Welcome back to the Ritual Herbalism Podcast, a space where we explore the sacred threads of plant medicine, seasonal wisdom, and the ways we return to ourselves through earth-centered ritual.
In this episode, “Plants as Ancestors & Elders: Wisdom for the Descent,” we arrive at Samhain, a threshold of remembrance, mystery, and the turning toward the darker half of the year.
You may also wish to revisit Episode 6, Herbs for the Ancestors: A Samhain Journey, where we explore the traditions, folklore, and plant allies that have long accompanied ancestral remembrance and the honoring of the unseen world.
Leaves loosen from the trees. Forest pathways emerge from beneath the summer canopy. The scent of damp soil rises as the Earth receives what the growing season has released. While the outer landscape seems to withdraw, this season invites a different kind of attention: to the ancestors who shaped our lives, and to the botanical elders who have accompanied generations before us.
What if plants are not simply offerings used to honor our ancestors? What if they are ancestors in their own right, ancient companions whose presence holds memory, continuity, and relationship?
Episode Themes:
At the heart of this episode is an exploration of plants as living elders, connecting the visible world with the mysteries beneath the Earth.
In this episode, we explore:
the botanical ancestors of the above
The plants have shaped life on Earth across an almost unimaginable span of time. Trees in particular offer a powerful image of continuity. Some stand through the lives of parents and grandparents, witnessing the changing landscape and those who pass beneath them.
Ginkgo, with its ancient evolutionary lineage and luminous golden autumn leaves, becomes a striking elder at Samhain. In this episode, a ginkgo growing on family land holds memories of children growing up and of a beloved dog, Rainfeather, laid to rest beneath its branches. As its leaves fall, the tree offers a quiet teaching: release and continuity can exist together.
Pine offers another kind of companionship. Evergreen through winter, it becomes a symbol of constancy during vulnerable passages of life. The episode reflects on pine flower essence and its traditional associations with self-acceptance, revealing how a relationship with one plant can become woven into the story of healing and belonging.
The Wisdom of Roots and the Descent
As branches reach toward the heavens, roots descend into the hidden world below. In autumn, many perennial plants gather resources underground while fallen leaves and stems become nourishment for the soil. What appears to be an ending aboveground is part of an ongoing transformation beneath our feet.
A story of students carefully unearthing a magnificent yellow dock root brings this teaching into focus. The work requires patience, many hands, and a willingness to kneel close to the Earth. Root medicine brings us to our knees, into attention, humility, and perhaps a place of prayer.
The episode also considers the bitter qualities of roots such as dandelion, burdock, yellow dock, and angelica, valued in digestive herbalism. Their relationship with digestion becomes a reflection on grief: not something to erase or hurry past, but an experience we slowly learn to carry and integrate. The inner fire is not meant to burn sorrow away. It helps sustain life while sorrow remains.
Angelica, Hawthorn, and Living Legacy
Some plants connect us to ancestral landscapes and to the hands that gathered medicine before us. Angelica, with its warming aromatic root and associations with spiritual protection, reaches both above and below. Seeds planted after the passing of an Irish grandfather become a living bridge between family history, place, and the present.
Hawthorn, familiar in Irish hedgerows and rich in folklore, brings the heart into conversation with herbal tradition. When a student carries hawthorn into her own bitter preparation, another form of ancestry becomes visible: the knowledge and relationships we pass forward. A living legacy is not only what we inherit, but what continues through others.
The Plants That Hold Memory
Ancestral remembrance is not always found in names or written histories. It may arrive through the fragrance of a flower, a familiar fruit, or a recipe prepared with herbs passed through a family. Roses, lilacs, apples, St. John’s wort, dandelion, and calendula can become doorways into memories and imagined connections with earlier generations.
This episode invites us to recognize the plants present at our beginnings, through our becoming, and at the thresholds of loss. Their medicine also lives in relationship.
Ritual Invitation
For Samhain, consider a plant that belongs to your ancestral story. It might be an herb used in family cooking, a flower from a childhood garden, or a tree associated with someone you love.
Bring a leaf, dried flower, photograph, or carefully gathered branch to an ancestor altar, or prepare a familiar meal and share the stories it awakens.
You do not need to know every name or every story. Begin with gratitude, curiosity, and attention. As the season turns, remember that we walk among elders, teachers, and kin. The plants have traveled through countless cycles of darkness and return, and their companionship remains available as we make our own descent.
Thank you for walking this seasonal path and listening to the Ritual Herbalism Podcast. Blessed Samhain.
Registration is open for our Flower Essence Practitioner Program. This is a beautiful offering for those who are interested in working with the energetics of the plants.
Want to go deeper?
Join us at Twin Star Tribe to explore the art of ritual herbalism, energetic plant medicine, and ancestral healing. Our online and in-person offerings are here to support your journey—whether you’re just beginning or deepening your path with the plants.
Come be part of a growing community rooted in Earth wisdom, sacred remembrance, and collective transformation. Visit our website at www.twinstartribe.com and step into the circle. We’d be honored to welcome you.
Disclaimer and release of liability: information and services provided on this website, by Lauren “Lupo” Passero and by Twin Star Herbal Education and Shakti Exchange LLC are not intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any medical condition and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Information provided on this website and during all classes, programs and trips are for educational and entertainment purposes only.