Root Medicine as Liberation Technology
From The Reclamation of Ancestral Medicine
My grandmother kept mason jars of fire cider in the pantry to ward off winter colds. The balance of ginger, horseradish, turmeric, onion, jalapeño, chamomile, honey, apple cider vinegar, black pepper, garlic, oregano, rosemary, and whatever else she felt like throwing in wasn't solely for physical health, but spiritual protection too. I never questioned where she learned this intricate alchemy, and only now do I understand that in her quiet kitchen rituals, she carried forward knowledge systems that once sustained entire liberation movements.
As eclipse season creates its backdrop of transformation from September 7th through September 21st, and as we settle into Virgo season's energy after the August 23rd New Moon, I find myself reflecting on how healing knowledge became revolutionary infrastructure. This mutable earth energy, ruled by Mercury, asks us to take complete inventory of what we've accumulated and how we might transform it. For enslaved Africans and their descendants, this inventory included botanical wisdom that would become both survival mechanism and liberation tool.
Virgo's Deepening Wisdom
We're crossing the threshold into the night half of the year, where Virgo season prepares us for Fall and Winter months when things go dormant and roots deepen. Just as Virgo energy requires us to understand exactly what we're working with before we can create change, enslaved healers had to take complete inventory of available plants, assess which African knowledge could adapt to new landscapes, and build networks of care that would sustain both daily survival and freedom work.
The precision required for this kind of healing mirrors Virgo's approach to transformation. These weren't random folk remedies but carefully tested knowledge systems passed through generations with exactitude that meant the difference between life and death. As we move toward Virgo season's end with one final Virgo new moon, I hope this exploration energizes you to zoom in on your own family's healthcare knowledge systems. What remedies did your ancestors carry? What plant wisdom lives in your lineage? As we pass through this final Virgo moon gate, there's powerful medicine in folding your own ancestral healing practices into your preparations for Autumn and Winter.
Seeds in Hair, Medicine in Memory
When Africans boarded slave ships, they carried more than their bodies into bondage. Leah Penniman documents in "Farming While Black" how they braided seeds into their hair, wove medicinal knowledge into songs, and embedded healing practices in stories that would survive the Middle Passage. This preservation of botanical wisdom feels deeply connected to Virgo's earth energy.
The medicinal knowledge that crossed the Atlantic represented centuries of accumulated understanding about plant medicine. African healing traditions were, and remain, among the world's most sophisticated medical systems, alongside those of India and China. Yet when enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas, this knowledge had to adapt quickly to new ecosystems while maintaining its essential power.
What moves me about this process is how deliberate it was. Healers didn't randomly experiment but observed which American plants shared properties with familiar African species. They collaborated with Indigenous Americans, learning local plant wisdom. They tested carefully, passed knowledge orally through trusted networks, and built medicine systems that would sustain resistance work for generations (Hoodoo).
Root Doctors as Knowledge Keepers
The Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives from the 1930s capture firsthand accounts of these healing traditions. In Maryland, one interview describes a woman whose mother worked with Dr. Ensor, a homeopathic doctor, learning to "assist in making medicine" and becoming known as "the doctor woman" throughout Baltimore County. She "prescribed for her people and compounded medicine out of the same leaves, herbs and roots that Dr. Ensor did," but her practice included prayer and spiritual connection that white medicine dismissed.
This integration of physical and spiritual healing represents something essential about root medicine that made it revolutionary. As historian Sharla Fett writes in "Working Cures," healing was both "spiritual and practical" work that connected practitioners to authority higher than their owners. Through healing, both doctor and patient reclaimed agency over their own bodies, creating pockets of self-determination within systems designed to deny their humanity.
The knowledge itself was revolutionary infrastructure. Root doctors understood which plants treated respiratory diseases like tuberculosis and whooping cough, how to prepare sassafras as blood cleanser, which herbs eased childbirth, and how to compound medicines that western doctors often couldn't match. Katie Arbery, interviewed through the Federal Writers' Project, remembered being near death until her doctor "fed me for three weeks steady on okra soup cooked with chicken...Then I commenced gettin' better and here I am."
Medicine as Resistance Technology
Harriet Tubman with sketches of Black Cherry, Paw Paw, and Sassafras. Known plant allies that assisted her during her time as conductor on the Underground Railroad
The connection between healing knowledge and liberation work becomes most clear in the life of Harriet Tubman. Beyond her role as Underground Railroad conductor, Tubman was accomplished herbalist whose plant medicine sustained both escape routes and military operations. She carried remedies passed down from her grandmother, treating fugitive enslaved people, keeping babies quiet during dangerous passages, and healing Union soldiers during the Civil War.
Can you imagine the experience of running from enslavement but feeling grounded because you found allies in the geography itself? This is the sort of countercartography that energizes my research.
Tubman's botanical expertise included knowing which plants provided nutrition during long journeys and which could treat the wounded. She famously cured a soldier dying from dysentery by creating medicinal infusion from water lilies and cranesbill. She dosed bread with opium poppy tinctures to quiet crying babies whose voices might reveal hiding places. Her foraging skills fed entire groups traveling toward freedom.
This demonstrates how root medicine functioned as liberation technology. The same precise plant knowledge that preserved health in slave quarters became the infrastructure supporting organized resistance. Tubman's healing work mirrors the thoughtful preparation that characterized other successful liberation movements, where careful planning and detailed knowledge created sustainable freedom.
Networks of Care, Systems of Freedom
These healing traditions created networks that transcended individual practice. Root doctors, midwives, and herbalists formed interconnected systems of knowledge sharing that moved information across plantations, between urban and rural communities, and through generations. Rather than isolated practitioners, they operated as nodes in larger networks of care that supported both daily survival and organized resistance.
The spiritual dimension of this work created additional layers of connection and meaning. Unlike European-derived medicine that increasingly separated physical treatment from spiritual practice, African-derived healing maintained integration between body, spirit, and community. Healers began treatments with prayer, used ritual alongside herbs, and understood illness as imbalance requiring both botanical intervention and spiritual realignment.
This holistic approach sustained entire communities under assault. The same networks that shared medicinal knowledge also passed information about escape routes, safe houses, and resistance activities. Root doctors often served as conductors on Underground Railroad routes, their medical knowledge providing cover for movement and their spiritual authority legitimizing resistance work.
Celestial Timing and Medicine Wisdom
Mercury's rulership over Virgo connects directly to how this knowledge moved through communities. Mercury governs communication, and these healing traditions demonstrate sophisticated information networks that moved botanical knowledge, resistance strategies, and spiritual practices across vast distances through dangerous circumstances. The precision required to maintain healing effectiveness while adapting to new plants and conditions reflects Mercury's gift for detailed analysis and practical application.
As we prepare for autumn's integration and root deepening, these traditions offer guidance about preserving essential knowledge while adapting to changing conditions. The same Virgoan energy that supported botanical preservation can help us take inventory of our own healing resources and resistance strategies.
Contemporary Medicine
Today's movement toward plant-based medicine and community healing carries forward these traditions in ways both obvious and subtle. When contemporary herbalists emphasize knowing your plants intimately, building relationship with local ecosystems, and integrating spiritual practice with physical healing, they're drawing from knowledge systems that sustained liberation movements for centuries.
The current emphasis on community care, mutual aid, and healing justice directly connects to networks that root doctors and midwives created within enslaved communities. The understanding that healing addresses both immediate symptoms and root causes reflects wisdom that Black healers preserved through centuries of oppression.
The root medicine traditions of enslaved Africans and their descendants remind us that revolution happens through the careful preservation and application of knowledge that serves life. In their attention to plants, precise preparation of medicines, and integration of healing with resistance work, they created liberation technology that continues to inform movements for justice and healing today.
Their legacy suggests that sustainable freedom requires the same thoughtful preparation that Virgo season supports: taking complete inventory of our resources, understanding exactly what we're working with, and building systems of care that sustain transformation over generations. In their hands, medicine became revolution, healing became resistance, and careful attention to the earth's gifts became a pathway to liberation.
Resources for Deeper Research
Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives - Library of Congress collection of over 2,300 first-person accounts including extensive medical and healing practices
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia: Medicinal Practices of Enslaved Peoples - Educational series documenting African American herbal traditions with historical context
The Herbal Academy: Roots of African American Herbalism - Contemporary analysis of historical African American botanical knowledge and its preservation
Soul Fire Farm - Leah Penniman's work documenting traditional African diasporic farming and healing practices
