Nine years of gathering in ceremony. Nine years of remembering what was never lost, only waiting to be called forward.

This October, we return for the 9th Annual Spiritual Herbalism Conference.

This year's theme: MAS: The Power and Mystery of the Divine Feminine.

The Sacred Feminine has been the initiating force at the heart of creation. A truth so ancient and holy it could not be spoken, only experienced. This year, we go there.

Rooted in the living spiritual tradition of Caribbean Mas, this conference is a portal. Mas calls our spirits to audaciously rise up, to dismantle every story told not by us. No empire, no erasure, no silence has ever been able to extinguish this power.

The feminine carries tenderness and ferocity. Wound and medicine. Silence and prophecy. She is the source of authority, not its contradiction.

Come to play mas. Come to remember who you are.

Fiona Compton is a Caribbean storyteller, historian, filmmaker, and cultural consultant, and the CEO and Founder of Know Your Caribbean, the number one platform for Caribbean history and culture in the world, with a global monthly reach in the millions. A proud daughter of St. Lucia, Fiona launched the platform in 2017 after identifying a critical gap in accessible, authentic Caribbean history online. Today, Know Your Caribbean reaches more than half a million followers across all social platforms, produces a podcast listened to in over 180 countries, and is supported by Know Your Caribbean Inc., a 501c nonprofit dedicated to education, advocacy, and community empowerment. The platform has attracted partnerships with global organizations including Meta, Reddit, Hearst Publishing, Soho House, and J.P. Morgan. Fiona is also the co-founder of the Caribbean Green Book, a directory championing Caribbean-owned businesses across the region, created alongside entrepreneur Jadine Yarde.

A vocal advocate for reparations, Fiona works directly with Caribbean countries to help tell their stories in ways that honestly confront the past while offering a clear and hopeful vision for the future. She believes that Caribbean history, told on Caribbean terms, is one of the most powerful tools available for restoring pride, strengthening identity, and building the case for the justice the region deserves. A multi-award-winning artist and filmmaker, her films have been screened globally, earning honors including Best Documentary and Best Director at the Caribbean Film and Fashion Awards, with her work featured by the UK Cabinet Office. She has served as Historian in Residence at the National Maritime Museum, contributed to The World Reimagined as a commissioned artist and board member, and has delivered cultural workshops at the South Bank Centre and Black Cultural Archives in London. Trained at London College of Printing and Central Saint Martins, and an official ambassador for London's Notting Hill Carnival, Fiona has spent nearly two decades ensuring that the stories of the Caribbean are told with the depth, dignity, and brilliance they have always deserved.

Trained in Eastern and Western Herbal Medicine, Master Herbalist Karen M. Rose has devoted her life’s work to empowering individuals to reconnect with their ancestral traditions. Her journey began in her native Guyana, where early exposure to African, Caribbean, and South American healing traditions profoundly shaped her understanding of plant medicine and community-based healing. These formative experiences laid the foundation for a practice rooted in lineage, spirituality, and collective restoration.

The opening of Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn in 2009 marked the beginning of an expansive community vision. Since then, Karen has continued to grow her offerings by creating Sacred Botanica, furthering her mission to make herbal healing accessible to all. A devoted teacher and guide, she has trained more than 1,200 herbalists through her renowned Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship Program, helping emerging practitioners reclaim their legacies, transform their lives, and heal their communities.

Karen is also the author of the bestselling The Art and Practice of Spiritual Herbalism (2022), a groundbreaking work that bridges herbalism and spiritualism and has become foundational in the field. Her creative and community-centered leadership has produced a range of influential projects, including the Sacred Vibes Annual NYC Spiritual Herbalism Conference, The Black Herbalist Convergence, The Black Healers Green Book, the Sacred Vibes Annual Herbal Almanac, the Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship Community, and the free Herbal Community Summer Workshops. Through each endeavor, Karen continues to cultivate spaces where healing, lineage, and spirit converge.

Ambien Mitchell

SHE/HER/ELLA

Ambien is a mother, a community builder, and a practitioner of healing arts gratefully residing in Canarsie and Munsee Lenape land also called Brooklyn, NY. She practices auricular acupuncture, Reiki, facilitates group shakes and yoga (asana), cooks, and prepares herbal remedies. Ambien has played many professional roles, including performer, facilitator, server, theatre educator, urban park ranger, immigration organizer, and advocate for freedom of movement as a human right. She has always found home and healing in the fluidity and freedom of movement we can access within our own bodies, our identities, our relationships, and across our beautiful planet. A Scorpio sun and moon (and Venus, and Pluto!), Ambien is fluent in mining our depths, exploring our darker recesses, and is reverent of the potency of thresholds and portals. As a mom and someone who has experienced multiple pregnancy losses in different ways, she is captivated by and committed to honoring the portal we hold within our own bodies.
Dara Pressley

SHE/HER

Dara Pressley is a clinical and spiritual herbalist, educator, and founder of The Rooted Wisdom and Sassy Roots. Her practice centers Black and Indigenous healing traditions, combining evidence-based herbal care with spirit-led connection. Dara specializes in supporting respiratory conditions, autoimmune illness, skin imbalances, and menopausal transitions—especially for those navigating layered environmental and ancestral stressors.
In addition to her clinical work, Dara leads seasonal workshops, practitioner circles, and an apprenticeship program through The Rooted Wisdom, a school of ancestral herbalism dedicated to community, ritual, and the rhythms of the land. Her product line, Sassy Roots, offers handcrafted herbal remedies rooted in the wild beauty of the Pacific Northwest. With every offering, Dara invites others to reconnect with the medicine of the earth and the wisdom within.
Ilissa Dorelle

SHE/HER

Ilissa Dorelle is a Registered Nurse, full spectrum doula, and former mental health therapist trained in trauma-informed care and perinatal mental health. As a mom of two, she bridges clinical knowledge with intuitive, spirit-led guidance; holding space for healing across body, mind, and spirit. Her path through nursing, therapy, and birth work has shown her that true care means honoring both what the body needs and what the spirit is asking for. She brings that integrated approach to this work, blending grounded expertise with deep presence and trust.
Julie E. Moody-Freeman

SHE/HER
SPIRITUAL HERBALIST & GALACTIC ASTROLOGER
Julie uses Spiritual Herbalism and Galactic Astrology to teach people how to journey with plants and astrological stars as allies.
Lea Afia Bempah

Lea Afia Bempah is the founder, owner, and operator of Rites of Wellness, LLC and Rites & Tea Rituals Wellness Tea Café in Berwyn, Illinois. Rooted in accessible plant medicine, embodied ritual, and reproductive and feminine healing traditions, her work invites people to reconnect with the wisdom of their own bodies through movement, ritual, and botanical medicine.
Lea holds a B.A. in Biological Sciences, is a graduate of Sacred Vibes Apothecary’s Level III Apprenticeship, and began studying dance at the age of three. She earned a minor in Dance Theatre from Louisiana State University and began choreographing and performing professionally at sixteen. Her work as an internationally performing burlesque artist became a profound journey of healing, body reclamation, and sacred embodiment, shaping her approach to movement as a practice of liberation, storytelling, and transformation.
Through Rites of Wellness, Lea bridges herbalism, ritual, movement, and reproductive herbalism to create experiences that cultivate embodiment, self-trust, and personal empowerment, honoring the body as a living source of wisdom, resilience, and sacred knowledge.
Ona McGovern

HE/THEY
Ona McGovern is a Black trans earth-worker who is invested in developing a network of care and community education that sees the health of the individual connected to the health of the community and the earth. They are a parent, community herbalist, and writer based in Philadelphia (on Lenape lands) currently touching grass, eating fruit, and talking to plants and people about our mutual relationships. Ona is a 2024 graduate of the Sacred Vibes Spiritual Herbalism apprenticeship and creator of Honeyseed Deep Care.
Osunkemi "Lady Shepsa" Jones

Osunkemi "Lady Shepsa" Jones is a Pleasure Priestess, teacher of pleasure, ritual, and women's wisdom, author, and modern-day juju woman devoted to helping women reclaim the sacred power of their bodies. Drawing from more than fifteen years of study in the spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora, Taoism, Tantra, herbalism, and embodiment practices, she creates transformative experiences that guide women back to pleasure, softness, and self-devotion.
She is the founder of Let Go Let Goddess, where she leads retreats, sacred circles, and trainings centered on feminine healing and liberation. Osunkemi is the author of six books, including the bestselling Nice For What?!: How to Go From Being a Good Girl to a Badass Goddess, and is a licensed massage therapist, Full Spectrum Doula trained by Ancient Song, a Level III herbalism apprentice in the Sacred Vibes Apprenticeship under Empress Karen Rose, and certified Universal Healing Tao Instructor. Her work reminds women that pleasure is not a luxury—it is medicine, resistance, and a pathway home to themselves.
Rachel Harris

SHE/HER/THEY
Rachel Z. Harris founded Black Woman Sanctuary in 2020. In March 2026, she opened Ixchel-Balam, its first physical home-a Sanctuary Campus and living classroom in Mérida, Yucatán, México. There, she invites Black Women throughout the diaspora to rest, gather, create, play, and experience belonging. Her work affirms beauty and intimacy as essential to wellness and pleasure and imagination as sources of wisdom. She creates spaces worthy of our inner child-spaces cultivated to delight her and give her the safety to be fully free.
Rachel's roots in community mental health now anchor a body of work centered on sensuality and intimacy. She brings pleasure activism and culturally responsive peer support into conversation with land, plant medicine, spiritual practice, and creative expression. Rachel sees Black Women as architects of the future and seeks to nurture and resource the women whose leadership, businesses, communities, and spiritual practices will shape what comes next.
Rachel holds a degree in Economics from Spelman College. Her thesis work examined traditional savings mechanisms practiced by immigrant populations, taking her to Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival for field studies and economic modeling. That early research now informs her exploration of women-led communal economies and how we resource one another. Rachel also earned her Juris Doctor from Howard University School of Law and brings a background in entertainment, law, and community mental health to this next chapter. Rachel is a Level Three Sacred Vibes apprentice studying Spiritual Herbalism under the tutelage of Karen Rose.

DAY ONE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 2026

6:30 - 9:00 PM EST

📍FLATBUSH CENTRAL CARIBBEAN MARKET PLACE FLATBUSH, BROOKLYN NY

Join us Friday evening, October 9th in Flatbush, Brooklyn NY for a casual pre-conference mixer before the main event kicks off. It's the perfect chance to connect with fellow herbalists, healers, and attendees before the days ahead.

Conference Kickoff Gathering

*6:30 - 7:30 PM EST

Meet & Greet with Fiona Compton and Empress Karen Rose

*Exclusive to VIP ticket holders.

DAY TWO

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 2026

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST (IN-PERSON)

📍INDUSTRY CITY (The Landing) SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN NY

Opening ceremony, herbal apothecary, healing sessions, the keynote address, spiritual herbalism workshops, music, raffles, gifts, movement, and ritual. Lunch included.

Virtual keynote ticket holders receive the live-streamed keynote plus access to three virtual workshops.

The Conference

DAY THREE

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11 2026

Reflections & Black Herbalist Convergence (Fully Virtual)

10:00 - 11:30 AM EST (Virtual)

Reflections + Q&A with Karen Rose and Baba Fasanmi

12:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST (Virtual)

Black Herbalist Convergence (BHC)

Now in its eighth year, the Black Herbalist Convergence is a space made by and for herbalists who identify as Black. BHC is our beloved annual gathering centered in community, honest conversation, and the kind of belonging that only comes from being in a room full of people who get it. For the last seven years, this space has held laughter, wisdom, tradition, breakthroughs, and connections that last long after the conference ends. If you're Black and you work with plants, this one is for you.