Nathaniel Hughes

A herbalist who runs the School of Intuitive Herbalism from a beautiful Apothecary at Ruskin Mill near Stroud. His passion is in opening people’s awareness to plant wisdom and witnessing the catalytic healing that unfolds from these human-plant relationships.

Website: intuitiveherbalism.org.uk

Diary 2016

Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris) is a powerful yet elusive herb. Often herb books miss her out entirely. Yet many people, including me, hold her in esteem as one of their greatest teachers. She taught me the art of courting. She showed me that my previous approaches to plants, though I felt them to be slow, careful and respectful, were brashness and indifference to her. There is a mystery at her heart that cannot be unlocked easily, and it was more than five years from my first meeting to my first glimmerings of real understanding of this beautiful native. In the Lacunga Manuscript, one of a small number of old English herbals dating from the 10th Century, the author writes adoringly of Mugwort as the first of the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’: “Remember, Mugwort, what you revealed, what you set out in might revelation. ‘Una’ you are called, eldest of plants, you have might against three and against thirty, you have might against poison and ill wind, you have might against the evil that travels around the land.”

Mugwort’s power lies in her ability to challenge our limited and blinkered perception. We all live within limited bubbles of consciousness, yet can easily fall into the illusion that all that we perceive is all that there is. When our ego and sense of self becomes overly calcified, closing us off from new growth, Mugwort may have wisdom for us.