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A review by lastbraincell
The Illustrated Herbiary: Guidance and Rituals from 36 Bewitching Botanicals by Maia Toll
3.0
The art is gorgeous. The book has a lot of nice sentiments and exercises, using the energies of the plant as inspiration. Basically a Herbal Oracle: the hardcopy does come with a deck, which can also be downloaded from here https://www.storey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/IllustratedHerbiaryCards.pdf
The plants are very North America/white country-centric. A few like Tulsi (Thai Basil) and Reishi (ganoderma / lingzhi mushroom) approached my zone of familiarity, which is Southeast Asia. I suppose you can now get rosemary and thyme from stores. But 80% of these felt foreign to me. So for the suggestion of connecting with their energies, I (born and raised a tropical creature, whose tongue knows and craves not apples, but mangoes, pineapples, lychees, coconuts...) might as well have tried to imagine snow.
It makes me wish I knew more about my great-grandmother, a herbalist. She would have known to apply chewed guava leaves as a poultice after circumcision; to make a soup with malunggay (Moringa oleifera) to increase a new mother's breast milk supply; boiled oregano or lagundi (Vitex negundo) in water to make a syrup for cough and colds; made teas with sambong (Blumea balsamifera) for kidney stones, and banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa) for weight loss; whipped up a batch of a hair-strengthening natural shampoo with the bark of the gugo vine (Entada phaseoloides).
But back to the book: lovely meditations on each plant. Unfortunately not a healing reference, but I don't even mind because my eyes just want to eat up all the pictures.
The plants are very North America/white country-centric. A few like Tulsi (Thai Basil) and Reishi (ganoderma / lingzhi mushroom) approached my zone of familiarity, which is Southeast Asia. I suppose you can now get rosemary and thyme from stores. But 80% of these felt foreign to me. So for the suggestion of connecting with their energies, I (born and raised a tropical creature, whose tongue knows and craves not apples, but mangoes, pineapples, lychees, coconuts...) might as well have tried to imagine snow.
It makes me wish I knew more about my great-grandmother, a herbalist. She would have known to apply chewed guava leaves as a poultice after circumcision; to make a soup with malunggay (Moringa oleifera) to increase a new mother's breast milk supply; boiled oregano or lagundi (Vitex negundo) in water to make a syrup for cough and colds; made teas with sambong (Blumea balsamifera) for kidney stones, and banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa) for weight loss; whipped up a batch of a hair-strengthening natural shampoo with the bark of the gugo vine (Entada phaseoloides).
But back to the book: lovely meditations on each plant. Unfortunately not a healing reference, but I don't even mind because my eyes just want to eat up all the pictures.