Classes
I’ve been teaching and practicing integrative herbalism, community abortion care, rooted rituals, and living folkways with a focus on queer, + disabled trans ritual, magic, and wonder for over 10 years.
There are a variety of ways to learn from me, from evergreen (pre-recorded / go at your own pace,) offerings via my Patreon as well as Recognizing Plant Relatives — A Virtual Plant Walk at Wakáŋ Tipi / Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary — to my newest live virtual class offering: Herbal Remembering School.
From time to time I teach individual workshops virtually and sometimes even in person. Sign up for my substack to stay connected through the mycelial web.
My Patreon is the best entry point as you can join for as little as $3 a month. This gains you access to Wyrd Magic: Folk Practices, Medicines, + Rituals, along with herbal recipes, musings, and more.
HERBAL REMEMBERING SCHOOL
Traditions, Futures, + Living Folkways
Approaching plants at the intersection of poetics and energetics
From a place of relationship, reciprocity, + remembrance
Through practices of curiosity, invocation and devotion
A 6 month + experiential immersion into mythopoetic herbalism through slowing down and deepening into relationship with plant medicine, one plant at a time. This communal cauldron will emphasize an embodied, interdisciplinary, decolonial, queer approach to herbal learning through engaging with mediums such as art, storytelling, somatics, gardening, poetics, ritual, trance, dance, and song. Rather than seeking an external authority or intermediary between us and the unseen, we will co-create a collaborative research process / project, looking to plants as teachers, as elders, as kin, as ancestors.
We will gather together bimonthly to root into cultural, transpersonal, and communal memories, and temporalities, while sharing and honoring our direct experiences with plants as guides, as we weave together something akin to herbal biomythographies*.
With perspectives of deep time, queer ecology, and partnership societies as our anchors, we will re-orientate towards more vibrant, just, and free futures where we collectively steward and share our ancestral traditions, rituals, and land-based living folkways.
Concepts informing this offering + container include: decolonial ontology, deep time, queer ecology, organoleptics, crip theory, memory work, feminist epistemology, people’s history, oral tradition, narrative medicine, popular education, and bioregional (place-based) herbalism.
*Biomythography means combining elements of history, biography, and myth, a coin termed by Audre Lorde in her seminal text Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography of Audre Lorde.
“Everytime you think you’ve found your way, the way changes.”
― Ursula K Le Guin,
Worlds of Ursula Le Guin
“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Dates:
1st + 3rd Sundays* of May through October 2023
*Please note, we will only meet once in May, June, + August
May 7th
June 4th
July 2nd
July 16th
August 6th
September 3rd
September 17th
October 1st
October 15th
Time: 1 PM - 3 PM CST
Location: Zoom. Recordings provided to all participants. Please note: this offering was intentionally created and designed to be experienced in real time due to the nature of the material and container. That being said, in this course we value disability justice + crip theory, meaning as a facilitator I ask you to show up when you are able to and don’t when you aren’t.
Some likely / potential plants we will work with: Birch, Nettle, Elder, Rose, Strawberry, Mugwort, Angelica, Apple, A Mushroom Yet to Be Revealed, Goldenrod, Kelp Seaweed
This IS for anyone who desires:
Prioritizing depth over breadth in relating to plants.
To engage with and steward your own ancestral traditions and rituals with a balance of respect, integrity, levity, and creativity in a collective, communal, expansive container.
A non-hierarchical learning and remembering environment where we share power.
Herbal learning which is framed through a remembering practice that includes naming and divesting from colonial ontology — which tends towards the individualistic, extractive, non-reciprocal, hyper-fixation on what any given plant is “used for” above all else, emphasizes quantity over quality, and is rooted in conquest, domination, and exploitation.
To approach herbalism as a curious and humble student, land tender, and steward.
Initiation and/or deepening into a lifelong, bio-regional, integrative, ancestral herbalism practice through the plants themselves.
To learn first-hand what it is like to work with a non-binary, queer, chronically ill, disabled facilitator who can take a long time to respond to emails.
This is *NOT* for those who:
Want a clinical herbalism or medicine-making intensive program.
While you will each receive herbal care packages to accompany our deepening into relationship with our plant teachers *and* there will be many invitations and opportunities to create medicines, this will not be the core focus of this offering.
Want easy answers to complex questions.
Do not wish to name, acknowledge, or honor lineage of craft and practice.
Would attempt in any way, shape, or form to take anything from this offering, uproot it from its context and intention, and apply it or work with it in service of advancing fascism and white nationalism, which are ideologies we seek to interrogate and disrupt in this container.
“My job is not to arrive at a final answer and just deliver it.
I see my job as holding doors open or opening windows.
But who comes in + out the doors?
What do you see out the window?
How do I know?”
-Ursula K. Le Guin, Worlds of Ursula Le Guin
Cost: $900
In addition to covering the cost of our time spent in session, this amount also provides me compensation for the hours I will be dedicating to the logistics, communications, planning, informatics, + facilitation of our time together. It also includes the cost of curating, packing, + shipping of your herbal care package to accompany + support you in your remembering. Examples: birchbark, dried seaweed, nettle tea, elder flower essence, milky oats tincture, and other roots, barks, and berries.
Deadline: Registration Closes April 30th, 2023.
Number of Spots: 10
HOW TO REGISTER:
Follow this link to my services / booking page and select Herbal Remembering School.
Alternatively, you can follow this direct link:
https://sassafrashealingarts.as.me/Herbal-Remembering-School
Payment Plans Are Available!
Examples / Ideas:
$450 x 2: May 1st + June 1st
$225 x 4: May 1st / June 1st / July 1st / August 1st
I am open to alternative proposals for payment plans!
Email me to set something up: sassafrashealingarts@gmail.com.
PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT able to offer refunds for this purchase.
Please don’t sign up if you are unsure you want to join Herbal Remembering School.
Wyrd Magic: Folk Practices, Medicines, + Rituals
Wyrd is a word often said to mean “fate”, but it is so much more than that. In Nordic Root tradition, wyrd refers to a web, a tapestry, and a weaving together of each of our individual threads or strands of örlög - the past which we have inherited. Wryd is the fabric of community we are collectively creating at any given moment. It is a non-linear understanding of time, of healing. It is a spinning, unfolding, + ongoing collaboration between ourselves + the Norns: Urd (what is past precedence), Verdandi (what is becoming), + Skuld (what is owed / necessary for healing / right relationship).
“In other words we have to notice and become aware of the magic that surrounds us
and respect what has gone before.”
-Mike Perry
Wyrd Magic is an integrative, animist, trauma-informed practice + invitation to deepen your relationship with yourself, the land, your plant kin, your ancestors, your community, and your magic. Rooted in healing and disability justice frameworks, it is offered in service of collective liberation, dismantling white supremacy and capitalism, and restoring sacred interdependence. Wyrd Magic recognizes that we are conditioned by these systems to doubt ourselves, our magic, and our ways of knowing / being in the world. Moreso if/when doing so confronts, challenges, + threatens these systems of domination, exploitation, and abuse. Reconnecting with, revitalizing, + integrating our ancestral, root cultural ways can be a powerful spell in service of abolishing these dehumanizing systems, enabling us to envision new ways of being in relationship, of making kin.
Wyrd Magic honors traditional practices of rest, pleasure, play, remembrance, celebration, interdependence, + sacred reciprocity, recognizing that when we come together collectively to hold sacred these values, magic + healing ensues.
Format: 12 Workshops (1 for each month) lasting 2 hours per month via Zoom.
Recorded + available evergreen style / go at your own pace on patreon
WYRD MAGIC PORTALS / MODULES
NOVEMBER
Ancestral Connection: Our Bodies As Altars
DECEMBER
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
Moondrops: Astrology + Lunar Living
MARCH
At The Thresholds: Companionship + Witnessing
APRIL
Ancestral Tending At Summer's Day
MAY
JUNE
Queer Ancestral Folklore + Herbal Rituals Of Solstice + Midsummer
JULY
Lighting + Linden, Berries + Be-Longing: On Not Working As Offering
AUGUST
Mother Of Herbs (Matka Boska Zielna)
SEPTEMBER
Pleasure + Presence In The Sweet Descent
OCTOBER
𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀:
A Virtual Plant Walk at Wakáŋ Tipi / Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary
This is an invitation honor these Dakhóta lands by supporting a Native-led organization centering Indigenous knowledge, storytelling, + land stewardship, working to resurface a buried creek between Lake Phalen + the Mississippi River, revitalize Wakáŋ Tipi: Dwelling Place of the Sacred — so much more!
In exchange for your donation to 𝗟𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 I will introduce you to 5 plant relatives residing at Wakáŋ Tipi. You’ll learn to identify them organoleptically (with your attention + senses). I’ll share some of their common, botanical, + Indigenous plant names (Ojibwemowin from Marisa Lee @mywildwisconsin + Lakóta from Linda Black Elk @lindablackelk). We’ll also take time to appreciate some of their many medicinal gifts + virtues — all from the comfort of your home.
Also Included:
🏞 Introduction to + history of Wakáŋ Tipi / Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary
📍Identifying + interrupting colonial frameworks + legacies within herbalism
🌎 Displaced plant relatives
📚 Resources for further bioregional herbal learning
❇️ This fully-captioned 36 minute video is presented by herbalist + LPCP Volunteer Wakáŋ Tipi Park Steward Cheré Suzette Bergeron of Sassafras Healing Arts. It was recorded with permission from + in support of @lowerphalencreek.
📽 HOW TO VIEW / ACCESS 🗝
1️⃣ Visit the DONATE page on the LPCP website via the link in their bio or mine.
2️⃣ Donate a minimum of $15.
3️⃣ Send me a screenshot or receipt or your contribution at sassafrashealingarts@gmail.com.
4️⃣ I’ll share the video link + password with you in my reply.
Videography by FabrikMarge
🏞 LPCP is an East Side Saint Paul organization whose mission is to engage people in honoring and caring for our natural places and the sacred sites and cultural value within them.
KOSELIG: Winter Rituals of Tending, Mending, + Reconnectinge
Koselig, pronounced “KOOSH-lee”, is an emotive word in Norwegian. It is both a noun and a verb. From ‘kose’, meaning to enjoy oneself / to cuddle. Koselig is related to and associated with the word “hygge” (Old Norse) which is built from the word “hugr” which later became the “hug” meaning soul, mind, + consciousness. It’s also speculated that hygge may stem from “hug”, which comes from the 1560’s word “hugge” meaning to embrace.
Winter descends upon us + unfolds within as a time of gathering in. Longer, colder, + darker nights invite us to embrace portals of slowness and mystery. Offerings, feasting, storytelling, dancing and singing around the fire – we all have ritual ways of tending to the land, our communities, and ourselves during the shorter, colder days of the year — and our ancestors did too. Let us deepen + delight in the winter ways of rest, reciprocity, + care rooted into disabled, queer + trancestral cultural + collective memories.
This offering is an exploration, deepening, and recognition of our attunement to the energetics and living folkways of winter. We will work with the elemental magic of fire, folk rituals, herbal remedies, holy tides, mycelium mysteries, and protective spirits of the land, hearth, and home to queer, crip, remember, and embody what is means to be koselig.
Our collective container will open us up, anchor us down, and carry us all the way from the Winter Solstice to the Spring Equinox.
Anyone who wants to join after the series begins will receive access to all previously recorded sessions and materials.
SYLLABUS + REGISTRATION
Session 1: December 19th
OPENING
Blessed is the bough. Welcoming Jul as season + spirit. Meeting + greeting spirits of the land, hearth, + home. Song and dance as ancestral ritual tools + technology. Naming our nauthiz, Nourishing + sharing the needfire. Straws + evergreens
Session 2: January 2nd
Toasting the Trees. Wassailing / Vas-hailin. Communal rites, rituals, + performances of interdependence + gender fluidity. Time out of time, days of play, days of rest. Herbal infusions + decoctions.Herbal winter wassail recipes.
Session 3: January 16th
Rites + rituals of herbal sauna + switching. Ancestral bathhouse preparations + ceremony.
Bathing with plant waters.
Session 4: January 30th
Imbolc, Candelmass, Brigid as queer saint, Divine Mother of the Thunder Candles. Beeswax as divination tool, oracular guide, + the original lamp. Cakes + sweet offerings of protection + perseverance through persecution of the people’s medicines. Cakecraft.
Session 5: February 13th
Rites of pleasure. Mardi gras, carnivals, lupercalia, ash wednesday, saint valentine, madonna of montevergine: patron saint of queer love + liberation, shrovetide.
Herbal honies + marshmallows.
Session 6: February 27th
Grain, bread, + birds. Seed singing. Blessings of the hearth, field, bough + plough.
Drowning of Marzanna + rituals of grief-giving.
Session 7: March 13th
Disting the dísir. Honoring our grandmothers + gender-bending generational grandkin.
Connecting to our crip femme lineages + intelligence. Communal divination rituals of seidr + staving.
Session 8: March 27th
CLOSING
Thawing ice + rising sap. Pussywillows + paskris.
Sacred springs, well visitation + decoration. Signs of spring coming.
Time: 5pm - 7pm CST
Dates: Alternating Mondays, December 19th, 2022 → March 27th, 2023
Cost: $400
Location: Zoom. Recordings provided to all participants. Please note that this offering was intentionally created and designed to be experienced in real time. That being said, in this course we value disability justice + crip theory, meaning as a facilitator I ask you to show up when you are able to and don’t when you aren’t.
Accessibility:
Live captioning provided.
Sliding scale fees available, email to arrange.