Herbal Folklore, Recipes, and Rituals for Yule with Ellen Evert Hopman

#56 - Join us for a delightful conversation with Author, Herbalist, and Druid Ellen Evert Hopman on the sacred herbs, traditions, recipes, and magical celebrations of the yuletide season. 

In this episode, Ellen shares about solstice rituals and herbal recipes that people have long connected with across cultures spanning from ancient Egypt to the Druidic traditions in honor of the returning of the sun. She offers insights on the origins of the Christmas tree and lessons that the conifers and evergreen plants can teach us during the winter solstice. She also shares wisdom on the Druidic path, herbs associated with the fire festivals in the wheel of the year including Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain, and the most potent times to gather plants both for medicine and magic.

Ellen Evert Hopman is the author of a number of books and has been a teacher of Herbalism since 1983 and of Druidism since 1990. She is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild and has presented on Druidism, herbal lore, tree lore, Paganism and magic at conferences, festivals, and events in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and in the United States. She is a co-founder of The Order of White Oak and was its co-Chief for five years, and was the founder and former ArchDruid of Tribe of the Oak.

Learn more about Ellen at: https://www.elleneverthopman.com
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Book links on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Evert-Hopman/e/B001JPAB2W
Inner Traditions: https://www.innertraditions.com/author/ellen-evert-hopman Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/23137.Ellen_Evert_Hopman
Simon and Schuster: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ellen-Evert-Hopman/410047891 

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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 excited to introduce our next guest to the show today. Ellen Evert Hopman is an Herbalist, Druid, and author of several books on Herbalism, Druidism, and Celtic Spirituality. She has been a teacher of herbalism since 1983 and a teacher of Druidism since 1990. She's a co-founder of The Order of White Oak, and was the founder and former ArchDruid of the Tribe of the Oak. So Ellen, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited for our chat today.

Ellen Hopman: 1:15

Thank you for inviting me.

Sara Artemisia: 1:18

So great. Yeah, I have just been honestly really looking forward to this conversation for years. And in particular, your connection with the fire festivals, the herbs of the fire festivals. And coming up, we have a very special one with Yule. So I would love to just start there and hear a bit about, if you could tell us a bit about some of the sacred herbs and traditions or rituals that people have connected with during the Yule in Christmas season.

Ellen Hopman: 1:49

I mean, a lot of the things that we do now, go back thousands of years. And I, while I was researching the book, I found out a lot of fun things, like for example, the Egyptians 4000 years ago, at the Winter Solstice would make fruitcake, which they would share with each other. And they would also place it on graves as an offering for their ancestors. And they would decorate the house with greenery. And I'm sure this was going on before the Egyptians, they got it from somewhere. But that was the 4000 years ago was, as far as I was able to trace it back. So that was fun. And then again, I was looking at the origins of the Christmas tree. And you know, there's a legend that Martin Luther invented the Christmas tree, which is absolutely not true. It turns out in the Middle Ages, there were passion plays that were done. And a very popular one had to do with Adam and Eve and they were the passion plays were put on around the Winter Solstice, which kind of makes sense, because during the rest of the year, you had to be out in the field, plowing and taking care of the animals, you know, so when everything after sow in or Halloween after everything was carefully stowed away in the barn for the winter, then you could venture out and go to a play, you know. So the Adam and Eve play, of course had to feature a tree, because it's the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you know, which comes from the Old Testament. And what kind of tree are you going to use if it's December? If you go out and get an Apple tree or Maple tree or anything like that it's not going to have any leaves and it's not going to look too good. So what are you going to go for, you're gonna go for a Conifer. So they either had Conifers or they actually built wooden pyramids, that were supposed to represent a tree. But when they put the Conifer on stage, they thought, well, this doesn't look like a special tree. It's got to look special. What do we do? So they decorated it with communion wafers, which are round and made out of flour and water, you know, and red apples, because Eve supposedly gave Adam an apple even though there are no apples in the Bible. If you go back and look at that story, apples had nothing to do with it. But that was the, the medieval imagination because they couldn't imagine anything more tempting. So they they have a nice kind of fruits decorated with round communion wafers and red apples. And then, in the 1400s guilds of merchants and seafarers started hosting celebrations in the town square, and they erected a nice tree in the center of the town square for people to dance around. And it was in Estonia in 1441, the guild of merchants and ship owners This, this is the first one that we have a record of. They set it up in the Town Hall Square, people danced around it and then set it on fire. So the original that was the original, you know, public Christmas tree other than the play. And they didn't come inside until much later. And it was actually Queen Victoria and Albert, who popularized the indoor Christmas tree. Because Germans apparently were starting to bring them indoors. And then they introduced that custom. And then English and Americans and everybody else started doing it.

Sara Artemisia: 5:41

Yeah, that is fascinating. I'm curious, are there any specific herbs or which herbs do you really connect with during the Yuletide season, and maybe any recipes specifically that you like to make with these herbs?

Ellen Hopman: 5:56

I have a cake that I'm kind of famous for, which is my Acorn cake. So I gathered the Acorns in October, and then I, I leached them, and then dry the once, well, it's a big process, but but then I dry it. And then when I want to make a cake, I grind it into flour. So sometimes each cake takes six eggs. And there have been Christmas's where I made six or seven of these cakes, which I mean that's a lot of eggs. But I make them with gluten free flour. And I also recently learned I don't even have to use eggs, I can use yogurt, I just experimented. Just plain I use vegan cashew yogurt. And it worked fine. But I have a book called The Secret Medicines from your Garden. And I have a lot of Acorn recipes in there if anybody's interested. But then there's also a lot of beverages, there's one that called Yule in a Glass. And I just thought I would share with that. And what I do is when I give the ingredients, I talk about the magical properties of everything that goes into the recipe, so that people who just want to make a nice drink for their guests, they can just put everything together and make a drink. But people who want to be a little more deliberate about it maybe and maybe for a Solstice ritual or something like that, you can actually make the brew and then I give suggestions for chanting. And you can chant while you mix it right. And I give suggestions but I also tell people that it's best if you create your own chant, you know, and then share that with your friends and loved ones. For example that hughan glass has Clementines, Lemons, lime, sugar, Clove, Cinnamon, Bay Leaf, Nutmeg, Vanilla Bean, and red wine and Anise pods. And then for example, I have as an herb of fire Nutmeg is appropriate to use at the Winter Solstice, sprinkle it onto eggnog and cakes, use it in mulled wine, apply the essential oil to candles to honor the returning sun, and so on. But I mean, Lemons and Oranges are very solar. You know, so you're, you're honoring the returning of the Sun. Nutmeg is also about prosperity. Cinnamon is about passion and, and love also, Bay is very protective. Vanilla Bean is also very erotic. I mean, I have whole, I have whole sections on each of these herbs and their history. You know, some of them are sacred to the Aztecs, for example, if you're interested and then there's cookie recipes, same idea, chocolate cacao, which was a sacred drink, only the nobles were allowed to drink chocolate, but it was said that it had a magical ability to bring people together and bind people you know, so it's just nice to know, the It's like another octave of the plant, you know, I mean, in the book, I go into the medicinal properties of everything. But then I also talk about the spiritual and the magical properties.

Sara Artemisia: 9:24

I love that you just shared about this of another octave of the plant of that it's getting of course the plants. I love the plants because they're so multidimensional, they work with us on every single layer you know, we can of course work with them just on the physical constituent layer and there's all these other layers present simultaneously within the plants and I'd love to hear a bit more about your experience with that and particularly in, in the Yule season in the Solstice, the Winter Solstice time of working with the the magical properties of plants and anything that you feel called to share about that. I don't know if there's a story or maybe some experience that you've had with a plant or even any recommendations that you have with folks for just connecting into that layer of working with the plants during the Solstice time and how special that can be.

Ellen Hopman: 10:13

Well, the special plants of this time of year, Winter Solstice are the ones that stay green. And they are, you know, Conifers and things, anything that that stays green all winter has a spirit that understands survival. And that is very wise. So it can handle extremes. So it's alive in the heat of the summer, but it's also alive in the cold in the winter. So it's about you tune into that you tune into that plant. And it teaches you about immortality, and about wisdom. And that you can, things will will continue. In other words, if you have a crisis, a big storm, a blizzard, whatever, it's only temporary, and then things will continue, the green will continue you know, so that's the lesson, that's what they're telling you is it no matter how bad something looks, it will at some point, and, you know, it'll stop being bad and the wheel will turn and then you just keep going, you know, and that's what they teach you. Perseverance, strength, determination, intelligence. You know, that's, that's what, that's the essence of the season. But as far as the octaves, I talk about that a lot actually, in my classes, but flower essences are another octave, you know, you have the, the physical plant, which you use for healing, so you apply it as a poultice, or you take it as a tea, that's kind of like the, the first level, the next higher octave, would be the flower essence, where you expose the flowers to full full sunlight for four hours on a cloudless day, right? In water. And then the next higher octave after that would be homeopathy. And if the if the homeopathic remedy is diluted enough, same plant, but there's literally no molecule of the original substance left, there's only the resonance of the plant. And yet, the higher the dilution, the more powerful it gets, because it goes right into your body, and it doesn't have to be digested, you know, the physical plant that you make the tea out of, your body has to break it down and digest it, by the time you get to the homeopathic remedy. There's no digestion anymore. You know, so, anyway, so those are octaves, and then there's the magical octave. And, I mean, that's a whole other, that's a whole other sphere of activity. So whether you're dealing with roots, that's means, you know, grounding and going into mysteries and into the dark and all that, that's very different from working with flowers, you know, which are about attraction. And making yourself, making yourself radiate, you know, and leaves which are about prosperity, that's a whole other thing, and growth, you know, and then seeds, which are about the future, and manifesting the future. And then there's all the colors of the plants when you're working on a magical level. Anyway, there's, there's a lot to but I should say that in the book, The Sacred Herbs of Yule and Christmas, I do have a primer in there on herb magic, and, and that and again, you know, there are these traditions that you can study Russian herbalism, or you can study British herbalism, or you can study Spanish herbalism, or whatever you want. But again, once you know the basic principles, you just go out in your backyard and see what you have, you know, and what color are the flowers, how can you work with it? Find something that has a deep root, and where it, you know, to to learn the mysteries. And anyway, yeah, I think people should just learn to work with what they have, with what's in their own yard. You know, you don't have to study alchemy. You don't have to do any of that. If you just have the basic principles, you know, you just go out and work with what you got, you know?

Sara Artemisia: 14:56

Yeah, absolutely. So you also were just talking Have a bit about the lessons of the Conifers and the Evergreen plants during the Winter Solstice. And recognizing that you are so deeply connected with the the Wheel of the Year, the different fire festivals throughout the year, I'd love to hear your perspective of your openness, sharing on why it's helpful or even vitally important, I might say, too have for people to work with the herbs in ritual way or just in a deeply connected way with each fire festival, like how does this impact? How can this enrich our lives if we if we do this and also, if you'd be open to sharing maybe just a start for folks who don't know just what are the fire festivals? And what is this? What is this about?

Ellen Hopman: 15:45

Well, the the fire festivals are a Celtic concept. I am a Druid. So obviously, the Druids were part of Celtic culture, the year starts at Samhain, which is what we call Halloween now. And Samhain is the end, the official end of the harvest when everything is supposed to be indoors, and safely stowed away for the winter. And it's also the time when you honor the the dead you honor your beloved dead it's not a, it's not a ooky, spooky, you know, well, it's scary. It is scary. But but it's it's there's nothing creepy about it, it's you set a place at the table hoping that, you know your grandmother will show up that kind of thing. So that, so that was usually traditionally observed at the Dark of the Moon. The idea of having festivals on the first you know, like November 1st, May 1st, February 1st, that's a Roman idea. The Romans had something called the Kalends and the Kalends was the first day of the month, which they considered a Holy day, the first day of the month. So they would make offerings to Juno, the goddess Juno on the Kalends. So when the Romans conquered Gaul, which is France, pretty much they immediately transpose the festivals to the Kalends. So instead of going, you know, the Celts always had a lunar calendar. And we know this because we've actually found the Coligny calendar, which is a French Gaulish. Druid calendar, we have that it's a lunar calendar. But the Romans didn't didn't like that. So so they changed it to the first so just know that if you're celebrating on the first, that's a Roman thing, it's not a Celtic thing. So if you're a Celtic you go by the moon, okay, so then and then the, the next big one would be Imbolc, or "oimelc", oi-melc means the milk of the ewe, oimelc it because it's a milk festival, it's the celebration of the lactation of the ewes, it's when the sheep start giving milk again, which was a really big deal because for months and months, nobody had milk, you know, they couldn't go down to the stop and shop and buy a gallon of milk. That just didn't happen, you know, so you had to wait until the sheep started giving milk again. So that happened, that was a big deal. So they associated the goddess Brigid, who later became a Saint, but it's the same person and with that festival and it's in Ireland anyway, it's considered the start of spring. And then you have Beltain or Beltane, which is May Day which again, if you do celebrate May Day most people think May 1st is May Day, but Imbolc would have been on the first quarter moon May Day is on the full moon Bealtaine or Beltain, is that the full moon, which makes a lot of sense, because it's a big party. And if you have people coming from Far and Wide, you don't want them tripping on stones and roots and wandering around in the dark, you know, so you got to have it's a full moon right? Samhain or Halloween was at the Dark of the Moon and everybody stayed inside, right? So now Beltane is the full moon and Beltane is the opposite festival from Samhain. You know Halloween and May Day are opposite each other. And then the next one was Luna saya and Lughnasadh our culture has kind of forgotten it but in Ireland, they still observe it, you know? And that's the start of the wheat harvest. And that's a big cause for celebration. You can it's when you can start digging new potatoes. So that's kind of a big deal, but it's not. People call it the first fruits festival but that's a little bit of a misnomer because the first harvest is actually the medicinal plants. In the time you gather the medicinal plants, or at least you start usually is around the time of the Summer Solstice, when the sun is at its height. So that's the most magical time to gather medicinal plants, both for medicine and for magic, things that are above ground, I should say, roots, obviously, you gather in the fall. But things that grow above ground, Summer Solstice is the most powerful time. So that's really the first harvest. So anyway, those are the fire festivals. What was the other question?

Sara Artemisia: 20:34

Yeah, just how in your experience, life can be so enriched by working with plants just in the same way that you were talking about the Evergreens, the Conifers, the lessons that they have for us during the Winter Solstice, how it can be so valuable to connect with the lessons of the plants during the sacred fire festivals?

Ellen Hopman: 20:52

Well, I would I actually think in terms of the whole year, I don't divide it up into the four fire festivals I have. And depending on where you live, it's going to be different for everybody. But I have things that I do in the spring, things that I do in the summer, things that I do in the fall, things that I do in the winter. And that's my own year, I have my little clock in my head of "oh, now it's time to gather the acorns". You know, I need to get out and gather the Horse Chestnuts. I gathered the Horse Chestnuts, the week before I gathered the acorns. I use the Horse Chestnuts for my salves because they're anti-inflammatory and they kill pain. So I have to do that every fall. And I'm going backwards now. So in the summer, in well. Elderberries are tricky. Depending on how much sun they get, I have to keep going back to the Elderberries and checking and seeing if they're ready, so they were ready. I think around the beginning of September, I gathered the Elderberries, but in the spring, I can gather the Elderflowers. That's a whole other thing. Around June, I gather walnuts before the nut forms, okay, so I gather them when they're green and soft, and small. And I cut them into quarters and I freeze them because I use those in my herbal salves because they have manganese, which is a skin healing agent, and they are a natural antifungal that prevents the salves from going bad. You know the same way that walnut trees will kill anything that grows under the walnut tree, if you put the walnuts in the salve it prevents any, you know, mold, bacteria, anything that and I don't ever use preservatives, you know, that's, that's my preservative is the walnuts. So that's what I do in June, I'm kind of going backwards here. Early spring, the spring would be time for things like Chickweed, which also makes a beautiful salve and you can eat it out gathering the green, the light green tips have Conifers, like Hemlock, Spruce, that happens in the spring. And sometimes I make liquor or cordial out of that with, you know vodka and a little bit of honey. And I let it sit for about six months, I usually make that in the spring and then give it out as Christmas gifts in the winter. But anyway, that's the kind of the way I think it's like I have this herbal year in my head. And again, you know, I I've never really lived in a desert area. So I don't know, the cycles of the desert that would be completely different, you know, or a jungle. I've never lived in a jungle. But you need to learn what's happening in your area and work with what's going on where you are.

Sara Artemisia: 23:56

So great. Well, thank you so much for for sharing that, that portal also sounds really wonderful. So yeah, and you mentioned also earlier being a Druid, I was curious if you could tell us a bit about that a bit about really, maybe for folks who aren't familiar what is the path of the Druid? And then I'd also be curious to hear how the path, how the Druidic path intersects with the Green Path of Herbalism and your experience too?

Ellen Hopman: 24:19

Being a Druid again, this is a big topic. And I have, I have a lot of books out I think I have 16 books in print right now. And another one coming out next spring actually on The Druid Path. Well, I also wrote novels I wrote a trilogy of novels, which I should mention if you're interested in Druidism. I put the Druid path in each of the books. One is called Priestess of the Forest. Then there's the Druid Aisle, which is Iona. And then there's Priestess of the Fire Temple. But what I did was I put all the festivals in their, prayers, beliefs and also herbalism the protagonists of the books are female Druids who just happened to be herbalists. And I looked up, you know, Iron Age herbalism. So everything in there is is accurate for Iron Age Herbalism. But there are many different kinds of Druids out there. So what is a Druid? The ancient Druids, which is where it all started, were actually a class within Celtic society. So they were called the nemid or sacred class, they were equivalent to the Brahmins. So if you think of the Brahmins in India, who are hereditary, who are highly trained, who are ritual leaders, who are healers, you know, that's what the Druids were they were the Brahmins. But anyway, so those are the ancient Druids, and they were the teachers, the advisors, the Kings. They were the teachers of the nobles, of the children of the nobles. They were the lawyers, the doctors, the physicians, they were herbalists. They were magical practitioners. They specialized, they didn't all do every function. Some of them were poets, you know. Anyway, so that was the Druid in ancient times. Now, we have a lot of people, modern people who just call themself a Druid they say, "Oh, I'm a Druid" you know, and, and I always have to talk to them for a few minutes to figure out what they mean. Because some people will say, you know, I like to hug trees. I'm a Druid. And some people will say I have Celtic ancestry. I'm a hereditary Druid, you know, of course, there is no unbroken, Druidic lineage. So there are people like that. And then there are people who spend many years studying, reading the the mythology, the tales, the wisdom, poetry, just reading the law books. And there's a lot of literature that's out there. And I constantly hear people say, Oh, we don't know anything about Druids, so you can do whatever you want. But if somebody says that, it just means that they haven't really looked into it, because the Romans never got to Ireland, and the Druid, there were books written down. And I'm sure the Vatican has things that haven't been translated, which drives me crazy. There's books still to be translated. But we have law books, we know the tribal laws, we know exactly what the training of a bard was, we know the exercises that they did we know how many stories they had to know, we know how many alphabets they had to learn. We know the Bee laws, for example, there's a whole volume of law just about bees. Because bees were incredibly important. You know, honey, they had very few sweet things. So honey was very important. And beeswax was the equivalent of duct tape. We think of duct tape, but a very use beeswax to stick things together. And there are all these elaborate laws, because if somebody had bees, and then their bees decided to swarm and move to somebody else's land. Now the person where the bees went to has the bees, you know, so who gets the honey? Does the original owner gets the honey? Or does the new landowner get the honey, and what happens when the bees come onto your land and they're foraging on your flowers. And that's how they looked at it. They said, your neighbor's bees are coming on to your land and and foraging on your plants. Therefore, the neighbor who owns the bees owes you a certain amount of honey in exchange, you know, and like that it's all very elaborately thought out. But it's called the back bayer, or the law of bees. And anyway, we have these. So we know we know quite a bit about how they thought.

Sara Artemisia: 29:17

That is fascinating. How would we find out more about the VEC Brea or the lobbies?

Ellen Hopman: 29:23

Well, there's, there's the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. You can get all the law books, you can get Fergus Kelley's guide to early Irish law, which is a nice introduction. Then there's early Irish farming, which is actually all the farming laws. And I'm such a nerd. I love just reading that stuff, you know, because it gives me a picture of what the society was like. And then there's the Bee laws and then there's the Euro Cashner rear, which is the laws of the poets. And what's so fascinating about that is it goes year by year through the training of a bard. So you know what they did in year one, year two year three or four. You know, it took eight years to train a bard and a bard was one type of Druid. Yeah, there's quite a bit. And if you if you combine that with the tales, the traditional stories that often feature Druids and I also have a, an essay floating around on the internet that you can find called female Druids. So if you just Google Elena Everett, Hartman, female Druids, it'll come up. And I did a lot of research. And you know, there were just, I don't know if it was just many, but there were certainly female Druids. And they were hereditary. Probably most of them were trained by their parents, but they did have Druid colleges, and you could go to Druid College, and learn to be a Druid. But, but we have lots of evidence for the female Druids and nobody talks about that people think of a Druid as an old man with a beard, you know, and it wasn't like that.

Sara Artemisia: 31:02

And you clearly have so much knowledge have done extensive research on this topic, and in embodied practice, clearly. And so I'm also curious to hear about in your experience, how the Druidic path really intersects with the Green Path of Herbalism?

Ellen Hopman: 31:19

Well, we. This is very similar to Native American spirituality actually. And I spent five years exclusively working with Native American elders before I became a Druid so it was very easy transition to go from that worldview to the Celtic Druidic worldview, it's really very similar. But if you're a Druid, there's a spirit within everything. So trees have spirits, every herb has the spirit, rocks have spirits, fire has spirit, you know, air has spirit, water has spirit and you know, everything you look at has has a sacred being. Another way of looking at it is God consciousness, it's like God is within all things or the Divine is within all things, you know. So if you're a Druid, you know whether you're looking at a Dandelion, or you're looking at a Sequoia, they're both sacred and.

Sara Artemisia: 32:24

That seems like really connected to what you were sharing about earlier with the different octaves of, of herbalism, how they, they're these different layers of ways that we can connect with the herbs. And I know you have also written very extensively about the sacred herbs, have multiple, a series of books, actually about the sacred herbs. I was curious if you could share a bit about what those are? And then also just tell us how people can find out more about you and your work.

Ellen Hopman: 32:51

Yeah, there's three books now. One is called The Sacred Herbs of Samhain. And Samhain is Halloween. So that one focus it's herbs to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Because Halloween, that's what you do. It's a big religious festival, for the Celts, and you know, it's about connecting with the other world, and the spirits and the dead. So it's also the time of year when you focus on roots in the fall is when you gather roots, and seeds, okay, and so that book focuses on roots primarily with a lot of recipes, magical uses drinks. So the second one is called The Sacred Herbs of Spring, which is about Beltane or Beltaine and that one same thing, lots of recipes, magical properties of plants. I talk about May Day observances in many different cultures. And May Day is as I mentioned, the opposite festival from Samhain they're both considered liminal times their portals. So Samhain or Halloween is the portal between summer and winter. And then May Day is the opposite. It's the portal between winter and summer. And in ancient times, they were both spirit nights. Our culture has for some reason we've latched on to Halloween, as the big spirit night when ghosts are running around. But May Day was actually equally the walls between the worlds within at that time and if you slept under a blooming tree, like a blooming apple or a blooming Hawthorne or blooming elder, you know, you could see fairies, and I write about that in the book. And then the newest one is the sacred herbs of Yule in Christmas which just came out and I highly recommend it as a Christmas present. Here's the good one, but if you want to see all my books, just go to elleneverthopman.com. That's e-l-l-e-n-e-v-e-r-t-h-o-p as in Paul a-n.com, elleneverthopman.com, or just Google my name, Ellen Everth Hopman. And they're all on Amazon. But you can, if you contact me, you can write to me through my website. And you can get signed copies, which is always nice. And I will mail them to you. And it's all through PayPal. And then for beginning herbalist people who say I'm beginning, what should I do, I highly recommend the book, Secret Medicines From Your Garden. Because the way we've been talking about the Wheel of the Year, and the things you do in spring, the things you do in summer, at least if you're living in New England, or anywhere north of the Mason Dixon Line. Or if you're living in Ireland, or England, or Northern Europe, you know this, that book will be relevant to what to do in spring, what to do in summer, what to do in fall, what to do in winter, and a lot of instructions about how to create herbal formulas. Step by step, I take you through that.

Sara Artemisia: 36:08

Wonderful. Well, Ellen, thank you so much, just been so delightful and wonderful to have you join us today and to learn so much more about the sacred herbs of you'll and really the entire herbal year. It's just been so wonderful. So thank you so much for joining us.

Ellen Hopman: 36:27

Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Sara Artemisia: 36:33

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.