A guide to herbalism

If you are still a beginner witch, or maybe if you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut in your witch path, it’s probably a good time to visit (or revisit) the basics to give you a new perspective. As a green witch, my path does not narrow into working exclusively with plants, but the more I dive deeper into herbalism, the more I find out they are in fact a great way to start learning and refining your magic.

     The basics of plant magic are generally the basics of most practices in witchcraft. As witches, we ultimately seek to restore balance, especially because we don’t usually believe we have a savior other than ourselves, so we gotta do the work. In plant magic, you’ll be working as well as their signatures, such as the planets and elements they’re ruled by.

     We must first understand the language of plants, because they do reflect in our bodies and even in other spirits or spellwork. These are the alphabet bricks that help you to form your words, they tell us the general properties of herbs so we can compose our magical workings. The plants are divided in certain categories that says both about their magical properties as well as their medicinal ones as they often overlap, but for safety reasons, I will not give you a guide on plant medicine, and if you do plan to use plants for such purpose, I utterly recommend you to seek a professional in the medical field to aid you. Do not do this by yourself, as you can do more harm than good to your body.

     The first action a plant can have is their temperature. Plants are described as being either warming, cooling or neutral, which usually reflects on their gender alignment and their elemental ruler, such as fire and air for warming plants, while earth and water are cooling. Warming plants are usually masculine or projective herbs, which means they bring vitality and heat while they make great allies for banishing, protection and to bring in warmth. If you’re a person with too much passive energy, or if the situation feels stuck and slow, you can generally use them in spellwork while considering which plant spirits will be suited best for it. Cooling herbs on the other hand work as receptive herbs, they are nurturing, calming and are great for general cleansings, bring in fertility and nourishment of a situation, as well as inviting calm and reasoning if a situation is too “heated”, like fights or discussions. Mind you I mentioned the gender alignments as a classification since they’re usually recorded this way in textbooks, but it’s good to clarify that they do not reflect societal expectations on gender, but rather they signify energetic polarities such as projective or receptive, positive and negative and so on.

     Sequentially, we have their effects on water and minerals ratio, which are classified as moistening, drying or nourishing. If you’re into gardening, you’ll know that for a plant to thrive you must be constantly be measuring the amount of nutrients and water of the soil. If the soil has too much minerals, we must water the plant a lot to dissolve these nutrients, while if the soil is too damp, the plant will have what it’s called physiological dryness, where there’s not enough air and minerals for the plant to absorb that water, and with magic it’s no different. Moistening herbs are like water itself, they bring flow and movement to a situation or a person that feels to stiff, brittle and dry, while they’re also related to air and water elements. On the other hand, drying herbs are very useful when there’s an excess of water, like when a situation is too emotional like it is too damp, so they act to dispel this excess of water.

     All of these classifications, along with others, are originally medical classifications for the practice of herbalism, but they’re still useful to learn since they tell us a lot about the magical properties of the herbs as they overlap very often, as well as the way they are applied in magic. Plants do not work by fixing small inconveniences, but rather they go to the root of what is causing the situation in the first place. For example, if you’re experiencing effects of the evil eye, rue will not just take your headache and the string of bad luck, but it will remove the whole evil eye placed on you. If you ever made an uncrossing work with lemon and rosemary, you’ll know that for a short while it will look like you put a curse on yourself, a lot of things will go down, a lot of fights may take place, but suddenly you’ll feel much, much lighter than before. This happens because magic goes way back to the root of it, and with plant magic is no different, even though they are more subtle and often go unnoticed, but this doesn’t mean they’re not potent.

     Additionally, we have the famous hermetic law of “as above, so below”, which can make plants a great ally to understand bigger forces. Plants are also magically classified by their planetary rulers, alongside their element and polarity due to this law. You can then select a few plant allies to help you study these forces, either by making herbal pouches or jars to carry with you (like you would with crystals), burning them as incense or meditating with the plant. How do you feel this energy? Are there images that pop up? Do you hear anything when exploring what it feels like? And after that analysis, you can then write down your experience. This will give you both information on this particular plant and it’s rulers, so you can pick a few herbs of each element, planet or gender to understand how different they can be between each other.

Finally, with all this information you’ll have, you can then use these formulas to compose your spell. If you’re making a fiery wall protection for example, you’ll want to use hot herbs, such as clove, peppercorn and rosemary. If you’re looking to dispel a fight, it’s better to use cooling herbs, and so on. While each plant will have their specific signature, these broad categories will give you a north to where to start. Happy witching!