“There's a little witch in all of us.”
Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic
Where Health and Wellness Meet a Sense of Wonder
There was a time when we worked with Mother Nature instead of against her. She provided us with flora and fauna for healing from this divine connection. We are of the belief that plants, flowers, and herbal remedies are a gift from nature. These gifts are given to us so we might heal and balance the mind, body & spirit and restore our connection with the more than human world.
All of us at Friends of the Forest embrace a simpler, sustainable existence that is more harmonious with nature. We have a deep reverence for Mother Earth and her bounty that may run deeper than most; this respect for nature is but a piece of the whole part that makes up a green witch’s path.
We are proud to be a community resource for women who wish to learn more about the Wise Woman tradition and develop a deeper connection with Mother Nature.
Perhaps you are seeking healing...
Perhaps the plants are calling you to go deeper into yourself...
Perhaps your calling is to live close to the earth with plant, animal and invisible beings.
We provide a safe space where all women can find community through one of our many ongoing and seasonal workshops, gatherings, classes, seasonal celebrations, and inner-care practices focused on inspiration, connection, and self-discovery.
We are here to support you in a safe and nurturing environment that radiates light, compassion, and gratitude to support authentic connections within our community.
Blessed be.
Creating your Herbal Medicine Chest
A Journey through the Seasons 2024
“Herbal Medicine teaches us that each season has its own plants, gifts, and unique medicine to offer. By following the rhythms of each season, we gift ourselves the opportunity to integrate the healing powers of plants back into our lives and practice the art of building our home apothecary. In this 4-part, hands-on medicine-making series, you will be guided through the medicine of each season, learning which body systems to support and which herbal remedies to reach for. Together, we will make safe, effective remedies, including syrups, salves, tinctures, teas, herbal-infused oils, oxymels, and more--all with plants that are abundant and local to our bioregion.
We will explore herbal energetics, formulation, ethical harvests, and practical applications. In addition to our in-class medicine-making projects, each participant will receive dozens of recipes to practice at home.
This is a journey of remembrance.
While it is easy to feel overwhelmed or out of touch with the green path, each of us carries this wisdom within. Once we touch, smell, and taste the plants, it’s remarkable how much our hands and hearts remember. Join us for this Wheel of the Year medicine-making journey.
We will stock our medicine chests one remedy at a time, reconnecting to the plants, to ourselves, and to each other.”
Wild Blessings,
Nora Toomey, Clinical Herbalist, Teacher, Poet, and Plant Guide
Creating your Herbal Medicine Chest 2024 Classes
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Spring Remedies: Air
March 23, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 pm
(Liver and Nervous System Support, Allergies)Creating Oxymels, Vinegars, Infusions, Bitters
Spring is a time to awaken our livers and support our lymph as we venture out of our cozy winter nests. It is also the time to fortify our systems against seasonal allergies and begin the work of tending to the element of Air in our bodies, which is expressed in the health of our Nervous Systems. As we anticipate the hustle and bloom of the Spring and Summer Seasons, we will discuss how reaching for calming, mineral-rich herbs can invigorate, enliven, and bring balance.
We will also begin the fine work of stocking our apothecary! Each participant will make and take home an Oxymel, Infusion Blend, and Bitters. You will also receive a springtime remedies booklet, full of plant monographs, and several recipes for you to try at home.
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Summer Remedies: Fire
June 29, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 pm
(GI Support, Skin,
Lessons in Adaptation)
Salves, Herbal Infused Oils, First Aid Remedies, Herbal Waters, Flower EssencesSummer is the time tend to tend to the element of Fire in our body, which often manifests as GI health, and our relationship to creativity and productivity. As so many medicinal plants are in full bloom, often thriving despite extreme weather conditions. This teaches us the importance of adaptation and breaking up stuck emotional patterning in our own lives. Just as these plants find ways to survive and flourish, we too must learn to adapt to changing circumstances.
We will also discuss the practical applications of herbal first aid and herbal skin care to help round out your growing apothecary. Each participant will make and take home an Herbal Infused Oil, a Salve, and a Flower Essence. You will also receive a summer remedies booklet, full of plant monographs, and several recipes for you to try at home.
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Fall Remedies: Water
September 21, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 pm(Root/Mushroom Medicines, Final Harvest, Food as Medicine, Cardiovascular & Kidney Support)
Herbal Honey, Herbal Salts, Cordials, Tinctures, Fire CiderFall is about celebrating harvest season and bringing medicinal herbs and remedies into the kitchen! It’s also about roots! Most flowers have come and gone, and the medicine of the plants return to their root systems to prepare for the darker months ahead. We can mimic this energetic journey by preparing root medicines, enjoying medicinal mushrooms, and creating herbal rituals to help us feel rooted in our bodies and in our homes. Fall is also the time to tend the element of Water in our bodies, which manifests as the health of our kidneys and cardiovascular systems.
After discussing a handful of plants and remedies indicated for this Fall season, each participant will make and take home an herbal honey, herbal salt, a tincture, and a cordial. You will also receive a fall remedies booklet, full of plant monographs, and several recipes for you to try at home.
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Winter Remedies: Earth
December 14, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 pm
(Immune, Respiratory, and Skeletal Support)
Elderberry Syrup, Steams, Soaks, Broth, Cough Syrup, GarglesWinter is often seen as a time of hibernation and rest, but it is also a crucial period for bolstering our immune systems, giving love to our lungs, and supporting the earth element in our bodies. Our skeletal systems, the very bones that carry us through the year, deserve special attention during this season.
Taking care of these aspects will ensure that we have a strong foundation for optimal well-being all year round.
After discussing a handful of plants and remedies to reach for this winter season, we will prepare for an afternoon of medicine-making! Each participant will make and take home an elderberry syrup, a respiratory steam blend, and a medicinal bath soak. You will also receive a winter remedies booklet, full of plant monographs, and several recipes for you to try at home.
Learn. Heal. Celebrate.
Each season we add a wide variety of classes and workshops that embrace many aspects of conscious and regenerative living, taught by professional, passionate, and fun witchy women. Our passion is to inform and inspire you to deepen your relationship with the natural world and one another. Learn to make tinctures, oils, salves, electuaries, and other healing compounds from local plants. Attend a weed walk and understand the practice of listening, connecting, gathering, preparing, and utilizing herbs for nourishment and healing. Learn how to harvest plants in all seasons and the gifts each season brings to our wholeness. Join vibrant conversations about the Wise Woman Way, and in-depth discussions about herbs and their uses. Craft magickal tea blends, co-create a flower essence, intentionally cook with herbs, and delve into the Wheel of the Year with us with seasonal celebrations.
“At her core, the green witch is a naturalist, an herbalist, a wise woman, and a healer. She embraces the power of nature; she draws energy from the Earth and the Universe; she relies on natural objects like stones and gems to commune with the land she lives off of; she uses plants, flowers, oils, and herbs for healing; she calls on nature for guidance; and she respects every living being no matter how small.” Arin Murphy-Hiscock
Arin Murphy-Hiscock is the author of The Green Witch’s Grimoire, Spellcrafting, The Pregnant Goddess, Wicca, The Green Witch, The Way of the Hedge Witch, House Witch, The Witch’s Book of Self-Care, Pagan Pregnancy, Solitary Wicca for Life, and The Hidden Meaning of Birds—A Spiritual Field Guide. She has been active in the field of alternative spirituality for over twenty years and lives in Montreal, Canada.
What is a Green Witch?
“This is the way of the green witch. She knows her plants. She listens to their voices. She receives their nourishment. She knows her helpers. She understands that she is a catalyst. She moves energy through her hands, through singing and dancing, through drumming and rattling, through fire and water, through feathers, stones, and bones. Earth is her teacher, the plants her deepest teachers. She understands that the wisdom given to her comes through her. She is a hollow bone. I am a green witch.”
May it be in Beauty.
Julie Charette Nunn, Crow’s Daughter
The History of Women Healers
Detail of a miniature of witches being burnt and tortured, from "Chroniques de France ou de St Denis," 1332-1350. Image courtesy of the British Library.
[1]Minkowski WL. Women healers of the middle ages: selected aspects of their history. Am J Public Health. 1992 Feb;82(2):288-95. doi: 10.2105/ajph.82.2.288. PMID: 1739168; PMCID: PMC1694293.[2]Witches, Midwives, and Nurses A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
In the three centuries preceding the Renaissance, the role of women healers was heightened by two roughly parallel developments.
The first was the evolution of European universities and their professional schools that, for the most part, systematically excluded women as students, thereby creating a legal male monopoly of the practice of medicine. Ineligible as healers, women waged a lengthy battle to maintain their right to care for the sick and injured. The 1322 case of Jacqueline Felicie, one of many healers charged with illegally practicing medicine, raises serious questions about the motives of male physicians in discrediting these women as incompetent and dangerous.[1]
The second development was the campaign--promoted by the church and supported by both clerical and civil authorities--to brand women healers as witches. Perhaps the church perceived these women, with their special, often esoteric, healing skills, as a threat to its supremacy in the lives of its parishioners. The result was the brutal persecution of unknown numbers of mostly peasant women.[1]
The age of witch-hunting spanned more than four centuries (from the 14th to the 17th century) in its sweep from Germany to England. It was born in feudalism and lasted—gaining in virulence—well into the "age of reason." The witch-craze took different forms at different times and places, but never lost its essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror directed against the female peasant population. Witches represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state.[2]
The extent of the witch-craze is startling: In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were thousands upon thousands of executions—usually live burnings at the stake—in Germany, Italy and other countries. In the mid-sixteenth century the terror spread to France, and finally to England. One writer has estimated the number of executions at an average of 600 a year for certain German cities—or two a day, "leaving out Sundays". [2]
Nine-hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg area, and 1000 in and around Como. At Toulouse, four-hundred were put to death in a day. In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant each. Many writers have estimated the total number killed to have been in the millions. Women made up some 85 percent of those executed—old women, young women and children.[2]
Unfortunately, the witch herself—poor and illiterate—did not leave us her story. It was recorded, like all history, by the educated elite, so that today we know the witch only through the eyes of her persecutors.[2]
The wise woman, or witch, had a host of remedies which had been tested in years of use. Many of the herbal remedies developed by witches still have their place in modern pharmacology. They had pain-killers, digestive aids and anti-inflammatory agents. They used ergot for the pain of labor at a time when the Church held that pain in labor was the Lord's just punishment for Eve's original sin. Ergot derivatives are the principal drugs used today to hasten labor and aid in the recovery from childbirth. Belladonna—still used today as an antispasmodic—was used by the witch-healers to inhibit uterine contractions when miscarriage threatened. Digitalis, still an important drug in treating heart ailments, is said to have been discovered by an English witch. Undoubtedly many of the witches' other remedies were purely magical, and owed their effectiveness—if they had any—to their reputation.[2]
The witch-healer's methods were as great a threat (to the Catholic Church, if not the Protestant ) as her results, for the witch was an empiricist: She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and childbirth—whether through medications or charms. In short, her magic was the science of her time.[2]
Celebrate the Turning of the Wheel with Feasting, Friends, and Good Food
Honoring the seasons is a beautiful way to tune yourself into nature and connect with Mother Earth. The themes of birth, death and rebirth are played out across a year that is divided into light and dark, male and female, sun and moon, growth and rest, and heat and cold. The ancients and their predecessors saw time as a wheel or spiral divided by eight festivals.
All of these seasonal cycles allow us to pause and connect with the land and with the energy of each season as it shifts, and reflect what that means internally and externally. Understanding how everything is naturally turning is a great way to bring peace and harmony into your life. These celebrations allow us to truly be thankful for life, love, and honor all mother nature has to offer.
Celebrating these shifts in the seasons is nondogmatic and something anyone can do, no matter your religion, age, heritage, or gender. You are invited to join us for potluck dinners celebrating the eight festivals, main solar events, solstices, and equinoxes.