Beginning

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

"Those who may doubt the efficiency of herbs as natural remedies should remember that our most useful. drugs wer originally synthesized from natural herb. In this, as with most other things, the original is much preferred to its imitations Edmond Bordeaux Szekely


To my mind, ethnobotany ties int what I call Planetary Medicine. Every single culture on the planet, had at one time among its indigenous peoples ways in which they related to plants as medicine and healing media. From the deep well of ancient knowledge that is anchored firmly in mankind's past, we begin to get an idea of how various plants are used as medicine. It should come as no surprise that cultures, which can be separated by thousands of miles and diverging traditions, could ascertain howto best use the same plant - and come up with the uses which run similar to each other. No matter what culture you study, no matter where you go on the planet, you come to the stark realization that healing - the art of practicing medicine, regardless of modality or cultural constraints, is all at once an art, a craft, a philosophy and a science. Whenever one or more portion of this four-sided base are absent, then it begins to come apart. The human being, whether they bey the healer or the healed, cannot be exrracated from the cultural considerations of the healing process.

According to author, Richard Grossinger, adminishes that medicine from an archtypal point of view, is a limitelss and unplowed field. "Medicine is still, " Grossinger says, " and likely forever, an unfinished work."