In this era of global consumerism, almost anything can be delivered to your door with the click of a button. And yet, people are still hungry for something…we think that something is a connection to the Earth, plants, and meaningful community.
The herbal industry is booming, people are searching for natural alternatives, but maybe there’s something more they’re seeking too - they sense that herbs can provide some of the connection we crave.
But this quick growth in the industry has led to large corporations buying up many herbal brands. Sadly, corporations often demand that profit is the top priority rather than quality. This extractive mindset leads to cutting corners, like buying cheaper herbs from unknown growers in faraway lands and turning a blind eye to poor ecological practices. The result is herbal products of compromised quality that feed the cycle of unsustainable practices and that aren’t truly healthy for the land, plants, and people.
But we take a different approach. We put our values first. In crafting our small-batch herbal spagyrics, we start from a place of connection to the land we grow on, the plants we grow, and the people we work with. And a natural consequence of prioritizing connections is that our products have a vital potency that’s rare in this modern world.
Our small-batch spagyrics honor four core values: family, sustainability, tradition, and connection, creating herbal products of rare vitality and potency.
The Four Principles Guiding Our Work with Small-Batch Spagyrics
We are a Family-Run, Farm-Based Business
In 2009, we started Natura Sophia Spagyrics out of a desire to create exceptionally potent herbal products. Our humble business has grown slowly and steadily over the years, but we remain a small family business that crafts small-batch spagyric tinctures and essences.
Unlike large-scale herbal product makers, we still run Natura Sophia Spagyrics ourselves, with just two valued employees. This allows us to oversee quality at every step of the process.
These days, Whitney spends most of her time sourcing the freshest and most vital herbs possible. She focuses on:
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Growing, harvesting, and processing the herbs that become our spagyrics on our family farm
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Building relationships with other growers and wildcrafters (often other family-run businesses)
While Sajah spends most of his time running our sister company, The School of Evolutionary Herbalism, where he’s busy educating future herbalists. He also works in our spagyrics lab, developing our herbal formulations and maintaining our quality control for our traditional alchemical processes.
We Know Potency and Sustainability Go Hand-in-Hand
Our commitment to connection inspires us to grow as many of the herbs we use as possible in our small-batch spagyrics. And our desire to restore balance to the Earth drives us to use permaculture and regenerative agricultural methods on our farm. These practices create healthy, living soil that, in turn, grows healthy, vibrant plants.
For herbs we don’t yet grow, we turn to our community of fellow herbalists and growers, who share our values and priorities. For example, we buy many herbs from Oshala Farm in the Applegate Valley of Oregon. Their commitment to regenerative agriculture has led them to pioneer farming methods that completely exclude plastics from their land.
We have many friends who are ethical wildcrafters, like Naturespirit Herbs and Friends of the Trees Botanicals, and who’ve been tending a close relationship with wild stands of herbs in the Pacific Northwest for decades. Their responsible practices ensure the health of the ecosystems they harvest from.
Buying herbs from growers and wildcrafters in our community strengthens the bonds between us and enables all of us to keep doing the work we do. We pay top dollar for these herbs because we value connection and quality. Plants produced with industrial methods are often weak, which ultimately yields a weak extract. But regeneratively grown and responsibly wildcrafted herbs are healthy and vitally potent. And this potency extends into our spagyrics.
We Use Traditional Alchemy to Guide Our Work with Plants
Our small-batch spagyric process is rooted in traditional, European alchemy. We use old-world techniques that waste nothing: the whole plant is in the bottle.
The spagyric process, which descends from Paracelsus, mimics natural processes and takes the plant on a journey of transformation. We start with fresh, vibrant herbs and end with a full-spectrum herbal extraction containing the complete mineral profile of the plant.
Our spagyric essences unite each plant’s three essential principles:
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Sulfur (Soul): Fresh plants yield essential oils through distillation
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Mercury (Spirit): After distilling, the plant material is fermented to create its own alcohol
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Salt (Body): The remaining plant material is purified with fire and water to extract its mineral salts
Our spagyric tinctures are crafted with a simpler process, but we still preserve the marc (leftover plant material) to extract its alchemical Salt. This means they contain highly bioavailable minerals, making them unique among tinctures.
Working with traditional alchemical methods and safeguarding the quality of the herbs we use allows us to create herbal spagyric essences and tinctures of exceptional potency and efficacy. Here’s what our customers have to say:
"I immediately saw deeper changes and more rapid healing in my clients after I switched from conventional tinctures to Natura Sophia Spagyrics. The little bottles on my office shelf are no longer simple medicines, but rather potentized plant consciousness in a user-friendly form. These herbs (and Sajah and Whitney’s wisdom) have accelerated an alchemical process for me and my clients that is continuing to unfold with each passing season."
- Dr. Travis Elliot, N.D.
We Prioritize Connection to the Land
Currently, industrial agriculture is pursuing AI and robotics to replace humans in farming, further disconnecting people from the land. Some people argue that this level of mechanization is needed to feed the world. But we think it will only cause more harm to the health of people and the Earth.
Instead, we practice small-scale farming, herbalism, and spagyrics as a way to reweave humanity’s connection to the Earth.
From seed to harvest, each herb we grow is a chance to establish this connection. A relationship is born with each seed we sow, and it develops through the growing season. While the plant slowly matures, we watch over it, tend the soil with compost and mulch, and eliminate weeds that compete for space. When it comes time to harvest, we do so with gratitude and respect for each plant that we’ve come to know.
We do all this because the journey back to wholeness begins with healing our relationship with the land, plants, and people. We believe that this relationship is captured in our spagyrics. And it’s what makes them so potently effective and transformational for you.
Growing Natura Sophia: The Next Step in Our Journey
Our goal for the future is to be as truly seed-to-bottle as possible. This year, we made a huge leap to expand our herbal farming, purchasing a 10-acre organic farm solely for our business with the goal to grow as many of the herbs we use in our spagyrics as possible. We also plan to experiment with growing some Chinese herbs that are harder to source locally, like Schisandra berry, Andrographis, and Licorice root.
These efforts will allow us to continue our commitment to providing a robust apothecary of practitioner-grade herbal spagyrics. At the same time, we’ll also be deepening our connection to the land, plants, and community.
[Shop Small-Batch Spagyrics]
More Resources:
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To learn more about the history of the traditional, alchemical processes we use in our herbal spagyrics, visit our blog post, “Tracing the Ancient Roots of Spagyrics.”
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To learn more about herbal education, visit our sister business, The School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
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For more information about sustainability in the herbal industry, please visit the United Plant Savers.
- Please visit our Sourcing Page to learn about the other small-scale, sustainable farmers and wildcrafters we buy herbs from.
We also regularly share herbal and alchemical wisdom, along with seasonal sales in our newsletters and on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. We look forward to seeing you there!
