Page 25 - Autumn 18

We understand a depressive mood, where the individual isolates herself, becomes worse walking in open air and better closing the eyes.
It is a small effort to link these proving symptoms to the animal's behavior as described by Hahnemann:
"This <juice> the animal occasionally squirts out to darken the water around it, probably in order to secure its prey or to conceal itself from its enemies."
The depressive person isolates herself behind a black curtain (of indifference), just like the cuttlefish paints the sur- rounding waters black when external influences stress her.
The prover starts to sense and to react like the animal. Since Hahnemann, an alphabet of provings with real animal substances has been carried out (apis, bufo, cantharis, ...).
They all confirm that the prover becomes like the animal. A more challenging example of this is the recent proving of the Maiasaura dinosaur. The provers took a substance they did not know and produced symptoms which can be linked in a wonderful way to contemporary knowledge about these prehistoric creatures. For example, I was struck by the dream that "beasts <are> approaching people from the rear, biting off their heads". Also, the fact that there are several proving symptoms referring to flying may make sense as birds are considered descendants of dinosaurs .
As much as a prover displays symptoms of the animal substance, so does the patient in need of the remedy display symptoms of the animal. One could say that the patient is becoming the animal and thus we give a remedy based on the animal. The message of that intervention is like showing a mirror to the patient: if you go on, this is how you will end up: crawling over the ground in suspicion and doom, like a snake!
A dose of lachesis muta then helps the patient to resume his human path to reach the higher goal of his existence.
Animals become humans
Prover or patient, humans can become animals indeed. The symptoms we collect conjures up the image of the animal as gifted with human qualifications, especially with human mental symptoms. We understand the animal through a human perspective as we allot it human emotions, thoughts and feelings.
This human understanding of animals may be more obvious for the domesticated animals, with whom we can communicate much easier, but it does apply to all animals.
Therefore we can look upon animals as expressions of human nature. Each animal expresses in an exaggerated way certain aspects of human nature. It is here that the circle is complete: we can gain a deeper understanding of animals because they have become human.
If the line between understanding a human and an animal is thinner, this must have consequences for our Materia
Medica. This leads us to the use of mental symptoms in animals.
Alfonso Masi Elizalde (Argentina) has probably been the first to explore and excogitate the mind to a new level of excellence in homeopathy. His first series of seminars in Europe was attended by several veterinary homeopaths. Just as the more comprehensive way to approach mental symptoms at first seemed hard to handle for humans, this approach seemed even more difficult to apply in animals.
Nevertheless, the animals were "treated" in much the same way as the humans. I remember a case of a dressage horse that was ridden by the Belgian Olympic champion Anne d'Ieteren. It had been a winner but had become very disobedient, ran into cars when leaving the trailer at the manège, etc. Masi was a horse lover and Anne's husband happened to be a homeopath.
A very refined analysis of the horse's mind led to the surprising prescription of pulsatilla pratensis with a very good result.
To my knowledge, Masi has been the first to show how animals could be investigated as humans, in other words, how similar the Materia Medica could be for both. That insight is now more widespread and in an earlier issue of your journal I have seen a very attractive example .
One key to prescribe the remedy in that case, was the résumé of mezereum as formulated by Marc Brunson (a Belgian vet): "‘When Mezereum was carried by the stork on its way to his birthplace, the towel in which he held broke and Mezereum fell on his head on a stone in the middle of the desert."
This symbolic phrase was linked to the behavior of the horse. I can tell you that this résumé makes just as much sense for a human case of mezereum.
In other words, humans and animals are much more an ex- pression of the same thought than many of us are aware of.
By the way, this perspective applies well. Our understanding humanizes plants and minerals all the same: the pulsatilla patient yields like the true flower in the wind, the aurum patient shines like true gold, etc. We are all part of one life, one mind.
humans and animals merge
Patients in a way become animals and animals can be understood in human terms. In this merging of concepts there is a special relationship I would like to discuss now: the animal and its owner.
Could this merging evolve to the point that the owner and its pet express the same energy, so they need the same remedy?
Well, you will all know at least one owner who behaves pretty much like his pet, awkwardly stumbles through the street like his dog, etc. If not, your editor can quote you
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