What are we about?

Justice is a fact of nature! Temple of Earth Apothecary (TEA) and Freedom School is a community healing project and a traditional ancestral medicine space, seeded in the prayer and knowing that what goes up, must come down. We offer a school, a healing clinic and an herb shop located in Unceded Oakland, CA. Our Freedom School creates space for Black and Indigenous teaching elders and medicine people to share their wealth of ancestral humanistic wisdom, holistic physiological healing practices centering herbal medicine, Indigenous science, spiritual practice, ways of knowing the land and ourselves as integral to it, and technical skill in herbalism, nutrition, survivalist and healing arts.

As a public storefront, the Temple is an herb shop featuring plants and medicines that are locally grown and grown in community. It is also a nervous system regulating portal, a prayer space, a library with cozy living room vibes, a tea and tarot salon, a seed swap, and a space where spirit shows out with serendipitous encounters sparking prayers answered on the regular. Located at Oakland’s Lake Merritt, the shop is led by a group of phenomenal Black and Indigenous community herbalists who offer formal and informal consultations on the floor as needed.

We offer healing consultations and energy cleansings with sage resident practitioners, intimate group sessions led by community herbalists, and workshops and series supporting our community to become skillful healers who are rooted in our own ancestral medicine lineages. We are here to see to the recovery, practice and evolution of our ancestral medicine ways! And so it is.

Read on Temple’s values, rights and responsibilities here.