Herbs of the Sun, the Moon and the Planets - Pagan book review

I have been studying medicinal herbs for around fourteen years and I’m a practicing Pagan, though not one focused on recipes for spells. My herb lore is primarily practical and focused on the health needs of my family and community. I grow those herbs that can be prepared as medicine and used for common illnesses and injuries. My local doctor doesn’t see much of my family and as sweet as she is, we all like it that way. 

Still, I had to take a second look when I saw the Pagan Portals book Herbs of the Sun, the Moon and the Planets by Steve Andrews. I am skeptical of many newly concocted “spells” promoted by random witches, and yet I take basic astrology as demonstrable fact. Find me a person born between March 21 and April 21 who has little spark and fire in their personality or a person born between February 21 and March 21 who has no dreaminess about them, and I’ll concede something to you. But an Aries is an Aries, while a Pisces is a Pisces. And little can be done to entirely change either. 

Sun signs and ascendants have a powerful effect on our lives. I am not precisely sure how the planets can have such a marked impact on our minds, emotions and temperaments. I suspect it has to do with gravity and the types of energy being studied by physicists today, but any observant person who has opened their mind to the possibility knows it is so. 

So, why shouldn’t plants reflect astrology in some way as well? This was my impetus for picking up the book.

There are several good things about this book:

1. The book combines medicinal and energetic properties of herbs nicely, glossing over neither.
2. The medicinal information appears to be correct and there are warnings where there need to be safety warnings.
3. There are some interesting historical tidbits.

And yet the book falls short in some ways. It is primarily a list of herbs, categorized by their planetary correspondence. There is only vague and scanty information about what the planetary correspondence is likely to mean or how to use it to bolster the effectiveness of either herbal medicine or magical work.

In general, this is a descent introductory herbal with a handful of the herbs most commonly used in witchcraft and Pagan ritual, but also including their medicinal properties. More information is likely to be needed for in-depth study but if the warnings are heeded this book will do some good.