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By Root 975 0

within each of us. I ask you to relate to the learning of the overall process of making herbal medicine more like the way you might relate to creating art or reading a novel, rather than the way you might relate to viewing a movie or a TV program that leaves little if anything to your imagination. Like a Zen painter (don’t I wish), I will create some empty space suggesting forms and ideas which your creative imagination can fill in as we proceed. This way we co-create while experiencing the ripening fruits of this medicine show. (There are some instances, however, when I will tend to go on and on; kind of like I am now.) We know that young children enjoy themselves for a significantly longer time and experience far more quality time when given simple pine cones, small rocks, colorful ribbons, and randomly shaped blocks of wood to play with than they do when given complex, perfectly molded, and fully complete toys. The opportunity to pour their own vision into the empty spaces of the unfinished picture presented by their elemental toys ignites the fertile fires of their imagination, giving them the joy of unleashed creative pleasure. The subtle suggestions stimulated by these rudimentary building units become their most entertaining playmates and beneficial teachers. Likewise, children soon become bored with toys that leave little to their innovative imagination; and so it is with adult human beings, for we are all avid creators and we all love to play.

As the medicine show proceeds from stage to stage in your home, create an herbal pharmacy that you tailor to your lifestyle; develop and refine your medicine-making techniques to suit yourself; and make notes that clearly record your experiences for future reference. Rely on the ideas in this handbook merely as starting places that will give you solid ground on which to place your feet, then leap high into your creative, innovative nature. Students become skilled in the basics under the guidance of an experienced teacher, but they become masters only after leaving the teacher and exploring areas into which the teacher had not ventured.

Have fun, don’t hesitate. I appreciate your life.

Let’s begin our immersion into the mosaic of ideas and techniques that describe herbal medicine-making by first harvesting a wild plant and making an herbal extract: a Dandelion tincture.

We’ll begin this green medicine journey outside your dwelling place—where the wild plants are. Herbal medicine lives outdoors, where nature spirits arouse our enchantment, and our vitality is naturally quickened. With your involvement and, I hope, a freshly awakened passion, you’ll initiate your apprenticeship by experiencing the elation of harvesting a wild plant and, with it, creating a simple herbal medicine of excellent quality. So, if you are not already outdoors reading these words, please, weather permitting, step outside with me and we’ll find Taraxacum officinale, a most notorious wild plant.…

This is the plant that herbalists, children, and poets call Dandelion.

Many other people call it a weed and treat it rather rudely.

Let us refer to it as a wild medicinal plant and perceive the extract we’re about to make with it as an herbal tonic. Our intention is to connect with a plant spirit and with its alliance create a nutritional preparation that is easy to assimilate and can be depended upon to help our digestion, our liver, and our kidneys to feel good. Then, while this first-born extract is macerating (soaking) in its menstruum (solvent), we’ll proceed through the following chapters of this handbook and peruse the rest of the medicine-making ideas that await our attention.

Dandelion

Common Dandelion (botanical name, Taraxacum officinale) grows just about everywhere. It should be fairly simple for you to discover this flowering ally. It is usually denoted by one or more bright yellow floral asterisks randomly displayed in urban lawns, in grazed fields, or along neighborhood footpaths.

Dandelions are one of the most common medicinal herbs that live with us in our neighborhoods. In fact,