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Imagine a seed.
A tiny seed. You have a spoonful of tiny seeds. You look at them, then you pick one and place it on a white sheet of paper. You look at it through a magnifying glass. You are absorbed, for some reason, in looking at a tiny seed through a magnifying glass. You can see its shape. A ridge maybe. Ovoid, flattened, brown, maybe speckled. Stained. You know that it contains the blueprint for something else, much bigger. Your human mind does the maths. Ratios, work, inputs and outcomes. And then back to the seed. At this moment in time it is a seed. A seed with promise.
Next you are creating an environment. A bed for the seed to lie in and germinate. You are provoking a transformation, understanding that certain conditions need to be met for the seed to start metabolising in a certain way to express genes that will ultimately lead to cell division and morphological change. Morphology. Its shape and appearance. A bit later you see a little bit of green poking out of the soil, a thin stalk, then a couple of leaves. At this point you also know the seed has produced roots, going down into the soil that you can't see. You know this from experience. The roots are drawing up water and minerals, water which is being breathed out through the leaves by the process of transpiration, whilst the leaves are drawing in energy from sunlight, converting this via photosynthesis into glucose, which the plant uses, as you do, to feed the electron transport chain and the process of cellular respiration. This is where the energy comes from to keep metabolising, to keep the process of continual change happening. Sunlight, water, minerals, carbon dioxide. The carbon comes from the air.
And then there is the branching stem, more leaves, strength enough for you to take the plant out of the pot and put it in the ground. By late Summer it is four feet tall and covered in yellow flowers, big green leaves. Then sometime in November it keels over onto the ground and starts to disintegrate. By February there's nothing left to look at, all gone. What was that about?
What was that thing?
It came and went. Its clear enough isn't it? It was a plant of course, grown from a seed. Now dead, having completed its lifecycle. You knew it was going to do that when you looked at the seed. If only you could get it to germinate and manage to keep the slugs away at that early vulnerable stage. You knew, when you looked at that seed, the plant was already keeling over and disintegrating, and yet both you and the plant persisted, you carried on and made the whole drama take place. You directed this plant to perform its life right there in front of you, and you observed all the key stages of its development. You marvelled at it from time to time, and you also ignored it and found it quite dull at other times. You can't marvel at something the whole time. You've got to have a bit of a break. But when you did marvel, you marvelled like this (imagine):
Plant looks pretty good today. Slightly different from yesterday, but I can't tell how exactly. Is that a new leaf there? Getting enough water? Enough sunlight? Oh look, you're just a thing aren't you, like an energy. You just convert sunlight air and water into whatever it is that you are. I'm just seeing you now, but you're moving at a different rate to me. Are we part of the same thing? What would that be. What's driving you, plant? Is it me. I decided to germinate you. Am I playing your God. Who am I? What drove me to plant your seed? Am I just passing through? Yes I am. Am I the same now as I was yesterday? Probably not, but not much difference. What's the point in all this? This is the point:
Is there a life force? If I ignore your form and just think about the activity, what do I perceive then? A continuous vibration of energy. A massive, unmeasurable amount of single events, all combining together to create a sustaining, living unit. Like me. Same phenomenon. An organising principle. Some sort of system. Out of which there emerges this observation.
Published in: Herbal Medicine by Max Drake
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Some General Points
- Pick only healthy specimens - not dead or uprooted plants.
- Pick in dry weather
- Pick with respect - for the environment, and for the plants you are picking
- Pick in areas that you know are not polluted or sprayed
- Pick only what the stand will bear. This can be as little as 5% in some areas or as much as 70% if the plants need a cutback.
- Avoid using plastic bags, especially in hot weather, as plants 'sweat'
- Pick small herbs and plants which 'bleed' by hand. Use a clean, sharp knife for thicker plants. Do not tear small branches, but cut them cleanly.
- Respect the law and the Country Code. It is illegal to gather plants without the permission of the landowner - although few people will object to the collection of 'weeds'
Harvesting Times
- Pick herbs and leaves before plant comes into full flower
- Some herbs, such as yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), are best picked in full flower
- Seeds for medicinal use are generally picked while still green
- Roots are usually harvested after the plant has died back
- Barks may be taken from branches or suckers at least two years old, in the early Summer. Peel the bark off branches as soon as possible after collecting.
- Fruits are picked when just ripe. It is usually allowed to pick fruit from public land
- Fungi. The perennial fruiting bodies are picked when growing (usually Autumn or late Summer)
Drying and Storing
General Principles
Remember that dry air dries, while direct heat only cooks. Whole herbs can be hung up in bunches. Large leaves and sliced roots can be threaded on string and hung across the kitchen. Sliced roots can be dried in a low oven. Flowers and seeds can be spread out on a tray and turned over daily.Tip: tie buches up with natural fibre string that you have pre-soaked. As it dries it will get tighter, thus avoiding bunches that drop all over the kitchen. Tie bunches of seed bearing herbs with the heads in a large paper bag. Tie around the stems and hang upside down, as the plant dries the seeds fall into the bag.
Some More General Points
- If possible, pick clean herbs so you will not have to wash them.
- Store herbs as whole as possible
- Store in a cool dark place and try to avoid fluctuations in temperature
- Check for insects from time to time. Flour weevils are the most destructive. They can be killed without damaging the herb by putting the whoile bag in the freezer for a few days
- Always label clearly with the NAME, DATE, and PLACE COLLECTED. Add any observations or special considerations
- Dried herbs usually keep for one year (one growing season) although roots and barks will keep much longer. Check the condition by taste and smell
Published in: Herbal MedicineHerbs by Max Drake
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Both German chamomile and Roman chamomile (Chamamelum nobile) can be used fairly interchangeably. German chamomile contains a thick volatile oil, chamazulene, that is blue in colour. If you leave a few chamomile flower heads in the bottom of a teapot for 24 hours or so you will find that the last few drops of tea in the bottom of the pot turn blue. The oil is anti-inflammatory and vulnerary (stops bleeding), and is a useful addition to external preparations for treating inflammatory skin conditions.
Chamomile tea makes a very pleasant relaxing drink, and is much better made from s few freshly picked flowers. If you cultivate chamomile, or are lucky enough to have some growing nearby, pick flowers daily when they are there to encourage further growth. If you are storing them, dry them well, as they can go off quite quickly. Well dried flowers will last the year, at least, and are much more rewarding than using commercially available teabags.
If making a tincture do a 1:3 @ 45%. The tincture is quite powerful, and you don’t need much either on its own or in a mix. The tincture is much better than the tea for direct therapeutic applications, for treating inflammatory digestive problems and so on.
Actions
- Anti-spasmodic
- mild sedative
- Antiseptic
- Antimicrobial
- Vulnerary
- Carminative
- Diaphoretic
- Anti-inflammatory
- Anti-allergic
- Bacteriostatic
- Nervine
Uses
- Chronic gastro-intestinal disorders
- Childhood insomnia
- Bronchial asthma
- Gastritis
- Stomach ulcers
- Colitis
- IBS
- Crohn’s disease
- Diarrhoea
- Constipation
- Spastic colon
- Headaches
Published in: Herbs by Max Drake
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Sap - use to make a base syrup, beer or wine. Harvest the leaves as soon as they’ve hardened off in early Summer. Make a feesh plant incture, or dry them for Tea. Make an infused oil of the fresh leaves for a relaxing massage oil for stiff or inflamed muscles: Put leaves in a jar with enough olive oil or almond oil to cover them. Put a piece of cloth over the jar as a lid fastened with a rubber band, to allow moisture to escape. Put the jar in the sun for a month or so, stirring regularly, making sure that the leaves remain below the surface. Strain ff, let it settle, and pour off into bottles, excluding any water and residue left at the bottom of the jar. Store in dark glass, or in a dark place. The oil can also be used for cellulite, eczema and psoriasis - but for these last two is not as effective as using birch tar.
properties
- Tea
- Spring cleanse, fluid retention
- Kidney stones
- Cystitis
- Gout
- Arthritis and rheumatism
- Psorisis and eczema
- Fevers
- Oil
- Cellulite
- Detoxing massage
- aching muscles
- rheumatism
- eczema and psoriasis
Published in: Herbs by Max Drake
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“The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilisation.”
Chris Johnstone
“If we succeed in making the changes required in our times, future generations may look back on the early twenty-first century and talk of it as the time of the great turning”
Three Dimensions of the Great Turning, according to Macy:
- HOLDING ACTIONS
Political activism and legislative, legal, and regulatory work undertaken to slow down the destruction inflicted by the industrial growth society.
STRUCTURAL CHANGE
Understanding the dynamics of the industrial growth society as a pre-requisite for changing it. Employing systems thinking to analyse the structure of the drivers behind growth and the destruction of resources and the natural environment. Clarity helps us to understand how old systems can be replaced.
“What interlocking causes indenture us to an insatiable economy that uses our Earth as supply house and sewer? It is not a pretty picture, and it takes courage and confidence in our own common sense to look at it with realism; but we are demystifying the workings of the global economy. When we see how this system operates, we are less tempted to demonize the politicians and corporate CEOs who are in bondage to it. And for all the apparent might of the Industrial Growth Society, we can also see its fragility—how dependent it is on our obedience, and how doomed it is to devour itself.”
Herbal Medicine, as a holistic health practice that enlists the self-organising powers of body and mind is just one example of a structural alternative.
SHIFT IN CONSCIOUSNESS
Perception of the Earth as a living system in which we are intricately interconnected. An end to the human experiment that separates mind from body.
Herbal Medicine
In the context of The Great Turning, Herbal Medicine occupies space in dimensions 2 and 3.
It is not possible to understand modern western herbal medicine without reference to both the history and tradition of its practice, and its political relationship to the dominant medical model of today: evidence-based biomedicine. Herbal medicine was the primary form of medicine from the earliest civilisations up until relatively recently. There are several key moments in the development of modern science over the past 200 years that have led to the marginalisation of herbal medicine in the West. One in particular illustrates well where modern medicine began to diverge in a completely new direction.
Claude Bernard (1854)
“La fixité du milieu interieur est la condition d’une vie libre et indépendante”.
The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life.
When the French physiologist made this assertion it opened the door for experimentation on the human body as a set of chemical reactions rather than as a living entity. It effectively got rid of the need for a ‘life force’.
Walter Cannon (1932)
:
The Wisdom of the Body: Homeostasis does not occur by chance but is the result of organised self-government.
A systems view of the body, predicting the developments of endocrinology and immunology. Describing how chemical events happen in the body in a linear series, producing feedback mechanisms that alter the physiology. All modern pharmacological interventions are based on this understanding. Fora more detailed explanation listen to Jonathan Treasure’s podcast on this subject.
Modern herbalists are trained in all aspects of scientific medicine: anatomy and physiology, pathology, pharmacology, epidemiology and research methods, but also understand there is another, parallel view that predates Bernard, and that is more useful when using herbs therapeutically, that recognises and works with a ‘vital force’. Some modern herbalists have completely rejected the vital force as a grounding therapeutic principle, and use herbs as though they are simply pharmacological agents acting on the same biological mechanisms as orthodox medical practitioners. These herbalists are sometimes known as phytotherapists - and this is also the non-holistic model of herbal medicine that the dominant, scientific medical establishment tend to recognise.
Many experienced herbalists, though, understand that there is a significant difference in the effectiveness of herbal interventions when they are directed by a therapeutic philosophy based on the existence of vital force. One of the reasons for this is because our understanding of how to use herbs has always been based on a constitutional and energetic view of human health, acknowledging that what works for one person might not work for another, because they have a different constitution or whatever. This can be summed up by saying that in this form of medicine the practitioner treats the patient and not the disease. This is the holistic model.
Taking herbal medicine forward as an essential skill for realigning civilistaion towards life-sustaining, and away from mindless industrial growth, the holistic model makes much more sense. Mainly because you can do a lot more with herbs by adopting the holistic view, and also because the connection that is implied by acknowledging the existence of a vital force - ie. the interconnectedness of all living things, and ulimately between mind and universe, allows for a medicine where people can manage their own healthcare with far less dependency on ‘experts’. As guardians of their own vital force, they are more likely to take good care of it. This is where we enter the third dimension of the Great Turning.
One of the great theorists of the vital force, or vitalism as it became known towards the end of the nineteenth century, was the American physiomedical herbalist J M Thruston. In his great work “The Philosophy of Physiomedicalism” he noted that working with the vital force “will yield the same unerring practical results at the sick bedside, as well as in prophylactic and sanitary work, whether the materialist or vitalist be right.” In other words, it doen’t matter whetheror not its true, as it gets results.
Published in: Herbal Medicine by Max Drake
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