ETP 70 // Witch Season Wisdom: Samhain Rituals, Slow Living & Nettles with Crystal Woodling
ETP #70
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“You want to treat this herb as an intelligence, as another person. Somebody who can teach you something.” -Crystal Woodling
Witch season is here, and herbalist Crystal Woodling is spending it slowly: keeping the old Samhain rituals for her ancestors, tending three beehives and drinking a lot of nettle tea. Crystal co-founded the School of Heaven and Earth, and she comes from a long line of Appalachian medicine women. She first came on the show for EP 9, and this time we sipped nettles together the whole way through. Underneath everything she shared is one idea: when you slow down, you start to feel the world around you again, and the plants, the bees and your ancestors have a lot to say.
Samhain Rituals and the Dumb Supper
Every Samhain, Crystal keeps a dumb supper, a silent meal with one extra place set for an ancestor, with food, a drink and a photo. Nobody speaks, and nobody looks at that seat. "Symbolic thought has only been around for 100,000 years," she said. "So we have a long evolution of communicating through feeling and not through symbol."
My mom died eight years ago. Every October 31st, after everyone goes to bed, I set out apple pie for her, because of the night she baked one and the two of us sat and ate from it until half was gone.
The old Samhain rituals were a reset. Every hearth fire in the village went out, a communal fire was lit, and people carried embers home in jack-o'-lanterns carved from turnips, "which is much harder carving than pumpkins. We tried it."
Slow Living, Bees, and the Land
Crystal and Matthew have never used the mower they inherited. They planted clover instead, and now indigo buntings ride the grass stems down to eat the seeds. Their three hives sit right outside the bedroom door. The bees stay calm around people who move slowly and go after visitors who feel scared, so, as Crystal put it, "you're learning to regulate with the bees."
She doesn't pretend it's easy. She has no patience for the tradwife movement, which makes homesteading look effortless while telling women to give up financial independence. Her answer to the workload is fruit and nut trees and a lot less weeding.
That same slowness is why Crystal is proudly anti-AI. She said AI can take a lot off your plate, but you give up your attention and "the piece of you that would have developed in doing that task." What she wants more of are places where we're required to be slow and present, so we can feel reality again.
“In doing something fast, you're always going to sacrifice something, and it's going to be presence.”-Crystal Woodling
Stinging Nettle Tea Benefits and Learning Herbs by Relationship
Nettles was Crystal's pick for our tea, because it's energizing and it's the first plant she works with in her GAIA course. It was the first herb I got to know in that course too, years ago.
She explained stinging nettle tea benefits through the plant's two rulers. Its Mars side cleanses, moving heavy metals and toxins out of the body. Its Venus side nourishes, with a ton of iron, protein and chlorophyll, while supporting the adrenals and kidneys. Nettles also calms the stress response, so you spend more time in the rest-and-digest state where you can "feel more."
Crystal would rather you meet the plant before you read about it. In GAIA, you drink an herb, sleep with it under your pillow and journal with it before you learn what it's "for." "You can read all you want, but you don't know anything about that plant," she said. When she brews tea, she talks to the plant as if it were a teacher, and to her that time is slow living, not wasted time.
She also said that what you birth with nettles can be completely different from what someone else does, and that's been true for me. I was taking her course during a long road trip at the end of a seven-year fertility journey when I heard Natalie Ross and Becca Piastrelli sipping nettles on a podcast. One of them said, "We're the wild ones," and I got chills. That was the birth of The Wild Ones community.
If you want to meet nettles that way yourself, GAIA registration is open until October 22.
Key Takeaways
A dumb supper is a silent meal with one place set for your ancestors, and it's one of the simplest Samhain rituals to try at home.
Slow living is something you practice: brewing tea, tending bees and planting trees all ask for your presence and attention.
Get to know an herb by relationship first. Drink it, sleep with it under your pillow and journal with it before you read what it's "for."
Episode Breakdown with Timestamps
04:23 — Welcome to witch season: Halloween vs Samhain and how to celebrate Samhain
07:45 — When is Samhain? Moon timing, cross-quarter days and the Pleiades
15:02 — The dumb supper: a silent meal for honoring your ancestors
18:56 — Samhain rituals: the communal fire, turnip jack-o'-lanterns and the Celtic new year
23:31 — Crystal's land sanctuary: a no-mow lawn, natural beekeeping and a future retreat center
36:20 — The tradwife movement and the reality of homesteading
42:41 — Food forests and the lazy garden that grew better
44:23 — Slow living vs AI: presence, attention and feeling reality again
53:57 — Stinging nettle tea benefits, tea as a relationship, and how nettles named The Wild Ones
68:26 — Learning herbs by relationship: Crystal's GAIA course, dreamwork and where to buy nettles
About Crystal Woodling
Crystal was born into a deep lineage of Appalachian medicine women and spent her childhood harvesting medicines and befriending the fae and primordial elementals of the world's most ancient hills and waterways. She is co-director of The School of Heaven & Earth, founder of Sibyl's Cave, a yogini with over two decades of daily practice, a full-time teacher with 20 years of experience, and a skilled herbal and astral witch and journey-work practitioner. She left her career as a creative writing and literature professor and performing artist, and spent over a decade studying with and hosting healers and elders from folk and indigenous cultures around the globe at her wellness center in Western Pennsylvania. She has studied and apprenticed with Ola Obassi, Julie McIntyre, Ashley Litecky-Elenbaas, Matthew Wood and Margi Flint. GAIA is her flagship course in healing through earth medicines.
Connect with Jenner Linden
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Join Crystal's GAIA course: seven months of plant and stone medicine, with registration open until October 22. Use code WILDONES26 for 10% off.
The free Dream Healing Guide on Crystal Woodling's website
Staying Human in the Age of AI with Natalie MacNeil: the AI conversation I mention
Mountain Rose Herbs, Starwest Botanicals and Frontier Co-op: Crystal's online picks for dried nettles, after a local herbalist or herb shop
More Episodes You'll Love
Astrology and Herbalism as a Portal to Belonging with Crystal Woodling (EP 9)
Reclaiming Ancient Practices as a Portal to Being a Wise Woman with Seraphina Capranos (EP 12)
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