Reclaiming the Witch: How Herbal Remedies are a Radical Act of Healing

Have you ever wondered why we are scared of witches and not those who burned them alive?

Between the 16th and 17th centuries, tens of thousands of people, the majority of them women, were executed in Europe on charges of “witchcraft.” Many of these accused women were midwives, healers, or folk practitioners who worked outside formal medical institutions.

The witch trials contributed to a cultural shift in the perception of healing. As medicine became increasingly regulated from the mid‑17th century onwards, formal medical education and licensing were largely inaccessible to women, which meant many women healers continued their work outside official channels.

Folk and herbal practitioners often operated in secrecy, and social attitudes frequently portrayed unlicensed healers with suspicion, while licensed physicians and apothecaries gained authority and social legitimacy.

Meanwhile, the trained physicians charged exorbitant fees, often for dubious treatments like bloodletting. The apothecaries made a tidy profit, favouring expensive concoctions, secret recipes made from exotic plants over simple herbal remedies made with common plants.

You may have heard of Nicolas Culpeper who was born in 1616. He was a radical herbalist whose books are still in print today. Culpeper did great work within the system, being a member of the Society for Apothecaries. Culpeper called out  the trained physicians and apothecaries who put profit before patient care and restricted medical knowledge to the elite.

He made it his mission to educate the masses, teaching them simple herbal remedies made from native plants they could make themselves. He was determined to democrotise health care. 

We believe he had an accurate vision of the path medicine was taking, long before big pharma existed.

He translated the Royal College Of Physicians Guide For Apothecaries, 'The Pharmacopoeia Londinensis', into English from Latin. He also clarified the remedies, which were vague in the original text, presumably in a bid to make it only useful to those with training. Culpeper sold his translation for just 3 pence making it accessible for all, outraging the medical establishment.

Culpeper himself was accused of witchcraft in 1643. He was acquitted (most likely due to being male and having qualifications).

It’s widely believed the accusation was an attempt by the medical authorities to discredit him in a bid to protect their profits. He belligerently continued to be a thorn in the establishment’s side until his death in 1654.

 

500 YEARS LATER

Thankfully, those selling medicinal products or services without a licence are no longer in fear of being burned at the stake. But business are shut down for making medicinal claims for unlicensed products. The legally responsible person can be jailed for 2 years for such crimes. This seems like a very reasonable legal safeguard, but when you unwrap the consequences it's not always so great. Making a medical claim includes stating well documented traditional benefits of an ingredient in the supplement or herbal product. So you cannot claim vitamin C will fight colds unless your vitamin c product has a licence.

Currently a medical licence costs £80,000 per product in the UK. All licensed products must be clinically tested to prove efficacy and safety, of course there are sometimes side effects that don't become apparent for many years, so long term data is very valuable.

Natural remedies cannot be patented because you can only patent a novel invention, like a new chemical compound. You can patent new extraction method or particular compound or use, but not a tried and trusted remedy.

You could buy a medical licence for a product using a traditional herbal remedy (subject to successful clinical testing) but another company could change the recipe slightly and sell a similar version and compete against you. This is important, because it means very few companies selling tried and trusted natural remedies can afford a medical licence, simply because there is too much competition to make it economically viable.

The net result of this, is that natural remedies (with great long term data) do not get licensed and therefore do not get prescribed by your doctor, even if they are the perfect fit.

So maybe not that much has really changed?

The system is further compromised by the patent structure. Patents only last a certain length of time. The company normally has 7-12 years to sell a drug exclusively before other companies can replicate it and sell it. Once a drug is out of patent it becomes far less profitable. So the drug companies have a motivation to constantly develop new drugs even if there is already a perfectly good option. Of course this does encourage innovation, but it can lead to slight variations on existing drugs that offer little improvement for purely commercial reasons. And the less long term data you have the less you can be confident of a drug's safety.

Hypothetically speaking this system could motivate an unscrupulous company to publicly discredit a cheap, out of patent, just to create a market for a new drug. That new drug would have less long term safety data - and that could potentially go badly.

Treating or preventing disease with vitamins, minerals or herbs is generally seen as 'alternative medicine' or 'complimentary therapy' and treated as quaint or fringe by many. We fear, that in a digital age, as big tech is pressured to remove 'dangerous' content, the outdated crime witchcraft could be replaced with the crime of sharing ‘disinformation’, further marginalising herbal remedies.

We acknowledge medicines must be regulated, and that there are quacks and charlatans selling snake oil, but does charging a huge amount of money for a licence actually sort the wheat from the chaff? 

We also appreciate what mainstream medicine has to offer, and we wouldn’t want to take it away, we are truly grateful it exists, especially the NHS in the UK. There is no doubt pharmaceutical medicine saves many lives that traditional medicine could not. But it is sad that the it has become so driven by profit.

What we really need is a system where herbal remedies, vitamins and minerals, can be used in a preventative way or as the safe efficacious option in some cases and the 'big gun' pharmaceuticals can just be used necessary. That way we could maybe have avoided issues like antibiotic resistance and topical steroid withdrawal. It's hard to see how that can be achieved without completly dismanteling the unfortunate system that has evolved.

A few big investment companies are the major shareholders in all the big corporations on the planet, including big pharma, big media, big entertainment, big agriculture and big oil. Those big corporations are legally allowed to ‘lobby’ governments , influence the law and regulations all over the world and even fund our universities. That means a tiny number of people have the power to decide how the population is educated and what medicines, food, information and narratives are available and deemed acceptable for general consumption, and it seems these few are looking for greater control.

 

RADICAL CHANGE

So to make this ending happy, we ask you to arm thyself with knowledge, and heal thyself as Culpepper advised. Prevent disease with good, unprocessed food, supplements, herbal remedies and a non toxic lifestyle. Keep printed copies of traditional information to reference.

Take responsibility for your own health. If you are unwell, consider the effect of your diet, or possible deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, dehydration, mental or emotional health or lifestyle before you go to the doctor. Discuss this with them, rather than passively waiting to be given a prescription. And if they do prescribe, ask about side effects and alternative solutions.

 Question the safety and ingredients in everything you consume, inhale or apply to your skin, whether it has a medicinal license or not. Remember wether it is licensed or not, somebody is selling it, so question their track record, integrity and transparency. If they won't tell you what's in it, question what they have to hide.

Resist propaganda, be it in the media, entertainment in school or ingrained in society. Make it a habit to question everything, especially if it’s something you never thought to question before.

We are entering the age of Aquarius - The end of the suppression of the sacred feminine - truth, power, and innocence. A perfect time to reclaim The Witch, rectify the system and maybe heal humanity as a whole. It's a monumental task, but there is magic in the air and anything is possible.