Popham - Evolutionary herbalism: science, spirituality, and medicine from the heart of nature

Sajah Popham powerfully presents a holistic model of plant medicine that weaves traditional knowledge, science, and an integration of the heart and mind to guide you toward transformational health.

Rosalee de la Fort, author of Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies That Heal

Popham crystallizes complex healing traditions and modalities, simplifying and making them palatable. Practical tips abound on merging observations of the human and differentiating to match the plant to that human, whether in relation to astrology, elements, principles, holism, or whichever concept is being shared. Chapters are infused with Pophams own delightful herb profiles. His humor grounds the education shared, creating a sense of ordinary, necessary knowledge. Essential for serious practitioners.

Margi Flint, RH, author of The Practicing Herbalist

Pophams evolutionary approach to herbalism provides a detailed blueprint to guide aspiring herbalists as well as those already walking the Green Path in the bringing together of plants and humans to inspire wholeness and affect healing. Firmly grounded in ancient wisdom and expertly distilled by the author before being recombined with his own clinical experiences, Evolutionary Herbalism offers medicine for transforming the root of our individual and cultural dis-ease.

Scott Kloos, author of Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 120 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness

An incredibly beautiful weaving of herbal and esoteric traditions creating a rich tapestry of what author Sajah Popham calls Universal Herbalism. This is a comprehensive study of not only the principles of various modalities but also the patterns inherent within them and how they intersect with each other. This is a must-read for anyone looking to have a comprehensive understanding of the expansive nature of healing and how to move into a new herbalism.

Pam Montgomery, author of Plant Spirit Healing and founder of Organization of Natures Evolutionaries (ONE)

A tireless confederacy of dedicated souls strive to preserve and pass forward our collective herbal, alchemical, and astrological knowledge. Within each generation a few pioneers arise to forge new schools or mediate divergent approaches. Sajah Popham has achieved a remarkably synthetic paradigm, integrating previous historic stages of herbal practice with his profound understanding of energetic systems, Eastern and Western.

Judith Hill, producer of the Renaissance Medicine Conference and author of Medical Astrology: A Guide to Planetary Pathology

Copyright 2019 by Sajah Popham. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Cover photo Tyler Penor
Cover art directed by Sajah Popham
Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in Canada

Evolutionary Herbalism: Science, Medicine, and Spirituality from the Heart of Nature is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Popham, Sajah, 1986- author.
Title: Evolutionary herbalism : science, spirituality, and medicine from the
heart of nature / Sajah Popham.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2019] | Includes
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018042878 (print) | LCCN 2018044579 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623173142 (e-book) | ISBN 9781623173135 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: HerbsTherapeutic use. | Traditional medicine. | Mind and
body. | BISAC: HEALTH & FITNESS / Herbal Medications. | NATURE / Plants /
Flowers. | BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Healing / Prayer & Spiritual.
Classification: LCC RM666.H33 (ebook) | LCC RM666.H33 P65 2019 (print) | DDC
615.3/21dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042878

North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We partner with FSC-certified printers using soy-based inks and print on recycled paper whenever possible.

For Whitney,

my root and flower,

whose never-ending love like an infinitely unfolding Rose

has made me into a better man.

First off, thank you so much for purchasing my book!

To show you my gratitude, Id love to give you a free integration guide.

To download it in PDF format, visit:

www.evolutionaryherbalism.com/book-bonuses

This guide will help you take what you learn throughout my book and integrate and implement it in your work with plants and your unique plant path.

Despite beliefs to the contrary, animismthe experience of Nature as a living beingis not long dead and finished in the Western world. While it has been declared extinct by the high priests of the universal Muggle church (called science), it has enjoyed a persistent existence, literature, and educational system of its own. Recently, conventional science has come to similar conclusions about the natural world: it is infused with intelligence and communication binding it into whole communities that operate as if self-aware.

Idea: what if this newly discovered world of science is the Living Nature of the animists? This is where our journey begins, under the able guidance of Sajah Popham, who, despite his youth, carries the experience necessary to travel this path. He is one of the only people I know who has been trained in herbalism, alchemy, astrology, and conventional science, and he has integrated them together, discovering the common and foundational roots uniting them. But all of that would amount to nothing if he were not also a citizen of the Living World. For animism is not a belief but an experience.

The traditional name for the Living Nature of Western animism is anima mundi, translated as the Soul of the World or the Living Nature. The animists found the world to be alive and aware, like a person. When we experience our own soul, that of another, and then of many others, we gradually move to an experience of the Soul of the World. And she is a person.

This experience comes to us through our heart. We feel the Living Nature when we experience a soul connection with someone we love, belongingness to a community, or love for our Mother Earth. This, as Sajah explains, conforms to the findings of modern science. The physical heart, it turns out, can perceive the surrounding environment with precision in ways that the brain cannot. This awareness is not as complicated as one would think, for it is based on a simple principle. The heart is an electromagnetic oscillator and is able to synchronize with other biological oscillators, such as another person or even a plant. This synchronization gives us the experience of feelings that are based on similarity, harmony, and empathy, and it can also give us the opposite experience: aversion and antipathy. Our deepest choices are based on the feeling perceptions of the heart.