Spiritual Science and the Art of Healing or Medicine Grove

Spiritual Science and the Art of Healing: Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Medicine

Author: Victor Bott

Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical medicine, highly regarded and widely practiced in Europe, integrates allopathic medical practices with alternative remedies, including dietary and nutritional therapies, massage, hydrotherapy, art therapy, and counseling. It recognizes that health and illness are directly related to our states of consciousness, and it views illness as an opportunity to create a new state of physical, emotional, and spiritual balance. Modern medicine tends to consider only the material aspect of human beings, an approach that fails to bring the individual to a state of complete wellness. Steiner's holistic view of humanity-beings composed of body, soul, and spirit-takes into consideration the seven-year cycles of human development, the influence of education on health, the relationship between psychological symptoms and physical conditions, the problem of cancer, the four cardinal organs, heredity, and the spiritual balance that characterizes true health.

New, revised edition of Anthroposophical Medicine.

Books about: Planning for Real Time Event Response Management or Why Global Commitment Really Matters

Medicine Grove: A Shamanic Herbal

Author: Loren Cruden

Medicine Grove is a comprehensive herbal, with listings for every common herb and many wild plants of North America. It includes descriptions of the part of the plant used, notes on preparation, lists of symptoms alleviated by the herb, and common effects. But Medicine Grove goes further, with chapters on gathering and growing wild herbs, using herbs in shamanic ceremonies or as plant allies in the wilderness, and birth, death, and dreaming herbs. Cruden combines her own first-hand experiences with a profound knowledge of indigenous traditions, enabling the reader to bring herbal lore into his or her own practice. She explains which herbs are best for seasonal ceremonies, smudging, and making offerings, and tells how to purify a sacred space. She covers topics such as vision quests, consciousness-altering, and the special connections between certain herbs and totem animals.

Medicine Grove brings the concept of an herbal into sacred territory, offering guidelines for incorporating herbs into one's spiritual life, based on the author's lifetime of work with Native American practices.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
 
Introduction
 
Part 1: Shamanic Herbalism
 
1. Gathering and Growing Herbs 
2. Preparing Medicinal Remedies 
3. Healing with Herbs 
4. Plant Allies 
5. Offering Herbs 
6. Smudge Herbs 
7. Maintenance Herbs 
8. Ceremonial Herbs 
9. Smoking Herbs and Use of Psychotropic Plants 
10. Birth, Death, and Dreaming Herbs 
11. Trees
 
Part 2: Materia Medica
 
Appendices
 
Appendix 1: General Tips for Growing Common Garden Herbs
 
Appendix 2: Forms for Medicinal Application of Herbs
 
Appendix 3: Plant Associations Within the Web of Life
 
Appendix 4: Herb Allies for Specific Aspects of Well-being
 
Appendix 5: Herbs Used in Ceremony 

Suggested Reading

Sources of Supply

Plant Index 

General Index 

Loren Cruden, midwife and herbal healer, lives on a mountain in Washington State in a house that she and her son built. Following spiritual studies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, her six years of work with Lewis Sawaquat, a Potawatomie pipe carrier, deepened her engagement with the spirituality that is native to the land. Respectful of the integrity of Native American ways, she draws carefully on those and other Earth-oriented traditions to create an eclectic yet authentic spiritual practice that relies on a direct experience of the interrelatedness of all life. She is the authorof  Love Is Green: An Herbal for Parents, The Living Earth Tarot Deck, The Spirit of Place, and Coyote's Council Fire.