{"id":55,"date":"2003-10-29T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-29T18:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2011-08-24T14:22:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:22:54","slug":"witchcraft-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Witchcraft Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants<\/em> is a collaboration<\/a> between three German anthropologists: Claudia M\u00fcller-Ebeling, Christian R\u00e4tsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R\u00e4tsch<\/a> has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr<\/em> — see the October 18 entry.<\/p>\n

\"\"The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.<\/p>\n

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s<\/a> work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.<\/p>\n

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog<\/em>, “god.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M\u00fcller-Ebeling, Christian R\u00e4tsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R\u00e4tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,25,11,29],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-entheogens","tag-herbalism","tag-shamanism","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-T","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13059","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":0},"title":"The Passing of Christian R\u00e4tsch, Magical Ethnobotanist","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 23, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I heard Christian R\u00e4tsch (1957\u20132022) speak in person only once, at a conference in England in the 2000s, shortly after I had bought a book he co-wrote, Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants. I also treasure a recorded lecture of his on henbane beer and such topics,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ethnobotany\"","block_context":{"text":"ethnobotany","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ethnobotany"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Ratsch-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1330,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1330","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":1},"title":"Witchcraft Medicine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =\u00fcller-Ebeling, Christian R\u00e4tch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I'll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1345","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":2},"title":"Witchcraft Medicine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =\u00fcller-Ebeling, Christian R\u00e4tch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I'll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1360,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1360","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":3},"title":"Witchcraft Medicine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =\u00fcller-Ebeling, Christian R\u00e4tch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I'll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12750,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12750","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":4},"title":"The Making of an Ethnobotanist in a 1960s University Scene","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 23, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the books on my ethnobotany shelves is Witchcraft Medicine:Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, a colloboration between Wolf Dieter Storl, Claudia M\u00fcller-Ebeling, and Christian R\u00e4tsch, all three anthropologists and ethnobotanists. M\u00fcller-Ebeling and R\u00e4tsch are married and live in Hamburg, but Storl was born in Germany in 1942\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/storl.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1050,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1050","url_meta":{"origin":55,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry with Atoms","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Just some links while I am busy on two editing projects and a proposal...\u00b6 Aleister Crowley's legacy still poses problems for occultists -- especially when they take Internet \"life\" as equivalent to a \"scene.\"\u00b6 Lonnie muses about animism and consciousness.\u00b6 A British celebrity chef recommends henbane in salads. Much concern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}