A Study in Symbol and System

an introduction to this project, and an invitation into the spaces where science, story, and herbal tradition converge.

I’ve always needed things to make sense.

Even as I study plants, rituals, and healing practices that stretch beyond clinical frameworks, I find myself asking why. Why do certain stories stay lodged in the body? Why do certain herbs feel like keys, not just chemically, but symbolically? And why do we often dismiss the parts of healing that can't be measured, even when they so clearly move something in us?

My background is clinical. I’ve trained in medicine. I’m fluent in pharmacology, physiology, and research. I still love those things. But I’ve also walked deep into herbalism, where traditions carry stories older than our science. Where intuition, symbol, and ritual still guide practice. And I’ve found myself in a space between worlds.

This Substack exists in that space. It’s not about abandoning evidence.

It’s about asking whether evidence alone is enough.

We know the placebo effect changes physiology. We know language shapes perception, and perception shapes biology. We know belief can regulate immune response, shift pain thresholds, and alter neurochemistry. But most clinical models still treat meaning as secondary, or worse, irrelevant.

I think it matters. I think meaning is a kind of medicine. And I think we need new ways to talk about that—especially as herbalists, practitioners, thinkers, and seekers.

This is where that conversation begins.

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

I’ll be using this space as an experimental notebook. A journal where I trace connections between symbolism and the nervous system, between story and physiology, between ritual and the chemistry of change. I’ll write about the plants that live in myth as much as they live in materia medica. I’ll follow metaphors, chase research trails, revisit histories, and question how we know what we know.

Some posts will be essays. Some may feel like field notes. Others might be visual tools or symbolic monographs. But all of them will live at the edge of science and story, structure and spirit.

If you’re someone who thinks in both systems and symbols, or someone who’s spent years in evidence-based spaces and still feels something missing—this is for you.

Thank you for being here at the beginning.

Let’s see where this leads.

Stay connected

If you feel at home in this space—where story meets science, and plants carry both chemistry and meaning—I’d love to have you along for the journey.
You can subscribe for free to receive new essays as they unfold, or upgrade if you’d like access to deeper research notes, symbolic monographs, and visual tools as they’re released.

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If you'd like to become a Founding Member and help seed this work, you’ll find a special tier when you click Subscribe. Your support helps keep this space spacious, thoughtful, and rooted in what matters.

Either way, thank you for being here at the beginning. It means more than you know.

— Agy | The Buffalo Herbalist