The Language of Plants: A Guide to the Doctrine of Signatures

by Julia Graves, Julia Graves

It is only in the age of technology that human beings have lost a sense of nature being alive. Throughout history, people spoke to nature, and nature communicated with them. During the Middle Ages, reading the “book of nature” was called the doctrine of signatures, which had always been an important part of interacting with nature for traditional healers and herbalists. “As a child, I just knew which plant to pick up and hold to my head for a headache to go away. Once I heard about the concept of a ‘doctrine of signatures,’ I would just stand silently, in awe of nature talking to me, talking and talking in her silent, direct speech. The book of nature seemed so obviously spelled out, and in oddest contrast to what I learned in medical school. My professors seemed never to have heard of nature being vibrant and alive and brimming with patterns of energy that are right there for us to understand and use.... This direct and primordial experience of being part of nature's omnipresent, cyclic course taught me more in the realm of no-words than any university ever could have.” ― Julia Graves The Language of Plants covers all aspects of the doctrine of signatures in an easily accessible format, so that everyone, whether nature lovers or healers, can learn to read the language of plants in connection with healing. More than 200 color and b/w images.

Genres: Nature, Religion, Plants, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

Reviews

[Lia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get that this kind of intuitive work is hard to explain and to teach...
But I do wish it had more detailed examples explained, like half a dozen, I'm not greedy,
One of a tree, and one of an herb, one of a mushroom....
Besides Passion Fruit plant and Angelica so I could get the hang of it.
Very complex. Will need to re-read to understand it.

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm reading this because I have to for one of my classes, but if I could, I would abandon it. Absolute garbage. Crazy crackpot stuff that herbalists have leaned way too hard into for way too many years. Even the stuff that is valid is hard to swallow because the "logic" that they use to get there is convoluted and contains a lot of errors and fallacies. There's a lot of misapplied science and pseudoscience. It's a religious persuasive essay pretending to be scientifically valid because the author attended med school for a while.

[Jodi G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really my thing.