The Alchemist Gold // botanical distillation workshop

Join in for a packed & potent 2-day distillation workshop at a beautiful medicinal herb farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  

Gather your curiosity & bring your prima materia!

 This weekend is for folks interested in how to work a traditional copper alembic to distill plant medicine, both essential oils and hydrosols, and to discover how this process also works within us to distill the self. 

You'll walk away with a hands-on, embodied understanding of plant distillation and distillate medicine, and also be introduced to the esoteric knowledge of this alchemical process. We’ll touch on the 7 stages of alchemy, their planetary associations, and how these archetypes and energies are reflected in our lives and how to work with thems.

The prima materia is what we bring to be transformed. It’s the patterns and stagnancies we are holding and ready to transmute into knowledge that will guide our evolution deeper into our authentic self. We will be taking our lead and discovering how it may become gold, and how the physical process of distillation that will be our weekend background will create a medicine to take home and continue working with on this journey. 

If you are like what is prima materia, great! This weekend will help you understand that concept! It's said simply understanding what prima materia refers to is half the problem solved. This is a weekend of curious, open minds and questioning. 

If you've ever been interested in Depth Psychology or Alchemical Psychology, this class is a great introduction. 

PLUS: At the end of class we will spend a little time diving into the next incarnation of this workshop, The Secret Fire. You'll need to gave taken this class to join in the more advanced workshop, which will be one day, held at the shop in town. 

Kestrel is my most favorite place to teach. Having access to this incredibly beautiful land that's been carefully, organically & regeneratively tended means we get to meet the plant, take part in careful harvesting practices and see it through the process of distillation. On the second day we will discuss how distillate medicine is supportive and take some time to explore what we've created. 

Just as the distillation process requires a strong vessel and the circulation of air and water through our physical, earthly matter, we will start each morning with a very short movement practice to strengthen our own vessel and get our energetic channels moving and prepared for the day's work. This optional but I wouldn’t be adding it to the weekend if I didn’t think it was so powerful!

This workshop is small and intimate in hopes we can create a safe space, held by the land and the work, to really dive deep.

Once we have our group we can discuss if we want community meals or the ability to go off into asheville. Plan to make some magical friends!

Times:

June 7 & 8, 2025

Saturday 10:30-7:30 (hour break for lunch or swimming!)

Sunday 10:30-3:30 is pack up and any

purchases of herbal medicine from Kestrel Farm  available all weekend.

Campers can arrive in the afternoon of Sept 27

Facility:

Kestrel Herb Farm in Sandy Mush, NC (about 35 minutes from Asheville, NC)

More details will be emailed with welcome packet.

Camping is availably Friday & Saturday night for $20 paid to Kestrel. Available are two bathrooms, a shower, a hot plate, kettle, plenty of fresh clean water, a pond, pups to pet, flowers to sniff and all of kestrels herbal products and you-pick-herbs for anyone interested to take home more medicine. Campers can arrive in the afternoon of Sept 27.

refunds: full refunds issued until 3 weeks prior to start of event sept 28. since this event requires planning and travel, refunds will only be consider for serious issues leading up to event 

About the instructor: 

Ash Sierra is driven by a desire to bridge gaps between the human and plant worlds. She is the heart and soul behind Ritual Botanica, a small-batch Appalachian apothecary specializing in botanical distillation & herbal medicine. Her background as a clinical herbalist, farmer, distiller, and astrologer are wrapped up in a practice focused on mental wellness and empowerment through an eclectic range of modalities including evolutionary, traditional and medical astrology, depth psychology, hermeticism, eco-psyschology, hermeticism and vitalism. Since 2011 she’s dedicated years of her herbal journey to the craft of distillation and loves sharing it with other like-minded plant people, the type who enjoys a bit of magic and a bit of science. You can find her tending land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. For medicine and magic visit: www.ritualbotanica.com