This is a fabulous resource for anyone who wants to understand African American spirituality, shamanism, and indigenous spiritual practices and beliefs. It is designed to be informative while providing hands-on recipes, rituals, projects, and resources to help you become an active participant in its wonderfully soulful traditions.

Inside you will find:
1. A celebration of healing, magic, and the divination traditions of ancient African earth-based spirituality
2. An explanation of how these practices have evolved in contemporary African American culture
3. A potpourri of recipes, rituals, and resources that you can use to heal your life

Among the topics covered:

• African spiritual practices of Santeria, Obeah, Lucumi, Orisa, and Quimbois
• Hoodoo--and how to use it to improve your health
• Ancient healing rituals and magical recipes of Daliluw
• Talking drums, spiritual dancing, clapping, tapping, singing, and changing
• Power objects, tricks and mojo bags, and herbal remedies

The changing of the seasons is magickal--green leaves transforming into browns and golds, snow melting to show fresh buds. We all recognize these telltale signs, but few of us are aware of the powerful impact each season has on our spiritual lives. Whether sunny, snowy, windy, rainy, cold, or humid, the weather has a dramatic effect on our being wherever we may live.

The author, Stephanie Rose Bird, is deeply committed to keeping alive the spiritual wisdom of her indigenous African ancestors. In African American Magick, she examines the magickal ability of the seasons to enhance our lives by unearthing ancient techniques, rituals, and methods from around the world that reflect each season's inherent energies to supplement body, mind, and soul.

Drawing upon her own ancestral heritage, as well as other cultures and those that have influenced her, Bird offers a lifetime of wisdom and expert botanical knowledge while sharing her path to a holistic and magickal life. Guidance from all over the world, and from classical and modern traditions alike, are offered:

• Spiritual insights from Caribbean African American culture
• Wisdom from indigenous Native American traditions
• Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices and rites
• Practices of classical European spiritual traditions
• Lessons from Aboriginal Australian dreaming practices

2005 COVR Award Winner

Hoodoo is an eclectic blend of African traditions, Native American herbalism, Judeo-Christian ritual, and magical healing. Tracing Hoodoo's magical roots back to West Africa, Stephanie Rose Bird provides a fascinating history of this nature-based healing tradition and gives practical advice for applying Hoodoo magic to everyday life. Learn how sticks, stones, roots, and bones--the basic ingredients in a Hoodoo mojo bag--can be used to bless the home, find a mate, invoke wealth, offer protection, and improve your health and happiness.

Hoodoo is a bold spiritual tradition that helps enhance your wellbeing and solve everyday problems. This practical, do-it-yourself guide shows you how to use spells, rites, recipes, mojos, and curios to enrich your life and be ready for whatever comes your way.

365 Days of Hoodoo starts by providing the basics of Hoodoo, and then gradually builds your knowledge day after day. You'll discover the essential components for your practice, how to master the parts of your life that seem out of control, and the various ways Hoodoo can improve love, prosperity, protection, and much more. This impressive book also features lore, prayers, potions, altars, baths, and meditations.

If you want to learn about the reciprocal spiritual connection between humans and trees, you're going to love this beautiful book.
--Tess Whitehurst, author of The Magic of Trees

Reclaiming traditional botanical and herbal practices has never been more important than it is today. So much of our future depends on our ability to use ancient earth knowledge. In this crucially important book, author Stephanie Rose Bird recounts the story of the sacred wood: how to live in it, learn from it, and derive spiritual enrichment from it, as well as how to preserve and protect it. The Healing Tree offers functional, accessible recipes, remedies, and rituals derived from a variety of African and African American traditions to serve mind, body, soul, and spirit.

The Healing Tree celebrates the forest: its powers, spirits, magic, medicine, and mysteries. Bird shares how trees have provided her with personal healing, then allows us to share in that process for our own benefit. Bird's book follows her own personal journey, but Africa is always her touchstone--the persistent and tenacious ancestral mother wisdom and spiritual foundation that refuses to fade away. The Healing Tree preserves this knowledge, presenting it as relevant and viable and demonstrating in intimate detail how vestiges of that knowledge took root in the Western Hemisphere, in African American culture, and more broadly in American culture in general.

Previously published as A Healing Grove, this updated edition includes a new preface by the author and a source guide for the botanicals discussed within.

In this powerful and comprehensive guide in the spirit of Jambalaya and Sacred Woman, an herbalist celebrates ancient and modern African holistic healing.

The message of this book is: hold onto your yams, your collards, watermelon, and roots. There is magic, mystery, connection, and healing stored within them.--Stephanie Rose Bird

Stephanie Rose Bird grew up surrounded by forests, listening to the stories of her ancestors and learning African healing ways. From an early age, she dedicated herself to herbalism and living a spiritually fulfilled life in harmony with nature. Now, the wisdom she as accrued is gathered in this impressive encyclopedic work of African Healing and herbal medicine.

Stephanie teaches you how to garden and harvest in unison with the seasons, and how to use herbalism and magic--derived from ancestral and spiritual helpers--to heal. A treasure trove of knowledge, Motherland Herbal showcases an array of recipes and rituals that nourish every facet of life:

Seasonal recipes to support overall well-beingTinctures for common ailments such as headaches, flu, or heartburnRemedies for improving mental health, lessening symptoms of anxiety, stress, or depressionNatural body and home care products, from facials to cleaning solutionsHerbal Baths for relaxation, sexual wellness, and good luckRituals and Altars for universal experiences, such as learning to letting go after loss and improving creativity and fertilityLove Potions, Sleep Potions, Protective Amulets, and more

Written in Stephanie's warm and authoritative voice, Motherland Herbal seamlessly blends activism and ancestral folklore with the realms of spirituality, gardening, and holistic wellness. Her deep reverence for the wisdom of her ancestors infuses every page of this guide, which is a foundational resource that will shape the landscape of African healing and folk medicine for generations to come.

Motherland Herbal includes 54 original pieces of art, including maps and artwork created by the author.

Stephanie Rose Bird is an expert in the field of alternative health and earth-based spirituality. Bird, is the author of five books: The Big Book of Soul: the Ultimate Guide to the African American Spirit: Legends and Lore, Music and Mysticism and Recipes and Rituals, (2010, Hampton Road Publishers), A Healing Grove: African Tree Medicine, Remedies and Rituals ( 2009, Chicago Review Press), Light, Bright, Damn Near White: Biracial and Triracial Culture in America (2009, Greenwood Publishers) Sticks, Stones, Roots and Bones Hoodoo, Mojo and Conjuring with Herbs (June 2004, by Llewellyn Worldwide Publishers) and Four Seasons of Mojo: An Herbal Guide to Natural Living (Llewellyn, 2006). She holds a BFA cum laude from Temple University, Tyler School of Art and a MFA from University of California at San Diego where she was a San Diego Opportunity Fellow. She was a professor of fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for over fifteen years. She has also taught at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and Garfield Conservatory. Bird works as an herbalist, aromatherapist and sole proprietor of Almost Edible Natural Products. Her product line features herbal soap, incense, potpourri, bath salts, sachets and dream pillows. Bird writes regularly for www.naturallycurly.com as resident herbalist. She has been a professional member of the Handcrafted Soap Maker's Guild, for whom she wrote a column Soap Worts: Useful Herbs for Soap Makers. Bird is also a member of: the American Botanical Council's Herb Research Foundation; the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy and the International Center for Traditional Childrearing. Her writing on herbalism, natural healing, complimentary therapies, herbal lore, goddesses, rituals and ceremonies are featured in Sage Woman Magazine The Beltane Papers, PanGaia, International Journal of Aromatherapy, Aromatherapy Today, The Oracle, Herb Quarterly, Herb Companion, The Llewellyn Magical Almanac, The Llewellyn Herbal Almanac Enlightened Practice, E-pregnancy and Spell-a-Day. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar, Bird studied the art, rituals and ceremonies of Australian Aborigines in the outback of the Northern Territory. Bird's fine art is held in several important national and international art collections, she has exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, universities and public spaces. Stephanie Bird is a hereditary intuitive and healer specializing in positive energy work and spiritual cleansing using African plant wisdom.