Herbalism, known in older English usage as wortcunning, "the craft of the worts (herbs)", is the traditional knowledge and use of plants for healing, protection, and magic. It spans a practical and a symbolic dimension that were, for most of history, inseparable. On the practical side it is the ancient art of preparing plants as medicine: teas and infusions, tinctures, salves, oils, and poultices, drawing on an accumulated empirical knowledge of which plants soothe, purge, stimulate, or calm, a body of lore recorded from the ancient herbals of Dioscorides and Pliny through the medieval monastic physic gardens and the early modern herbalists like Culpeper, and preserved in countless folk traditions and, in living form, in systems such as Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine.
On the magical and religious side, herbs carried symbolic and protective virtues: particular plants were gathered at particular times, hung, carried, or burned to ward off evil, attract love or luck, or aid in ritual, the domain of the cunning-folk and, in modern usage, of Wiccan and Pagan practice, where wortcunning names the witch's knowledge of the powers of herbs. The two dimensions overlap in the real pharmacology of many "magical" plants, including the potent and dangerous psychoactives (henbane, belladonna, mandrake) long associated with witchcraft. Herbalism is historically significant as the ancestor of modern pharmacology, many drugs derive from plants long used by herbalists, while surviving as both a complementary health practice and a magical-religious craft.