The Sacred Hearth

Here you will find books on herbal lore, herbal magic, herbal crafts and herbal gardening. When I talk about herbs, do not think that I am just referring to traditional herbs or the herbs found in the herbs and spices section of your grocery store. Nor am I just talking about herbaceous (non-woody) plants. When I use the word herb, I am referring to any plant that is useful in any way; magical, culinary, medicinal and crafty plants.

Anyway, please take a look at these mini reviews of my favorite (and not so favorite) books on herbal lore.

Garden Witchery: Magick from the Ground Up by Ellen Dugan is, while not a completely useless book, and extremely annoying one. For one, the tone of the book is condescending and presumptuous, though I'm sure she meant it to be friendly and informal. She scolds, she gripes, at one point she tells the reader not to whine, (I wasn't even considering whining.) and she insists on peppering her dialog with irrelevant personal stories. She also says "you need to learn how to do this" or "go to your garden center and ask how to do this" rather than just telling you how to do it. Very annoying. Also, this is really a very Wiccan book that will surely annoy non-Wiccans to distraction. If I used the word fluffy, I would. There is a huge section about how Artemis, Selene and Hecate are a classic Maiden/Mother/Crone moon-Goddess trilogy that almost had me pulling out my hair! (If you read alot from me, you know that sort of thing drives me crazy.) Of course, I could have skipped that and ignored it if there was a bit more substance to the book, but there's not. At one point she even promises to give growing instructions for her suggested plants and she doesn't beyond giving growing zones. She even neglects to mention that many of her suggestions are highly invasive and should only be grown in pots! Very disappointing. Her lack of environmental concern is evident also by her cheerful use of pesticides and herbicides. She tells one particularly mellowdramatic anectdote about growing datura in her yard, freaking out when she finds out it's poisonous and dousing it with pesticide and then lays the blame on the datura for the fact that nothing else would grow there for awhile.
If you're not an absolute newbie at gardening, you won't learn anything about it from this book, but you might profit from the spells and correspondences (though you'll find more detail on this website than in her book).

Today I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite books about herbal magicki, The Wicca Herbal by Jamie Wood.

The introduction contains a bunch of information that is, as usual, questionable, but not offensively so. She describes a traditioni, which she calls Wicca, which is certainly earth-based spirituality and witchcraft, but is not really Wicca, though the definition of Wicca is so convoluted these days, who knows what it is. She gives a brief rituali outline that is certainly Wiccan and she explains how to get in tune with the energies of plants, which isn't anything in particular. She expounds romantically on how she believes ancient people viewed the plant world as if it were fact, which is moderately annoying, but still romantic and pleasant so it's forgiveable. She also includes handy tips for growing, gathering, storing and preserving herbs, but she's pretty light on general information about making herbal preparations. If you already know all that, you won't miss it.

Finally, we get to the nitty gritty, the plants themselves. For each plant she gives a brief introduction and provides practical information for integrating it into your magical practice. Here is where the herbal preparations are, but you have to find the herbs she's chosen to provide recipes for to get the information.

She wraps the whole thing up with a list of sources and of course a handy index.

I just like this book. It's a good reference and it has lots of neat ideas and recipes. It would be nice, perhaps, if there was more detailed information about the individual herbs, their correspondences, growing conditions, plant identification tips, but I don't think that's what this book is all about. I think it assumes you are already familiari with the plants under discussion and just wants to give you some ideas about how to use them. Alli and all, a great book to have as a companion to more mundanei book with more detailed information about the plants themselves.

Of course you can find lots of information about magical herbs at http://www.sacredhearth.com if you want to know more about the plants in this book.