Susun Weeds Wise Woman Forum

Hello Everyone!

I was wondering if anyone uses their infused herbs for anything other than compost. are there too many nutrients pulled out to make it worth our while?

I suppose that might depend on the herb, but I think you're probably right - too much has been pulled out.

One thing does occur to me though. I freeze carrot peelings, kale stems, and suchlike, and simmer them when I want a vegetable stock. It couldn't hurt to add leftovers from an infusion, as long as the herb is one that tastes good.

That's a good idea. Perhaps there's still a small bit of goodness to pull out? I'll keep this in mind.

Thank you!
Rhonda

Have you looked into spagyrics at all? It's an alchemical preparation of tinctures- the basic idea is making a tincture as you normally would, decanting it, and then calcifying the marc by burning it until it's ashes, then recombining it into the tincture.
The reason for this being the basic elements in alchemy are salt, sulphur, and mercury. In traditional tinctures, Mercury is the water element- the alcoholic extract. Sulphur is fire element- the extract of the volatile oils. Salt, the earth element, is missing, which is represented by the vegetable salts extracted through the plant ashes. Basically, according to alchemical thought, traditional tinctures are energetically incomplete, thus less effective.

What a fascinating idea, FifiAralia! Do you strain out the ashes after the usual amount of time infusing, or leave them in?

sorry, I misspoke. it's not the actual ashes you reintroduce- you put them through another filtration process where all that's left is literally these tiny concentrated plant crystals. these are the salts. they're incredibly beautiful! those are what you reintroduce back into the tincture (and they disolve into it). this is the most confusing step to me, but there's a lot of good online resources and books to check out!
I've never gone through the whole process myself, just watched and assisted a more alchemically-minded herbalist friend do it, but I'm really interested in experimenting with it more. I have a hawthorn tincture macerating right now that I'm thinking about turning into a spagyric.
I can't attach a pdf I have, but if you google "spagyrics instructions", it's the first hit.

Cool! Thank you - I have downloaded the PDF and will look around the website it comes from.

Hey there! Thanks for the info on the tinctures. I'll definitely go and take a look at that link.