ABOUT Anastasha

Anastasha Verde Ph.D. is a plant ecologist, scholar, and longtime pagan witch with over 30 years of experience. She has explored plants and their communities across North America, and occasionally Central America, Europe, and India. As an academic scientist, she has published and presented numerous scientific articles and book contributions concerning how our leafy kin interact with the world, climate change impacts on plants and their habitats, and strategies to restore degraded ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

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In the early 1980s Anastasha discovered paganism, witchcraft, and magic which led to decades of transformational work. Her coven and solitary practice fomented a botanical possession that drove her to pursue an academic life. The inevitable confluence of witchcraft and plant ecological science resulted in a path steeped in animism and led to deep green gnosis.

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Being an unwilling handmaiden to the sixth mass extinction event has been the driver of Anastasha’s public efforts to reanimate and update botanical magic, witchcraft, and pagan practices. She has presented on modern plant magic, bioregional animism, and ecological grief at ethnobotanical, ecospirituality, and pagan and witchcraft conferences.  

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Anastasha lives as a feral witch with her magician husband in the southeastern forests of the US.