Roots+Circle
The roots: Radical reclamation of ancestral magic and folk healing practices that reconnects us to an embodied presence on the land, with each other, and for the future of our planet.
The circle: The circle of life, the cycle of the seasons, the circular nature of time, and the reciprocal, sympoietic, and emergent relationship these have with the human community, the individual, and the multi-species collective that we call Earth.
About Lisa Fazio
Folkloric Witch : Herbalist: Writer
Lisa Fazio is an Irish/Italian American folklore witch, heretic, herbalist, astrologer, and the mother of 4 children and Nonna to 2 grandchildren. She is also “una donna che aiutana” (a woman who helps). This is an Italian phrase that refers to the traditional peasant herbalists and healers who provided physical, spiritual, and energetic healing services to their communities both in italy and in the Italian diaspora. Her principal training is in Traditional Western Herbalism, Western Astrology, and the folk ways of her Italian immigrant family. The primary focus of her work is ancestral revival and remembrance within the Italian diaspora as well as with anyone who longs for ancestral connection.
Her practices uses the tools and methods from the Folk Catholic and animistic traditions of her Italian ancestors who were the original people of Calabria; the Brutti people, and Benevento; the Samnite people.
She has an academic background in Psychology and Ethnobotany as well as years of study and practice in the traditions of Trika Shaivism and Plant Spirit Medicine. She is also a tracker, a wilderness first responder and spent 20 years working as a clinical and community herbalist.
She thinks of herself as an infinite embodied imaginal being living as a human doing her best to remember what it’s like to be in a multigenerational and multi-species relationship with all time; past, present, and future.
Her forthcoming book “Della Medicina: Plants of Italian American Folk medicine” (Inner Traditions, 2023) is a book of ancestral and cultural traditions and practices focused on plants and Italian American healing practices.
The “Official” Story
My primary herbal medicine training was by informal, ancient-style apprenticeship where I worked daily, one-on-one, herbalist Kate Gilday of Woodland Essence for over 20 years. I continue to be under Kate’s mentorship to this day and spent 12 years as an employee for her business working as a wildcrafter, gardener, consulting with customers, filling orders, preparing formulations and all other aspects of herbal medicine making. I also worked and learned from late great herbalist Jean Argus of Jean’s Greens as an organic gardener and medicine maker.
My formal herbal training includes several structured training series and long-term group apprenticeships with many teachers including Matthew Wood and Pam Montgomery. Focuses of formal study and practice include: Spiritual Ecology, the Heart as the Path to Spirit, Plants as teachers, Journeying, Working with the Medicine Wheel, Five Element Theory, the Chakra System, Ayurveda, Alchemy, the six tissue states, the four qualities, the six directions, the twelve primary organ systems, traditional herbal diagnosis, specific medicine and Western Herbal materia medica.
I have spent 3 decades studying and practicing the language of astrology under both the formal and informal tutelage of master astrologer Tiny Shuster where I first learned to devise astrology charts by hand, mathematically using logarithms and a calculator. This is known as the "old fashioned way" and although computer programs were becoming available at the time, Tiny insisted her students learn to cast charts by hand first. This has offered me an opportunity to understand the logical and system-based underpinnings of astrological placement and astronomy.
I continue to study with Tiny(she's 92 and more amazing than ever) at the present. She nows uses a fancy, dancy computer program for efficiency and for all the fun bells and whistles but the quality is as deep and skillful as the old way was. I am also an associate member of the American Federation of Astrologers.
I also hold a BA in psychology from the State University of New York, an AAS in Human Services from Mohawk Valley Community College and have completed Master’s level studies in Chemistry, Botany, and Environmental Science.
Additional trainings and certifications include: Herbal First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, Flower Essence Practitioner, Medical Astrology, and Social Permaculture(in process).
***The lands I live upon are the unceded, colonized territory of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy and I am committed to the continued acknowledgement and awareness of the trauma and genocide that occured here as well as acting in every way possible, to the best of my ability and awareness, to honor these First Nations, accept responsibility for my own and my ancestors complicity in this ongoing conquest, and make every effort to learn more, understand greater, and do better at contributing to the creation of a right and reparative relationship with this place and it’s indigenous people and all those oppressed by white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy.
““The wound reveals the cure.” ”
“Lisa has been graciously sharing the ways of herbal healing for many years, weaving her experience and intimate connection with plants and the sacred Earth from which they rise with the science and magick she has found along the way.
Her classes and workshops are designed to not only offer traditional herbal medicine studies, but also to help encourage and empower students to bring herbal support and allies into their daily lives.
Hands-on demonstrations, well researched information, along with a deep well of experience and knowledge create a space for true learning in a community of plants and people. I love Lisa’s desire to awaken and expand new ways of thinking about healing, her hands-in-the-soil, simple yet profound insights along with her integrity and fearlessness in tackling some of the larger issues of health and well-being as a birth-right for all!
She speaks of and for the medicine plants she knows so well even as she honors the ancient ways of tending hearth, home, body and soul. She is a gifted medicine woman, in a timeless lineage of herbalists, who carries on the task of educating and healing in beautiful ways! Not to be missed!”
“I am blessed and honored to know Lisa for many years personally and professionally. I love her holistic mindset where healing body, mind, and spirit with herbs, flowers and planet energy empowers individuals, communities and nature itself. Lisa is a true wise woman.
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Below is a link to the full story of my first adventures hiking with my grandfather:
This all started for me that day when I was four years old and hiking in the Adirondack mountains with my grandfather. He took me along on his daily rounds up the mountain trails above his the cabin where he and my grandma lived, and where he was always tracking the daily activities of the white-tailed deer and collecting his favorite edible mushrooms. We were walking along as usual and I looked off the trail to the slanted rock faces, the smoothed over glacial crevices, the carved ancient grade with brief landings where trees gripped the edges and lifted their branches upwards toward the next turn of rock face toward the zenith.