Womb Witch: Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health

Herbal remedies and wise perspectives to help make your cycle less of a rollercoaster.

Ever felt like your uterus is out to get you? Or experienced dismay at the politicians out to get your uterus? This book will speak straight to your soul. Get to know your body with this inclusive guide to herbal, holistic self-care for every womb, at every stage of life—from puberty to post-menopause and everything in between.

Herbalist and pregnancy loss doula Angelica Merritt offers a wealth of anatomical science, plant medicine, and nutritional and herbal strategies to support body literacy, a regular menstrual cycle, and your reproductive goals. If you’re dealing with irregular menstruation, PCOS, infertility, pregnancy loss or release, perimenopause, or any other reproductive health issue, look to these pages for remedies that bridge the scientific and the spiritual. Inside you’ll find guidance in holistic modalities such as castor oil packs, breath work, breast and womb massage, baths, and infused oils, along with rituals and journal prompts. You’ll learn about the connections between the womb, the moon cycle, and the archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Transform your self-care through the magick of the womb within!

You can join the community of support for this exciting project on Kickstarter.

Read on for an excerpt of Womb Witch: Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health by Angelica Merritt, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 3/18/25)!

Are the inner workings of your body a mystery to you? Have you felt fear as politicians make nonsensical and dangerous laws about your uterus? You’re not alone. This book exists to guide you as you find your power by embracing the womb witch within. Whether you have a uterus or love someone who does, the pages that follow offer a path toward autonomy through learning ancient knowledge and wisdom about the wombspace. While this knowledge has been smothered into an ember that’s barely glowing within our western society, a spark remains, tended by the dedicated few.

The majority of us have not had the fortune to learn directly from the wisdom-keepers and elders who have kept this sage knowledge alive. This book acts as seeds from their pockets— seeds scattered into every sentence and meant to be tended to, reaped, and shared. On every page, these sprouts of knowledge are there to equip you with knowledge on your journey toward self-sovereignty.

In short, Womb Witch is a guidebook for those who long to be in touch with their wombspace in both spiritual and functional ways. I emphasize both, for these combined insights guide us into the intuitive knowing witchcraft begs us to hone. The womb is a sacred portal, a direct pathway into the life cycles of all that is. From it, the life-death-rebirth cycle is enacted. Through the process of getting to know the wombspace, we discover a deeper understanding of what is held inside of our bodies: magick and wonder. In this magick and wonder, we find the essence of witchcraft. But what exactly is a womb witch?

What Makes a Womb Witch?

Witchcraft has seen a strong renaissance in the past decade, with many reclaiming the word witch as an avowed path of self- empowerment. However, old definitions still linger—such as the one provided by Oxford Learners Dictionary, which describes a witch as a person “believed to have magic powers, especially to do evil things.” This connotation does not resonate with the majority of witches and echoes the core of colonialism, which has historically demonized the practice of connecting with the cycles of nature, magick, and the deep reservoirs of intuition that lie within us all. It is this sacred connection that informs my understanding and practice of witchcraft, and it is in this spirit that this book is written.

There are many different paths and lineages of witchcraft, each with its own focus and direction. There are green witches, hedge witches, eclectic witches, kitchen witches, and on and on. How one witch presents and practices may vary largely from another. Likewise, my approach may differ from that of other witches. I believe womb witchcraft is not beholden to its own niche. The practices and information offered in this book are paramount for all witches to familiarize themselves with. If you do not house a womb, you came from one. Because of this, it is our responsibility to know the very basics of tending to ourselves and others in our community, for all of human life originates from this place. The health of wombs is intrinsically tied to the health of society.

Body literacy is the process of learning one’s own natural rhythms, sensations, and reactions to foster awareness and understanding of one’s personal health. This knowledge opens the door to radical reliance on caring for ourselves and others. It also shields us from the external forces that dictate our laws and education. The power of body literacy aligns seamlessly with the practice of witchcraft as both emphasize the importance of intuition, self-knowledge, and personal sovereignty.

Allow me to define womb witchcraft as I envision it throughout this book. While I do not claim this to be a definitive definition, it is what guided the insights and practices that follow. Remember, as with this entire book, take what resonates with you and leave the rest. I invite you to add your own nuances to this definition. Make it your own.

Womb witches…

• are deeply in touch with the natural rhythms and cycles of the body and nature
• place importance on connecting to their intuitive knowing
• use herbs, foods, practices, and rituals supportive of the wombspace
• see the connections: “as above and so below”*
• condemn restriction of knowledge and uplift the rite of sharing wisdom with the next generation
• exist as beings who see the sacred within themselves and each other
  In short, womb witchery is for everyone who desires to connect to the power of knowledge and wisdom about and from the wombspace.

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for every womb and for everyone who longs to learn about the wombspace. There is no one who is not welcome here. I truly stand by the idea that it hurts no one to include everyone. Each page was crafted as an offering to any and every person who seeks its words for the betterment of themselves or those they love. In this vein, this information was crafted to be shared: with your partner, your mom/parent, your sister/ sibling, your neighbor, your best friend, and anyone else who you may encounter who may be helped by this knowledge. I invite you here even if you do not identify with the word witch, for that is by no means a requirement to read and implement this book.

Occasionally, you will see me using terminology like women, woman, female, mother. I would like to note that not all people who have wombs are women, and not all women have wombs. There are non-binary folks with wombs, trans men who have wombs, AFAB2** people and women who do not have a womb from birth or who have had their wombs removed, just to name a few womb experiences. In this book, it is my deepest wish to welcome, celebrate, and represent the vast diversity of ways people with wombs can present. With all this in mind, I want to note that, within these pages, when I reference the reproductive system, I’m referring to the female reproductive system unless noted otherwise.

Why I’m Writing This Book

After I decided to stop taking birth control pills in 2012***, I dedicated myself to fertility awareness, which gave me the opportunity to learn about the intricacies of my body. What made me tick? What foods felt most nourishing throughout my cycle? When was I actually ovulating? Why did I experience overwhelming sensitivity before I started bleeding? These were questions I slowly found the answers to through self-study, my first herbal apprenticeship, and pouring over books on the subject of womb health. This great remembering of my relationship to my womb and womanhood allowed me to find my roots in herbalism, animism, and paganism, as well as through following and aligning myself with the Wheel of the Year****. It saved me and baptized me in the waters of my innate wildness, from which I felt truly starved. With these new eyes, I saw that the sacred was everywhere as well as within me.

I steadily drifted into my path as a green witch. With my father a flower-loving landscaper and my grandfather a hobby farmer, I grew up in the dirt, planting seeds and dazzling over blooms and vegetables of all kinds. However, it wasn’t until I had a handful of years away from my small-town, Christian upbringing that I understood that my authentic, personal beliefs and the way in which I experience the world was akin to being a witch. My deep, spiritual connection to the plant path was ignited during travels abroad when I was offered teas and oils as cures to my maladies. Returning home, I was changed and dedicated myself to learning about the plants in my bioregion and the rituals and wisdom of the Wheel of the Year. But still, I had trepidation in claiming the identity of witch for fear of the judgment that would follow. The deep, healing connections I made with other women in a plant spirit apprenticeship I attended built up my confidence to fully accept this part of myself. My longing to seek solace within the natural world fused with my affinity for the mystical, and I’ve pursued this path unfailingly since.

Similarly to my journey with witchcraft, I discovered the power within my womb slowly, and then all at once. After experiencing an ectopic pregnancy while living abroad, I realized there was a vast gap in the knowledge I had when it came to my body. Despite practicing the fertility awareness method as a means of birth control for seven years, I did not know what an ectopic pregnancy was or comprehend the severity of my condition for days. This situation put me in grave danger, and that experience propelled my path forward. I was hungry for knowledge, attending trainings on the wombspace and birth work and furthering my studies and practice in herbalism—all of which ultimately led to the scribing of these pages.

*“As above and so below” is a phrase from The Emerald Tablet, a hermetic text, and refers to the microcosm and macrocosm. In essence, this phrase expresses the idea that what happens “above” on a larger scale is happening “below” on a smaller scale. It communicates the connection the spiritual world has to the material plane.

**2 AFAB is an acronym that stands for “assigned female at birth.”

***I started taking birth control pills at age 15 at the suggestion of my OB-GYN to lengthen my 16- to 18-day cycles. I realized I couldn’t remember a time where I had not been on the pill and suspected these pills were causing disturbances I wasn’t able to clearly detect while taking them. Within a year of stopping the pill, my body felt less inflamed and my emotions more manageable, and I had a clearer picture of my own intuitive guidance.

****The Wheel of the Year marks the year’s major solar events and includes the seasons, equinoxes, solstices, and midpoints between.

Want to keep reading? Check out Womb Witch: Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health by Angelica Merritt, available for preorder from our site or through an independent bookstore near you.