Monday, July 01, 2019

Book Review: Evolutionary Herbalism


There have been a couple opportunities to get an understanding of nebulous concepts in my life.  In high school, World Cultures class was an overview of the religions, types of governments, and an assortment of "isms" that served me well and led to further study on my part.
In the very earliest days of learning about herbalism, my sister and I took an 8 or 10 week course during which a different healing modality was addressed each week.  There we got a rudimentary understanding of things like homeopathy, ayurveda, transcendental meditation, reiki, and several others.  It was much more important than I'd imagined at the time, and it opened us up to learn more. 

Now we have Evolutionary Herbalism by Sajah Popham.  This is another one of those huge learning opportunities.

I've been a fan of Sajah Popham's via social media.  He's got some great Youtube videos, and a podcast called The Plant Push that he and his wife Whitney do together.
His ability to explain confusing or difficult concepts is fluid and easy-going.  You get drawn in and understand the subject before you have a chance to realize you're learning something new.  So it comes as no surprise that his innate talent for transferring information and understanding is on full display on these pages.
We swoop and dive through many deep and mysterious subjects and see how they bring us back into connection with plants and healing.
We walk through several doctrines, elements, alchemy, doshas, astrology, and so much more, leading to helping and healing the soul in evolution.  He does a spectacular job of bringing plant/person/condition energetics into focus.  Ever want to understand more about the how and why of spagyric processes?  I have!  And here it is.
This is a new and valuable resource that explains a whole system of wholeness.
Most importantly for me, there is a lot of material here that is usually approached with a level of woo-woo that leaves me lost in the ambiguity and lack of clarity.  This is not the case in Evolutionary Herbalism.  Here we have a writer who knows the subject matter well enough that he can convey it without being vague.  I'm not sure I've ever seen some of these topics approached so openly.

The book is published via northatlanticbooks.com and I'm sure it's available through the jungle behemoth as well, but I'm not posting that link. 
ISBN 9781623173135

or, check out
EvolutionaryHerbalism.com