Vernacular Spiritual Epistemologies among Contemporary Herbalists, Gardeners, and Farmers in Cache Valley, Utah

When herbalists today describe their connection to plants, they often speak of a sense of spiritual belonging that extends beyond human communities. Drawing on fieldwork and digital ethnography, this paper looks at how animistic herbalists – practitioners who hold that "the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human" (Harvey 2017) – redraw the boundaries of spiritual community. Using Harvey's "new animism" as a framework, I explore vernacular spiritual epistemologies: ways of knowing that grow out of direct, lived relationship with plants rather than formal religious doctrine. Through interviews and participant observation, I show how belonging works in both directions – herbalists recognize a plant's “vegetal agency” (Hufford 2021) while also understanding themselves as belonging to the land and to a wider, more-than-human family.