Why I Love Making Remedies.

We live in a mass-produced, over-processed, superficial, hyper-kinetic society. A society that worships technology and industry while it pillages and pollutes nature. A society that is arrogant enough to believe that the artificial is superior to the natural. That we are better medicine makers than the plants, animals and minerals who have been making medicines for millions of years.

There is a robust counter-culture of health food stores and alternative practitioners providing people more “natural options”, but sadly, most of these natural medicines are impersonally mass-produced and engineered in a manner not too different from what the drug companies make. I have used and still use some of these products, but when I remember my grandmother and the way she made her “bush medicines” I am left feeling short-changed by all this slick packaging and sterile, uniform products that are devoid of vital energy and bear little or no resemblance to the natural materials they were made from.

I come from a long line of Afro-Caribbean herbalists and bush doctors. I was born in Trinidad and was first exposed to natural healing by my maternal grandmother, who was a well-respected healer. My grandmother was quite a character. She wore a white turban and used a crystal ball. She put herself and others into trances and communicated with the spirit world – but that’s another story. My grandmother would go into the rain forests of Trinidad to wildcraft plants for her bush baths, teas and powders. Everything she made, she made in her kitchen or in the backyard.

It was wonderful seeing sick people who the doctors had sent away to die get healed.

In healing, everything is part of the equation. Who the healer is a huge factor. You bring everything that you are, everything you have ever done, everywhere you have ever been, everything you have ever touched on any level to the healing. If you cannot come as amedicine maker with clean hands, clean energy and a clean heart, you contaminate the healing. How the remedies are made and where the materials come from is also a crucial factor. As I said in the beginning of this page, I already live in an impersonal, automated, mass-produced culture. Do I want the medicines I am giving to people to be machine-made, impersonally mass-produced, with materials that I have no idea where they came from, what condition they were in and who grew or collected them? The answer for me is: not if I can help it! I make my natural medicines in a more expensive and time-consuming way than the norm but have no regrets doing it because you can tell the difference in the finished remedy.

I have a master distiller hand make the alcohol I use for my tinctures. The herbs I work with are wild crafted whenever possible, and organic.

If it sounds like I’m completely against science and technology, I’m not. I don’t believe that there is any natural conflict between science and magic or between technology and art.

I make my remedies with the technical aspects in mind. Dry-weights, solubility factors, specific gravity, acidity and other factors are used to inform how I make the medicine, but never to the exclusion of the magic and emotional relationship between myself and the substances and my patients. I spend a lot of time and focus and a lot of energy on the remedies. I think about who they are for and what ailments they are meant to address. I think about where they came from and from whom they came from. I synchronize the making of the remedies to the cycles of the moon and get a lot of excitement watching the tinctures and remedies develop over the long maceration period. I greatly enjoy the different colours and textures and aromas. It can be a very sensual experience.

As a healer, I want to keep my medicines as raw and natural as possible.

I think my grandmother would have been proud.

To arrange a consultation with me or to ask questions about my holistic treatments

Ricardo Scipio RH AHG, Member of the American Botanical Council