Black Sage Botanicals exists to empower cooperative sovereignty, engaging a direct relationship with & as the living, breathing world.
Ash Ritter is a west coast born, desert-dwelling ethnobotanist, educator, writer, multi-disciplinary animist, and poet in disguise as herbalist. For twenty years & counting, Ash continues to reverently devote her life to fungal & botanical studies, encompassing traditional, academic, clinical, and directly relational terrains.
Ash's approach places emphasis on plants, fungi, and planet as relations, and is manifested through her practice as fostering engagement with & as the living world, rather than "using" plants as commodity. She counsels & creates in her private practice, Black Sage Botanicals.
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One-on-one longterm apprenticeships are the cornerstone of her training, with a focus in Druid herbalism, clinical botanical medicine, Cali-Mexican curanderismo & MacGuyver-style urban & wilderness first aid. Ash also attended acupressure school, permaculture certification training, and studied journey work with Michael Harner, just to name a few of the adjunct teachings that inform her practice.
Her bachelors degree thesis focused on botanical & fungal agents for initiation, and altered states as evolutionary technology. Over the years, Ash’s research has honed in on entheogenic traditions of her ancestry, mainly the folklore, physical, and energetic medicines of Amanita muscaria, and the Solanaceae-laden Flying Ointments of Europe.
Ash feels blessed beyond measure to have shadowed naturopathic Dr. Kenneth Proefrock in his office for 2 years upon her relocation to the Sonoran Desert, and almost went to medical school, until coming to recognize the potency of keeping her practice out of bureaucratic matrices. Previously, she apprenticed with history buff & lineage keeper Charles "Doc" Garcia, and worked for several years as a plant-based personal chef, and apothecarist in a bustling California Bay Area clinical herbal practice. Ash would also like to acknowledge Dr. John R. Baker, David, Eda, and countless others for the training, guidance, healthy challenges, and encouragement along the way, as well as the life-altering writings of Christian Rätsch, Terence McKenna, Dale Pendell, & Jonathan Ott.
Ash currently lives in a century-old gnome house on an old ranch in southern Arizona, and enjoys tracking deer through the spiny brush, sitting with 200-year-old cacti, and waiting for monsoon season thunderstorms as she writes her first book.
:: SERVICES ::
- Herbal Consultations
- Public + Private Classes
- One-on-One Herbal Mentorship Programs
- Custom Formulated Apothecary Goods ~ with a small rotating selection of favorites listed online
:: BECOME A PATRON ::
GIFT CERTIFICATES available upon request for Herbal Candy of the Month Club, the Digital Class Archives, and Consultation Services! Contact to arrange.