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-three years & counting, Ash continues to reverently devote her life to fungal & botanical studies, encompassing traditional, academic, clinical, and directly relational terrains.
She is a devotee of curiosity, and especially savors the study of history through the woven threads of fungi, people, and plants.
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 teaches both publicly & privately, with a focus on ethnobotany, ethnomycology, and herbalism. Ash has a passion for weaving the unifying threads between history, science, and spirit. She joyfully offers in-depth consultation services, and loves concocting unique herbaceous & bemushroomed elixirs in her Sonoran desert apothecary.
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One-on-one longterm apprenticeships are the cornerstone of her training, with a focus on 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 college thesis in the early 2000's focused on the history of plants & fungi in rites of passage and initiation, and altered states as evolutionary technology. Over the years, Ash’s research has honed in on entheogenic traditions of her Bohemian 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 an herbal personal chef, and sole 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 learning with people & plants wherever she goes.
Ash currently lives in a century-old gnome house in the Sonoran desert, 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
- Public + Private Classes
- Herbal Consultations
- One-on-One Herbal Mentorship Programs
- Custom Formulated Apothecary Goods
- Herbal Candy of the Month Club, and other unique edible creations
Get to GNOMIE
Click here for media appearances & free goodies sprinkled about the interwebs
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!!!
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