Taught by Thorns Ebook

Taught by Thorns: Mythic Herbalism & The Medicine of Shadow

by Kiva Rosethorn

The forest is both a physical place and a mythic one, a living cathedral where medicine, mystery, and story intertwine.

In Taught by Thorns, herbalist, mythologist, and poet Kiva Rosethorn invites readers to step through the hedge: that wild, liminal space between the human world and the green Otherworld. Drawing on decades of animistic herbal practice and mythopoetic reflection, she offers a deeply personal journey through the forests of memory, spirit, and medicine.

This is a book about learning from the forest and its healers,  Juniper, Hawthorn, Rowan and all those who dwell between root and sky. It is about descent and renewal, the sacredness of shadow, and the way thorns both protect and teach. Moving between folklore, clinical herbalism, and personal revelation, Kiva reclaims the practice of plant medicine as an art of relationship, intuitive, embodied, and numinous. Blending memoir with materia medica, Taught by Thorns speaks to herbalists, mystics, and seekers of enchantment alike. Each page opens a threshold into a world where healing is not merely the mending of the body, but the restoration of wonder, belonging, and reverence for the living Earth.

Written in lyrical, myth-infused prose, Taught by Thorns calls us back to the wild intelligence of the green world. to the sacred dialogue between human and forest, healer and hedge, self and shadow. For those who have ever felt the call of the trees, the whisper of hawthorn petals on the wind, or the medicine hidden in darkness, this is a book of remembrance, a living spell, and an offering to the numinous.