Showing posts with label herbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label herbs. Show all posts

Friday, February 14, 2020

The Occult Family Physician: Now Available!



This fairly long book is a tome of medical and herbal lore which combines multiple distinct elements of literature into one semi-condensed volume. Often, in the 19th century, the Materia Medica was separate from social tracts or only contained herbs and their uses or recipes. This contains all of the above, as well as dietary content, all from the backdrop of the botanic method, which stressed proper living, "natural" remedies, and was altogether an objective improvement on the prior era of mercury based medicine, antimonial injections into wounds, and other pseudo-alchemical snake oil.

It is interesting to note that by this time, while lobelia (formerly heralded as a sort of cure-all) was continued in use for many complaints, it had lost ground against chamomile, st johns wort, artemesia absinthium, and a few other species which were rising in prominence.

Of interest as well here is a short tract against onanism ("self pollution"!) and material involving spiritism.

307 pages.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants: Now Available!



This excellent book is full length and contains a laundry list of fascinating legend and folklore about botanical species- it specifically dwells a lot on Greco-Roman, Arthurian, and then modern (largely European, sometimes American) lore. It is of great interest noting how humans have lopsidedly created stories about some species so much more than others; the rose, the oak, and maize especially.

It's hard to single out a story that was my own favorite because there are so many; Saint Patrick of course comes to mind; the explanatory story of how he converted Ireland involves explaining the trinity using a shamrock as opposed to conversion by force (I like the fictional, botanical account better.)

266 pages.

Monday, January 6, 2020

American Medicinal Leaves and Herbs: Now Available!



This interesting little work is another of the botanically important circulations produced at the dawn of the 20th century by the US Department of Agriculture- it is fully illustrated by Rita Metzner, whose Instagram you can see here. It lists over 30 species of note that grow within the region of the continental United States- mostly native plant life, with a few European garden escapees. The number of uses is quite large; from expectorants and purgatives to general balms. That is all secondary however as the work was mainly meant for farmers and rural dwellers to be able to identify and exploit species in order to prevent continued US reliance on imports of plant material which were used within a clinical setting as medicine in an era before modern standards and preparations.

67 pages.

Monday, December 23, 2019

American Medicinal Flowers: Now Available!



This short bulletin is a handy little guide to North American species wild-gathered for medicinal purposes in its era. It has been illustrated by Rita Metzner because my own renditions would not be appropriate for a work meant to be roughly a short field guide. I've released a couple of these agricultural pieces before by the same author and have another lined up being edited as we speak.

The species are common; datura, elder, raspberries, and so forth; for each a basic description of usage is given- it should be noted that the apothecarian recipes derived from such herbal material are still in use in folk medicine, homeopathy, and in the third world.

29 pages.

Friday, December 2, 2016

The Witches' Pharmacopoeia: Now Available!




And now at last we come to a great milestone in the catalog of works I have authored or edited; the 100th occult release (counting a half a dozen of my own works) and the first herbal/homeopathic work here, technically speaking; the very good "Witches Pharmacopoeia" by Robert Fletcher, who combines the Shakespearean with the burning times herbal and cauldron-stirring lore

This booklet is line after line of not only herbal inclusions into magick but contains also some brief coverage of other diabolical work; especially as it relates to the boiling of unbaptized infants or the use of hanged man fat in potions and rituals. You will probably know the latter best from the use of the Hand of Glory.

This work along with "Magic Plants" will be placed in a new ninth category for herbal, homeopathic, and medicine-related works as soon as at least two additional titles are available that would fit therein; likely the South Sea Herbal and "Weeds as Medicine." It will go under the Academic heading until the new category is crafted.

40 pages.