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Inside Ritual Botanica: The Art & Science of Sacred Plants · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What? What's going to happen?
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: What?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I welcome back to the occult rejects. One of the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: things I've learned over the years is that most of
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: us encounter herbs at the very end of their story.
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  Speaker 2: You buy a bag of rosemary, a bottle of essential oil,
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  Speaker 2: a tincture, or incense blending. But maybe we know the
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  Speaker 2: magical correspondences. Maybe we've heard about the medicinal benefits, but
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  Speaker 2: we rarely stop to ask how any of it got there.
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  Speaker 2: How does a living plant become a medicine, a hydrosul
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  Speaker 2: and essential oil and incense a ritual object? What gets
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  Speaker 2: lost and what gets gained at every step of that journey.
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  Speaker 2: Today's guest is someone who doesn't just study herbs from books,
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  Speaker 2: grows them, harvests them, distills them, works them clinically, studies
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  Speaker 2: their chemistry, explores their folklore, and asks how all these
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: perspectives come together in a single practice. That is one
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  Speaker 2: of the reasons I've looked forward to this conversation, because
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  Speaker 2: I want to go beyond simply asking what herbs are
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  Speaker 2: used for. I want to understand the craft itself. What
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  Speaker 2: does it actually take to become a modern ritual herbalist.
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  Speaker 2: How do you decide the exact moment a plant is
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  Speaker 2: ready to harvest? Why I choose a hydrosul instead of
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  Speaker 2: a tincture, a steam distillation instead of another extraction method?
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  Speaker 2: What happens chemically inside the still does changing the way
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  Speaker 2: we prepare a plant also change its medicinal properties, its
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  Speaker 2: aromatic profile, or even the way we experience it in ritual?
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  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about ritual magic, psychology, chemistry, herbal medicine,
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  Speaker 2: and sacred plants. But more than anything, I want to
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  Speaker 2: pull back the curtain on the work itself, to understand
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  Speaker 2: not just what you make, but how you make it
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  Speaker 2: and why those choices matter. And before I introduce Ash
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  Speaker 2: and Daniel, I'm going to introduce the other people joining me.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: We got the lound, Judith, What is going on? Judith?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: How will you fine?
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  Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. I can't wait to talk
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  Speaker 4: about this topic is one of one of my favorite ones.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Everyone else. You could find me on YouTube, speaker and
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: x as the Loon, check out my interview with Nick
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: and any upcoming weekly branches.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for coming on, Judith. I appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: I know you. I know you're big into this stuff,
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  Speaker 2: so it should be fun. Yes, oh yeah, and Sky,
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  Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on. Man, that was
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  Speaker 2: really awful, awesome that you offered to come on. Thank you.
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  Speaker 5: Absolutely wouldn't miss it for Ash or Daniel. Daniel is
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  Speaker 5: one of my favorite jurissists out there, and I've heard
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: nothing but wonderful things about Ash, so really excited. People
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: can find me at Philosophical Mind podcast or Therapa podcast.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: So hey, good Instagram, RSS feed.
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  Speaker 2: All that awesome. Thank you very much, sir and Esh Daniel.
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  Speaker 2: I know, unfortunately when I made the intro before, I
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: left Daniel out because I don't think he was I
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: didn't know you were coming on at that point, but
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I would have thrown something in there for you. But
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  Speaker 2: please introduce yourselves and let everybody know what your deal
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  Speaker 2: is also.
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  Speaker 4: Sir.
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  Speaker 1: Cool. So, I'm Daniel Wiseman and I'm the founder of
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  Speaker 1: Secret Fire Spageria. We are a spajeriic apothecary. I'm also
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  Speaker 1: the founder of Lumina Institute, which is an educational platform
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  Speaker 1: and research platform advancing modern day spageria and our chemical practices.
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  Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at Secret Fire Spageria
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  Speaker 1: or Lumina Alchemy, as well as my personal chemical page
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Alchemia Arcadia.
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  Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you, sir, and.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Ash. I am the owner, founder, operator of Ritual Botanica.
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  Speaker 3: I started this around twenty fourteen, but I had a
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: lot of incarnations of different herb medicine, probably since I
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  Speaker 3: was about twenty, so it's been twenty years now. I've
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  Speaker 3: been working with plants, and I'm located in Asheville, North Carolina,
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  Speaker 3: and yeah, I love all plant medicine, but I specifically
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  Speaker 3: have moved into aromatic medicine, and yeah, distillation is kind
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  Speaker 3: of my niche. So I've been teaching aromatic distillation of
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  Speaker 3: plants since about twenty sixteen, and I just love introducing
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  Speaker 3: people to this medicine that I feel like in the
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  Speaker 3: herbal world is still like highly undervalued. So I'm here
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  Speaker 3: to talk about it. I made Daniel, who's in town
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: visiting from Nova Scotia, jump on here with me, and
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  Speaker 3: I'm excited to see what we get into. Thank y'all
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  Speaker 3: for having us.
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  Speaker 2: No, of course, thank you. I'm glad it worked out
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  Speaker 2: because originally I was supposed to have both of yous.
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  Speaker 2: On the first time I tried to schedule it, so
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  Speaker 2: I mean it worked out anyway. Is your shop in
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  Speaker 2: Nashville in Asheville.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm just it's technically wood fin, but it
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  Speaker 3: is five minutes from downtown Ashville, and I've kind of
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  Speaker 3: bounced around this area. I live just thirty minutes north
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  Speaker 3: in the mountains, and I've worked in Marshall, and recently,
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  Speaker 3: or about maybe five years ago, I moved closer to town.
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  Speaker 3: So just out the front door, I can see the
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  Speaker 3: French Broad River and the train tracks. It just feels
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  Speaker 3: like a little I'm in a little magical niche not
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  Speaker 3: quite in the main area of Asheville. It's a little
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  Speaker 3: quieter here so and the shop was open to the public,
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  Speaker 3: but the last couple of months I've moved back to
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  Speaker 3: just buy appointment only and mainly running classes in an
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  Speaker 3: online shop.
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  Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha? Yeah, I totally forgot you're out there, because
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  Speaker 2: I think it was like a week or two after
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  Speaker 2: Ike did his thing, I ended up going out to Asheville.
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  Speaker 2: I totally would have, you know, if you're open or
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  Speaker 2: whatever there, I would have stopped by.
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  Speaker 3: I totally forgot, Yeah, you got to come visit near
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  Speaker 3: by the river. You know, stare at the geese that
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: are out there.
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  Speaker 2: For me, I'll be stolen. It'll be interesting. Nice. So
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: what got you? I guess this is for both of
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: youse got you? What got you into this?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Oh?
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  Speaker 3: It's been such a long journey, but I found the
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  Speaker 3: herbal medicine when I was younger, just looking for some
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  Speaker 3: kind of sovereignty within my own wellness and healthcare. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: also grew up as like a dirt punk anarchist, so
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  Speaker 3: being able to like medicine of the people it was
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  Speaker 3: important to me. And for probably the first ten years
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  Speaker 3: I was very much an herbalist that was like, the
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  Speaker 3: medicine tastes bad, it's more potent, let's do it this way.
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  Speaker 3: And I did a lot of clinical work. I've always
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  Speaker 3: been very hands on. I spent years farming, so part
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  Speaker 3: of my work is focused on actually growing, harvesting, and
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  Speaker 3: making fresh plant medicine. And somewhere along the way, I
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: just had this kind of epiphany with a marigold plant
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  Speaker 3: that led me into distillation and working with aromatics. And
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  Speaker 3: as I've gone further down the aromatic road, it's just
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  Speaker 3: completely changed my practice. It's changed my views of healing,
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  Speaker 3: of medicine, and I've sunk into a much more sensual
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  Speaker 3: and imaginal and ritual place with it. So in twenty fourteen,
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  Speaker 3: that's when I shifted my shop to be called Ritual Botanica,
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  Speaker 3: which to me kind of stood for the fact that
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  Speaker 3: everything is made with intention and everything is taken with intention.
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  Speaker 3: And the goal of the shop in the beginning was
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  Speaker 3: to kind of weave plants back into people's lives so
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  Speaker 3: that they'll want to kind of start participating in the
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  Speaker 3: more than human world and taking care of the more
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: than human world and even just going out and watching
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: a sunset and having those moments of beauty, because I
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: feel like if we don't cultivate these moments of beauty,
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  Speaker 3: then we aren't cultivating like hope and just something greater
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  Speaker 3: that ties us back into the connection and the web
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  Speaker 3: of life. So I don't know, did that answer the question.
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  Speaker 3: I'll just pass Dan.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: How did you get started?
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  Speaker 1: Good question? You know, I would say kind of my
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: gateway drug to herbal medicine and alchemy really was actually cannabis.
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  Speaker 1: When I was much younger, you know, I was working
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  Speaker 1: with some basically some projects that help people gain access
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  Speaker 1: to free cannabis people who had like chronic health issues
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: like cancer and chronic pain and things like that. I
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  Speaker 1: was pretty young at the time, so I was really
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  Speaker 1: just interested in growing cannabis. But at that time, like
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  Speaker 1: I just saw tremendous healing in people that I did
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  Speaker 1: not anticipate when first getting into it, you know, hearing
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  Speaker 1: people's stories about how they changed their lives with this plant,
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  Speaker 1: and that really turned me on too. You know, of course,
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  Speaker 1: the idea that well, if this plant can heal, all
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  Speaker 1: of the plants must have certain potentials. So I started
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  Speaker 1: really diving into that, diving into psychedelic plants and mushrooms
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  Speaker 1: in general, like looking at the way we can heal ourselves,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: you know, on a more subtle level, like reading into
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  Speaker 1: traditional use of psychoactive substances. And at the same time,
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  Speaker 1: I kind of had like an academic interest in the
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  Speaker 1: occult in general, and as a part of that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: a key part of that interest was in alchemy, although
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  Speaker 1: at that point, again it was quite academic, kind of
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  Speaker 1: armchair and as time went on, I really felt like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, this is what I wanted to make of
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  Speaker 1: my life, was working with plant medicine.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And so when I dove into starting to study that
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  Speaker 1: at the same time I was studying alchemy. So I
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  Speaker 1: kind of found this realm within spijirics in alchemy where
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  Speaker 1: all of my interests kind of converge, where you know,
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  Speaker 1: you have the psychological, psycho spiritual, internal aspects of alchemy
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  Speaker 1: and plant medicine in general, and then the practice of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: plant medicine, you know, growing plants, harvesting plants, making medicines
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  Speaker 1: from plants, seeing people, helping people introduce plants into the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: life through clinical practice. So that's how kind of all
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: spun together for me. And at this point now I've
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  Speaker 1: moved on to specializing really much more in medicine making
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  Speaker 1: and harvesting than the actual clinical practice. I practiced clinically
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  Speaker 1: for just over ten years, and I'm I'm moving more
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: into just focusing on preparing medicine and teaching and researching
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: in regards to alchemy and spagirics.
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  Speaker 2: Did any but either one of you is like into
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: alchemy at all before you got into it, like the
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: idea of like kind of like you know, alchemist or
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  Speaker 2: the occult or did you just find yourself becoming an
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  Speaker 2: alchemist one day in your own way?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? You know, I it's hard. I mean, for me,
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  Speaker 3: alchemy is really like an orientation to life, like that's
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  Speaker 3: how it's become. It's it's a way of relating, right.
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  Speaker 3: And I started taking alchemy classes before I even really
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: got into distillinge and aromatics. And at the same time,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: I was already into astrology, which is a wing of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: like you have to have astrology if you're going to
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  Speaker 3: be doing alchemy. I was also into a cult and
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: what do they call them now, a psychonaut Like I
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: think I was doing that before I even knew what
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: the word was. So I was exploring all of realms.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: And once I really started studying alchemy and then practicing alchemy,
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  Speaker 3: it was like this moment of realizing kind of what
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  Speaker 3: Daniel said, where they all converged and it would just
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  Speaker 3: became one thing. It's hard though, when people ask you,
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  Speaker 3: like what you do, because alchemy has just become this
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  Speaker 3: word that is just like, oh, alchemy, it's just transformation,
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: like you know, it's used all over the place now.
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  Speaker 3: So to tell people like, oh, I participate in alchemy,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: and then you start describing all the things alchemy encompasses,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: you leave people a little brain fuck. They're like, what,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: You're like eclectic? What is going on? What do you
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: actually do? So it's nice to get on podcast and
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: teach classes and be able to kind of get more
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: clarity around that. But yeah, so I guess I was
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: into alchemy before I even knew what alchemy was.
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  Speaker 1: Like, I was.
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  Speaker 3: I do a lot of medical astrology, and naive baby
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  Speaker 3: me thought I was making this up. I was like, oh,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: this makes sense, We'll use astrology as a constitution system.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: And I started working with it. And then pretty shortly
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: after someone was like, this already exists. It's called medical astrology.
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  Speaker 3: And then I just like went deep down the medical
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: astrology hole.
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  Speaker 2: That's funny. You're like, oh, I just figured out something.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about myself too, him like, I can't
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: be the first person to think of this. Yeah, you know,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I'm real big into I always bring up whenever we
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: bring up like an astrology in herbalism, somebody I was
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: really impressed with. And when he came to medicine, I
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: think it's actually kind of you know, impressive that they
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: they kept uh some of their medicine was still in
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: medicine books up until like the late eighteen nineties. Or
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: maybe nineteen hundreds. Tycho Brahe I don't know if you've
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: ever heard of him. Yeah, he was a he was somebody,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: a god. He had his own observatories and Kepler basically
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: after he died, Kepler jacked his shit and stole it,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: and he was what he was. He was also working
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: for Tycho, but uh, yeah, he was huge into the stars.
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  Speaker 2: He had observatory, he had made a whole bunch of
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: different type of like instruments of waiting able to look
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: at the stars, ways of looking at the stars without
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: the telescope. The telescope wasn't out yet. And he was like,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: you know, really big into astrology and he was totally
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: in charge. He was on he had the Isle of
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: e vent and he was totally in charge of taking
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: care of everybody's health. And he even had like he
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: would have stuff planted in planetary like uniform, like all
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: the Saturn everything would be here, everything from Jupid it
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: would be here. And it was like built around the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: observatory and he turned them into chink tinctures and he
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: treated people and he had stuff in the I think
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: it was like in the Danish or Denmark like pharmacy
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: book up until like the late eighteen hundreds, almost nineteen hundreds,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So like, I mean that shit works obviously.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean if you said, with the plants long
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: enough and start observing the sky, you really see it
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: kind of unfold right before you.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, did any of you have any questions? Sky
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: would Judith?
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just gonna ask what exactly constitutes aromatic medicine.
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: I would assume maybe has something to do with aroma
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: therapy and sense I'm just thinking aromatics, but maybe it's
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: a lot more so.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know what's funny is I don't consider myself
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: an aroma therapist at all. I haven't really had a
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: roma therapy training. I don't work with essential oils internally
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: too much or I don't know, I just in aroma therapy.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: I see this disconnect, and it's not true across the board.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: I'm making a generalization, but I feel there's a disconnect
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: of relating to the plant as its own entity, and
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: therefore the plants get a little bit more abuse, Like
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: it takes a lot of plant material to make a
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: little bit of essential oil. And the way I work
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: with aromatic medicine, which encompasses pretty much anything that's natural
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: from a plant that smells right like incense. Essential oils,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: hydrosol hydrosaurs is where I really got in to aromatic
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: medicine because it's just very sustainable to make hydrosols for
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: yourself or in smaller batches, more sustainable than essential oils
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: and hydrosols. A lot of people aren't familiar with them,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: although they have gained popularity in the last ten years
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: since I started. They are basically like the essential water.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: They have the water loving molecules volatile compounds, whereas essential
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: oil has the more fat loving the carbon chains. So
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the hydrosol also has like a tiny bit of essential
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: oil in it. Like the molecules of the water which
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: holds the plants, volatiles has a saturation point for essential oil.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: So it's just like a very safe way to work
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: with essential oils and they still smell amazing. So yeah,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: for me, aromatic medicine is pretty much anything that's going
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: to be able to be inhaled that has the aroma
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: of a plant, and I call it aromatic medicine to
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: differentiate it from aroma therapy. Eric medicine to me is
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: a medicine that bypasses the other physiological processes in the body, right,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Like we don't have to process it through our liver,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: it goes directly to our amygdala. And these volatile compounds
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: they have this way just to instantly penetrate our consciousness.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: We know this. They bring up memories, they bring up colors, visions,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: They can change our emotional state instantaneously. So it's just
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: really potent medicine that I feel like we all should
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: be using with a lot more care and consciousness. So
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: I hope that answers the question. And humans have been
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: working with aromatic medicine for centuries. I mean, it's some
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: of the oldest ways we've worked with plants outside of
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: just eating them and whatnot. But they have stills dating
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: back to you know, eighteen fifty BC, and even before that.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: We see the Egyptians had this huge emphasis with making
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: these aromatic oils burning incense like perfume means through smoke,
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: and it was a way that our ancient ancestors could
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: send their prayers up to the gods. They would burn
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: these as offerings and send off their prayers. So I'm
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: kind of overgeneralizing all of it, but I just like
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: to situate it a little bit in the history of
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: we find stills coming out of the Swana area right
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: southwest Asia and northern Africa. And I'm sure more than that,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Like I haven't even gotten into more of like Chinese
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: alchemy or aromatics. It's a whole other world to me.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I've kind of stuck with my lineage, which encompasses more
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: of the southern Italy. I have some Coptic Egyptian roots
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: and just basically Western medicine. Do you have anything about medicine?
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Nothing to add I mean, I think, well, something that
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Ash and I love to talk about is finding this
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: intersection between her work and my own, which has so
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: much overlap, you know. And we've talked a lot about
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: hydrosols in particular. Alchemy doesn't always use the same terminology,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: but what we find is like the same substances being
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: described under different names. For example, recently we're talking about
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the importance of hydrosaul in the work, and I was
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: speaking about Isaac colindis one of the most famous alchemists,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: and he does this work where he talks about what's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: called the water of the clouds, and like Ash was
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: speaking about, hydrosaul contains like a certain amount of essential
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: oil in it. When it comes over, it's often coming
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: over as like a cloudy mixture. And in the work
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: with hollandis this water is distilled the plants in various ways.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: He's got different recipes, but essentially, this water, this natural water,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: indogenous water inside of plants is gently distilled out and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: it comes over technically as this cloudy hydrosaul. And it's
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: interesting because in this work, which is quite complex, the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: hydrosaul is featured all throughout the work. It's used to
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: extract the plant. Like the water, the water, the indogenous
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: water of the plant is used to extract itself. It's
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: used to cleanse all the different aspects of itself. You know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: when the plant is broken down into the elements, the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: four elements, and the elements can all be cleansed by
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the same water. Then this same water can also be
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: used to elevate to amplify each of these individual parts.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And then finally this water is used to bring everything
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: back together again. So it's interesting seeing, you know, hydrosol
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: is such an important aspect of Ash's work in aromatics,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and seeing this interplay between her work and this traditional
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: work of alchemy where the hydrosol plays this key essential
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: role in again taking everything apart, cleansing it, exalting it,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and putting it back together. Water is featured there, so
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: it's you know, not to add to it, it's kind
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of just like an addendum or like alongside what she does.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to see how important these aromatic substances have
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: been in alchemy as well as you know, traditional distillation
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of plants and different aromatics.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I've I've really veered towards working
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: with hydrosals and aromatics in a more psycheological sense, but
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: there are many physical attributes to hydrosals and historical uses.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: A lot of these waters, floral waters, aromatic waters were
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: traditionally used. There were periods of time where people had
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: still rooms and their houses that were tended by women
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: to make the aromatic waters. We see this throughout the
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Middle East, like orange blossom water, rose water being used
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: in drinks, which you know, in a hot climate, it's
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: going to help cool, it's going to cool the agitation.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: They're also great digestive, so we see it throughout old
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: material medicas and different apothecary records that they were using
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: aromatic waters for digestive issues. So I think it's just
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: interesting that they kind of fell out of style. And
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: you know, I think it might be Anne Harmon's book.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: I don't want to misquote, but I'm pretty sure she
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: mentions that at one point the essential oils were discarded.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: They were seeing as not as valuable because they were
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: too gross, and the waters were what were used. And
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: what they think with like some of the very old
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: distillation was that it was these maybe ceramic vessels with
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: some kind of animal skin put on top, and they
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: would boil the plant matter and the waters would go
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: into the skins and then they'd ring them out and
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: use those aromatic waters. So, I mean, there's a lot
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: we don't know that we're having to kind of speculate about.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: But I think that's the case for everything, the way
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: things get traded and misconstrued. It's just interesting.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sky Drew, do you have anything else?
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: Well, I know that it seems like ash you're super
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: big on like copper Olympics, So I was curious if
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: he could speak to you your thoughts on why that is.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Actually that's funny because I started in glass and my
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: preference is for glass. I feel like glass is more
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: of a alchemical tradition, and I think there's also something
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: very beautiful and symbolic about using glass, like the invisible
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: holding this visible matter, and it allows us to watch
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: the process. And you know, I've been studying depth psychology
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: for a while now, and Young spent a lot of
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: time talking about and using alchemy as a framework for
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: his psychology, and it was all about the projection of
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: our unc onto this plant matter that you could see
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: through the process through glass. So I probably spent the
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: first five years distilling and just glass, but then I
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: outgrew it and I got I hit my Venusian years,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: and you know, venus is copper is its element, and
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: it's also just it's like a beautiful and traditional way
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: to work with the aromatics. Copper has this way of
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: taking some of the plant molecules that might come over
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: and have these still notes, and the way they interact
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: with the copper, it takes out these like sulfur smells
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: called they're called like still notes, and sometimes you have
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: to wait for them to clear up if you're using glass,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: but if you add a little bit of copper, then
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: they immediately come out smelling really wonderful. And I just
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: think that's interesting because venus, which governs you know, beauty
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: and perfumery, is this metal of venus helps these molecules
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: smell better for us. I mean, I also think that's
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: an interesting line to be like what smells good, what
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: smells bad. It's all kind of objective.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I got to experience that yesterday. I normally
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: work with with glass and stainless steel and don't have
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of experience with copper. And you know, we
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: did a long distillation yesterday and I noticed immediately that
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: like the hydrosol and the oils smelled so good immediately.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I sometimes I describe like a fresh dis distillation, like
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and you make soup, and like you've got
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: all your different ingredients and when you first start making
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the soup, it's like everything's kind of separate. Still everybody
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: hasn't gotten together, you know, Like when soup gets better
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the next day, it forms this like homogeneous smell and taste.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: And like distillations do that too, where normally I'm letting
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: them sit. They come off kind of sharp with the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: glass or stainless steel, and they need that time to mature,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: whereas yeah, with the with the copper. Still it was
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: just like immediately, like you can smell it even just
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: from the aroma in the air from the distillation that
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: it's just it's like rapidly gets to that point of
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: homogeny where all the smells come back together again because
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: of course all the molecules are coming apart in the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: distillation and they're coming back together again when they're condensed.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And I notice a massive difference with the copper.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: They're sexy to Honestly, a copper olympic is like a
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: very sexy tool to work with. You can see this,
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: there's one here in the background, and so it's just
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: it's a little bit more affordable to go larger for
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: me and the copper rather than the glass. It's also
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: a traditional you know, we've been using them for at
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: least a thousand years. They've been kind of come out
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: of Arabic alchemy, so in perfumery.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And Venus is set to rule herbs too, So another
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: feather in Venus's cap this sensual medicine.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Uh, I'm just asking you because of something I thought of,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: But I don't know how this stuff works because of
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: just being like I guess a ceremonial magician. You got
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: to always attribute things to things, you know, stuff do
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: they Is there ideas of like distilling in blue or
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: red or green jar instead of.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Clear can you say that last part again?
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Rare? Like instead of clear glass? Is there ideas of, like,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: you know, if i want to make something Jubiterian and
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I'm going to distill it in a blue.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Bottle, that's interesting. I've actually never considered that, maybe of you.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I've never worked with something like that, But I could see,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: certainly from a perspective of ceremonial magic, how it would work.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think just in the sense of like
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: how it affects the psyche, you know, in alchemy at least, uh,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: we could argue that the most important ingredient is the operator,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and so of course the state of mind of the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: operator is paramount to the whole work. You know, Alchemy
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: being very holistic, I feel like it's always this this
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: interplay between inner and outer. So of course, if you're
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: incorporating things like color, symbol things like that that are
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: affecting your psyche, that in turn is going to affect
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the work. Whether or not that has a direct effect
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: on the work itself, I'm not sure. I mean, we
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: could probably start to speculate on things like the way
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: that light refracts. I mean, if light is shining through
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: different colors and influencing the materia itself, perhaps it makes
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: me think of distillation and how, at least from an
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: alchemical perspective, when you're distilling and these vapors are rising,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: it's said to be this part of the work where
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: where the material becomes very susceptible to outside influence. It's
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: like it's these closed gates are opening up in distillation,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: allowing you to capture these outside influences, let's say astrological influences.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So let's say if we had color involved, perhaps we
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: could be capturing those same influences that particular colors could
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: impart and then as the distillate condenses, it would then
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: trap those influences. You know, we often talk about celestial agriculture,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: where we can harvest from the stars with different processes
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: used in alchemy. So I don't see why you couldn't
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: use color to grab those same types of influences and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: trap them into your material.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: And just to be clear, you don't have to only
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: distill aromatic plants. I mean, I've learned from teaching classes
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: sometimes it's the most obvious thing that needs to be said, right,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: But it's like, you don't have to just distill aromatic plants.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: I've distilled non aromatic plants. I've also distilled things like
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: wax clay stones. So if you wanted to throw in
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: some tin for Jupiter, you know, you could iron for Mars,
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: like you could find other ways too. Maybe it's interesting
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: to find ways to incorporate these planetary elements and archetypes.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: But I teach these two day classes where we do
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: do the distillation is more of a ceremony. And then
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: in the very very beginning, you know, we meet the plant,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: we set our intentions. At one point where we write
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: our intentions, we burn them and we put that paper
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: into the still. And for me, a big part of
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: it is, yeah, I'm sure there's a magic in that
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: paper going in the still, but a larger part of
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: it is that we are priming our unconscious with our intention.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: And then that whole process medicine making that becomes part
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: of the medicine is that we're making this medicine to
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: help us with this intention. And in a way, like
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: maybe the still in the plants, they all know this
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: and we can all kind of conspire together to make
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: this more potent medicine. But in general, I really think
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: the more we can be intentional, and the more we
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: can communicate with our unconscious in ways that are not
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: linear and not words, you know, the unconscious really speaks
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: through image and symbol and poetry, then the more potent
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: our magic's going to be. In my opinion, come to
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: still with us sometimes come.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Out of this reminds me of Ash and I are
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a big fan of used bookstores. We're kind of hopeless
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and them our bank accounts suffer, and we're in this
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: used bookstore and we're you know, you can find a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: good old book and like you take a big whiff,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: you got you have to smell that old book. And
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: as I'm smelling this book and saying, oh, this smells
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: so good, Ash lets me know that She's like, yeah,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I just stealed a bunch of old books one time,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: trying to capture this. So yeah, it doesn't have to
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: be just plants.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: You sell that smell to like bath and body works
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: or something in the candles. Uh, If you guys have
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: any questions before I start, because you mentioned harvest and
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: I actually wanted to start getting into the whole planting
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: and harvest. Did anybody have any questions before I went
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: into that, No, Judith, if.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: You want to ask something, you go ahead. If not,
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: I have a question. Okay. So I'm really curious because
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: I just encountered this recently and I think you have cats, Ash.
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure, but with like cats and things like
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: essential oils, there's all kinds of stuff online and different
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: opinions and debates about the toxicity and exposure and all
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: of these sort of things. So I just was curious
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: to get any of your insights and thoughts into like
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: the in regards to cats being exposed to things like
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: certain aromatic compounds or essential oils. I'm sure it probably
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: depends on what type it is and then to what degree.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: So I just I'm curious of any of your insights
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: on that.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I probably have an unpopular opinion here,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: but I don't really use essential oils topically. I don't.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Cats are really sensitive creatures, right, They're they're liminal. They've
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: pulled me through different realms many times for they're just sensitive,
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: and yes, central oils can be really aggravating for them
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: and their nervous system and their neurology, So I'm really careful.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: I used to distill a lot of catnip and that
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: was safe for the cats. Again because like the hydrosul
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: or I said a centjoy, but I'm meant hydrosol. It
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: has such a small amount, it's like point zero three,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: you know, percent essential oil, and that's a really safe
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: way to work with aromatics and cats. So I had
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: this like cat nip hydrosol and you could spray it
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: on a toy and cats would go crazy over it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I really don't use essential oils neat which
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: is like an undiluted pure essential oil, often at all
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: unless it's just for the work of how I use
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: aromatic medicine, which is just smelling it, and you know
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: my cats aren't doing that work with me. So I
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: don't have them like sniff and essential oils or anything.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm really I'm really careful. I think essential
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: oils can not be applied at all and be amazing
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: medicine just through smelling them. And I think it's the
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: same with like with children too. I'm really careful about
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: recommending any kind of essential oil for kids. But I'm
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: happy to offer up hydrosauls. Like, uh, my best friend
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: is a midwife and I'm kind of surrounded with baby
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: world midwives and doulah friends, and for a while I
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: was on this kick of getting them all to bring
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: hydrosauls with them to work and having you know, moms
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: get used to a smell they really like that, then
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: their baby could get used to and then that way
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: like there, if their baby needs to go be held
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: by someone else, you could bring that scent with them,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: and it's a way to transfer like a sense of
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: comfort and safety. So yeah, there's ways I work with
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: aromatics and sensitive creatures, but it's often not the essential
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: oils directly. So yeah, I just I would probably avoid
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: it with the cats anything.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Judith, are you good? Uh? I wanted to get I
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: guess kind of into like when you start planting these
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: things do you start do you incorporate astrology into all
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: this stuff to planning and harvesting?
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: I do to almost a debilitating sense.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Really, Okay, can we hear a little bit about that.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: I've actually had to I've had to convince myself to
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: lighten up a little bit with it because it can
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: be hard when you're on a schedule and you're like,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: now is the perfect hour to harvest this plans or
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: to pick this plant, and it just fucks your whole
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: schedule up. And but I do. I just it's part
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: of the intention, right, Like I've been saying it is,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: like I really try to be intentional with every step
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: of the process. So, and I studied with some biodynamic
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: farmers who were even more wildly out there than I am.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: I studied with one person who would plant things at
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: certain angles, like build up beds at certain angles, so
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that they had a relationship to the sun. It was
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: honestly a little bit too intense for me, but it
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: was really interesting to see, like how far you can
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: go with this. But yeah, it's an important process, and
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: I think for you as well, Right.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, astrology is an interesting one for me. I try
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to like approach everything as like a skeptic. I'm not
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not a believer, but you know, astrology is something
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: that just continuously proves itself to be correct. So it's
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: it's hard to dismiss it at this point. It's it's
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: hard to not incorporate it in literally every aspect of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: my life. But I did a lot of farming a
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: few years ago with a friend of mine, and he
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: he was using the biodynamic calendar. I was already into astrology.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I'd already kind of, you know, given up on trying
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to completely disprove it and was using it in my life.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: But I hadn't I hadn't planted according to this calendar before.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: And it was interesting too, because it's a sideial calendar
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and I was getting interested in sidereal astrology at that time,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: so where you're having the actual alignments with the placements
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: of the stars rather than the solar tropical calendar. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: so we started doing a lot of like side by
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: side tests to start to actually bring some validity into it.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Because there's obviously the psychological aspect of it. We could
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: say this is one big meditation and ritual and that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: has a certain level of value. But then you know,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: we could start to look at some more objective things
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: too and say, is there something measurable here? Is there
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: something that is different when we work in lockstep with
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the stars. And I'll give one example. I could give
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: dozens of them, but it proved itself over and over again.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: And one particular example I could think of is we
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: had a crop of wormwood two roads side by side,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and one day we chose to pick it at the
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: wrong time, essentially, so it was not in cohesion with
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: any sort of rulership of the plant or the part
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: of the plant too, because that's another aspect of biodynamic farming.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: There's different you know, the moon is moving through and
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: whatever planets or signs the moon in, it'll delinear basically,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: you know, is this the root time? Is this a
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: leaf time? Is this the fruit time? Is this the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: flower time? So we harvested the wormwood leaf at what
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: would have been considered a totally normal time to harvest
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the plant, but it wasn't in sync with the calendar.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: And then we distilled it. We got a decent hydrosol
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and we didn't get a single drop of oil. And
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: then the next day we picked it at the perfect time.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: We picked it. It was a leaf day, so it
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: was the right day to pick it, and we picked
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: it with a sidereal rising of the planet, so we
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: looked to the actual placement of Mars rising up on
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: the horizon, you know, so as it's that energy is building,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: we were working with the plant under Mars at the time.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: We harvested from the same plants, We distilled the exact
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: same amount in the same still, and we got a
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: huge abundance of essential oil. So one day apart, really
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the plants looked the same, they smelled the same. There
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: was no weird weather, there's no there's no outside thing
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that we could say would have interfered with the essential
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: oil yield. The only thing that really changed, but it
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: was the time that we chose to pick it. And
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: of course it's not going to always be that way,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: but it was whenever we put it to the test,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: these these things just kept coming up as correct and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: really in the end it was just it for me.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: It helped kind of nail down the idea that you know,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: everything is connected. So the more we can get in
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: tune with intricate calendars of nature, which I think astrology is,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the more things flow. You know, there's no you're not
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: bumping up against something that's pre existing and going to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: flow whether you like it or not. You know, you
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: just you flow with the river rather than trying to
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: grab onto the sides and you know, uh, fight your
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: way through it. It just it just worked better and easier,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: flowing with the stars. And again I could think of
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: dozens of examples of this, you know, planting to you know,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: planting a tray of cam mile one day at the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: right time, planting it the next day, same seed, same water,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: same greenhouse and everything. The tray planted at the right
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: time just like crazy germination rate the other tray not
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: so great. You know, some plants. Okay, look, this row
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: is planted really well. This row produced thirty percent more
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: herb than the row that wasn't It Just it kept
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: happening over and over and over again, and it just
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: it just makes sense after a while, you know, like
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: we we don't tend to like go hang out to
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: sunbathe and the beach in the middle of winter in
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the Northern Hemisphere. It's like that's just an obvious, you know,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: calendar thing to adhere to, and this is just like
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: a more subtle calendar to look at that I think
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: does have a real tangible reality.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: That is awesome as well. You've actually even seen a
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: first hand make a difference. That's pretty cool.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: It was kind of frustrating because, like Ash said, it's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, scheduling becomes you know, scheduling
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: is hard enough as an entrepreneur or a firem a
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: medicine maker. But when you're having to plan your whole
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: life around astrological cycles, it throws a whole new stick
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: in your spokes trying to get things done. It's like, well,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the day starts at three forty six am today, I
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: guess you know it's you know, you just you work
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: when you have to.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: I'm so compelled by the plants to this year. I
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: told myself, I'm like, this is not gonna be a
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: medicine making year. It's not gonna be a gardening year.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: I just graduated from a master's program. I'm trying to
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: regorate my life a little bit, and then I find
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: myself knee deep back gardening again, Like it's just part
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: of my rhythm of life at this point. So I
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: was able to back off a little bit this year,
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: but I'm still out there. Especially right now. It's it's
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: like almost a daily thing to be harvesting medicine making.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: So and I think too, you know, sterial versus tropical astrology, right,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: like they're they're not the same thing. They're two different languages,
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: and I actually use them both with working with the plants.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: I use siderial a lot, like what Daniel was saying
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: with planting the moon calendar, for me, like planting with
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: the moon phases is just very key. But also I
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: don't discard because I'm rooted in Western astrology, which is
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: more of the psychological, right, it's about the Earth's relationship
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: to the sun. This is more about the self. And
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: so sometimes if I'm making these medicines, these aromatic medicines
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: that I know I'm going to be working with in
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: a more psychological manner, I'll harvest according to that calendar.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: So it's not just like using astrology. Then it's like
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: choosing which language you're going to use within that. If
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: that makes sense, which one do you find easier to.
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: Work around?
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: That's a really good question. Maybe for me Western just well,
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: I think they're kind of the same. I'm more tuned
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: into Western astrology on a daily basis, But with the
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: moon phases, I'm I'm also very tuned into those. So
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: maybe when it came to planting with the moon more
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: sedereal and harvesting, I kind of take into account. Bote.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: It's just kind of comes down to my intention. They made.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: It's so easy these days, right, you can just get
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: online and look something up so they really made it
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: pretty easy to follow either one, uh what.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Other I know you mentioned like what what I guess ways,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: what kind of stuff do you do with these plants
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: like once once you're done with it? I know you
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: mentioned hydrosul and I really don't even understand that situation really,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: but like what are the methods or what methods do
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: you use to like start doing stuff with the plants
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: after you've done.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: Well?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I really don't Yeah, I'm not. I mean I'm
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: assuming what do you guys you're evaporating stuff with that?
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Like I really didn't quite understand.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Like, well, Daniel was talking about a way to use
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: hydrosol and another type of medicine making process, Like you know,
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: there's so many different ways. There's so many different ways
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: you can make medicine within alchemy. There's not just like
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: like with making an herbal medicine tincture that's not a
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: spageric it's pretty straightforward. There's there's this like recipe. It's
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: like we do one to two fresh plant material, this
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: percent alcohol, We let it sit for this amount of time,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: and then we press it out and we're good with
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: aromatic medicine with alchemy in general, there's just so many
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: more ways to make medicine, so many different types of medicine,
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: and even within alchemy, like working with the operations. I'm
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: not sure how familiar y'all are with this, but okay,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: well I'm not going to go there. But in general,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: back just back up to hydroceels. A hydrosol can be
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: as simple as you put your plant material in the still.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: So if we're looking at this guy behind me, for
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: everyone that can see it, we have the bottom of
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: the pot. That's where the water goes. There's a column.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: You put your plants inside the column. You have a
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: mors tap, and then there's a swan neck and that
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: goes into a condenser. So what's happening is the water's
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: heating up. It's going through the plant matter, unless you're
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: doing a hydro distillation in which you have plant matter
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: in the water, but we'll save that. So it's going
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: through plant matter, it's opening the plant up, it's releasing
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: these volatile compounds. They're going into the steam. The steam
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: is then hitting the air, getting cooled, hitting a condenser
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: that's full of cold water, and when it comes out,
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: what you get, for most cases is an essential oil.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: And a hydrosol. So essential oil in an essential water.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: So you have the hydrophilic and the lipophilic. Lipophilic is
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: the essential oil, hydrophilic is the hydrosol. And you can
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: separate those out, work with them separately, you can blend
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: them together, work with them together. There's lots of different
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: ways to use it. So hydrosol would just be the
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: water component that is saturated with plant volatiles, and that's
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: a key thing to work with a hydrosol. They typically
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: have a lower pH. I think one issue I see
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: teaching is that there's a certain point in the process
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: where you have to turn your still off because not
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: all the water you're working with turns into an hydrosol.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: At some point you're going to get just kind of
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: you've already got all the volatiles out of the plant.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: You've already saturated these molecules of water with the plant volatiles.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: So I don't know, does that help at all? Do
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: you understand hydroceels anything?
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: No?
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: You no. What I was getting at is like I
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: didn't understand the process of making it, and I was
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: gonna I guess ask, like, is there other techniques that
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: you use to make your products there besides.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: That for the hydrosols, that's the technique I use. I
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: use a glass Still, they're pretty comparable. Once you understand
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: the process of distillation, you can get creative and make
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: it out of crazy shit. Like you could go home
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: use a teapot and hook it up with the tube
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: to something else. And you can do it on your
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: stovetop just using a pot and a lid that's upside
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: down with ice in the top. You have your plant
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: matter in the pot. It heats up, hits the top
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: of the lid where it's cold, it condenses and falls
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: back down until like you put a bowl inside the pot.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: That's a really simple way to do it. You can
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: YouTube it. There's lots of bad examples out there on YouTube.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: But.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: I mean distillation. Also, it's not a man made process, right,
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: this is happening all around us. I think this is
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: like another level of the medicine. That's interesting is that
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: like it's it's a microcosm of the macrocosm. Like distillation's
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: happening all the time. It's happening with the rain, It's
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: happening on our cups like a cold cup. It's happening
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: in our psyche all the time. When we take an information,
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: we distill it turn it into how we move forward
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: in life. So just because I like to talk a
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: little convoluted and encircles and more poetically, like there's there's
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: just a lot of ways to look at distillation. But
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: when I'm making plant medicine, I'm typically using one of
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: these stills. I have either the copper or the glass,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: or I do have a stainless steel as well, and
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I'm looking to make a essential oil and a hydrosal.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Nice. You know, it's funny the way you were explaining
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: how you were doing something before gave me like a flashback.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: I've been in prison before. I've mentioned it on the show.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: I did two years in the FEDS, And remember one
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: time I walked into the bathroom and I was like, Yo,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: what the fuck is this on the floor, And they
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: had like this garbage bag that like I guess they
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: blew up with air, and then they had they had
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: like a plastic garbage can in the middle of it,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: and they had hoochs in there, and then they had
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: taken a quarter off of a vacuum and like cut
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: it and tied a piece of metal to the two
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: pieces at the end, plugged it in, threw it inside
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: the hooch, and the evaporation would go up and hit
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: the bag and then all drip down to the bottom
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: and they would make a fucking moonshine. I was like, Yo,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: who the fuck comes up with this? In you? Oh?
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: I love that. I mean I've had people in classes
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: say that this seems like an inaccessible medicine, and I'm like, no, not.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: If you get inventive, all you have to understand is
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: that what you need to do is heat up the
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: thing you're working with, turn it into steam, and the
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: seam down to turn it back into a liquid. You know.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even degenerate prisoners knew how to do that, right.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: This reminds me of one of my main teachers, my
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: main teacher in alchemy, Robert Bartley. Want to give him
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: a shout out. In the first class I ever took
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: from him, somebody made this point that Ash said, It's like, oh,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: this seems so like out of reach, you know, like
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: distilling alcohol and things like that. And he's like, oh, no,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: it's not out of reach. You just need a ziplock
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: bag and we're like what And so like he took
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit of wine and he poured it into
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: a ziplock bag and he put it in a cup
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: on the windowsill, and he just took a corner of
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: the bag and pulled it over the side of the cup.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: And so the sun is hitting the wine in the
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: ziploc bag, and because there's a corner pulled over, the
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: alcohol evaporates, It condenses on the bag and just drips
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: into the corner of the cup. So by the end
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: of the class, you know, there's a little bit of
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: clear alcohol in the bottom of the ziplock bag. So,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is very, very simple, And like Ash said,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: it's it's simple because it's an essential process of life.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: It's literally happening everywhere in everything essentially all the time,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you know. So you know, we can get really fancy
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: with tools like getting nice copper stills like this one,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: or glassware and things like that, but you know, you
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: can there's many, many different hallways to the same room.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: What are some of your favorite ones to work with
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: and why I.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: Can't talk about that plants? You mean, well, okay, so
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: it's hard for me to have favorites, but I do
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: work with Yarrow a lot when I'm teaching, and part
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: of the reason I love working with yarrow one it's
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: a plant that's been around and and in a relationship
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: with humans for a very long time. And when you
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: distill yarrow, it's a very venusian plant. It produces this
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: essential oil called azuline, and this is not actually in
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: the plant on its own yet, it has to go
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: through this process and then it turns into a blue hydrosaul.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: So when I'm teaching, it makes it like extra magical
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: because instead of just having this kind of clear essential oil,
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: we get this blue essential oil and this blue hinged hydrosaul.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: So that's one reason I love working with it. The
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: other is just the medicine of yarrow, to me is
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: very valuable for our times. It's really you know, my
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: favorite way to get to know a plant is we
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: can add amplify it by looking at the exoteric information
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: like within books and lineages and traditions, and that's very important,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: but then we can also have the esoteric or the
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: gnostic like experience of working with that plant directly. And
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: my experience of working with yarrow achille amelia folam is
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: that it went directly into my heart space and helped
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: me kind of remove the constructs I had that weren't mine.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: Like it was very Venusian where it centered me back
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: in my own values. And yarrow is said to physically
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it helps stop bleeding. It gets the name Achillea from
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: Achilles because it was carried on the battlefield to stop bleeding.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: So Achilles carried it around and put it on, you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: wounds to stop the bleeding. And we see it like
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: within more of the metaphysical medicine realms being said that
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: use yarrow for boundaries. It like helps you know, leaky
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: holes in your aura. And I'm like Daniel, I'm a skeptic,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: like these things need to make sense, even if it's
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: like in a weird mystical sense or very like direct
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: experiencing of it. And I sense this that when it
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: helped me understand what my own values were, then it
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: helped my energy field or my ore or my boundaries
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: be stronger because I knew what was mine and what
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: wasn't mine, if that makes sense. So yao is always
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: like a top one for me. But there's I'm always
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: cycling through. I'm falling in love every time I distill
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: with the plant, like at hand. So you have a favorite.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I feel the same as you. I mean, how can
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: you choose a favorite. It's like they're all like my buddies, right,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: But I feel like I go through seasonal cycles like I.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: I'm tempted to say Rose. Rose has just always been
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: with me, Like Rose has always been one of my
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: favorite medicines for so many reasons, just like the symbolism
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: of rose. I love the smell of rose. I love
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the way it is. You know, it's a hard opening,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: but at the same time it's it's not It's got
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: its thorns too. You know, the heart opening experience is
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: not always easy and sweet and soft. It can actually
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: be quite painful. And so Rose has that that polarity
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: to it where it's you know, it's tied to that
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: that one anchor of the heart, but at the same
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: time it can bring into both sides of the fence,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: like sweetness and uh and and also sharpness as well.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Boundaries is another thing that I've learned a lot with Rose,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: you know, to kind of build off what Ash was
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: saying with with yarrow. But right now I'm loving mimosa.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: So Mimosa is like my new plant here. I've you know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: this is Albusia. The species I'm speaking about, I've I've
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experience with other species of
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Mimosa or like a Casia, this whole related family. There's
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: different plants all over the world that are that are related.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I was quite obsessed with the Acacia and
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: that was an egypt or in the in the in
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: the Middle East, and you know, it's relation to the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: mysteries in general, and it's psychoactive components, you know, it's
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: it's connections to Freemasonry and maybe even Sufism and all
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: these different esoteric orders. But now for the first time,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I'm being introduced to this other species that's growing here,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: which it's not indigenous to hear too. Yeah, it's growing
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: all over here right now. It's another heart medicine and
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: it's just it's in bloom here right now, and it's
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: got these like alien pink flowers that just smell like
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: absolutely incredible. Like it's like once you know the plant,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: it's like you can see it. You're driving and you
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: can see it like miles and miles away. You know
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: that it's been most it's just got this signature and
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I'm loving it right now, Like honestly just smelling it.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: And we've been harvesting it to make medicine with it.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: But like in the moment, this plant is just really
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: drawing me in for many different reasons, and I'm just
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: exploring different ways to work with it, like these You've
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: got these ethereal like alien flowers that you know makes
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: sense where it's it's considered to be like an uplifting medicine.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: But the bark of the plant too is said to
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: be grounding. So there's all these different ways to use
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the plant, and I'm just yeah, diving into mimosa right now.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's definitely my favorite at the moment.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: In Chinese medicine, they call it the collective Happiness tree,
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: and like literally just seeing and smelling it makes you happy.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: It's it's these these alien flowers he talks about. They
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: just look like little they remind me of like little
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: pink fireworks. And you probably see him around where you are,
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure it grows over there.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: No, I think those are the things. Yeah, a couple
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: of blocks down they have like trees on both sides
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: that go over the road, and yeah, it looks just
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: like what you were explaining pink too.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Also, the first place I ever distilled on my own
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: was marigold, And it was funny because it was I
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: was just laying under some marrigold plants I had on
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: the farm I was living at, and it was summertime,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: and I was smelling that a lot of people don't
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: like the smell of marigolds, but I've always loved it.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: And it's got such a signature of the sun, right
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: it holds the sun archetype and and like in Mexican tradition,
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: it was placed for the day of the dead and
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: for the ancestors because it kind of lights this this
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: way for them to come in. And so it was
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: the first one I distilled because I was like, how
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: do I have this essence in the winter when I'm depressed,
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: you know? And I immediately like harvested it. I had
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: just gotten this little teeny glass still. And so I'll
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: always have an affinity for a marigold, just because it
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: was kind of my gateway.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: And oh, a Luna Sky, did you want to ask anything?
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: I do have a question because you say you use
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: it for medicine, how do you choose what form of
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: medicine you're going to use it for when you start
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: to work, because you've got a time it when you
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: plant it and when you pick it. And I don't
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: know if you use astrology as well when you distill
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: it as well, So if you can walk us through
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: that process.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think it
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: comes down to the intention of what medicine I plan
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: to make with it. Which it's funny because we had
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: this issue two days ago. I took Daniel out to
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: one of my friend's local farms, Castrel Herb Farms, where
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: I can get a lot of fresh plant material and
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: I love working with fresh plant material, especially for distillation.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: And you're out there and it's like sometimes you're like, well,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: am I going to tincture this? Or am I going
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: to distill this? So you have to first have that
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: intention of what type of medicine do you want to make?
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: And then there's also how you want to work with it.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: So for me, a lot of times I'm distilling on
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: Friday for venus. Daniel doesn't buy into the days of
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: the week. Can I say that.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: More or less again?
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: But it's it's like, you know.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: I'd be crazy with that shit. I'd be down to
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: the minute, the moon, the hour will yes.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: And sometimes if I'm going to be making aromatic medicine,
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: there's other things I have to consider about, like what
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: time of the day I'm harvesting it, because you know,
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not wanting to harvest at like two pm in
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: the under the sun where most of the volatiles have
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: gone off into the atmosphere already. So there will be
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: specific windows. But within those windows you can find the astrology,
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: like you know, when you really start getting into that,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: it's like the the microcosms, you can get it all
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: the way down to like even within an hour, you
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: could find what section of that hour might relate more
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: to a certain planet. So am I getting away from
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: the question? Can you? Can you get back on track
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: here with the question? Yeah?
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, like I think, like you're saying, like,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: there's so many levels of how deep you want to
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: dive into it. Something that I was thinking about with
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: this question too, is that when we're working with plants,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: like traditionally, they're thought to be of mixed influence, so
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have one single planetary ruler, And so
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: when we're deciding on you know, let's say when we
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: want to plant, when we want to harvest, when we
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: want to start different processes of the medicine making aspect
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: of the work. We can consider which way we kind
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: of want to like drive the plant into. You know,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: like if a plant, let's say, has a mixed rulership
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: of say the sun and mercury, but you you want
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: to work with more of its you know, psychological mental capabilities,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: which is associated with mercury. You know, then we can
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: we can work with that planet as a ruler for
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: choosing when we do everything that we're doing. But like
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Ash said, it's like you can make it as as
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: simple or as complex as you want. You can time
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: it right down to the minute or the second you're
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: going to do every single stage of the world work
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: because of course, every single stage of the work has
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: this like external symbol in the sky that we can
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: try to correlate with. Or we can try to use
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: larger cycles too, and and you know, feel good about
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: that and make it a little bit more open. But yeah,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: it's it depends on how complex you want to get.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Because like I said, you could you could literally time
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: every single step of the process from the point of
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: planting the seeds or even harvesting those seats before you
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: plant them, to every single stage of the medicine making
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: work too, you know, for example, like with my worker
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: with ashes work, there's all these stages of the medicine
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: making and each of them have associations with the with
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: the stars and the planets, and so we can find
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: ideal astrological elections for like every single stage of that.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Something that I like, I mean in my personal process
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: with astrology is over time, I've learned to kind of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: trust a little bit more, and I I've always loved
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: to use astrology as a reflective mechanism, which you know,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: instead of like kind of planning my day based on it,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I'll look at my day afterwards and say what was
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: going on, Like I'll find some weeks, all of a sudden,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling like processing certain plants or certain plants are available,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: or I'm doing certain types of processes, And then when
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I look back at the astrology, I see what's going
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: on in the stars and the planets that is associated
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: with whatever pattern was going on in my work that week.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: You know. So the thing is is that we are
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: innately tied to these cycles of nature, right, And I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: think when you kind of if you can kind of
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: let go and again like float down the river of
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: the cycles of nature, oftentimes we're just in sync with it.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: So I'm in my process, I'm learning more to to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: trust that, you know, and trust how I actually feel
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: about things, rather than trying to get too nitty gritty
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: into the details. And I'm you know, I guess at
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: this point not surprised when I look back at the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: astrological elections of what I'm doing and see like they're
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: often quite congruent. You know, it's again, it's it's it's
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: this interplay I think between conscious and unconscious. I think
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: it's great to use these systems to kind of give
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: us training wheels in order to start to learn the cycles.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: And then of course, after a time, you don't need
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: the training wheels any longer. You start to just like
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: get into that rhythm on your own, and you know,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you can ride your bike without the training wheels. And
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: so I'm kind of in the middle of that somewhere
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: where I'm learning to trust in the process and not
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: be so hyper vigilant about planning every single second of
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: my work based on you know, looking at the stars
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: before I start doing it. But that's just where I'm
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: at with it personally right now.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think maybe just to try to be
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: already be more back to your questions. But like my
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: original alchemy teacher, it was it was very big that
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: you harvest the plant at the time of the election
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: that you want. So that was the most important part
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: of the medicine making, was to harvest at the time,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: because that's when the plant is absorbing that astrological influence.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: But in my mind, I've come to my own sense
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: of like, yes, that would be, like there's a way
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: that we could be like make it the most amazing.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: The most amazing is if we harvest it at the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: right time, and we make it at the right time
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: and every little thing. But just because we harvest the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: plant doesn't mean the plant is no longer alive. Like
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: if you're truly animistic about it, then it's like it's
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: always alive. And so if I have to harvest a
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: plant not at the most ideal time, can I also
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: just conjure or set up a ritual to call in
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: that god or that archetype or that energy. And I
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: have found that kind of valuable for the process too,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: and it makes it kind of fun too when you
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: got music going and and since burning and you're like
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: trying to like really have a dance with the gods
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: and make this medicine and the I don't know, the
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: most beautiful way you can even though maybe you missed
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: the perfect time to harvest it. So you know, one
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: of the things I say when I'm teaching distillation is
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: like trying not to let everything being perfect, have you
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: not just go into the work. The most important part
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: is that you just start the work, just like getting
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: And I have the sense, Judith that you already work
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: with plants, but it's like, yeah, it's like just getting
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: in there and doing it and seeing from your own
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: experience like what's happening and what's working, Like that's such
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: invaluable information. And it's not to forego having a teacher,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Like I think we all need mentors and teachers and lineages,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: but we're not going to get anywhere if we don't
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: just go for it. And I have a virgo moon.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: So in my past, I've I've talked to myself out
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: of doing things if they aren't exactly perfect. So maybe
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: that's been the chip on my shoulder, and so I've
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: just had to learn that. Sometimes it's like what Daniels saying,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: like we just have to trust, Like it's maybe one
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: of the biggest things I've learned is divine timing and
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: trusting in the process.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: I needed you to tell me that because I happen
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: to be a virgo, so I know exactly what you're
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: talking about.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel you detail.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you could drive yourself crazy with it. And I
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: like my my friend that I was farming with, like
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: I was crazy about the details. And there was just
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: some days where he just shook his head at me,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: like why are you making this so difficult? And he
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of the times, I have to say, like
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: he was probably in a little bit of a happier, easier,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: easier going mood than I was, because I'm freaking out
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: looking at the sky and looking at my calendar and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: doing calculations on my phone and and you know, he's
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: chewing on a piece of grass, just smiling at the fields. Right.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: So it's it's interesting, But this makes me think. This
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: whole conversation makes me think about a quote from Man
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Hall where he says man is destined to rule over
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the stars, you know, talking about our destiny, where it's
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I think there's a point where we come
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: from a point of certain unconsciousness, and we can look
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: at systems like astrology to guide us, to get us
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit closer to understanding how we can work
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: and sync with nature. But eventually, when that kind of
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: that that teaching becomes embodied, we start working, you know,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: alongside it. So rather being rather than being you know,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: subservient to the forces of nature, it's like we're we're
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: riding right alongside of it, you know, in sync with it.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: And so we're kind of on that that journey of
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: getting to that point where we're not so susceptible to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: the weather. Because realistically, you know, if we look at
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the hermetic principle of all this is like everything, all
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: the pieces are always there at all times. There's no
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: separation of the different energies or you know, our planetary
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: archetypes or zodiac signs or anything. Everything is there all
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: at once. So all these things are always available. And
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: that makes me think of what ashe was saying about ritualizing,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: where maybe you miss the wrong moment, but you can
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: always bring in the energy of the stars or the
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: planets through you know, through music, and color and aromatics.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: You know, you can always find ways to evoke or
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: invoke these archetypal forces.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: I think it was James Hillman. I could be miss speaking,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: but I'm pretty sure James Hillman, who did a lot
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: of archetypal psychology, said that the gods just want us
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: to pay attention to them, you know, like we just
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: need to give them a nod of like, hey, we're
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: here and we're paying attention. And what that really speaks
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: to me too, is just to bring it back to
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: like our own psyche and our own conscious and how
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: we're connected into the greater web. Is like just showing
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: that you're paying attention and that you have this relational
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: aspect with the plants or anything like. I think that's
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: a great starting point.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, actually both of you. Actually thank you
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: for mentioning it being used as a guide. And I
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: actually love I would have never thought about if I
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: missed that time of harvesting it, during that window of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: actually drawing down the energy of the god or the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: goddess for that type of work.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. Thanks for getting into all that.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: Both that.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: We could literally just talk. We'll just take over the show.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: We'll just keep talking.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: About this into our day to day where we're just
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: wrapping off about anything and everything.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I want people to hear how like how
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: you know how deep it could get as well? You
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, because it can, you know.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: But the whole time you guys were talking about that,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: I had Phoenix Aurelius's voice in my head saying, don't
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: That, yeah, great advice.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: I do have a question for you, Ash. You mentioned
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: that you also you grow your own herbs, and you
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: go and you you go, and you purchase herbs as well.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: So is there a difference in energy for you when
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: you do on the difference? I think so.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's definitely something about tending your own, like
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: watching a plant go from seed to basket to medicine.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: But where I purchase herbs from, I really look for
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: farms that I think are taking care of the earth
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: really well, and there's not a ton of them out there.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: They're getting more and more, but honestly, there's not a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: lot of money in growing herbs, and I think we
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: need to be supporting these small herb growers. It's just
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: I hate saying one thing's better than another. But I
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: do think that having fresh herb material makes better medicine
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: because a lot of these big herb companies, their plant
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: material has been sitting around for a long time before
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: it gets to you, and it's it's touched lots of hands,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: and it's gone through lots of machinery, and like, all
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: of these are gonna take a little bit from that
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: plant or add a little bit to that plant. And
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: so if you're able to grow your own or even
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: find a farm near you or someone that might ship overnight,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: I just think the closer you can get to that plant,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: possibly the better potency of the medicine. But that's all.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: It's it's all up for debate, depending on which way
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: you want to swing it. Right, So Daniel's really good
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: at the chemistry of it. He could talk more about
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: the actual chemistry of what would make it more potent physically.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I do think there's something different like growing
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: a plant and harvesting it watching it grow. I learned
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: so much just from watching a plant grow. I mean,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: I think it was Paracelsus that that kind of coined
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: the doctrine of signatures, and I think we can find
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: these doctrine of signatures, you know, the idea of like
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: what a plant looks like might indicate what it's good for.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: A walnut looking like a brain, and it shows that
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: it's its fats are good for our brain health. But
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: I think you see that even just watching a plant,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: Like a lot of times, especially as I work more
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: and more with the indigenous plants to where I live,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: they aren't all written from these Western dudes, you know,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: the Western lens with the medical astrology associations of the planets.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: You have to figure that out for yourself if you're
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: using that lens with the plants that grow here. And
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: so actually watching a plant grow has always helped me
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: with that, seeing like what's the environment they thrive in,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: and how are they growing, what's their relationship to the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: sun and to the water into the air. So yeah,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: just being able to have access to growing plants, I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: think is super informative and it's special.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: But again, if you can't grow your own plants, if
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: all you can do is buy some bulk herb off
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: the internet, like great, do it, just just do it.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: I used to get a fresh lavender from some Vietnam
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: vet that used to grow it because I growed himself
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: because he used to help with like his PTSD in anxiety,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: so I figured it'll help it do it out. I
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: used to buy it over him. If it's instead, yeah,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you. It was such a difference, like just
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: my experience from getting lavender from other places. It looked
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: completely like different, Like the color of everything was really nice.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: When you compare, when you start comparing bulk herbs you
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: buy from these larger ub companies, something fresh, it's it's
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: kind of uncomparables.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: You picked us way too early, didn't you?
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: Like? Has it what kind of radiation has it gone through?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: And all of its travel? How long is it sat around?
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't intensive with someone from Italy that was specializing
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: and making essential oils, and man, the essential oil industry,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: they can get really nitpicky about like the plant needs
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: to get harvest and put directly in the still because
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: within an hour you're losing some of the aromatics. So
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: if you're thinking about it that way, yeah, but plant's
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: sitting out per year. What's happening, Like what's changing chemically?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: Is it exposed to the air.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: So I have a selfish question to ask please cause
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: you guys mention lavender and to tell you the tooth.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: It is the one plant I cannot grow from seed
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: to save my life.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Do you have any.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: Advice for me?
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: Lavender is hard to start from seed. It needs like
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: to be on heating trees. Like it's really it needs
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: some care. But you can grow it from a cutting,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: so you might want to look into doing that. Have
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: you've ever done it from a cutting?
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easier.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, cut Go find a lavender that you really like
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: and do some cuttings. You might want to get like
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: some rooting agent, or you can use a little willow
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: t and then you you can even buy I learned
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: this recently. They sell like rooting soil soils. They're like
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: little cube and they already have like a rooting agent
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: in them. And you can take your cuttings and just
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: stick them in there and keep them moist and it
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: makes it easy.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. I'm going to try that.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have heard that's notoriously hard to grow from seed. Yeah.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: One thing I did want to ask before we start
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: to wrap it up YouTube into a resins at all? Yeah?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: I love resents, which Yeah, what are some of your
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: favorite with those?
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: Well, I definitely love labinum and it's been used for centuries.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: It's have you ever worked with it?
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have it. I have it in.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: The smell just like gets it.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: That's why I was surprised you even said that, because
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: it's I don't hear people mention that one too, wolf
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: And actually I love it.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: Actually I was introduced to Labinam from my main aromatic teachers,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: Kathy Skipper and Flurian. They run a business called Romanosis,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: and anyways, they work with aromatics in the same sense
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: of working with the psyche, and they have this story
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: about Labinum being used by rulers pharaohs. I mean I
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: don't I can't directly quote the stories, but like in
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: the beards as a beard oil, and part of Labinam's
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: work and what I've learned from them is that it
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: helps us be aware of our shadow. And so if
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: a ruler back when maybe kings actually were working for
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: the people, could be aware of their shadow, they would
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: rule better. So that's like a little story that you
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: don't find many places, that's just handed down somehow. That's interesting.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: But so I love Labinam. I mean you have to
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: love frankinsense, right, It's just been around forever. It's like
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: almost like all the oh the orphic homes start with
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: like this frankincense for this god, this god, this god.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: But for like a local resident. I work a lot
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: with white pine, or sometimes I go out west to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: see my friends, and I love pinion pinion pine resin.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: So if you can get your hands on some of that,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: if you haven't worked with it, I would suggest it.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: It's really beautiful.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: Do you ever have masticum?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love mastic.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: Hemlock. Oh yeah, oh yeah. We were on a hike
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: and we found a hemlock tree that was just like
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: dripping and ash just like you know, like metal to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: a magnet, just like right on the tree, just like
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: clawing her fingers down taking balls of this was being.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: Nice, you know, like you know, trees are producing a
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: resin as a way to heal a wound on them,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: So you don't want to just like scrape the shit
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: out of the tree and cause another wound. You want
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: them to, you know, chake care of the tree, ask
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: if you can take some of its resin. But it
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: works the same for us. I think too, you know,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: like I love using resins and oils because I feel
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: like it just helps me like kind of hold my
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: energy together. It provides this kind of like healing oil
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: throughout my body, helps me just stay more embodied, which
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: has been my lifelong work is and I think I've
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: done and put a job at that at this point.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: But for sure, one of my favorite resins is benzoin.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: Like I love the smell, but it has this I
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: love crystals and benzoin. If you heat it into we
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: call it a blind head and alchemy. See you've got
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: to imagine just like a flask and the bottom and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: the resins inside the flask, and then you have an
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: inverted flask on top of it. If you gently heat
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: the benzoin, one of the aromatic volatiles in it, rather
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: than being an oil, is a crystalline salt. So when
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: you heat it into this cool top, it grows like
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: snowflakes or like long thin white needles, like perfect crystals,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: and it actually like fill the entire imagine like a globe,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: like two globes like glued together, and the top will
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: completely fill with these beautiful crystals which smell like absolutely
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: divine and they they form all kinds of different crystal
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: matrixes depend on depending on you know, how big is
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the setup and what is the temperature and all that.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: But you can grow all these intense crystal matrixes just
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: by gently heating Benzwin into a cool surface. So not
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: only is it really really really nice to smell, but
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: it's really really beautiful to work with as well.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: So what else are y'all working with? Resins? What other
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: resins do we have on the table here?
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: I have Benzoin. I like mrrh obviously frankinsense. There was
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: another one that I used to use as a substitute
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: for Murray. I can't remember the name now, it was
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: just it was it was pretty dark too. I have cobal.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Copal.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's why I think I all I got
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: here now? Yeah about you, Judas, You got any residents
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: over there?
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: All I have is Frankinson's. It's the easiest thing to get.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: Here in New York. Oh yeah, for sure.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: Are you in the city on the oscars?
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: I'm in the Five boroughs okay, so I might as
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: well say the city. But I do have a question
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: to you when it comes to distilling You mentioned different techniques.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: Is there any material that you shouldn't use when trying
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: to distill because I was surprised that you said copper
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: gave such a good outcome. So I'm wondering if there's
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: any metals or any materials that we shouldn't use when
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: trying to make these medicines.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, I usually just offer people the awareness around
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: anything that's poisonous. I mean, I've distilled a lot of
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: poisonous plants. You just have to be really careful, so
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: that I mean metals. You know, one thing I would
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: say with a lot of the copper is you want
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: to make sure you're buying a copper still from a
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: company that can prove they don't have lead in their solder.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't. Lead's not going to come over in the still,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: But if there's lead in the solder or in the
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: hardware on your condenser, essential oils are really good at
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: pulling metals. And so that's just one. I mean, I
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: think that's the biggest thing to be aware of, you know,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: looking at that. So yeah, and I'm really careful I
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: don't use I try to avoid any kind of like plastics.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can do an experiment for yourself. But
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: if you take a drop of an essential oil and
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: put it on plastic, it will literally like eat it away.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: Or Another reason I like working with that yarrow and
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: the blue is because it demonstrates how much essential oils
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: will go into a plastic because you can see it
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: when it's blue. So I just avoid keeping things in
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: plastic or having a lot of plastic tubing around. In
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: my classes, I teach how to kind of to use
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: more copper piping than the typical plastic tubings they come
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: with for collecting so little teeny hacks here and there,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: but I think the biggest one with just to be
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: careful about the solder and hardware on the copper stills,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: just making sure that it's a reputable company. You know,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of cool old stills out there you
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: can find, especially our I'm in Appalachia, like I've I've
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: been given some old moonshining stills to hold on to
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: and whatnot, and it's like, I don't know what was
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: in those solders unless I get them tested. So thank you.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: That's good to know.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 5: Nick, he was in city mind if at something for it,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 5: I thought this would be an interesting one. I think
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 5: maybe Daniel will be able to compliment it as well.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 5: So I saw on your Instagram ash It's sent as
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: sacred ferment, a chemical stage of fermentio in the Secret Fire.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 5: Was that like a paper written or tell me a little.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: Bit about that.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: I just graduated from pacifica graduate institute, and my big
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: final kind of thesist project was on my work with fermentashio,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: which within alchemy we are often in modern times forgetting
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: this phase of the yellowing or the kittrininas. We think
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: of the black, the negrado, the white, the albedo, and
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: the red the rubato, and there's always kind of this
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: like not a lot of attention giving to the yellowing,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: which is where ermentation sits, the fermentacio. So because I
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: work with aromatics more psychologically, I jove in the last
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: two years while I was in this program about how
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: scent can become the yeast or the ferment. Like I mean,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: when you're reading old alchemical books during the fermentation sometimes
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: they're literally throwing like poopin like they're doing crazy stuff
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: to get this ferment going sometimes. And so the way
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: I work with aromatics, which is like a literal whole
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: other conversation is once we've made them, and once we
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: have the conjunction with our hydrosol and essential oil, our
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: product basically what we're looking for. The real work is
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: happening once we inhale it, once we introduce this plant,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: spirit and soul into our own psyche, so it becomes
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: the secret fire. It becomes this psychic yeast that helps
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: us engage our imagination, our true imagination, not like a
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: fantastical but there's lots of you know, writings out there
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: about the band called it the Moon dis imagine Alyss.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: But it's a real realm, right, And how do scent
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: help us engage this realm? And in this realm is
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: where we can really talk with our unconscious parts and
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: discover more meaning for ourselves. So I don't know if
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: any of that really makes sense. Daniel has a lot
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: to say about Secret Fire, though, I think so he
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: sure does.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to take it too far from what
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: you're saying. I think what Ash is talking about is
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: really what I see is one of the most important
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: aspects of her work. And really you could have around
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: again and have a whole show just on this concept
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: as of aromatics as as the ferment, you know, bringing
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: this medicine into yourself and that triggering this reaction internally
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: inside yourself, which you know, speaking to the secret fire.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: It's it is a way we think about fermentation. Imagine
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: like there's this potential in a substance. Let's let's just
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: use alcohol as an example. We ferment a sugar, That
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: sugar has building block inside of it that when when
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: the right additive is added, the the yeast is added,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: this potential of alcohol is created as a result of it.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: You know, the old alchemists sometimes called it like the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: water of life. Alcohol wild be one example of this,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: you know, creating this burning spirit that comes off. It's invisible,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: you know, the the alcohol vapors are essentially invisible. The
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: alcohol itself is clear. But there's this fire inside of us,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: right this this latent potential inside of us and inside
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: of everything. And you know, our experience in life is
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: what is kind of tending that that latent secret fire
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: and and and and bringing it up and out of us,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: you know, bringing it to fruition. And I think that, well,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: I'm learning quite a bit more about it right now too.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: With ashes respect this, but bringing like aromatics are such
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: a potent way of you know, lighting that fire and
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, illuminating that latent potential that we all have
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: inside of ourselves in many, many, many different ways. Of course,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: each plant has, you know, a very particular personality, so
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: it like a key into a lock, comes into ourselves
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: and there's there's something inside of us that is relative
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: to that plant, and it can come in and open up, liberate, awaken,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: exalt that latent potential that we have inside of ourselves.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, maybe you'll have to have ash On
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: again to go more into this, because again I think
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: it is some of the most amazing work that she's
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: doing and some of the most important work that she's
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: doing in this whole field of aromatics.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: It comes down from a lineage. I really started working
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: with aromatics in this way kind of on my own,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: but then I quickly met up with these teachers I
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: mentioned at a Romanosa and they work with the psyche
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: a lot. And then it was me finding this secret
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: fire and from Antashio that kind of led me into
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: this two year master program of studying the more depth
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: psychological lens of Yeah, fermentation, it's it's the imagination. It's
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: that secret fire coming alive and the colorful peacock's tail
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: coming alive, and our own beings. So yeah, I think
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: it's really interesting stuff.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: But I think it touches on an important point too
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: that I'm thinking about a lot lately too. And you know,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: like for me, like I ash and I like without
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: our relationship with alchemy, like we do a lot of
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: the same things. We're very both technically inclined, you know,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: making the medicines, and we're both interested in the in
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: the psychology and the spiritual aspects of it. We kind
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: of favor one of those sides each and you know,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes I get a little bit wrapped up in the
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: laboratory aspect of the work, which of course is this
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: like external aspect of the work. But you know, if
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: we don't integrate that, you know, if we don't actually
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: bring the medicine into ourselves, if we don't actually awaken
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: those same processes in ourselves and awaken that, you know,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: that final product inside of ourselves, we're still disconnected, right,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I think the whole point of alchemy
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: really is is to is wholeness, you know, So I
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: think her work with that is really reminding me that,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not all about this external process
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: of seeking after you know, medicines external to ourselves. Like
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: we need to really bring these lessons even if they're
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: not physical, you know, like Ash is talking about this
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: very ethereal process of even just smelling something, you know,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: like there's no it's so it's so simple, but it
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: awakens these processes inside of ourselves. We may be doing
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: it outside of ourselves in the lab, but again, if
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: it's not happening inside of us, it's it's disconnected and
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: you're not getting anywhere, right. You just I think I
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: said last night to Ash, it's like if you're hungry
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: and you tape a sandwich to your stomach, it's like
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: you're close, but you don't quite quench that hunger. You know,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: you really need to bring the experience inside of yourself.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: It has to happen in your emotions and your psyche
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: and in your physical.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: Body as well, and it's all one thing.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: It's all one thing in the end.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Daniel taught a really great class here a couple
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: of months ago on may Do, and you talked a
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: lot about the secret fire then being captured in the
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: morning may.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Do Yeah, with secret fire. Yeah, I think again, we
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: can always look to nature for these things that are
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: happening inside of ourselves. And I guess in this class
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: we focused a lot on do and the water cycle.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: How there is this invisible kind of spark of life
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: that is constantly raining down onto the earth and nourishing everything,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: and then the excess is being exhaled back into the
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: atmosphere and repeating over and over and over and over
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: again disallation process, a distillation process exactly. So we spoke
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: about that and you know, a way to harvest that
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: and use it in in our medicine making. But again
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: it's it's just it's a mirror image of something that's
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: already happening inside of ourselves, right. You know, we have
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: an experience, like let's say, smelling something aromatic. You know,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: that experience comes down into us, it awakens life inside
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of us. We grow, uh and and as a result
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: of that unconscious becoming conscious, we then put that out
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: into the world and the way that we've become conscious
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: of it, so we start sharing that with the world.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: So this this energy is exhaled back into the world
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: and eventually it comes back to us again and we
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: learned something new, and that cycle just keeps repeating over
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: and over and over again, of kind of trading back
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: and forth. This the secret fire that's inside of everything
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: and making everything go.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: So secret Fire is really fun. And Daniel's apothecary is
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: called secret Fire, which I think is a great name.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: I like that that could be very occult too.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: Is there any other questions by any of yous had
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: Sky Judith?
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: I could just keep going forever?
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: Better that?
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: I think I hear. I think we could wrap it
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: up here maybe if you guys are right with that
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: around an hour and a half.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: Is there anything that you're kind of like working on
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: right now at the moment? Any Like?
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm always working on stuff. I have a new
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: aromatic project that I've been working on. It's mythopoetic, so
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: it's capturing different myths and ways like archetypes within a smell.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: So I'm getting ready to launch that. And I've been
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: working on some new classes about sky with using essential
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: oils and hydrosols. So yeah, that's kind of what I've
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: been interested in. I'm sure I'm always interested in something.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: So new things Yeah, Ash and I are similar. We're
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: very collectic and always doing a million things at once.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: But I've been pretty excited about my new educational platform again,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: it's Lumina Institute. A big focus of that has just
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: been to kind of marry our modern paradigm to the
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: tradition of alchemy and teach it in a holistic way.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: So there'll be some upcoming classes coming up online with Lumina.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: So in the fall, we plan on relaunching for the
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: second time our first herbal program, and we're now looking
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: at starting to bring in some more guest teachers, you know,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: from outside of my teachings, start to bring in some
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: new people on a monthly basis. So I'm excited about that.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: And in some of the recent sch we're doing there too,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: we're actually trying to take some of these concepts, bring
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: them into the lab and prove them out chemically as
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: well as philosophically.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: Nice. That's awesome, Good luck with all this stuff, both
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: of you. Before we wrap it up, I'll let Judith
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: and Sky plug this show, and then when we know
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: after them, I'd like you to promote anything you want. Judith,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: let everybody know what's up. When they can find all
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: you stuff.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, Ash, thank you Daniel. This is
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 4: a wonderful conversation. It could go on for hours. Literally,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: Sky is right, it could go on for hours, but
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: everybody you could find me on YouTube x and on
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 4: Spreaker as the Loon again i mentioned please check out
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 4: me and the Cardinals chat from yesterday and the weekly
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: brunch every Sunday.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Judith, I really appreciate it when
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: you make it. And Sky, thank you, sir. I appreciate
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: you jumping on man great questions too, Thank you, thank you.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 5: I'm happy to be here.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: Check out.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 5: Philosophical Minds podcast and Etherica podcast and people have probably
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 5: noticed both of the websites are currently offline, but I'm
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 5: working on making them fucking incredible. So I'm super excited
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 5: about it and we have that to look forward to you.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: So yep, that's that awesome. Thank you very much. I
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: appreciate it. And Uhes and Daniel, please let everybody know
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: what's up with both your separate stuff.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: Well. Thanks thanks for having us on, Thanks for giving
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: me a platform to yap at and all y'allat great questions,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: like really appreciate the thoughtfulness of it all. So you
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: can find me ritual botanica dot com or on Instagram.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: It's Ritual Ritual Underscore Botanica.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: And yeah, you can find me at secret USh Fire
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: dot com uh, secret Fire Spageria on Instagram or Lumina
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: dot Alchemy on Instagram as well. Yeah, you'll find all
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: my different projects through there. Thank you so much for
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: having us on today, Nick, and thank thank you Judith
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: and Sky for jumping on too. With all the great questions.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we could finally bring our schedules into one place.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're both very like four Planets and Piscey, so
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: it's it's hard to pin us down sometimes. But I'm
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: really glad this happened. This was really fun.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, maybe we can get you on again in the future,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: both of these because again, even for me, I'd like
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: to get into this bageria and stuff like that. I
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: didn't get to ask any of that stuff. So yeah,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: there's plenty of more questions. I had tons of them
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't even ask because I just went off of
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: the conversation. So can definitely do this again. Thank you
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: all for coming on. It was really interesting. I appreciate
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: how you got so in depth on a lot of
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: the answers with certain things. For the listeners, I don't
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: think there's a lot of people I myself don't even
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: know everything that goes on behind this stuff, so I
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: think you really gave a good example for the listeners
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: of the show. So I really appreciate that. And Sky,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: thank you very much for showing up and jumping on. Man,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it. And Judith, as always always appreciate you
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: here and everybody in the chat. That is what's up.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you all for jumping on and listening. That's where
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: we go live and until the next one. Everybody be later,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: everybody be well later.