“There's a little witch in all of us.”

Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic

Our Mission

Healing our living Earth.

Healing ourselves.

Our approach is simple.

The Creative Cauldron is our physical home and the hearth and heartbeat of our organization. We have created this sacred space around the energy and intention of the natural world that enables you to explore your own personal wellness journey. We offer an accessible, openhearted, and non-judgmental environment so you can freely explore your mind, body, and spirit connection through our classes, gatherings, and workshops.

Our People

All our teachers and guides are deeply in touch with the more than human world. We are herbalists, gardeners, wildcrafters, foragers, and nature lovers. We are crafters and makers and artists and writers and poets who all share a love for our more than human world. The forest is our safe place. The land shares ancient wisdom with us. The trees’ whispers calm us. The plants talk to us. The local wildlife brings us messages. We are all about connecting women with nature’s healing powers through creative exploration.

We Believe in Compassion

It is with intention that we have created this welcoming and calm space, a true sanctuary for women—a place of refuge and of healing, for all women who seek it. We want you to feel on every level; there is room for you here to be yourself, to learn and grow and let go, and to become even more of who you are. All women need a place to connect, be seen, and be cherished. This is a place for us to come together to support each other’s growth. Let’s inspire each other, help each other, play together, and rise together.

Adjusting to Life After Cancer

The Rebloom Initiative© is a Friends of the Forest initiative offering women who have completed their cancer treatment the opportunity to reclaim their lives, renew their bodies, and experience healing connections with other women through restorative nature-based wellness workshops and retreats.

For many women, a key dimension of healing is to be in community with women who share your wound and your strong intention to find healing. We hold this space for you—a healing space for women to come together to share, to offer support to one another, and help define your new normal of living after you’ve completed treatment.

This nature-based wellness approach offers hope and healing to women cancer survivors by empowering them emotionally and allowing them to reclaim their lives after battling this devastating disease.

10% of all sales support this initiative.

Our Guiding Principles

  • We Are Committed To Supporting Women

    We are committed to sourcing ingredients ethically and respectfully towards mother earth. We source and purchase the highest quality teas and botanicals from women-owned small-batch tea makers and worker cooperatives committed to sustainably growing and harvesting ingredients free from pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. We source handmade products from independent women makers around New England and the U.S.

  • We Support Your Spiritual Journey

    Your spiritual journey is uniquely your own. We are committed to holding space and helping you on your path in connecting with your inner self and aligning with your higher power. We work hard to create a sacred space that supports local artisans, honors ancient and modern cultures, and fosters magickal energy within our community.

  • We Operate With Mother Earth in Mind

    We strive to operate in an eco-friendly manner. We practice conscious consumerism when purchasing supplies whenever we can and always look for the best option. This includes post-consumer recycled printing paper, envelopes, toilet paper, trash bags, and supplies to biodegradable packing tape, price tags, merchandise bags, and cleaning supplies. The boxes and packaging materials we receive from shipments are reused from previous shipments.

  • We Are Inclusive. Period.

    We are an inclusive environment where trust and care are central to our actions. This is a safe space for all women, sexualities, ethnicities, abilities and disabilities, ages, who feel like they need a genuinely supportive and safe environment in this ever-changing world. Together, we can learn and share ways to support each other and Mother Earth and work towards an environment of fairness, diversity, and respect. We stand here with you; you are safe(r) here.

The History of Women Healers

In the three centuries preceding the Renaissance, the role of women healers was heightened by two roughly parallel developments.

The first was the evolution of European universities and their professional schools that, for the most part, systematically excluded women as students, thereby creating a legal male monopoly of the practice of medicine. Ineligible as healers, women waged a lengthy battle to maintain their right to care for the sick and injured. The 1322 case of Jacqueline Felicie, one of many healers charged with illegally practicing medicine, raises serious questions about the motives of male physicians in discrediting these women as incompetent and dangerous.[1]

The second development was the campaign--promoted by the church and supported by both clerical and civil authorities--to brand women healers as witches. Perhaps the church perceived these women, with their special, often esoteric, healing skills, as a threat to its supremacy in the lives of its parishioners. The result was the brutal persecution of unknown numbers of mostly peasant women.[1]

The age of witch-hunting spanned more than four centuries (from the 14th to the 17th century) in its sweep from Germany to England. It was born in feudalism and lasted—gaining in virulence—well into the "age of reason." The witch-craze took different forms at different times and places, but never lost its essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror directed against the female peasant population. Witches represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state.[2]

The extent of the witch-craze is startling: In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were thousands upon thousands of executions—usually live burnings at the stake—in Germany, Italy and other countries. In the mid-sixteenth century the terror spread to France, and finally to England. One writer has estimated the number of executions at an average of 600 a year for certain German cities—or two a day, "leaving out Sundays". [2]

Nine-hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg area, and 1000 in and around Como. At Toulouse, four-hundred were put to death in a day. In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant each. Many writers have estimated the total number killed to have been in the 7 1 millions. Women made up some 85 percent of those executed—old women, young women and children.[2]

Unfortunately, the witch herself—poor and illiterate—did not leave us her story. It was recorded, like all history, by the educated elite, so that today we know the witch only through the eyes of her persecutors.[2]

The wise woman, or witch, had a host of remedies which had been tested in years of use. Many of the herbal remedies developed by witches still have their place in modern pharmacology. They had pain-killers, digestive aids and anti-inflammatory agents. They used ergot for the pain of labor at a time when the Church held that pain in labor was the Lord's just punishment for Eve's original sin. Ergot derivatives are the principal drugs used today to hasten labor and aid in the recovery from childbirth. Belladonna—still used today as an antispasmodic—was used by the witch-healers to inhibit uterine contractions when miscarriage threatened. Digitalis, still an important drug in treating heart ailments, is said to have been discovered by an English witch. Undoubtedly many of the witches' other remedies were purely magical, and owed their effectiveness—if they had any—to their reputation.[2]

The witch-healer's methods were as great a threat (to the Catholic Church, if not the Protestant ) as her results, for the witch was an empiricist: She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and childbirth—whether through medications or charms. In short, her magic was the science of her time.[2]

[1]Minkowski WL. Women healers of the middle ages: selected aspects of their history. Am J Public Health. 1992 Feb;82(2):288-95. doi: 10.2105/ajph.82.2.288. PMID: 1739168; PMCID: PMC1694293.
[2]Witches, Midwives, and Nurses A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

Detail of a miniature of witches being burnt and tortured, from "Chroniques de France ou de St Denis," 1332-1350. Image courtesy of the British Library.