Her long thick hair is often worn held in by a headband. Susun Weed’s laughter is contagious, so our time together is a giggle fest. She is an enthusiastic advocate of the Wise Woman Way, and lives it in a complete sense in her own life. During our interview, she takes several breaks to mentor an apprentice. She tends goats on a quiet farm where she runs an educational center, but while Susun Weed’s spirit is joyful, her mission is serious.

Herbalist, teacher, illustrator, director of the Wise Woman Center, and editor in chief of Ash Tree Publishing,, Susun Weed is also author of: Healing Wise, Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way, and Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way, books which have been used by more than a million women throughout the world.

The Wise Woman Center offers workshops and events as well as The Moon Lodge, a gathering held six times a year, where diverse groups of women sit in council listening respectfully to each speakers’ story, "…witnessing the spiral of women, of life, of change and connection." Susun offers a weekly free herbal/health hotline. She has personally trained more than 200 apprentices, 500 green witches, and 300 correspondence course students. Asked about her personal goals, Susun says, "My goal in life is to get as old as I possibly can, to have as much fun as I possibly can, and then die."

MISS JOAN MARIE MOOSSY: You run a place called the Wise Woman Center?

SW: Exactly, the Wise Woman Center is on my land in the Catskills near Woodstock, it’s an old rock quarry. The Wise Woman Center is devoted to reweaving the healing cloak of the ancients. Women come here to learn the Wise Woman Tradition in which we work to nourish the wholeness of the complete individual rather than to fix the broken body machine or to clean the filthy temple. The Wise Woman through compassionate listening, through the use of simple ceremony, and with the everyday help of the ordinary weeds that grow around all of us, nourishes wholeness in the person, wholeness in the family, wholeness in the community. So much of modern medicine has the potential to cause great harm to the planet and great harm to our grandchildren even though it may heal us personally. So the Wise Woman Tradition calls us to the awareness that we are really standing on an edge, and that prior to us people did have the luxury of choosing to heal themselves with things that could harm others and harm the planet, but I don’t think that we really have that luxury anymore, and the Wise Woman Tradition urges us to nourish.

MISS MOOSSY: Would you consider the Wise Woman Movement part of an historical continuum?

SW: I definitely believe that it’s part of an historical continuum stretching back to our very earliest ancestors. My next door neighbor was part of the archeological team that found what’s considered to be the oldest human gravesite, and my neighbor came over and said "Susun, we found these plant pollens at the gravesite and they were clearly put there. What plants are these? Do they have any uses?" All of the plants that are around this gravesite, which may be as much as 50,000 years old, are plants that are still used today medicinally all over the world. The World Health Organization says that over 90% of the health care given on this planet is by women in their own homes. So, although in our culture, modern scientiÞc medicine seems to be the norm, throughout most of the world it is not.

MISS MOOSSY: Could you tell us about your scholarship program at the Wise Woman Center?

SW: Yes, recognizing that Women of Color and Native American women have endured centuries of oppression and difficulty, we offer women of Color and Native American women full scholarships. We do ask, if the woman is able, for her to help us out with some work and make our scholarship fund go further.

MISS MOOSSY: But the Wise Woman Center is not a woman-only space. What is a man’s place in the Wise Woman Tradition?

SW: Well, I don’t call it the Wise Woman’s Tradition, possessive, nor do I call it the Wise Women’s, plural possessive. I call it the singular, non-possessive Wise Woman Tradition to keep man in it. I teach that every woman is whole and complete unto herself, but that men need to Þnd the Wise Woman within in order to be whole, especially if a man wishes to work as a healer or a shaman, which means a she-man.

MISS MOOSSY: I noticed that the treatment of marijuana in your books is very nonchalant. Do you consider marijuana just another herb?

SW: Well, I would never use "just" to describe an herb. Every herb has a powerful activity in the mind, body, spirit continuum, and marijuana I think is unique in several ways. I consider it to be a magnifying herb, so that whatever is happening, it will seem to be happening stronger, brighter, louder, Þercer, and whoever is ingesting the marijuana will become more of themselves. So, you give marijuana to Bob Dylan and you’re going to have some really good songs; you give marijuana to a bum, you’re going to have a world class bum, but marijuana isn’t going to turn Bob Dylan into a bum.

MISS MOOSSY: The concept of self empowerment seems fundamental to your point of view. What do you think about the growing governmental encroachments on personal freedoms?

SW: It is deeply disturbing to me as someone who has been active in working with psychedelics and psychoactives since the mid sixties. That is actually one of the reasons that I moved from Los Angeles to the East Coast. I wanted to take some LSD. People listen to my story and they say, "Wait a second, you moved from the West Coast to the East Coast to get LSD?" I say "Yeah." We’re talking the early sixties here, when it was still legal, when Millbrook was the scene. At that point it was legal and it was startling to me that it was made illegal. I saw friends of mine being put in jail as threats to society. I took LSD more than 400 times and guided thousands of people on trips, and I never saw anything but tremendous benefit to everyone from its use. But this is not really new to me that the government reaches out and says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we can’t have our citizens doing this. They might get enlightened and where would we all be then?"

MISS MOOSSY: Are you against the war on drugs?

SW: I have seen in my lifetime that the war on drugs has created tremendous crime, and has certainly made my life worse.

MISS MOOSSY: What do you think about the recreational use of marijuana?

SW: I think that life should be recreational. I think that recreation is sacred. In the traditional cultures I have been in, spirituality is recreation, and everyone participates, from the pregnant woman to the newborn to the old person. Unlike our culture, it is understood that the psychoactive substances are healthy, help people,, and especially help people and communities to be more caring of each other, which is, I think, the essence of spirituality. Spirituality helps all of us to be the best we can be. We’re all dealing with our own particular selfish interests, and the more that we can really tune into the other aspects of life, in addition to, not instead of, but in addition to what we need, if we also see, acknowledge, and know what others need, then our opportunities are much healthier and therefore more sacred.

MISS MOOSSY: Do you have a vision for the 21st century?

SW: Yes, I would like to see every person be an herbalist. I would like us all to reclaim the Wise Woman way in which we understand that each person is capable of being whole, holy, and sacred, in which we truly come of age in the Aquarian sense and rather than looking to gurus or spiritual leaders, we look to earth, we look to nature, and we look to ourselves.

For more information contact: Wise Woman Center, P.O. Box 64, Woodstock, NY 12498