Page 13 - Summer 18

Vitally important remedy relationships are revealed. Apollo, the father, is equated with the sun; the male, patriarchal principle; the skyrealm; the intellect, reason and logic; his earthly symbol is gold, Aurum, a predominantly right-sided remedy. His twin sister Artemis is equated with the moon; the female principle; the fluid- realm; the intuition, imagination and the creative mind; her symbol is silver, Argentum, a predominantly leftsided remedy. The themes of solar and lunar, right and left, animus and anima, white and black, and conflict between these sets of opposites are established – and all pertain to this extraordinary remedy.
The goddess Athene gave Asklepios two phials of the Gorgon Medusa’s blood. The blood drawn from the veins on her left side had the power to restore life and that drawn from her right side had the power to destroy.
When the leftsidedness of Lac-can presides, the gentle, feminine qualities of empathy, nurturing, compromise, generosity, selflessness, submissiveness and creativity prevail. When the archetype’s right-sidedness presides, the harsh, masculine qualities of aggression, domination, control, violence, cruelty, resentment and hatred prevail.
A frightful being, Medusa had serpents for hair and a visage so hideous, with glaring eyes and protruding tongue,
it turned those who gazed upon
her into stone.
With the help of Athene,
Goddess of Wisdom, and
Hermes, the hero Perseus
succeeded in killing her. For the
purpose, Hermes gave Perseus an
adamantine sickle and Athene
provided him with a brightly polished
shield, warning him never to look at
Medusa directly, but only at her
reflection. Using the shield as a mirror
and his hand guided by the goddess, he decapitated the Gorgon with a single blow of the sickle.
Even after death the head retained its capacity to petrify. Athene fixed the severed head to her aegis. This head, with its tentacle-like writhing serpents, resembled an octopus, squid or cuttlefish and symbolises for the homeopath the deep relationship that exists between the three archetypes – Athene, the advanced mollusc and the dog. This association is strengthened by the fact that the creature sacred to Athene is the owl, which, with its great eyes, is a symbol of wisdom.
The same large, compelling eyes are found in Sepia, and who can doubt the higher Sepia’s innate wisdom, or the
ability of a powerful Sepia woman to turn a man to stone with her withering gaze, or that the premenstrual Sepia can be a shrew, or a ‘bitch?’ Furthermore it is in Sepia probably more than in any other remedy that the energy of the anima [left] and the animus [right] stand opposed to one another, and it is a dose of Sepia that can bring a balance to the dilemma of career [male] or family [female]. Such is the stuff of myth. Because of their connection with deeply repressed, emotional states Lac-can is closely related to the ocean remedies.
On a number of occasions Asklepios raised mortals from the dead and hence eventually incurred the wrath of Hades, God of the Underworld, who saw his subjects being stolen from him. Some slanderers claimed that Asklepios misused his healing powers and accepted bribes of gold to perform miracles. Whether this was true or false, it is a that when, at the bidding of Artemis, Asklepios attempted to restore the hunter Orion to life, Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks, struck him dead with a thunderbolt.
Later Zeus resurrected Asklepios, so fulfilling a prophecy that he would become a god, die, and then resume his godhead. It was also the destiny of Dionysos, the God of
Wine and Ecstasy, to die and become “the risen god.” In Christianity, Christ was the divine healer, who
could raise the dead to life, suffered a human death, and was
resurrected to his divinity.
In the same tradition, the dog fits the symbolism of the Good Shepherd, and was an emblem
of the clergy. Indeed, the name “Dominicans” for an order of friars, literally means “dogs of the Lord.” These correspondences are the most sublime expressions of the Lac-can state, standing in stark contrast to its infernal
associations.
Asklepios was depicted as a man with a large beard, holding in his hand a staff, round which is coiled a serpent; his other hand is sometimes supported on the head of a serpent; he is invariably accompanied by one or more dogs. Apart from this cult image, the divine physician often assumed the form of a serpent or dog, which were his divine symbols and possessed his attributes. At the sanctuaries of Asklepios, sacred snakes and dogs were used to lick the wounds and ailing parts of the sick. Many instances of healing were recorded. These animals were perceived as direct channels for the flow of the god’s power. Dog’s saliva and milk both had special virtue, but it was the milk that was particularly potent, representing
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