Green Witch Herbalism: Plants as Ancestors w/ Sage
The Witch’s Hands: How Herbalism Connects You to Your Ancestors
The moment Sage pulled that Mind’s Eye Tarot card, the World, ringed with plants that held tiny eyeballs inside them, something clicked. It wasn’t just about cycles ending or beginning. It was about plants themselves. The artichoke stock around the card’s border wasn’t decoration. It was a teaching.
That plant, Sage explained, has to be cut down to grow more. Which is exactly what the card means. Which is exactly what’s happening in the world right now. And which is exactly what witchcraft has been trying to tell us for centuries: you don’t separate yourself from the earth. You are the earth. Your hands, your words, your daily rituals, they’re all part of a conversation that’s been running since before language had names for it.
This is what green witchcraft actually is. Not performance. Not Instagram aesthetics. A living, breathing relationship with plants that have evolved alongside your ancestors for thousands of years.
The Healing Hand: Witchcraft Runs Through Your Lineage
Sage owns Healing Hand Apothecary. The name isn’t metaphorical.
She was raised by all women, her mom, two aunts, and grandmother. And every single one of them had what she calls “the magic hand.” Her grandmother would roll tortillas and play with her nails while they lay on the sofa. Her mother, a mental health therapist, would speak with her hands like she was pulling medicine out of her throat. Her aunt Angie creates and paints constantly. Her aunt Jenny is a hair stylist who brings the beauty within people to the surface.
Different crafts. Same energy.
“That’s what Healing Hand is,” Sage said. “Me passing on that magic, that legacy that the women before me have taught me and showed me and have passed down. And mine just happens to be plants.”
This is the real definition of witchcraft that most people miss. It’s not about casting spells in a circle at midnight. It’s about recognizing that your grandmother’s hands had power. Your mother’s voice had medicine in it. Your aunt’s ability to create had magic running through it. And now you get to find where your hands hold power too.
For Sage, it’s plants. For you, it might be something else entirely. But the inheritance is the same: you’re not starting from scratch. You’re continuing a conversation that started generations ago.
Plants Have Evolved to Heal the Ailments We Carry
Here’s what blew everyone’s mind during the conversation: plants and humans have co-evolved.
It’s not mystical. It’s scientific. As humans accumulated certain diseases and ailments over centuries, plants grew alongside us that could address those exact problems. The earth didn’t just provide, it adapted. It learned what we needed and grew it anyway.
“It’s the most beautiful thing ever,” Sage said. “To be like they. It’s just that like higher power feeling of like the earth being a higher power and being like you need this. Here is something for you.”
This is where herbalism stops being “alternative medicine” and starts being ancestor work. When you brew a tea with plants that evolved specifically to help your body, you’re not just drinking medicine. You’re drinking thousands of years of relationship. You’re participating in a conversation that your ancestors were already having.
Epigenetics backs this up. The foods we eat, the plants we’re around, the environment we live in, it all influences our DNA. We’re literally made of the plants our ancestors consumed. Which means when you work with herbs, you’re not learning something new. You’re remembering something old.
Courtney pointed this out: “Our DNA being influenced by these things. It just shows that we inherently are them. Right. Just because there’s no physical connection we can see or perceive with our eyes. You can see and perceive them with other senses how we connect.”
Ritual Doesn’t Have to Be Theatrical to Be Powerful
One of the biggest blocks people have with herbalism and witchcraft is that they think it has to look a certain way. Candlelit circles. Formal incantations. Planned-out ceremonies that require preparation and space and the right timing.
Sage brought up Pema Chödrön’s book Ritual: A Finely Woven Spell, which teaches something radical: ritual doesn’t have to be theatrical to work.
You can grab twigs and leaves and rocks from your yard and create an altar right there on the spot. You can take your kids out to the garden, ask permission before picking a tomato, and teach them that relationship with plants isn’t extraction, it’s conversation. You can peel an apple in a continuous spiral as a form of divination, eat the apple, throw the peel over your shoulder, and see what shape it forms.
The ritual isn’t in the production value. It’s in the intention. It’s in the relationship you’re acknowledging. It’s in the moment you stop treating the earth like it’s something you own and start treating it like it’s something you’re in partnership with.
“She talks a lot about that in this book just different ways of connecting with the land with the cycles with yourself with community,” Courtney said. “And that’s one of the things that i wanted to point out and just because you asked and also because that’s the relationship it seems you have you do this like naturally right.”
The Witch’s Real Power: Claiming Your Right to Live From This Work
Somewhere along the way, witchcraft became something you had to do for free. Something that was a calling but not a career. Something that was spiritual enough that charging money for it felt wrong.
Sage pushed back on this hard. And she’s right.
Historically, witches were respected members of the community. They were given compensation, money, resources, respect, safety, because what they did had value. The witch didn’t starve. The community made sure of it.
“I deserve to make money doing it because I come at it with professionalism with expertise knowledge and education everything that I’ve put into making sure I provide something quality to my clients,” Sage said. “And yeah I deserve to be making a living at it.”
This isn’t greed. This is reclamation. When you charge for your work as a healer, herbalist, or witch, you’re saying: I respect what I do. I’ve educated myself. I show up professionally. And I deserve to survive doing this.
It’s also an act of resistance. Because the moment witchcraft becomes profitable and respected, it becomes harder to dismiss. It becomes harder to marginalize. It becomes harder to pretend it’s not real.
The Witch Is a Spiritual Warrior
Sage has a quote on her mirror: “The witch is the spiritual warrior.”
She means it. Being a witch isn’t comfortable. It means looking at the dark parts. It means being liminal, existing between worlds. It means fighting, every single day, for the right to believe in something the mainstream dismisses.
“We will always be fighting that because to be a witch inherently means to be the marginalized,” Sage said. “It means to be someone who is to look at the dark parts and be a liminal creature to be a witch is is to be a woman it is to be queer it is to be um the the the black woman who struggles with um her way of believing.”
But here’s what matters: in that fight is the magic. In that resistance is the spell. One ritual by one broom ride, one cup of tea by one conversation, one person at a time claiming their power, that’s how the world changes.
It doesn’t require permission. It doesn’t require validation from the mainstream. It just requires you to show up, do the work, and refuse to apologize for it.
Go deeper into plant magic, ancestral healing, and what it really means to call yourself a witch.
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