Taurus Astro-Herbalism with Kyle Denton (Tippecanoe Herbs) & Michelle Lundquist
Tonight we bull-rush into the Spring and continue the Astro-Herbalism series, exploring the plant signatures that tell the tale of Taurus' virtues. Returning to enlighten us are Kyle Denton (Tippecanoe Herbs), Michelle Lundquist (Michelle's Healing Home), and Mario Garza (Symbolic Studies). Expect beautiful blossoms of wisdom!
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In this episode
Core themes
The Hierophant Card and the Bridge Builder
Mario walked through the hierophant card, pointing to its five pointed stars, the five petaled flower behind the figure and the number five, and said the title Pontifex Maximus meant bridge builder. One of the hosts described the word hierophant as the holy made visible and tied it to the spring surge of growth, then suggested the card carried a secret of letters. Another speaker described a pulse reading exercise taught in a class, said to be learned from Matthew Wood, in which a written plant name was said to change how a pulse felt.
The Neck, the Throat and the Language Bridge
The group linked Taurus to the neck and throat. Mario said the blue collar on the Rider Waite hierophant matched the throat color, and he recalled his tower card talk about the Tower of Babel as a broken communication bridge. Gabe said Socrates reportedly called the neck an isthmus, and another speaker added that part of the thyroid carries that name. One speaker wondered whether a secret might be the shadow of the hierophant, and later a speaker offered calamus and the Sanskrit word vacha, which they described as meaning both cow and voice.
Rose and the Rose Family
Kyle presented rose for the first Venus ruled sign of the series. He described thorns as boundaries that made room for vulnerability, the five petals as a Venus signature, and the rose petal shape as a guide for reading the tongue. He said he thought of rose as an astringent for grief and shared a short jingle on guitar. Michelle added photos of a wild woods rose with pink thorns, and Kyle mentioned the acronym Yarfa as a memory aid for the rose family astringents.
Ladies Mantle, Violet and Strawberry
Michelle presented ladies mantle as one of the first herbs she grew, describing the beaded dew on the leaves that she said alchemists collected. Kyle presented violet as heartsease, said he chewed the leaf on long herb walks, and told the Greek story of Io and how violets sprang up. Michelle then described strawberry as a Venus plant, said the leaves were edible, and wondered whether wild strawberries stayed small because nature offered only what was needed.
Clover, Trillium and Vanilla Leaf
Kyle presented red clover through its link to cows, its three leaves and its nitrogen fixing habit, and asked the group to help decode a pale triangle on the leaf. Michelle presented trillium, called birth root, and said she made its flower essence by setting a bowl of water beside the plant because it was endangered. She then described vanilla leaf, nicknamed sweet after death because it only smelled of vanilla once dried, and said it grew near trillium and wild strawberry in her region.
Quotes
“I feel like the luckiest podcaster in the world that I get to do this in my house with these people. It is so much fun. I learn a ton.”
“So this is my bull. I used AI to make a flowery bull head, and then I did a bunch of other stuff to make it all look the way I wanted. So who says you can't use AI art for good and actually bring your own creative energy to it?”
“And, you know, the pope, his alternate name or his actual name is Pontifex Maximus. And essentially that means bridge builder, as far as I'm understanding things. And so he is kind of like a mediator or a bridge between the people and God or the heavens, if you will.”
“I like the term five petaled flower as opposed to five pointed star because in nature we see five petaled flowers, but we don't really see five pointed stars. It's kind of like a symbolic, almost like a sharp representation of what we do see in nature and these flowers.”
“If you haven't caught on by now, when you see leaves of three, there's the same leaves of three, let it be. And I say leaves of three make a baby. It's like a symbol of fertility. We have the father. We got the mother, and we got the baby, or we got the two legs of the woman and the baby coming out from the third appendage there.”
“And then also too regarding this five nature, Venus in the night sky from the perspective of Earth creates a five petaled flower over the course of eight years, is my understanding. And it's called the Venus Rose or the Venus Pentagram.”
“In order to have room to bloom and really show who you are, the softest parts of you, the most vulnerable parts, it also cultivates a boundary and a strength at the same time. And one kind of begets the other, just like Mars all the way across the way in Scorpio.”
“So this one actually came to me, spoke to me from the garden, because I was out in the garden and I was like, oh, the ladies mantle is really coming in. And it was like, I looked at her, she looked at me. I'm like, I have to talk about you for Taurus Astro Herbs.”
“A lot of times our bodies, our biology, even us as people are more agreeable to the gentle explanations and to the gentle leadership. And that's what the plants of Venus offer.”
“Most all parts of the strawberry are actually edible. Majority of the time you see strawberries are stripped of that top greenery, but you can actually just pop the whole thing in. You don't have to chop that off. I think that's almost a little bit of a propaganda piece, taking away some of the nutrients that that plant gives us.”
“It's one of the reasons why I love working with flower essences so much is because they're so gentle, but they're so potent and they're so moving.”
“I mean, just look at what kind of insights we're able to achieve with this group when we're all putting our heads together and bringing our linguistic, symbolic, herbalistic and all the above type of knowledge to bear our powers combined. And there's actually a lot of room for more insights.”
Gabriel, known on air as Slick Dissident, co-hosts InnerVerse's Vibe Rant show and is a longtime recurring guest on the podcast. He teaches occult symbolism and tarot on his YouTube channel, ranging across the Major Arcana, the esoteric Enneagram, mythology and archetype, mystic linguistics, and the symbolism hidden in popular film. He is best known for Tarot-tories, his own system mapping the 22 Major Arcana and zodiac archetypes onto the geography of the United States.
See all Gabe episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
