Resources

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Following are my recommended resources for all things natural health, beauty, and cleaning – including my favorite books, shops, and useful links.

These are my favorite books that I own and can personally recommend for anyone interested in these topics. You can also check out My Bookshop Shop for curated lists of my favorite natural health, beauty, cleaning, and witchery books.

Herbalism

  • Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health – Renowned herbalist Rosemary Gladstar provides 175 proven therapies and herbal remedies that are easy to prepare and safe enough for children. Offering a potent and effective alternative to commercial pharmaceuticals, Gladstar will inspire you to nurture yourself and those you love with nature’s healing herbs.
  • Home Herbal by Penelope Ody – A great book for my British and Australian readers. Full of instructions for making herbal medicines including tons of recipes, pictures, and an herbal encyclopedia. All measurements are in grams and milliliters.

Herbal Beauty

  • Herbal Body Book by Jeanne Rose – Classic book that explains in detail how to make and use your own herbal body products. Everything you need from hair products to belly salve for a pregnant woman is inside this most useful companion. Jeanne Rose encourages the reader to make their own blend of herbs to target specific conditions, not follow a limited number of recipes.
  • The Herbal Body Book by Stephanie Tourles – Discover how to transform common herbs, fruits, and grains into safe, economical, and natural personal care items. Includes more than 100 recipes for facial scrubs, shampoos, lip balms, moisturizers, and more.

Natural Cleaning

  • The Naturally Clean Home – This book contains 150 super-easy recipes for green cleaning. This is my favorite book on the topic, and it’s been recently updated and revised.

Green Witchcraft

  • The Green Witch – Discover the power of natural magic and healing through herbs, flowers, and essential oils in this guide to green witchcraft. Written by one of my favorite authors, Arin Murphy-Hiscock. I recommend all of her books!
  • The Green Witch’s Grimoire – Your complete guide to creating your own natural book of magic. This book is like an in-depth class on creating and using a green witch grimoire. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in this topic.

Where to Buy Dried Herbs

These are my preferred mail-order sources for obtaining dried herbs. I personally order from all of these companies, and I believe they have great quality products and operate responsibly. Between them, you should be able to get just about every herb you could want or need.

  • Mountain Rose Herbs – Their line of organic herbs are guaranteed fresh, colorful, and fragrant. Mountain Rose Herbs is a zero-waste certified company with a commitment to fair trade sourcing and sustainability.
    NOTE: Mountain Rose Herbs is currently experiencing system errors resulting in LONG shipping delays. I’ve waited over a month for my current order. I do not recommend ordering from them at this time. I will remove this message when they have fixed their system. In the meantime, I recommend the other suppliers on this list.
  • Rosemary’s Garden – Rosemary’s Garden is dedicated to providing a comprehensive range of herbs and herbal remedies, supplies to enable making herbal concoctions and organic, wild-crafted, sustainable and natural products.
  • Healing Spirits Herb Farm – A family-owned herb farm in New York. All of their herbs are certified organically grown and ethically wild-crafted, and they’re hand-picked, solar dried, and hand-processed on the farm.
  • Purple Sage Farms – For more than 30 years, Purple Sage Farms has specialized in growing a wide range of organic herbs, greens, and vegetables. Today, that has expanded to over 250 varieties of crops ranging from the familiar and traditional to the obscure and exotic.

Where to Buy Essential Oils

If you have a local health food store, you might be able to purchase essential oils there. I often buy them at Natural Grocers in Colorado. If you need to order your oils, I recommend these companies:

  • Mountain Rose Herbs – In addition to dried herbs and supplies, they offer responsibly sourced and certified organic essential oils.
  • NOTE: Mountain Rose Herbs is currently experiencing system errors resulting in LONG shipping delays. I’ve waited over a month for my current order. I do not recommend ordering from them at this time. I will remove this message when they have fixed their system. In the meantime, I recommend the other suppliers on this list.
  • Aromatics International – Offers 100% pure, sustainably sourced essential oils. You can get 20% off your first order when you sign up for their emails.
  • Pranarom – Offers certified organic, sustainably sourced essential oils.
  • Swanson Vitamins – If you’re looking for a more affordable option, Swanson carries Now Brand and Aura Cacia essential oils that are inexpensive but still effective. I personally use Now essential oils almost exclusively because I can buy them locally.

Where to Buy Supplies

Empty bottles and jars, strainers, cheesecloth, carrier oils, and all the other supplies you could ever need to practice herbalism can be found here:

  • Mountain Rose Herbs – Containers, bottles, jars, carrier oils, clays and butters, cosmetic supplies, DIY ingredients, kitchen tools, and so much more.
  • NOTE: Mountain Rose Herbs is currently experiencing system errors resulting in LONG shipping delays. I’ve waited over a month for my current order. I do not recommend ordering from them at this time. I will remove this message when they have fixed their system. In the meantime, I recommend the other suppliers on this list.
  • Rosemary’s Garden – All kinds of supplies for herbal medicine making and homemade cosmetics – from beeswax to witch hazel – including empty containers, oils, powders, butters, kitchen tools, and more.
  • Bramble Berry – All types of homemade cosmetic supplies, including storage containers, oils and butters, soap making supplies, molds, essential oils, fragrances, and so much more. They have the BEST prices on carrier oils and butters.
  • Specialty Bottle – They carry all kinds and sizes of jars, bottles, and containers for storing your homemade herbal cosmetics and medicines. Shipping can be pricey for small orders, but individual item prices are very good.
  • Swanson Vitamins – They carry the Now brand products, which include inexpensive carrier oils (sweet almond, coconut, avocado, etc.), butters, lanolin, glycerin and other products you might find useful for making natural cosmetics and medicines.

Where to Buy Incense

I’ve had some questions about where I find my incense for “incense of the day.” The answer is Etsy! Following are the shops I can recommend for hard-to-find incense varieties:

  • Gia’s Traditions – My favorite shop for high-quality, affordable incense. She has a huge selection of different scents and usually has a coupon running.
  • Sacred Mists – I buy my Sabbat incense from Sacred Mists and they are absolutely lovely. Wonderful quality, fast shipping, and good prices too.
  • Alchemy Flame – This shop is my alternative to Gia’s Traditions. If Gia’s is out of a certain incense I need, I will always check here first. Good prices and lots of variety too.

Here are links to websites and resources that might be helpful if you’re interested in natural living and herbalism:

  • Rosemary Gladstar’s Science & Art of Herbalism Course – I’m currently taking this course and it has been invaluable to me. Considered by many to be one of the finest home study courses on herbalism available in this country, The Science & Art of Herbalism offers a comprehensive overview of herbalism and prepares the student to competently and effectively use herbs for home health care.
  • My Bookshop Shop – I no longer order from Amazon, and instead use Bookshop.org to purchase my books (along with Thriftbooks). Here, you can find my personal “shop” which includes curated lists of all my recommended natural health, beauty, cleaning, and witchery books. I get a small commission if you make a purchase through my shop and you’ll also be supporting small local bookstores.