Homeopathy Tips for 2/03/09 Kingdoms

      When we listen to a case, everything a person says, every gesture they make including what they wear will be an expression of the vital force. If we are unprejudiced observers we can then see the language of a persons dis-ease. This language will many times tell us quickly from which kingdom their dis-ease resides. We can sometimes quickly discern whether the best remedy will be from the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom or the mineral kingdom. If we are clear about seeing the metaphor of the dis-ease within the appropriate kingdom, we can often make our remedy selection much easier by eliminating the kingdoms that the dis-ease does not belong to.

      There are some general guidelines for understanding the kingdoms. I will give a few here but really each kingdom needs a book on it’s own. I will give a brief overview of each and a more in depth look into them in later newsletters.

• The animal kingdom is all about survival. Animals are either killing or being killed. It is the threat of being hurt or the hurting of another that is the root basis for most animal behaviors. When a person speaks their story and they need an animal remedy, they will often speak to the energy of the animal and it’s natural behaviors. They will tell of particular stories that correlate to themes that the animal naturally expresses. We have remedies from mammals, reptiles, insects, birds and creatures from the sea. Each has it’s own story to tell. But something that is common to all of them is comparison to another and competition with a struggle for survival. If you find this theme in any of your cases, you should really consider the animal remedies.
• The plant kingdom is about sensitivity. This can be expressed in many ways; lack of sensitivity or expression, overreaction, hypersensitivity or reactivity. Plants cannot move so their experience is one of being sensitive to their external environment. Because of this, they need to adapt ways to survive. Considering the natural history or botanical information about plants helps us understand their ways of adapting. As an example, plants that thrive in the desert have the ability to hold water. In the absence of water they shrivel and contract. In the presence of water they expand. This would lead to the sensation of expansion or contraction. I have found that Vermuellen’s Prisma Materia Medica has excellent information about  natural history and has been very helpful in learning about the substance of the remedy.
• Minerals are dictated by physics and chemistry and are defined by the period table of elements. All minerals are made up of one or a combination of the elements. As a consequence the mineral kingdom is about structure. Either the creation of structure or the loss of structure.  So a person needing a mineral remedy will tell a story of their dis-ease in relation to the structure in their life and the need to create it, maintain it or about it’s loss. This often appears within relationships, either familial, intimate or occupationally. It can be at the level of personal, familial, community or in a bigger world view. The periodic table is a map of all of the elements. It is the relationship of all of these elements that make up the physical structure of all things on earth.  It is also about the beginning to end of time and physical matter. It also correlates to the structure of our life from beginning to end. By understanding the rows of the table and the different positions across the rows we can understand the themes and individual placements of each element and how that is representative of the human life condition.  Jan Scholten’s book Homeopathy and the Elements is an excellent work in regards to understanding the mineral kingdom.

      Each of the kingdoms has it’s own story to tell just as each person has their own story to tell. By understanding the kingdoms better we can understand Materia Medica better and be better prescribers.  There is order in the physical universe. It has been described in many ways in each of the kingdoms. The beauty of homeopathy is that we can use this order and extract the vital energetic essence of many different substances to inspire healing when they are of a similar vibrational essence.  Understanding each kingdom will help to narrow our focus on remedies in a fairly quick way when we truely understand what is asking to be healed in the individual.