LOLA VENADO

“Lola Venado, The Botanical Bruja®, is a folk herbalist, kitchen witch, writer, speaker, and creative community gatherer. Born with river blood, magik bones, and a moonlit heart, she believes story heals, plants are magik, and comida es medicina.”

What I’m About:

Story telling. Casting spells with pen, voice, and camera.

Kitchen altars. Comida es medicina for body and soul.

Botanical advocacy. Plants are sentient beings, too.

Holistic sovereignty. You are your own best healer.

Mundane magik. No caftan, cloak, or $$$ required.

Everyday rituals and remedies. Do it for yourself first, not for followers.

When not traveling in my van to pray at the altars of desert, forest, river, and ocean, I’m connecting with community through story, plants, food, and art. I work at cultivating a modern holistic practice, integrating the old medicine ways of my mixed bloodlines.

The Xantico House Podcast launched in 2018, dedicated to centering the work of multi-cultural people of color whose Medicine stories are often underrepresented in communities of herbalism, folk magik, cookery, and other healing creative arts. (FKA Branch & Bone Medicine Show)

Xantico House™ is where all my offerings reside. Namesake Xantico (pronounced shawn-tee-ko) is an Aztec goddess, “she who dwells in the house”, who personifies and protects the hearth, home, and precious things. Associated with fire and volcanoes, she can take the form of red serpent, representing the snaking rivers of lava.

She possesses both feminine and masculine traits, wears a female skirt and man’s loincloth, she is both warrior and midwife. It’s said she was punished by an angry god for breaking a fast. To me, she embodies taking care of oneself and others, even when how or why may be misunderstood. She is the care-taking, rule-breaking, hedge-walking protectress of my house.

May your heart(h) be filled with fuerza, fuego…and love.

xLoVe

Connect with me here.

P.S. I am currently not offering my botánica products or energy work/readings. Thank you for your support in what was, and what will be.

P.P.S. Botanical Bruja is a title I created in 2016 as an alternative way of identifying my work as a plant witch, while giving reverence to my maternal Mexican heritage. I established use of the Branch & Bone name in 2015, and Xantico House was founded in 2018.