ecosophia | More Items from a Reading List (Reply)

I mentioned a week ago that I'd finally finished excavating myself from a stack of necessary reading for a couple of research projects, and could finally get to the stack of books I've received over the last year or so. Looking out over the year ahead, I can see some other research projects looming up, but in the meantime I can still catch my breath, read for pleasure, and post here about volumes I particularly liked.

The image to the left is the cover of one of these. The Humoral Herbal by Stephen Taylor is the most comprehensive and useful effort I've seen so far to revive the Western equivalent of Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine -- the humoral medicine that uses the four elements as basic categories and principles, with the planets of astrology as a second set. This volume covers the history, philosophy, and practice of Western humoral medicine, explores traditional methods of diagnosis, and gives extensive details (including elemental and planetary correspondences) for fifty herbs commonly used in Western traditional and alternative practice.

It really is a tour de force. I recommend it especially for readers of my book The Celtic Golden Dawn who are intrigued by the discussion of elemental herbalism in that work, but it's worth attention from anybody who's interested in Western alternative medicine or in ways of healing that don't depend on access to an increasingly problematic industrial system. Copies can be purchased straight from the publisher here.