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This is commonly the dilemma of Lac-can – left, right or centre? Although Hecate was feared for her dark aspect, she was essentially ambivalent, possessing a benign and benevolent side, which was generous, protective and guiding, and the obverse of this, which was terrifying and infernal. She was goddess of night terrors, phantoms, spectres, and fearful monsters, and the mistress of sorcery [Lac-can, Stramonium, Hyoscyamus]. Her companions were the Erinnyes or Furies, who hounded the guilty relentlessly, without rest or pause.
These Erinnyes were crones, with snakes for hair, dog’s heads, coalblack bodies, bat’s wings, and bloodshot eyes. They carried brassstudded scourges, and their victims died in torment. They personified the pangs of conscience, which afflict those who suffer from guilt, remorse and shame [Aurum, Carcinosin, Ignatia, Lac-can, Nat-mur, Staphysagria, Thuja, etc.].
In 1522, St Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit, was tormented by his personal Erinnyes or ‘scruples’ during the harsh penances he inflicted upon himself for what he considered to be the sins of his former life. This ‘dark night of the soul’ was followed by a series of spiritual experiences, which brought him a deep serenity and peace, which never left him. Ignatia, which was named after him, suffers ‘anxiety of conscience,’ and is the acute of Nat-mur and Lac-can.
In symbolism, in myth, and in the eyes of humanity, the dog, like Hecate, is profoundly ambivalent, a metaphor of extreme duality. Viewed homoeopathically, such ambivalence and duality are fundamental expressions of the sycotic miasm.
Christian and Celtic tradition revere the dog as the embodiment of fidelity, unswerving devotion, friendship, protective vigilance, nobility, and love that survives death; in Semitic iconography it accompanies the scorpion, serpent, and other baleful reptiles, and is evil and demonic; in Judaism the dog was held in contempt as an unclean scavenger, associated with whoremongers, sorcerers, fornicators and idolaters; Islam sees in the dog all that is vile in creation, a term of opprobrium for unbelievers, the very symbol of uncleanliness, greed, gluttony, and gross materialism – the sole exceptions being the saluki and the greyhound, which were used for hunting. The origin of the word “cynic” reflects this ambivalence. It derives from the Greek word “kuon,” [cyon] which was directed derogatorily at the followers of Diogenes to indicate their critical and aggressive rudeness. They, however, accepted the insult as a compliment, aptly describing their role as moral watchdogs. The word also originally implied flattery and insolence.
Possibly the most significant example of duality, which the dog shares with snakes, is its association with healing
on the one hand and its conveying of disease and death on the other. The domestic dog and its near relatives, the wolf, jackal, coyote, and fox are particularly responsible for propagatingrabies.
The disease has been known in Europe and Asia since ancient times. The period of summer marked by the rising of the dog star Sirius, which always accompanies the hunter Orion, has since antiquity been referred to as “dog days,” when dogs were supposed to be especially liable to spells of madness. This frequently fatal disease expresses itself in two forms – which reinforce the canine theme of duality – furious and dumb rabies. They mirror in extreme form two major characteristics of the Lac-can psychological state that stand poles apart. The ‘mute’ C type personality, which has no voice with which to represent or defend itself [the ‘disease to please’], and expresses all that is obsequious, self-effacing, and craven in the archetype, and the rabid, antisocial personality that lives out the latent “bestial aggression” and paranoid hate of the archetype. The intimate relationship between rabies and the dog reveals an equally close connection between Lac-can and major remedies of the anti-rabies Solonaceae – Belladonna, Stramonium and Hyoscyamus, and hence to fury, violence and sexuality.
The connection to Lac-can extends to the chronics of the Solanaceae – Calc-carb, Mag-carb, and Thuja, and to the rabies nosode, Lyssin. The most obvious symbol of the dog is its wild progenitor, the wolf.
Indeed, at the molecular level the DNA makeup of wolves and dogs is almost identical. The dog’s lineage began 37 million years ago in North America. The common forebear of most modern canids was Eucyon, a jackal-sized predator that migrated into the Old World six to four million years ago and evolved into the wolf. At least 14,000 years ago the domestication of the wolf/dog was under way.
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Atropa - Belladonna