The Witching Herbs and Samhain with The Seed SistAs

#52 - Join us for an amazing conversation with Herbal Drama Queens Kaz & Fi of The Seed SistAs on the magic and medicine of power plants and reintegrating the ancient tradition of working with witching herbs in ritual and modern herbalism.

In this episode, The Seed SistAs share about their experience of working in deep partnership with the poison plants and reclaiming the word witch. They offer profound wisdom on how to respectfully work with witching herbs such as Henbane, Datura, and Belladonna, and how they help connect people with Nature and bridge the gap between scientific understanding and the magical realms of herbalism. They also share about how the witching herbs and power plants are associated with the energy and time of Samhain.

Kaz & Fi are The Seed SistAs, sensory herbalists who have a passion for educating others about plant medicine. Their mission: to connect people with their local plants promoting empowerment, autonomy, freedom and diversity in health care.

Medically trained herbalists with a love and interest in the so-called witching herbs of old, they have worked and played together for many moons exploring all that the plants have to share. They combine their clinical experience with ritual, art and creativity to teach herbal medicine in a unique, inspiring and accessible style, led by the plants themselves.

The Seed SistAs are also authors of the books the Sensory Herbal Handbook and Poison Prescriptions - power plant magic, medicine and ritual, available at https://seedsistas.co.uk/books/

You can find the Seed SistAs at: https://seedsistas.co.uk/
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Learn how to communicate with plant consciousness in the free workshop on How to Learn Plant Language: https://www.learnplantlanguage.com/

Transcript

Sara Artemisia: 0:05

Welcome to the Plant Spirit Podcast on connecting with plant consciousness, and the healing wisdom of Nature. If you'd like to learn more on how to communicate directly with plants, visit www.learnplantlanguage.com. To register for the free workshop, that's www.learnplantlanguage.com. I'm your host, Sara Artemisia and I'm deeply honored and excited to introduce our next guests to the show today. Kaz and Fi are the Seed SistAs, herbal drama queens, and sensory herbalists who have a passion for educating others about plant medicine. Their mission is to connect people with their local plants, promoting empowerment, autonomy, freedom, and diversity in health care. medically trained herbalists with a love and interest in the so called witching herbs of old, they've worked and played together for many moons, exploring all of the plants have to share. They combine their clinical experience with ritual, art and creativity to teach herbal medicine in a unique, inspiring and accessible style, led by the very plants themselves. So Kaz and Fi, thank you so much for joining here, I'm excited to have you here.

Kaz and Fi: 1:42

That's lovely to be here. Yeah, thank you.

Sara Artemisia: 1:46

Just love your deep connection with plants so ancient and would love to start by exploring really, what are the witching herbs and power plants?

Kaz and Fi: 1:56

Yes, the witching herbs. So, for us to when to talk about the witching herbs, we've got to break down what we mean by the word witch. And we, as herbalists, and women who help babies get born, we get called witches. It's just part of the language and terminology in the culture in the UK at this time, if you have any kind of, if you've got tarot cards, everyone in your family or for your witch, you know, that's something I grew up with, if you read the astrology section in the newspaper, people call you a witch. It's, it is common language. And that word which is is an ancient one. And just like any of our words, they take on different meanings, in different time zones. And I was thinking about recently the word wicked. So I understand the word wicked means something really good. I was brought up in that era, got I remember describing things as wicked to my grandparents, and my grandmother was horrified because to her something wicked is truly evil. And the word witch has gone through so many different transformations of understanding. And historically, my understanding is the word witch was to describe someone who had mal intent. And the word cunning folk, were what herbalist or people that worked with more psychic abilities would have been called here in the UK, that we adopted this word witch years and years ago, we kind of said, okay, we will be the wild and wicked witches. And we traveled around music festivals and events, donning our black pointy hats and playing in the archetype of witch. And we had a fabulous time, and a lot of fun. But we also noticed that we scared a huge portion of the population, because people still have negative connotations and fear around the word witch, and we decided that, you know, our mission is you beautifully introduced us our mission is to connect people with Nature. And that's everyone we want every single person to be able to connect with their local plants. And if we scare people, we're not going to be able to, to achieve that. So that's when we changed and became the Seed SistAs. But we are, we are, witch is and what we define witch as is looking back into older English, with wild, wacky, wise women. And that's how we see ourselves, but we don't shout about it too much anymore. I think that it's interesting because we've been saying that we don't shout about it too much anymore, but we have just released the book of witching herbs and our use of them. So I think our perception of how we're viewed because for with our first book with the Sensory Herbal handbook, we, we felt like we were going a bit in disguise, and to really get that message out there. And we had this acute awareness of that duality within the word witch that in the modern era, it's been completely reappropriated, reclaimed, as this powerful, embodied, spiritual connected to Nature. Generally woman but not always, and especially not with the the gender discussions going on at the minute, you know, anyone can embody that, that spirit of the witch, but realizing that it holds that duality, and it will never truly let go, we don't believe it will ever truly let go of those connotations of fear because it's so entrenched in the fables and the folklore and the that history of where it came from to quash and quell and subjugate and so holding, holding that, realizing that it holds that duality we we moved away from it, but what we have actually done is now gone. Okay. This has been a huge part of our journey. And let's write about it now. And let's, let's do it from that balanced perspective rather than that pushy. We're trying to reclaim this word, it's much more. This is us. It's much more embodied now than I feel like in our early 20s, when we were feisty, angry, herbalist, witches out there in the world, we were the wild and wicked witches, and we still are that I think in some way, a little more embodied. We live in houses now, you know. That, you know, the witching herbs, they also embody the duality that we're talking about here. Those witching herds have the power to end life. And we're in amongst our very first murder weapons, you know, the very first arrow poisons. And the, the ways that whole governments were overthrown was often through poisonings. They were also at the very birth of surgery. You know, a lot of these herbs were the beginnings of anesthesia. And they, they're so powerful, because they have this ability to both kill, to knock someone out to a level, like an anesthetic so you can perform surgery and surgery was being performed in the 1400s. Because of these plants, by women, there were women surgeons in Italy at the time, you know, they, they are these incredibly powerful, intelligent, wise, wild creatures, these women who were doing that magic and they fully understood that each of these plants has a spirit and can alter consciousness just by picking that plants and creating your medicine, you're beginning the dialogue with super powerful entities. So the witching herbs, the so called witching herbs, or the power plants are quite a lot of different plants. In our book, we focus on the Solanaceae, in particular, the nightshade family, that there are others that we touch on. And they have this just depth of history that goes right to the very beginnings of humanity. And being called witching herbs, is literally because they were associated with practices that were deemed witchcraft. If you were found with herbal preparations containing these plants, you can be deemed a witch. They have that association because they hold within them such power, the power to to heal and support and the power to end life. You know, the alkaloids that are contained within those plants are the tropane alkaloids and tropos means to make a change. But Atropa Belladonna Deadly Nightshade is the namesake of a Tropos, which was the third fate in Greek mythology that cuts the thread of life. So they have the ability to, to cut an energetic ties, but also the ties of life if misused or, or abused in that way. So they need to be approached with a particular kind of reverence that has often not been associated with these kinds of practices. And that's also where the witchcraft comes in is really, really knowing your plants, really, really knowing them. And these plants also have been associated with deep and eatery techniques, and they're going back to the Oracles at Delphi. And looking at the originals of practices like necromancy. These plants are held within all of these different psychic and paranormal, and human practices that are associated with sorcery, and witchcraft. Magic, basically magic. And what we are super excited about with this work is that there's an opportunity for us to marry this scientific, linear with the magical spirals within each of these plants, because we're privileged to have learned the chemical constituents of each plant to understand the physiology of the human body and how the plant compounds interact with us. So we've got this medical training. And we're also privileged to have been growing and working ritualistically with these plants. And we can see that through ritual and magic. Healing is available. And if we can draw on the actual physical attributes of advanced as well make remedies and our potions and creams and tinctures using both aspects for healing is bound to be better than just using one. And it seems like we've spent a few 100 years going slightly off the path and going one way down the scientific track with medicine globally. And it's now time to just stop that and rebury integrate the magic and, you know, we can see a huge resurgence. The term shamanism is now globally accepted term for a healer. And most people know that I think it's published in common magazines that isn't something that was heard about a few years ago, in so people. And yoga as well people understand that yoga is a practice than people understand the word mindfulness. And all of these have science behind them that are beginning to understand, and to explain why these practices work. So that's the same thing that we want to kind of do in reverse with the plants and start teaching the magic and start sharing the magic with clinicians. And people that are working with all kinds of medicines, especially modern, derived plant, derived drugs that are available in all of the hospitals today, those drugs still have the potential to bring in the magical aspects of the plant within them.

Sara Artemisia: 13:55

Yeah, I love so much your deep connection with the plants and also how you have this very grounded clinical training in herbalism. Because there's such a cross pollination or translation or connection between what has, I think, for a very long time been perceived as potentially separate realms that you bring them together so beautifully. And I'm curious in your experience, why is it really important to resurrect this ancient tradition of working with the witching herbs in ritual and medicine right now? Like what is it about the times right now or this feels so important?

Kaz and Fi: 14:34

We've seen something quite interesting happen in the herbal world, which is what that just alluded to before in that we were scientifically trained within University to use these herbs clinically in the body for digestive cramps, for tremors in the body, for asthma, because they have these amazing relaxing properties on certain muscles and areas within the body. So that's the witching herbs, I use clinically in that way. But right at the turn of the millennium, actually into around 2000. We, from the research that we've done, we were one of the last years of clinical herbalist that were taught how to even use these herbs clinically. And when we were taught, there was no question about the power and strength and magic of these herbs, but we happen to be using them or working with them rather in that way outside of the clinical setting as well. So it was a natural progression for us to bring those qualities of the plants those subtle, actually very unsubtle, but in the ways we were working with them in very small doses, those subtle energetic shifts, and patterning within people's neurological systems to be able to understand themselves in different ways we were able to bring that into clinical practice. And what we saw was the even herbalist were losing their way with these herbs and becoming fearful of losing them, of using them on one herbalists gathering that we went to doing a talk on these plants years and years ago, out of 50 herbalists that were there, there were one or two that were using any herbs that were on the special list of restricted herbs. And none of them were using these plants. And to us, it just felt like that was a reflection of this severance between that majestic connection to Nature, that we've been really lucky enough to never have because a severance from because we've been brought up both of us in Nature, Nature being alive, we can interact with Nature, we can talk to Nature, it will respond. And that's what's driven us both together on this work. And that recognition that these plants can bring that reconnection by bridging this gap between that scientific medical herbalist model, and this much more ritualistic spiritual, and actually, in some ways, unbridled with these plants, there's still quite unknown outcomes, even when you're using very small doses, you never quite know what it'll bring up for yourself personally, at each point, and a bit of that unknown wildness is really what the world is craving. Right now, it feels like this. This, everything has to be certain, everything has to be measured, has been blown apart in the last few years. And these plants are like, Hey, we told you, nothing was certain, you know, that the world is ready to feel back into that wildness in that connection. And these plants are perfectly placed to to bring that inspiration. Yeah, we've been talking about what's wrong in the world for quite a long time and thinking of ways to change it. And to us. The root of the insanity is capitalism, or Neo capitalism, greed, and if lost the power, and it's like looking at it, looking at the problem, and being aware of the problem, but what do you do? How do you live and celebrate life, knowing that there's all of this oppression and destruction? And so our answer has always been, you know, grass roots, community, activism. And these plants have given a dimension to the rituals that tap into that old ancient way of human consciousness because they've been with us for so long. So I don't think we really know why. But what we've seen there is a conference and called Botanica Obscura that someone called Coby Michaels is organizing and Coby is in I think Coby is in Florida. But what he's shown us is that there are a lot of different people working with these plants right now. All over the planet. And there is this natural resurgence happening there's when we were looking at how many different books there were on the poison plants when before we brought us out we really like encourage to see there's a lot and only last year, I think four or five were published. And it's obvious that these plants are calling in, there's something that they want us to do. But we can only really guess. Because they know they're the ones that know.

Sara Artemisia: 20:18

I always find it so interesting how the different plants will come forward at different times to support with different planetary things happening is so it's such a wild time to be alive right now working in collaboration with the plants. And you know, you mentioned working with the Solanaceae family in your book, and I was curious if you could tell us more about this. And in particular, you know, who are some of the herbs that you share about specifically in this book? And why are they so helpful for connecting magic and medicine with modern herbalism and contemporary witchcraft?

Kaz and Fi: 20:55

So some of the main ones that we mentioned, the Nightshade family, so also known as the Solanaceae family. And they also include that family plant, family also includes potatoes, and peppers and chili peppers, and aubergine that I think you call eggplant. And that family is a vast family of foods, really delicious, useful foods, but also very, very powerful medicines. And that family, they all have alkaloids, which provide both their powerful medicine and also their potential poison. And the ones that we talk about mainly in the book, we focus on three in detail. And they are Henbane, Datura also known as Jimsonweed, and Belladonna, or Deadly Nightshade. So they're the three that we have a really deep hone in on and focus on. And they're the three the we've worked with and grown a lot. And over the years, we've run many, many workshops on developing the green Ongwen, the flying ointment, and we'll do it with a group in ritual. And we will tiny energetic doses of those herbs to blindfolded groups, small groups and get them to talk about their responses afterwards. And it was just amazing to map these energetic responses on a kind of not a mass scale, because they were relatively small groups, but over the years amassing a lot of information about the blueprint or picture of these plants and what what they can actually offer us. And the qualities of those herbs are low, they contain many of the same alkaloids, they're in slightly different levels within the plants. The energy of the plants is very, very different. And it's been really amazing to work with seemingly chemically such similar plants, and see how energetically different they really are. So the Henbane has this real kind of jovial, uplifting Nature to it. Associated the Henbane with the kind of celebration after a death. So when you go to a funeral, and afterwards you have a really good week, and everyone comes together to talk about whose passed and you might have fabulous music and you may be intoxicated in the Henbane. We've watched the groups after they've taken their blindfolds off and how they interact and how they talk. And it feels quite boisterous and lively. And when you go into the the history and look into where Henbane was being prescribed and used the beer, the fact that we brewed with Henbane and as normal all through Europe and Henbane is the original pills and or pills in a lager. And it is the very first ever drugs law ever ever passed on the planet was because of Henbane because people were regularly imbibing this as a, as a nightly or daily drink and having these very opened and consciousness connecting experiences with this plant. And we always think it's amazing that they outlawed any other herbs in brewing except for Hops and Hops is anti testosterone, it's mildly depressive. And that was the plant, they say it's because of its taste that we think other things were put there. That was the beer purity Law that came into place right at the end of the 1400s. But the, the Henbane, as well, with this kind of jovial response we'd see with people, when you look back at the folklore of Henbane, a wreath of Henbane was worn as people crossed over the river sticks into the underworld at death. So you have this kind of jovial, celebratory atmosphere, but with this kind of not exactly sorrow, but a release a letting go and allowing that passing over through the celebration. And when you see an energetic response, and then look back, and are able to overlay that with the folklore and what's been said before about the Henbane, and the fact it was used in the beer, and then it's like, all that knowledge is still there for people to ascertain and get an any ritual or work that's been developed has always been done in response to the environment, the plants, the people of wherever it's arisen from. And that still exists if people can learn to tap back into these, these energetics of the plants. So Henbane is always one of our the ones that we enjoy sharing with others because of that spirit of it. And then the Datura, the Jimsonweed is much, much more introspective, and much more about old ancestral, even like ancient ancestral kind of patterning, and is thought to be the origins of the image of the werewolf and the idea of transformation, personal transformation, what power and strength has brought you here today, recognizing different aspects of the self and being comfortable to be able to shift into those different aspects of yourself. And it's had a much more people can barely respond to each other in the groups when they've had that they're so inside from just tiny energetic drops you, you really notice that because we don't give them the same time you really noticed the Datura group? So it was a bit like, not sure how do I express what I've just experienced, whereas the Henbane group, or what was going blablabla on, I saw this and that happened, and you get the Thornapple. So when you look at the Datura's seed pods, and the spiky Thornapple and the brakes opened to be filled with tons and tons of little black seeds. But as it cracks opened, it has four chambers, very clearly delineated and is reminiscent of the heart and the four chambers of our heart, but surrounded by this seriously protective, spiky seed pod. And that introspection in that time to give ourselves to really protect our hearts while we go inside and do that exploratory work is an incredible gift from the Datura. And we love to draw on her gifts for shapeshifting work. And that's where we, that's where we deal when we do magical work with the Datura. And then, of course, the Belladonna, the beautiful lady who has so much history and folklore that surrounds her. Possibly the most famous worldwide, isn't she I would say, Yeah. and responsible for the most deaths. The Deadly Nightshade with the most delicious sweet black cherries, you know, so many of our poisons are accurate or bitter. So you wouldn't want to eat them. But Belladonna's cherries are actually quite sweet. So she had this a bit of a Machiavellian trickster vibe to her going on as well. But it's her that we called on we evoked actual posts. That an event is the ritual at Summer Solstice and we have been calling on her to cut the threads of consumerism in greed and it is the archetype of Belladonna that feels like she's leading, leading the way with a clear intent. That was four years ago and there's been a lot has happened since that and you know, it's a bit like the risk agents in the poisons, you're never quite sure how much of an influence or magic and work has had on it. But we've certainly seen this huge upsurge agents in the last 25 years of us working with these plants. And we did that spell in Prague in 2019, and then watched the world kind of crumble. And it was just interesting to see what occurred with that, not saying that that spell caused the world rifts. But it was just interesting to see our take to create shift in the world, actually. And in our worlds it did, you know, we did, that was the action. So that is what's happened to Belladonna has led this and in a response to it, we called on our failure, Goddess of healing we, we held or hold more aspects of the gentle and the kind alongside the, the severe. But within our book, we have offered up that rights to the people, and we've written it out. Because we do believe that consumerism needs to go, you know, I think there's a huge, it's a big issue, I think that huge amounts of the world population are addicted to consuming crap. And unless that consumption of crap is ended, that how can anything change? And as individuals, we all have a responsibility to look at what we're consuming, you know, I know I do. I regularly, if I walk into a shop, I see pretty shiny things. And I think I want them and I've got to be really mindful. It's a practice I've done for years. So it's, it is an addictive thing. And it is a it's a shiny, magical spell in itself that the market is woven on a lot of humanity. And the plants are calling for it stop.

Sara Artemisia: 32:07

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that's so much about, you know, when we drop into this deep relationship with the plants, it's like the shiny surface, things lose their importance as so much. And because we're connected to this much deeper well of connectivity that is connected with the entire interconnected web of life, much more enriching, shiny thing. So one of the things that you were just sharing about that is so key. So key, it feels so key to me in your work. And just so key when working with these, all plants, and particularly with these power plants is this aspect of the respect. And I would love to hear from your perspective, why is it so important to approach the Witching Herbs from a space of respect, and what are some ways that you'd recommend interacting with them safely?

Kaz and Fi: 32:58

So this is one that we have to obviously inevitably talk about a lot because of the the flip side of these herbs. And we don't recommend taking, the first thing that you do is ingesting these plants in any way. What we actually say to people is, once you start thinking about these plants and putting them in your consciousness, they will more than likely appear in your yard at work in your garden in the rubble out the back of the supermarket, you know what they will start to appear because they have that level of connection with the web of consciousness that you were just referring to. And it will be more than likely that you'll start to find them. But if not, locating seeds, growing the herbs, getting to know them in that way. Because if you have these herbs near you, when you sleep, they infiltrate your dreams is often enough to grow and draw and connect with and be with them. In fact, sometimes even that can be overwhelming with the connectivity of them if you're not fully prepared for that. But sitting with these plants, and really getting to know how they grow and how they look and the differences in them is a really beautiful way to start that connection. And we do write about that in the book. We go deeply into how to begin to connect with the plants. We take through a whole journey of a year really with the recipe for the witching ointment in the book as well because it's it takes that length of time to harvest the herbs that they're different cycles and points and this is in it for the long haul with these herbs. This is not let's have a, a weekend retreat or mighty boosh because if you approach them in that way, you may never fully come back. And there is no reason why we can't work with these herbs without taking a hedonistic quality to working with them. But there's been so much fear built up around them. So it's about really getting to know them so that you can put that fear to one side, knowing that you're working with them in a respectful, safe way. And, like being respectful, I think this is for all plants. Saying hello, it's a very basic beginning and talking to a plant. And even from the seed, if you've got a seed, being able to tell the seed what you want, we put our seeds on our altar with intentions of how we'd like to interact, grow. If we have a specific idea of why we want to grow a plant, we tell the plant. And I think that if you can be on your own, and let go of all your inhibitions. Naturally, you might want to hum or sing to a plant. And I think plants love that I know plants love that I know when I'm on my own with the plants, I can channel words and songs that feel so right for the moment, they just feel like now, when you think about cellular activity, and you have the cell membrane with receptors, and there's various chemicals in the body that go into those receptors, it feels like that when you're with a plant, being able to offer voice and the vibrational quality of voice, I think the plant has receptors within it that can infuse the plant with a quality that it loves. And that's what we've seen with the plants we work with. And by having a dialogue with the plant, because it is a dialogue. We can speak out loud with vibrations, but the plants speak through a variety of different means. And through all of our senses. And one of the most obvious is our sense of smell. If a plant is in flower, the plant is aromatic anyway, being able to smell, the plant elicits this whole range of different feelings inside our own bodies. And it's being able to slow down. And I think that's one of the biggest messages is respect. Slow, slow the fuck down. All of us because we're all going quite fast as well in the plants aren't working at that same level of time, if we can slow down with the plants, and get our fingers in the soil, so that all of those microbes and particles that are interacting at the level of the plants, roots are also interacting in our fingers. This that kind of behavior is, is fun, it's really good fun, its awesome. A lot of these plants grow where it's really barren ground, they need very little nutrients, you know, and that is a kind of metaphor for bringing us back from what's become soulless, in many ways, is really poetic, that they grow from nothing, and bursts forth this such powerful beauty. And yeah, they're all the messages that you can get from just growing working with observing, being with them enriches anyone's life, having plants, especially these ones in their lives, but any plants.

Sara Artemisia: 39:08

Absolutely. And that aspect, you were just sharing about to that slowing down piece really, if we're going to commute, like if we're going to learn a new language, we need to learn the language of the person or if we're wanting to communicate with a person, we need to learn the language that they're speaking. And the same thing with plants and the the wavelength that they're communicating on is much slower. So how can we really drop into the wavelength of the plants by moving much slower than we normally do and getting our hands in the soil and, and really witnessing them through the changes and how how beautiful and invaluable This is. And you mentioned earlier doing, casting a spell at the Solstice and just thinking about the different times of the year, the seasons, the Wheel of the Year and how certain plants are associated with different times and the Wheel of the Year and I'm curious why in your experience are so many of the witching herbs and power plants associated with Sahmain at the end of October?

Kaz and Fi: 40:08

Well, if you go back to the old, I mean, Sahmain is a Celtic term, it's the Celtic calendar. And in the time when that was originated, there was two parts of the year, there's a light part and there's a dark part. And so, Sahmain is the point where we're going into the dark. And so very basically, it's these plants are associated with the dark, and the witch which who later became associated with our own. And so a red represents perfectly that unknown, the energy of the harvest dropping down into the Earth, the crisp air being this conduit for being able to connect with spirits or ether in a different way. And bringing the plants into those times when subtle connection is what's needed to be able to understand these herbs. They're the perfect time to, to be working with them and, and bringing them into it. And communing with the dead. It's classically a time to remember celebrate and commune with the dead. And all of these plants have had histories of working with necromancy.

Sara Artemisia: 41:41

And how would you say that your lives have been enriched by being in deep relationship with these plants?

Kaz and Fi: 41:46

Good to know a time before, time before, we turned up we had an avocado germinated so we put the avocado in front of the house. It's a south facing wall. And one day the Henbane just self seeded in there. And it's like oh, okay, and then the Datura, self seeded. And someone gifted us the Mandrake and Belladonna turn, everything just turned up all these plants just kind of knocked on the door literally. And but that these plants are super special, we love them. But all of the plants, every single one of them are incredible and hold as much magic and as much mystery. And, you know, I was thinking about Plantains. So common Plantago lanceolata was what I was thinking about. And I was, we were once running a workshop somewhere. We've never been on the land, and we needed some Plantain. And there was none. I'd walked it, there was none. And just at the point where my mind was going, oh, you know, rubbish, blah, blah. But just thought, Oh, how about if I just walk in a circle and sing Plantain a bit? And there's a part of my mind that says, Oh, you're a nutter was ridiculous thoughts. But there's another part that knows it's true. And that's exactly what I did. And then there was Plantain. And these magical plants are so magical because of their strength of action. Plantain has the same strength of action. And if we take that time to connect deeply enough with the Plantain we'll find as many gifts and as many wonders within the Plantain and there is no hierarchy really, in the plants at all. You know Plantains, ancients, surviving the ice ages, one of our oldest ancestors. So there is something quite interesting that's happened with the poisons for our, our life's work, and that is that because within our medical herbalist profession, we were practicing what might be thought of as quite edgy practices on something that was already quite an edgy profession. We weren't always we certainly weren't invited to back in the day many herbalists conferences to speak or we were thought of as you know, this fringe the wild and wicked witches giving herbal medical herbalism a bad name. And we stuck to our guns because we weren't going to change the way that we were incorporating the magic and the science together. And we had to really, we had to really just sit in that and not waver, but it was hard at times. And then the psychedelic community have the resurgence in interest in studying altered states of consciousness as medicine started coming into the fore, and conferences popping up around the world. And it was actually getting invited to speak at the psychedelic conferences, and people being really interested in our work and how this work with the plants in a magical and medicinal way could be interpreted be of benefit was then what started to make the herbal medicine community go our there may be some value in this work. And can you come and speak about these plants and but it took the psychedelic community which is full of all sorts of people, from traditional healers, to Uber, Uber allopathic, scientific people that are doing psychedelic research that have never taken psychedelics before, you know, a whole Plethora of a Gamut of people that are interested in plants and compounds that alter consciousness. That that, that it made us visible in a way working with these plants, which you've got to be really, you know, we felt we had to be quite secretive about in the early stages, were what started to make our work much more visible. And that was really interesting, kind of dynamic and path that occurred for us along the way. And it has taken 25 years for us to get this book out of working with these plants. And that is on the back of well, not the back of but as part of this huge resurgence and it does feel like it's just come at the time where it will be received. And that feels really special. And that has been huge. We often say we're guided by the plants themselves. And we have you know, we have been ultimately when the times been right. Yeah, I guess they're like, thinking about, like the differentiation of plants. And I think that the poisons the power plants are a bit like the rock and roll stars of the plant world because they're a bit they're a bit edgy. They would be the ones in the hotel room that was smashing up the teles and throwing them out the window. They are, they are sexual. There's a lot of connection to sacred sexuality. And they are they deal in debt. And they do water consciousness. So it is like sex and drugs and rock and roll with them. And maybe the Plantains, more like folk ballads. Like feeling to it.

Sara Artemisia: 48:12

I love that. Totally puts so much into context for me how like, I mean, since I was a kid, I was always like, what about the Plantains of the world? Like everyone loves the flowers? What about them? Yeah, I'm like, oh, so folk ballads. There we go. Love that. Oh my gosh.

Kaz and Fi: 48:34

Oh, you know. We are, we are also really interested in making the songs of Nature loads more appealing to the young people of the world. You know, it's really hard to get the youth engaged in folk ballads these days, and they're generally more interested in rock and roll. We've worked with a halfway house like a homeless hostel of young people to initiate a herbal medicine garden. When they saw that cannabis sativa seeds were on the list. All they wanted to grow. They just wanted a garden of cannabis and was like, okay, how can we how can we guide this into something that's got a message that says something and cannabis sativa you know, hemp was included in the garden along the way, but they created this beautiful garden that had a story about how toxic are you and leading up to the more the more potentially alkaloid rich plants had a lot more of the allopathic pharmaceutical medicines alongside them. So it was displayed how the pharmaceutical medicines are derived from the plants and get more common as the plants get increasingly more potentially rich in alkaloids. Yeah, but that, but that is what engages the kids. And I mean, I'm really interested in getting some modern Nature music out there and how, how we can connect them in with the local environment through some. I think drum and bass is back in my ear at and if it's still that drill, Nature drill music. But yeah, maybe these plants have got something to offer towards that as well.

Sara Artemisia: 50:29

Oh, I'm sure they do. I'm so excited to see what what evolves out of that for you all because you all are your work is so guided by the planets, it's I love that you're working in such deep partnership, collaboration, deep listening, deep honoring, even when it's like painful and hard and whatever. It's like if the plants are guiding it, you're gonna do it. And I just love that about your work. And so tell us how can people find out more about you, your work your books? How can we find you?

Kaz and Fi: 50:58

So we've got a website, which is seedsistas.co.uk sisters with an A-S rather than ERS at the end. So seedsistas.co.uk. And most of our work is available through that. And we've got some brilliant projects in the pipeline. We've got a poisons course that accompanies the book that we're busy creating the minute we've got members area that we're looking to develop. We've got a monthly online webinar about different topics, we we survey people and say what are you interested in, and then we put it on for them, because it's all about getting it out there. But joining our newsletter through the website, we've got a free download of a PDF three charms and spells and three ways you can bring herbs into your daily life. So you can download the PDF and sign up for our newsletters with loads of cool info and updates on what we're up to and all of that. So that's probably the best way is joining the newsletter. And yeah. Watch this space because we are beginning our herbal comedy we've been developing and having fun dressing up as plants and doing performance lectures. And last year, we went on a comedy script writing course. And what we'd like to do is free up some time so we can go and work with like proper theater people will give us proper feedback. And then because comedy is a ways vehicle of being able to say to be really hard hitting truths without making people get really, really bored of hearing everything, all the dark stuff all the time. So yeah, we're, we're developing that. And we got some great costumes. I am chilly in the next incarnation and be owners Datura. And we will be on the Solanaceae theme when we've done fruity climate comedy dressed as plums and apples, which we took to cop 26, the big climate conference on the Fringe Festival there. So yeah, that's once we've got all the juicy foundations of our online world for people to tuck into then. Yeah, watch this space on the free plant comedy, that we'll also be putting in the members area as well like snippets on what we're up to here with all live as well, because I didn't ever ship surely people want to watch what we do what we're up to it ourselves. So let's say. You did an event, we went to Oxford farming conference, and it's a bit of a skit, and we came away going, it's brilliant. We're just being completely ridiculous. We are literally being just ridiculous character tours. And it's great, why not really the venue that they put us in the Oxford farming conferences, an amazing event that's all about the future of food and farming and the venue that they put us in in the main corridor, but it had a perfect mirror with bulbs around it like you get in a dressing room. So we had this like dressing room to get rescued. And we have these diva plants going into the performance to lots and lots of the farming community in the UK and worldwide. There's lots of amazing people there. Not all of our event but the whole event. So yes, having fun along the way keeping it exciting for us but constantly finding different new ways to get the information out there and be able to talk to people on different levels. And because we want to talk to people, eventually we just want to talk to people that don't know that plants exist, because there's a lot of them. You know, we meet people regularly that have no idea about the lifecycle of a plant. People literally don't know that a tree blossoms before it fruits, they don't understand about pollination. And these are educated people is a people who, now I live close to London, and we run a community Orchard where people come out and rent a little glamping space. And there's the professional city dwellers that come out and say things like in March, where are all the apples? You know, I laugh, but it's not really funny. It is something that is seriously remits. In our educational system. People do not get taught anything about basic botany, people do not get taught plant identification. So it's something that they're the people we want to talk to. We love talking to herb. Our herb community, it's amazing. But we're always telling everyone we can in the herb community, we need to tell everyone we need to tell people in the car parks and if you're on a dog walk or in the supermarket, just everyone needs to know something about plants every day. Eating plants is a great way to get by passes to have a chat people always want to know what you're up to if you're picking herbs in a car or by by a canal or something people walk past and have a chat. You know being out there doing it is one of the best ways to start conversations with people.

Sara Artemisia: 56:45

Yeah, I definitely found that to be the case as well. I love that. Well, Kaz and Fi, thank you both so much. Just such a joy and honor again to connect with you and so excited to see how it all evolves from here. It's just an ongoing adventure. Thank you.

Kaz and Fi: 57:02

Thanks for having us back. Thank you.

Sara Artemisia: 57:08

And thanks so much for listening and joining us today on the Plant Spirit Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and please follow to subscribe, leave a review and look forward to seeing you on the next episode.