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Sajah Popham is the author of Evolutionary Herbalism, the founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism and makes spagyric botanicals. He trains herbalists in a holistic system of plant medicine that encompasses clinical Western herbalism, medical astrology, Ayurveda, and spagyric alchemy. His comprehensive approach focuses on balancing the science and spirituality of plant medicine to heal the body, clarify the mind, open the heart, and support the development of the soul. This is achieved through working with the chemical, energetic, and spiritual properties of the plants. His teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves. He lives on a homestead in the foothills of Mt. Baker Washington with his wife and children where he teaches, consults clients, and prepares spagyric herbal medicines.
How did you first become interested in herbalism, and what path has that taken?
All throughout my childhood I wanted to grow up and be a doctor. At first, I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon, then I got interested in neurology, then psychology. I grew up witnessing a lot of health problems in my family, from chronic pain due to injuries and type I diabetes, to cancer, severe allergies and chronic migraines. I always wanted to do something to help but obviously couldn’t. Eventually, as I grew into a young man, I had some serious disillusionment around conventional medicine and wanted to explore alternative options, and thus the doorway to herbal medicine was opened. I always had a deep love of nature as I grew up hiking and backpacking through the PNW forests and mountains. Herbalism seemed to be an interesting merging of my desire to be a doctor with my love and deep appreciation of nature. This connection with nature ultimately developed into something beyond mere appreciation and into a deeper reverence and, dare I say, spiritual connection to the natural world. So this was the whole milieu of my life when I got into herbal medicine. I hustled my way through community college to get my prerequisites taken care of so I could join the Bastyr University Herbal Sciences Program which was really the beginning of the journey.
How did you come to David's herbal education program, and how has that experience shaped your development as an herbalist?
For me it’s important to be constantly learning and growing, not just in the realm of herbalism, but life as a whole. By the time I joined David’s program I’d been working with clients off and on for about 15 years, managing my spagyric apothecary of 200+ remedies and formulas, as well as running my own educational platform for herbalism. It was time for me to get on the other side of the classroom! It’s interesting to consider how it’s shaped my development as an herbalist. I would say the #1 biggest takeaway for me was the concept of triune formulation and classification of plants. In fact, this is a concept I’ve been applying to the astrological classification of plants as well, which is a system in desperate need of refinement and updating. I’d never formally studied any TCM aside from reading a few books, so that piece of the program was interesting to consider, along with that entire materia medica, which I’m honestly still trying to wrap my head around!
Overall, I would say the program has helped me refine my understanding of materia medica, gather some new insights and perspectives into the consultation/interview process, and have an entirely new model to approach studying herbs and architecting formulating.
Your herbal apothecary is named Natura Sophia Spagyrics, and you are, like Herbalist & Alchemist, one of the rare herbalists to use the spagyric process. What is it about this process that resonates so deeply with you?
I can remember working in the bot med lab at Bastyr learning pharmacy and absolutely loving it, while at the same time having this nagging feeling that something was missing from the process. I always felt guilty every time the step came where I had to put some plant material in a compost bucket. I always felt there was still some form of medicine locked up in the plant that wasn’t extracted with any menstruum we used. It wasn’t until studying abroad in Tuscany Italy with one of my teachers that I was introduced to the Western alchemical tradition and spagyric pharmacy. It was like an entirely new world of medicine, cosmology, and pharmacy was opened up to me, one that seemed to equally connect the spirituality and science of herbal medicine. There’s a universality to the teachings of alchemy that are truly profound and heavily influenced my approach to herbalism, healing, and how I work with plants.
I think what I appreciate the most about the spagyric process is that it is, in my opinion, the most holistic form of herbal pharmacy because nothing is wasted in the process. If we want to be holistic in our approach to herbalism, that is, if we want to heal the whole person, doesn’t it make sense that our remedies should contain the whole plant? The various types of spagyric preparations (not just spagyric tinctures), operate on different levels of the human organism, from the physical body to the psycho-spiritual layers of self. To me, the body is just the most concentrated aspect of the soul, and the soul the most volatile aspect of the body; they’re not separate. Thus, spagyrics can heal the body, as well as transform the psychological, emotional and even spiritual aspects of a person's problems. In this way alchemical medicines are not just healing, but transformational, which is the kind of healing I think a lot of people out in the world are looking for and need.
Please share how and why you bring a spiritual approach into your training at your School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
My spiritual connection to nature and plants was present before I ever learned a single thing about the medicinal properties of plants. But as I did learn the herbs, and more importantly, experience them for myself, I started to notice that as the plants were healing me I wasn’t just feeling better, I was changing. As my physical health issues resolved, as I built my vitality and strengthened my weaknesses, I started to notice that the plants were transforming me on a much deeper level than the books I was reading were talking about. This transformational aspect of the plants was further solidified as I got into the alchemical tradition as I explained above.
So the spiritual side of the plants was central to my understanding of how plants heal, while at the same time acknowledging their biochemical power to heal. My approach has always strived to connect that scientific and spiritual side of the plants and the healing process. This involves recognizing how a plant is not an isolated being, but rather is a microcosm of the archetypal forces of nature. In alchemy this is represented by the seven planetary bodies of the cosmos, the four elements of nature, and the three philosophical principles. Each plant corresponds to a planet, an element, and a principle; this is represented through its morphological characteristics, its taste, organ, system and tissue affinities, medicinal actions, energetics, and special potencies. Even the chemistry can be correlated to these patterns
From this we can come to understand the unique nature of the plant, its character, and see its relationship to these archetypal forces of nature. This also enables us to begin to decipher the more subtle esoteric virtues of the plants, how they impact us psychologically and emotionally, and in some instances what types of lessons the plants might teach us to become more virtuous people. That is a central tenet of alchemy: the transformation of poison into medicine, which reflects internally within us as transforming our trauma, of turning something negative into something positive. We all embody certain archetypal forces and patterns… the question is do we embody their virtuous attributes or their shadow side? A part of my approach to herbal medicine is about identifying what the dominant archetypal forces are at play in someone’s life and using alchemically prepared medicines to transform them from the shadow into the virtue.
To me there are a few different layers of the spiritual approach to plants and herbal medicine. One is this more alchemical perspective described above. The other is simply recognizing that plants and nature as a whole contain a vital intelligence that we as humans have the ability to connect to and learn from. People have been learning about plants from plants for a very long time. We modern humans tend to rely pretty heavily on books, teachers, and what other people say. Not that we should ditch all of that, but it’s also not a replacement for us having a direct experience and connection to the medicine we rely on. I think we can balance our intellectual knowledge of plants with experiential understanding. To me the combining of intellectual knowledge with experiential understanding is what can come together and over time grow into herbal wisdom.
