Herbalism Question

[Guest guest]

I posted the excellent info (which Frank posted here) on

dandelions into my LiveJournal. Someone wrote me the inquiry below.

As I have very little systematic knowledge about herbs, I thought I

would ask the question here.

 

Alobar

 

> What would you suggest for a reading-happy person who wants to

learn

> about herbalism?

 

> I've made a couple attempts already, but always gotten bogged down

in

> " and Culpeper said this was a cure-all too " , so come away with only

> minimally more info than I'd had before. However, I'm familiar

enough

> with systems thinking that I'm not looking for overly reductionist

> answers. Despite those disappointments, I'm still quite eager to

> learn, just not sure which things I could read would require less

> sorting of wheat from chaff, or otherwise make good starting

> points/methods.

[Guest guest]

Learn herbalism from books?

As an Asian Bodywork Therapist I'm partial to TCM but what I noticed

over a couple visits to " Herbfest " (a festival of herbalists that used

to happen in Iowa) was that herbalists who used TCM diagnosis

processes (pulse et cetera) seemed to have the most attended lectures.

 

Michael Tierra claims to be able to teach herbalism with a mostly

correspondence course <http://www.planetherbs.com/> that is based on

his books. His tradition is TCM oriented.

 

Other names I recommend as writers of good books on herbs are

Christopher Hobbs, Rosemary Gladstar (who I'm told has a

correspondence course as well), David Frawley, Vasant Lad and Stephen

Harrod Buhner.

 

Here's another thing I noticed at " Herbfest " over the years, quite a

few of the lecturing herbalists were suggesting folks not diversifying

their bag of tricks with exotics.

They tended to tell people to pick a couple herbs that grow naturally

in one's own back yard and spend a year or two just focusing on those

few.

 

Penel