Poisonous plants have long been misunderstood and even forbidden, yet they hold a special medicinal power. Let’s do as our ancestors did and carefully, respectfully ally ourselves with this potent family of healing herbs.

IN THE INTRO:

• Poisonous plants, visionary journeys, and Samhain/Halloween witches

IN THE INTERVIEW:

• How trees and plants companioned Kathryn through her dark and disconnected teen years, led to her meditation practice and relationship with wrathful deities, and eventually brought her to the poison plant path
• Safety: we are not talking about ingesting these plants, but working with their spirits
• Making space to integrate traumatic experiences
• My recent experience with belladonna
• What happens when many people all tune in to the same plant spirit
• The effects of deliriant plants
• How (not) to work with datura, a gateway plant into underworld/angelic work
• How the scent of plants can bring us into deeper relationship with them
• Gender, pronouns, and plants
• Reclaiming lost visionary lineages
• Being aware of projecting our desires and our wounds onto plants
• When plant knowledge transmissions get broken through the ages
• When Amanita muscaria came to Kathryn in a dream
• Exploring the myth of Persephone
• The dose makes the medicine/poison- the poisonous plants used in modern medicine, and the different mechanisms of action by which they can harm

LINKS:

• Kathryn’s website

• Ben Vierling art website

• Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

• Poisonous Plant Book Recommendations- 

• Pharmako Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path by Dale Pendell

• Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and its Applications by Christian Ratsch and Albert Hoffman

• Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Wolf Storl

• Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers by Richard Evans Schultes, Christian Ratsch, and Albert Hoffman 

• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart

• Malleus Maleficarum

• Hammer of the Witches on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast

• Witches & Witch-Hunts: A Global History by Wolfgang Behringer

• My website MythicMedicine.love 

• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz

• Medicine Stories Facebook group

• Mythic Medicine on Instagram

• Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)