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Mastering Herbalism: A Practical Guide

by Paul Huson

Mastering Herbalism: A Practical Guide Cover

ISBN13: 9781568331812
ISBN10: 1568331819
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Easy to grow, rich in history, and blessed with a thousand uses, herbs have delighted green thumbs as well as amateur gardeners for centuries. This comprehensive collection of herb lore and usage covers everything from cooking, beauty, and health, to aphrodisiacs, elixirs of life, and witchcraft.

Herbal gourmands will enjoy flavorful recipes for jams, marinades, sauces, soups, meats, fish, desserts, beer, wine, and teas. Sensualists can pamper themselves with homemade perfumes, incenses, and cosmetics. Those interested in natural medicine will find detailed descriptions of forty-nine herbs — including their habitats, properties, and applications — recognized for their healing qualities. Those fascinated by the possibility of manipulating their libido, increasing their longevity, or influencing the behavior of others will find instructions for traditional tonics and spells from the Dark Ages through the seventeenth century.

Featuring resources for buying herbs as well as tips on how to grow your own, Mastering Herbalism combines ancient knowledge and modern perspectives into an indispensable resource for staying healthy, looking your best, and living well the natural way.

Review:

"A somewhat mystical apporach to practical information....Great fun." New York Times Book Review

Review:

"A sort of popular magnum opus, full of fascinating history, folk wisdom, recipes, cultivation tips, and cures for just about everything that ails you." Library Journal

Description:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Hermester Barrington, September 10, 2007 (view all comments by Hermester Barrington)
A Practical and Yet Mystical Introduction to Herbalism

This book has two faces, one masking the other. Huson presents his book as a practical herbal, explaining how to use herbs in cooking and perfumery, as aphrodisiacs and to increase longevity, to live healthily and look beautiful at the same time. It also features a chapter on where to buy herbs, brief descriptions of the basic plants, and how to start an herb garden. Huson also includes a brief but thorough history of herbalism through the ages. As he points out, the aim throughout the book was practicality.

Accordingly, my wife Fayaway and I have found something useful in each of these chapters. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this book was the inspiration to plant a garden, which has provided us with an eternally renewing source of herbs for our experiments in cooking, perfumery, and natural healing. Huson tells us, in clear but entertaining language, how to make practical use of these marvelous plants. Herbs carry an occult reputation before them, and Huson makes it easy to apply the power of these wonderful gifts from nature in one's daily life.

That he has written a practical herbal without losing sight of the mystical qualities of herbs and their importance to us in these days of ecological crisis is all the more amazing, and is one of the joys of this book. The mysticism which infuses these pages is the face behind the mask: Huson's reverence for the earth is apparent throughout, particularly in his evocation of the magical essence of herbs and how we feel once we become aware of their beauty, grace, and power. Without preaching, he shows us how herbs can help us live closer to the earth, in accord with its rhythms, and he reminds us that we are part of something larger than our species and the societies we build. By reading this book, and taking part in the activities here, Fayaway and I have renewed our connection with the organism which is the earth, and of which we are but a small part. In this, then, the book is merely disguised as a practical herbal: always behind, beneath, and within Huson's words is an awareness of the beauty and simple grandeur of the plant life on this planet, and our part in the globe's cosmic order. Huson walks a fine line between practical and mystical without losing his way. It is the sort of herbal that the utilitarian Benjamin Franklin and the reverent Ralph Waldo Emerson might have produced together.

It is fitting, then, that the practical and the mystical have become in some sense identical, in this day and age. We as a species have laid waste to the planet, and our circumstances are even more dire than they were when this book was first published. It is a matter of simple survival that we see how we are connected with the rest of the universe, and bring ourselves in line with the cosmos. Failure to do so will mean our certain extinction, as well as that of the ecosphere.

This book is a fine place to start learning again of our connection with the earth and to return to simpler ways. Reading it is also a pleasant way to pass the morning in the garden or a rainy afternoon, perhaps while drinking one the teas recommended herein. The Select Bibliography lists books which, though perhaps more comprehensive on any of the various facets of herbalism described here, do not present the information with the same wit, joviality, and reverence for the earth that Huson does. I also enjoy his drawings, inspired by medieval herbals. I'd take this book over any other herbal, any day of the week. It conjures up, as no other herbal I've encountered does, Marvell's lines "a green thought in a green shade". It is recommended for beginners in the study of herbalism in general, as well as those who are specializing in one area of the field, and who want to know more about the other uses of these wonderful plants.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781568331812
Subtitle:
A Practical Guide
Author:
Huson, Paul
Author:
Huson, Paul
Publisher:
Madison Books
Location:
Lanham Md.
Subject:
Cookery
Subject:
Herbs
Subject:
Herbal Medications
Subject:
Magick Studies
Subject:
Cookery (Herbs)
Edition Description:
1st Madison Books ed.
Series Volume:
#37
Publication Date:
July 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
371
Dimensions:
9.01x6.01x.82 in. 1.09 lbs.
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