Notes On Homeopathic Prescribing

In my last entry on the elephant, I confused some people.  So let me take the opportunity for clarification.  The issue in calling the elephant a “remedy for grief” is that it sounds as though I commonly prescribe it to treat grief.  The truth is, I have prescribed elephant milk in homeopathic potency once over the past seven years, and I am fairly certain I have not missed another case of it.   

To give the elephant as an exact prescription everything has to fit.  Every word, every gesture, every dream must funnel down to the pattern of consciousness (i.e. on the 4th level, see catepories on the right) of the elephant.  Anyone who needs such a remedy would have, first of all, general qualities of animal remedies, and second, the general qualities of milks.  Animal remedies are defined in terms of victim and aggressor, the need to be alpha or one-up, attraction, sexuality, jealousy, and such.  In milks you see a conflict between the need for independence and being dependent on the group for survival.  Often you see a love for children or dreams of babies in people who need milk remedies.   

Any remedy can be a remedy for grief in a superficial way (2nd level).  That is to say, if someone loses someone they love, their deep-acting homeopathic remedy will likely help them recover.  What is distinctive about remedies such as Ignatia and the milk of the elephant is that grief runs deep and lies within the pattern of consciousness itself.  People who need these remedies may experience grief in entirely inappropriate ways.  For example, they might lose their job and react as if they had lost a loved one.  Or, they may experience grief in an entirely appropriate way, but have serious difficulties moving beyond it, spiraling in grief for years.   

The challenge of high-level classical homeopathy is always to penetrate the outer layers a person presents with, finding a deep, unchanging, energetic core.  Not always does what is on the surface lead in a straightforward way to the deep pattern underneath.  Moreover, two people with the same deep pattern may present in entirely different ways and have entirely different personalities.  The homeopath as sleuth must be flexible, refusing to be boxed in by superficial ideas about remedy states.