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Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
A witch's brew to improve your life can be found in your backyard.

By

PlentyMag.com
Fri, Jul 24 2009 at 5:37 PM
 3

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HARVEST TIME: Collecting wild herbs in the Chugach State Park. (Photo: ykskin/Flickr)

Wild harvested eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog are what you would expect to find in a standard witch's brew. However, for the modern green witch, such implements definitely require a bit of toil and trouble to find. Nowadays, keeping the stove-top cauldron bubbling with the most magical of potions is as easy as grabbing some weeds off the front lawn or the edge of a sidewalk.
 
Common weeds, like dandelions, nettle, elder berries and hawthorne grow in abundance in many regions of the country, and can be used for a variety of herbal remedies, that some claim work just as well as over-the-counter drugs. Did you know dandelions are fantastic in a salad and are a highly effective diuretic? Ginger counters nausea? Or, that feverfew is great for a tooth-ache?
 
Think it's all just a bunch of hocus pocus?
 
Well, the National Institute of Health (NIH), a subdivision of the Department of Health and Human Services, disagrees. Check out their site on Complementary and Alternative Medicine for the proper handling and specific effects of common herbs. Also check out the organic herb shop, Flower Power Herbs & Roots, where you can order more than three hundred freshly dried, organic herbs, seeds, roots and flowers that you might have missed on your daily walk around the neighborhood.
 
"If you can boil water, you can utilize the herbs all around you,” says Lata Chettri–Kennedy, Flower Power owner and resident Greenwich Village Green Witch, a.k.a. herbalist extraordinaire. “Just drop the loose herbs in a mug, and enjoy. The most beneficial things grow in our backyards, so a plain green lawn is very depressing to me."
 
Kennedy says that it's more ecological to use locally grown herbs rather than pharmaceuticals. “When you cut and dry a plant, (your) taste(buds) immediately trigger the natural, medicinal effects,” she says. “In pill-form, so much energy has gone into irradiating and re-formulating the herbs that they've lost their essential essence to packaging." Not to mention, they lose their eco-friendly preparation and disposal.
 
Composting your used herbs or dropping them down the garbage disposal is an eco-friendly alternative to hazardous pharmaceutical waste disposal, whose toxicity moves from landfills and sewers into the local water supply.
 
To woo the object of your desire this Halloween, Kennedy recommends brewing up the following potion: 1/2 ounce damiana, 1/2 ounce Siberian ginseng, 1/2  ounce ashwagandha, 1/8 ounce licorice root and 1/12 ounce prickly ash bark combine to make the ultimate love potion/aphrodisiac.
 
Story by Nicole Zerillo. This article originally appeared in Plenty in October 2008. The story was added to MNN.com in July 2009.
 
Copyright Environ Press 2008

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Comments: 3
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anonymous
Bruce Denney Jul 27 2009 at 11:44 AM
Share the love everyone. Everyone should know that not everything that grows is edible, the "Demands" for health warnings are an over reaction. "Danger: Danger: reading this could damage your health is you do not have your display properly adjusted to your ambient conditions..." "Warning Warning; don't stand up to quickly, the blood may rush from you head and you might faint" We do not want to dumb down everything to the point that they are a mass of anti liturgy garbage. There are plenty of people
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out there who deserve a Darwin award, it is not our job to wrap them up and prevent them from following their own stupid path even if it does lead them somewhere fatal. Our role is just to leave it to the powers of nature to make it's own natural selection. As for date rape drugs! Manipulating sexual choices! Wow, you must have a very different reaction to one of those ingredients to normal people. I have tried them all on myself and my partner (with her knowledge and consent), and yes they can add a little extra something, nudge the old equipment into gear a bit more and maybe even add some stamina. But date rape! Anyone using this to try and force themselves on anyone else is going to be bitterly disappointed, these are not powerful crude chemicals that knock you out, they are gentle aides to natures process. There was no suggestion in the article that any love potion or aphrodisiac should be "slipped" to anyone. In my experiance, the magic of this sort of potion comes in many parts, there is a neurological response but it is "mild", then there are some psychological responses, "I've eaten something sexy" the placebo effect and the "this person has gone to a lot of trouble for me". On top of all that, you can, if you stir it right, put in the right intent, and choose to believe, then there is a possibility of some other sort of magick, but I don't think that is being advocated here. It is great to see people encouraging others to take an interest in what nature provides us. If you get the chance there is an excellent BBC series called "Grow your own drugs" which I guess some of you might die if you watch (heart attacks just from the lack of safety warnings!)
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anonymous
nasionnaich Jul 27 2009 at 12:58 AM
Shame on you, Lata Chettri–Kennedy, for not insisting that information regarding the dangers of un-informed do-it-yourself herbology be included in the article. Shame on you, Nicole Zerillo, for not doing the necessary research on the dangers AND for not including the information. Shame on you, editors of "Plenty" magazine, for publishing such a FluffBunny piece of trash. Yes, "backyard weeds", as many people call them, are very useful, very beneficial -- and they can also be very deadly when handled,
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processed or administered improperly. Not to mention the very REAL dangers of mis-identification -- such as gathering White Snakeroot, instead of Boneset. One can be deadly toxic, the other is "safe" when handled properly -- how many people can actually tell which is which? This article reminds me of "field guide" books where only general descriptions are given -- "plant: tall", "leaves: green, long and opposite-set", or "flowers: white, small, in flat cluster"! FluffBunny trash.
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anonymous
Mike Thornton Jul 26 2009 at 11:58 AM

Considering just how much can go wrong if someone who doesn't know what they're doing starts self-medicating with herbs they find around their homes, I wonder if perhaps it wouldn't go amiss to advocate caution and responsibility... Oh, and slipping something (even herbs) to someone with the intent of manipulating their sexual choices is wrong, wrong, WRONG. Please, do not turn herbal medicines into the next date-rape drug.

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