bio + services

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.

One-on-one longterm apprenticeships are the cornerstone of her training, with a focus in global entheogens, clinical & folk herbalism, Druid herbalism, 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 in the earlier 2000's 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 and pharmakon 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, etc. Ash would also like to acknowledge Nana, Pop, Grandma, Grandpa, Dr. John Baker, Prof. Kath Courtney, David, Eda, and countless others for the training, guidance, healthy challenges, and encouragement along the way, as well as the writings of Christian Rätsch, Terence McKenna, Dale Pendell, & Jonathan Ott.

In addition to the elders in her life, her most illustrious teachers are the landscapes, plants, and fungi themselves- deserts, mountains, oceans, forests, rivers, and all the rest that rattle the ancestors alive in her bones. Ash is an avid solo traveller, and owes so much of her enrichment to touching old rocks, listening to the echoes of ancient architecture, singing at sacred sites, eating traditional foods, and listening to people and plants wherever she goes. 

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 ::

 

:: BECOME A PATRON ::

Explore the BSB private membership page to access writings, educational videos, monthly community livestreams, discounted herbal candy of the month club subscriptions, etc!

I am currently writing my first book! Your patronage directly bolsters my ability to prioritize researching, drafting, and editing, as well as maintaining my committment to sliding-scale herbal consultation & apothecary pricing to those in need. Thank you!!!

check it out HERE

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