Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry: Towardsan Understanding of How Art, Myth andHomeopathy Are Inextricably Connected, withSpecial Reference to the Work of TS EliotIan Hamilton Q1Q1

Q11

1Scotland, United Kingdom

Homœopathic Links 2017;30(4):1–7.

Address for correspondence Ian Hamilton, BA Hons, DSH, RSHom,Tigh Fhada, Inver, Dunkeld, Perthshire, PH8 0JR, Scotland,United Kingdom (e-mail: Ian_Hamilton@homeopathy-soh.org).

Introduction

In this essay, I try to explain how art, homeopathy and mythare totally interconnected—art may be tapping into somehomeopathic roots and myth is doing the same, as it is aconstruct which attempts to explain and change humanbehaviour. It is as though myth works as an epigeneticevolutionary force, which allows humans to work out howto develop and not regress. Myth, like religion, is a humanlyconstructed artifice, but it has taken hold on a level ofcollective memory, maybe now even hard wired into thehuman frame. I argue that homeopathy and art are alsotapping into the same collective memory—they are workingon the same plane and maybe even using the same forces.

I will look at the concept of the human condition, as, inmythesis, it embraces all three of these closely connectedphenomena. The point of trying to understand the humancondition is to establish ‘reality’, to make sense of the world.As Magritte’s painting of 1933, The Human Condition, showsthis is not easy (►Fig. 1).

I am well aware that to include homeopathy in the samepantheon as the other twoways of making sense is tomake abold claim. Many would wish, rightly, to place science in thepantheon, but I contend that homeopathy is as important tothe development ofmankind as science; indeed it is a scienceand an art. I hope to show that homeopathy is as transfor-mative in its effects as art and myth (including religion) andthat science, while it transforms lives, does so in a qualita-tively different way to the other two. Science tends to movein a series of ‘revolutions’, where one theory supersedesanother,1 for example Ptolomy, Newton, Einstein as models.My three phenomena are ways of being, living and explain-ing, which have always been a part of being human.

The Foundations of Homeopathy

Without any doubt, true homeopathic healing and thinkinginvolves a crossing over from conscious to unconscious, fromthematerial to thedynamic, frommindto spirit.Useanysimilarcontrasts and they apply. How do we know? Because in the

Keywords► Art► Mythology► Poetry► Evolution► Consciousness► Platinum► Sulphur

Abstract This is another article of what we hope will be a series of interesting contributionsabout the relationship between art and homeopathy and the art and science ofhomeopathy. Many have noted this connection between art and homeopathy, andthere is something about the nature of the creative force and the way in which weperceive the vital force as creative, which puts homeopathy in the same dynamic placeas that which drives artistic inspiration. We would like readers to reflect on theseconnections and how they may have experienced, used or made art a focus of theirhomeopathic practice and understanding. I know from starting my group ‘Art andHomeopathy’ that the direction of our own work is diverse, but all is founded on theprinciple of using art in some way to clarify and enhance practice. We invite you to sendus your experience or take on this, be you artist, homeopath or both. This article tries toexplain how art, homeopathy and myth are totally interconnected.

© 2017 Thieme Medical and ScientificPublishers Private Ltd.

DOI https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1608615.ISSN 1019-2050.

Homeopathy and Art 1

process of restoring the organism to health, all that we under-stand about the conspicuousness of being human is trans-formed on some level. Look at Aphorism 19 of The Organon.2

‘Since diseases are nothing other than alterations ofconditions of healthy people, which express themselvesthrough disease signs, and since cure is only possible throughan alteration of the patient’s condition into healthy state, it iseasily seen that medicines would in no way be able to cure ifthey did not possess the power to differently tune the humancondition that resides in feelings and functions. Indeed, it isevident that the curative power ofmedicinesmust rest solelyupon this, their power to alter the human condition’.

We should unpack this extraordinary paragraph. Theclaims it makes are well known and believed by all homeo-paths. They are the foundation; the curative power of re-medies is solely due to their power to alter the humancondition. This means that medicines are transformative inthe deepest sense. The power of the potentised remedy,which has been clearly described through the proving, isthat it will restore to health by matching and overpoweringthe morbid signs of disease. But the art of cure practiced bythe homeopath cannot be merely a mechanical action. Itinvolves recognising the full expression of disease and med-icine. As paragraph 20 explains:

This hidden spirit-like power in the inner wesen ofmedicines to alter the human condition and thus tocure disease is, in itself, in no way discernible withmere intellectual exertion. It is only by experience, onlythrough its manifestations whilst it is impinging on thehuman condition that we can distinctly perceive it.3

Twootheraspectsofhumanlifewhicharecapableofalteringthe human condition aremyth and art. Both are also capable ofdescribing and reflecting the human condition. Art and artistsfrequently tap into myth to explore or communicate.

Myth, like art, is a human construct; that is, it cannot existwithout consciousness. But thanks to C.G. Jung, weknow thatmyth is embedded deep in the unconscious as well, in thecollective unconscious.

I am interested in Hahnemann’s statements here abouthomeopathy altering the human condition in Aphorisms 19and 20. I think his spirit-like power (theWesen4 in German) isthis forcewe are trying to get to termswith, but he expressedit in 18th/19th century belief terms. As he says we cannotperceive it byamere effort of intellectual exertion (reason). Ithas to be by other means that we understand it. That is whyart and myth and homeopathy are linked—because they areabout the same force within us which drives evolution.

What is this force? I think it is nothing less than theacquisition of some quality, through what anthropologistscall the great leap forward, the change in humans whichstarted!50,000 years ago.5 There is no agreed version aboutwhat happened; some say the ability to speak, others thedevelopment of language, others a change in brain size. Butthere is some agreement that it manifests in the develop-ment of art as a means of expression. The cave paintings ofLascaux are a later example of an art which began muchearlier, at least 40,0000 ago (►Fig. 2):

Evidence suggests that they (cave paintings) were not merelydecorations of living areas since the caves inwhich they havebeen found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. They arealso often located in areas of caves that are not easilyaccessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings mayhave been a way of communicating with others, while othertheories ascribe a religious or ceremonial purpose to them.The paintings are remarkably similar around the world, withanimals being common subjects that give themost impressiveimages. Humans mainly appear as images of hands.6

Fig. 1 The human condition (René Magritte 1933).

Fig. 2 Cave painting (Lascaux, Dordogne).

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton2

Consciousness as an Evolutionary Force

I would argue that the development of art is a manifestationof the development of consciousness and that the great leapforward is just that. Without consciousness, we are nothuman. Whether it was brain size, language or speech, itresulted in humans being able to step outside their blindlydestined evolutionary path and see themselves differently.By consciousness, I mean awareness of the self outside ofthe species-specific impulses which drive other life forms.There is also an argument to say that consciousness hasmass, or a form of it, as an energy force. One reading ofWesen implies that it is the organism and the supra-organ-ism. In this reading, it may ‘inhabit’ every cell. Wesen maybe consciousness, or an aspect of it. Goethe and Coleridge,contemporaries of Hahnemann, certainly shared this view.Coleridge called it the genius.7 The period of Romanticpoetry coincided with the Hahnemann development ofhomeopathy.

Various Viewpoints

According to David Chalmers, director of the Center forConsciousness at the Australian National University,8 thesubjective nature of consciousness prevents it from beingexplained in terms of simpler components, a methodused for great success in other areas of science. He believesthat unlike most of the physical world, which can bebroken down into individual atoms, or organisms, whichcan be understood in terms of cells, consciousness is anirreducible aspect of the universe, like space and timeand mass.

‘Those things in a way didn’t need to evolve’, saidChalmers. ‘They were part of the fundamental furniture ofthe world all along’. Instead of trying to reduce conscious-ness to something else, he believes consciousness shouldsimply be taken for granted, the way that space and timeand mass are in physics. According to this view, a theory ofconsciousness would not explain what consciousness is orhow it arose; instead, it would try to explain the relation-ship between consciousness and everything else in theworld.

Then There Is the Argument thatWe Are OurOwn Reality

A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowl-edges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we arepersonally involved with the creation of our own reality.Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a‘mental’ construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeanswrote: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like agreat thought than like a great machine. Mind no longerappears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter,we ought to rather hail it as the creator and governor of therealm of matter’. The universe is immaterial-mental andspiritual. Live, and enjoy. (R.C. Henry).9

Related to This Is the QuantumConsciousness Theories of Hameroff andPenrose

The nature of consciousness remains deeply mysterious andprofoundly important, with existential, medical and spiritualimplication. We know what it is like to be conscious – to haveawareness, a conscious ‘mind’, but who, or what, are ‘we’ whoknow such things? How is the subjective nature of phenomenalexperience – our ‘inner life’ – to be explained in scientificterms?What consciousness actually is, and how it comes aboutremain unknown. The general assumption in modern scienceand philosophy – the ‘standard model’ – is that consciousnessemerges from complex computation among brain neurons,computation whose currency is seen as neuronal firings(‘spikes’) and synaptic transmissions, equated with binary‘bits’ in digital computing. Consciousness is presumed to‘emerge’ from complex neuronal computation, and to havearisen during biological evolution as an adaptation of livingsystems, extrinsic to the makeup of the universe. On the otherhand, spiritual and contemplative traditions, and some scien-tists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intrinsic,‘woven into the fabric of the universe’. In these views, consciousprecursors and Platonic forms preceded biology, existing allalong in the fine scale structure of reality.

My research involves a theory of consciousness which canbridge these two approaches, a theory developed over the past20 years with eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose. Called‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’), it suggests con-sciousness arises from quantum vibrations in protein polymerscalled microtubules inside the brain’s neurons, vibrations whichinterfere, ‘collapse’ and resonate across scale, control neuronalfirings, generate consciousness, and connect ultimately to ‘deeperorder’ ripples in space time geometry. Consciousness is more likemusic than computation. (Stewart Hameroff, Director, Centerfor Consciousness Studies Professor Emeritus Department ofAnesthesiology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona).10

Mass Consciousness

If there is individual consciousness, then there is also amass orglobal consciousness. This was first postulated by Emile Dur-kheim, theFrench sociologist, as evidenceof thepower of socialbelief systems.11 But now it has been seen, as with individualconsciousness, as a quantum phenomenon, specifically quan-tum field. There is history for the notion of collective con-sciousness going back to 1500 BC, with the Vedic rishis ofancient India. They taught that an all-encompassing field ofpure consciousness exists, as a universal Self called Atman orBrahman. This universal field of consciousness was said to bethe sole and whole cause of all physical phenomena and toinclude within itself all individual human consciousnesses.12

We must skate over intervening history, which separatedVedic texts from monotheism, as the latter allowed onlycollective consciousness through the medium of God. Tocome up to date we have the idea of the Gaia mind or earthsoul,13 Hagelin’s unified field theory of consciousness14 andRoger Nelson’s ElectroGaiaGram (EGG) project, also called

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton 3

the Global Consciousness Project.15 The latter two seek tomeasure the effects on mass consciousness of meditation orresponses to world events, for example the twin towersdisaster of 9/11. Both have a significant spiritual dimensionand the EGG project on its website has a section called PoeticHistory,which indicates that the project grewout of theworkof Père Teilhard de Chardin’s, The Future of Man.16 TheHagelin theory and practice is also known as the Maharishieffect as it involves Transcendental Meditation (TM).

It is also worth noting here that there have been strongconnections made between field theory and homeopathy,notably through the work of Lionel Milgrom17 and others.

The Collective Unconscious

So far we have considered the question of consciousness as aforce, individually or collectively, which forms the humancondition and its relationship with the universe in its broad-est sense. When we look at the unconscious condition ofhumankind, whole new realms open. This is for me the mostimportant thing about us, as it is where the repository of theoutcomes of consciousness lies. Jung described the personalunconscious thus: ‘Everything of which I know, but of which Iamnot at themoment thinking; everything of which I was onceconscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by mysenses, but not noted bymy conscious mind; everything which,involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think,remember, want, and do; all the future things which are takingshape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all thisis the content of the unconscious… Besides these we mustinclude all more or less intentional repressions of painfulthought and feelings. I call the sum of these contents the“personal unconscious”’.18

But it is with the collective unconscious, a particularconcept of Jung’s, that we find the most likely explanationof the evolutionary nature of consciousness. Jung speaks of itas ‘consist(ing) of mythological motifs or primordial images,for which reason themyths of all nations are its real exponents.In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort ofprojection of the collective unconscious… We can thereforestudy the collective unconscious in twoways, either in mythol-ogy or in the analysis of the individual’.19

Jung was to elaborate the concept of archetypes as theprimordial forces which shape human behaviour. ‘The arche-type concept derives from the often repeated observation thatmyths and universal literature stories contain well definedthemes which appear every time and everywhere. We oftenmeet these themes in the fantasies, dreams, delirious ideas andillusions of persons living nowadays’.20

Now we could begin to see that what our patients areexpressing are these same fantasies… and illusions andwhichare often also the pointer to cure for us as homeopaths. Thismay also be the connection with our earlier discussion of thequantum field theory of consciousness and homeopathy.21 Ibelieve that the main polychrest remedies are expressions ofpsychical and physical archetypes.We speakof thesewhenwedescribe somebody as a Nux vomica or Sulphur or Pulsatillatype. Often we can achieve a good curative response if the

patient’s picture fits the remedy archetype. These types exist,have always existed, in a collective unconscious encompassingmythology, because this goes to the idea of a subjectivecreation of our own reality referred to earlier by R.C. Henryand S. Hameroff. The most important thing to grasp is thatmyths were created by the human mind, by consciousnesspersonal or collective; we invented the gods!

However, the polychrests are not always the remedieswhich lead to cure. It falls to the ‘contents’ of the personalunconscious to disclose this for us, what I have referred toelsewhere as the mask (or persona) rather than the arche-type.22 We need to use both aspects to lead us to thesimillimum. The terms, ‘archetype’ and ‘persona’ here arenot interchangeable with Jung’s particular definitions, butare conceptually related. I see ‘persona’ as the visible andunconscious ego rather than just the visible. Similarly, ‘ar-chetype’ encompasses mythical and other archetypes, suchas ‘Sulfur’, ‘Venusian’ and Mercurial’.

Art and Consciousness

If we see consciousness aswoven into the fabric of the universeand that it ismore likemusic than computation, and conscious-nessmaybea subjective realityof theuniverse, individuallyandcollectively, then who better express this manifestation of thehuman condition than an artist, or—more specifically—a poet?

I chose T.S. Eliot as that artist, because he drewon somanysources for his poetry and expressed in poetry, somanyof themyths. He also put into his poetry his experience, his vastlearning and the suffering of his life, aswell as the suffering ofhumans in events such as the Great War. He was a true artistin that both the conscious and unconscious are clearly atwork in his poetry. It was his editor and collaborator GeoffreyFaber who expressed this best in a letter to Eliot.23

Little effective art has ever sprung directly from theoriesabout Art. Indirectly the theories, I suppose, do affect theminds of all intelligent people, and consequently (if weassume that artists are intelligent people) the work of theartist. But this is only when the influence of theory andcriticism have soaked right down into the soul. The resultis more in the nature of an unconscious physiologicalprocess, than of conscious rational effort. Unqualified thisview is, of course, untenable, since a great deal of anartist’s work is conscious, though it is perhaps rather aconscious process of selection amongst the suggestionsprovided from a source within himself but outside hisconscious control than a process of conscious creation.There are also the technical methods which he has learnt,or elaborated for himself, most of which he applies un-consciously perhaps, but the acquisition of which wasconscious and deliberate. But I think you would probablyagree with me that both the selective process and tech-nical methods are equally characteristic of all minor artsand handicrafts, as well as of Art with a capital A; and thatwhat gives Art its capital A is the judgment of life or of theUniverse which the selective process and the technicalmethods enable the artist to express; and that this

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton4

judgment is, when it is a judgment of real value, formu-lated by thewhole personality of the artist, and is farmorean uncontrolled and involuntary reaction to the facts thana deliberate gesture.What I meant, therefore, when I usedthat unfortunate phrase about the eternal principles ofArt was that the Artist ought always to seek to express hisgenuine re-action rather than make striking gestures’.

A poem like The Waste Land24 was created from a severedistillation of learning, technique, language, mythology,religion, personal experience, suffering and human sufferingthrough the war.

The title is a direct reference to the land of the FisherKing,25 laid waste through the wound he received (thewound of humankind) in the Grail myth. This in turn, though,is a version of much older myths and rituals of the bowl andsword, male and female symbols of fertility. Eliot acknowl-edged that he was very influenced by Frazer’s The GoldenBough26 and through this, Jesse L. Weston’s From Ritual toRomance,27 which traced the Grail myth back to pre-history.Frazer began the nowubiquitous understanding that ritual inmost societies is linked to fertility rites. Interestingly, Eliot,when he attended the Ballet Russe’s ballet performance ofStravinsky’s, Rites of Spring, drew immediate parallels withFrazer’s work.28 Of great interest to us, as well, is that Frazerspeaks of homeopathic or imitative magic in his work, inthe chapter on sympathetic magic. He dismisses it as prac-ticed by savages, ignorant and dull witted people.29 (Later,Margaret Mead changed all this thinking with her culturallyrelativist ideas about anthropology).30 In some ways, thesepractices are based on doctrine of signatures and the law ofsimilars. Therefore, homeopathic thinking, myth and ritualare already intertwined in many societies from early pre-history. What Frazer did not do, because of his lack ofrelativism, was to see the natural descendants of these‘magicians, shamans, practicing healing as well as ritual‘magic’, as probable forerunners of modern homeopathy.

What Eliot also expressed was the zeitgeist, the commonexperiences, the equivalent of the painted hand in the cave40,000 years ago. The artist expresses thehuman condition, or‘seek(s) to express his genuine re-action’. He taps into con-sciousness, or that which is in the unified field because he hasdeep ‘judgmentof life or of theUniverse’, as Faber says (►Fig. 3).

Eliot himself was conscious of the role of the artist intransformation. He says this in an essay published in TheSacred Wood (1921).31

I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestiveanalogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finelyfiliated platinum is introduced into a chamber containingoxygen and sulphur dioxide…The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gasespreviously mentioned are mixed in the presence of afilament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. Thiscombination takes place only if the platinum is present;nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace ofplatinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaf-fected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. Themind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly orexclusively operate upon the experience of the manhimself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more com-pletely separate in him will be the man who suffers andthe mind which creates; the more perfectly will the minddigest and transmute the passions which are its material.

I would suggest that there may also be an analogy withhomeopathy here. It is well known that platinum is a catalystand remains unchanged after carrying out its role of transfor-mation. Platinum, the remedy, remains untouched on an emo-tional level (haughty) and consider it to be above others. Artistsand poets are often apart from the mainstream of society andlead change by their vision. Eliot’s words are very much aboutperfection and separateness, strong Platinum themes. He sug-gests that the true poeticmindcan ‘transmute the passions’, justas, forHahnemann, ‘medicines would in noway be able to cure ifthey did not possess the power to differently tune the humancondition that resides in feelings and functions. Indeed, it isevident that the curative power of medicines must rest owingsolely upon this, their power to alter the human condition’.32

To me, altering the human condition stands in the sameplace as transmuting the passions, in Eliot’s phrase.

The Artist and the Homeopath

If the artist is expressing the human condition, then is it thesameas thehumanconditionwhichHahnemanntalksabout in§19 of The Organon? Hahnemann says medicines ‘differentlytune the human condition that resides in feelings and functions’.Medicines possess the power to cure by altering these thingswhich govern the state of health of the individual. It is thedisturbance of the feelings (sensations) and functions, ex-pressed as morbid signs, so deep, which is called disease.The restoration to health throughmedicines is akin to the cureof the Fisher King’s wound and thus the healing of the wasteland, by Parsifal or Gawain, depending on the source of themyth.Weare led to say thisbecauseofHahnemann’s assertion,‘that the curative power of medicines must rest owing solelyupon this, their power to alter the human condition’.33

This is a huge idea and puts disease much more into therealm of the ‘spiritual and contemplative traditions…“woveninto the fabric of the universe”. In these views, consciousFig. 3 Painted hands (Lascaux, Dordogne).

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton 5

precursors and Platonic forms preceded biology, existing allalong in the fine scale structure of reality’, of which Hameroffspoke. It is also what Jung is speaking of, when he says: ‘Weoften meet these themes in the fantasies, dreams, deliriousideas and illusions of persons living nowadays’. Here he isspeakingof themyths and universal stories, but we can easilysee myths and stories of disease as woven into this fabric ofthe universe, waiting to lay waste the land devastated by theKing’s wound. The human condition encompasses every-thing, including disease. We can see how plagues and epi-demics could easily be visitations from the gods. In a sensethey are, as their devastating effects are part of the mythiccollective unconscious.

For the artist, as for the homeopath, the human conditionis the very stuff of life. Art reflects the current age and thepast because the collective unconscious contains both ofthem. Music as well as poetry acts in the same way. Greatcomposers capture their era with such pieces as Beethoven’sEroica symphony, with its roots in revolution, as equally doesRomantic poetry. These are the collective unconsciousmove-ments of their time. These are both interesting for homeop-athy, as this was the time Hahnemann was active. We couldargue that homeopathy is a revolutionary response to thestultified medical model pertaining then, as now. Homeop-athy continues to evolve and respond to changing worldviews and events and we are constantly evolving newremedies and new directions, while holding onto funda-mental skills and practices, just as artists do.

What genius led Scholten to the Lanthanides as remediesof our time; or Sankaran to Sensation, as newapproaches, notjust to our skill base but to conceptual shifts in how wepractice? What genius led Picasso or T.S. Eliot to see theworld in a way which changed our view of it forever?

Homeopathic Thinking and Artistic Thinking

Homeopathic thinking can best be described as seeing theworld through the doctrine of similars compared with thelaw of opposites. In this way, all phenomena are connectedrather than contrasted. So in this view, Descartes’ division ofmind and body is abjured while the universal notion of yin/yang is embraced, because they are not just opposites butparts of a whole, each containing the other. Newtonianphysics, in homeopathic thinking, straight cause and effect,is subsumed by Einsteinian physics and its relativist founda-tions. Modern medicine is still, broadly, Newtonian in itsbase, with laws of motion and mechanics. In its presentincarnation, it is reduced to the so-called evidence-basedpractice. Homeopathic medicine has principles not laws, andthey are a foundation and a set of guidelines upon whichpractice is founded. It can encompass change and is fluid,responding to and recognising greater forces than incremen-tal scientific discoveries. Homeopaths are skilled practi-tioners who draw upon principles of empirical practiceand great insights.

Artistic thinking is always relativist. There are few laws orgrand theories, but instead there are movements which bothlead and are led by human interactions.

What I am arguing for is that artists, who are true artists inFaber’s sense, have special insight into the human condition;they are the true medium through which we see the humancondition. John Berger wrote about this in his book Ways ofSeeing.34 He said that art historians had mystified art so thatit was available only to a certain class. They are responsiblefor promoting theories about art which are giving a one-sided interpretation. There can be no theories of art as such,because art is a response to human activity in all its rangeand interpreted by skilled and gifted exponents. There areartistic movements, because art detects these things andresponds. Futurist, Cubist, Impressionist, Modernist; theseare all various ways of seeing which both lead and respond.The avant-garde quickly becomes the ubiquitous mode andmoves on, learning from and adapting what has gone before.

What both ways of thinking have in common is a sharedorigin of mythology and understanding, at a conscious andunconscious level, which responds sympathetically to thehuman condition. Sympathetic magic is perhaps not a badname for what happens. Magic weaves and creates delusionand insight, disease and cure, vision and understanding,religion and politics, because these are all the creations ofhumanity and are all part of and the drivers of the humancondition. Homeopathy can unlock this and get us back to atrue understanding of ourselves. Art can unlock this andshowus all the delusions and insights by throwing thembackat us to look at, paint images of, read about, make versesabout and sing about what we are deep down.

The Art of Homeopathy

To conclude, I want to end with a plea for skill, practice,insight, learning, experience and intuition, as the attributeswhich homeopaths and artists have in common. Percy By-sshe Shelley said, in his Defense of Poetry, ‘Poets are theunacknowledged legislators of the world’.35 I think by legis-lators he means leaders. Poetry means art in all its forms.This quote from that essay seems to capture the essence ofthe myth and truth of the waste land of the Grail story.

‘Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centreand circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehendsall science, and that to which all science must be referred. It isat the same time the root and blossom of all other systems ofthought; it is that fromwhich all spring, and that which adornsall; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed,and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and thesuccession of the scions of the tree of life’.36 In this reading, theFisher King’s wound is the absence of poetry; the healing isrestoration of the power of poetry to order life. So the humancondition, to be truly healthy, has to spring not from reasonbut from poetry which understands truth and beauty.

Or, as Hahnemann says in §20, ‘This hidden spirit-likepower in the inner wesen of medicines to alter the humancondition and thus to cure disease is, in itself, in no waydiscernible with mere intellectual exertion. It is only byexperience, only through its manifestations whilst it isimpinging on the human condition that we can distinctlyperceive it’.37 He was of the poets’ camp.

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton6

I believe this raises, or equates, poetry (art) to homeopathy,in helping to restore the sick to full health. Mankind has beenexploring the inner nature of medicines for centuries. Fromearly attempts in pre-history and across many cultures, to usethe power of similars, in Frazer’s description, to the question-ing exploration of art across the same cultures and theembedding of these things in myths, humans were searchingin the imagination (the experience of its manifestations?) fortheir answers. Understanding of art, as with understanding ofhomeopathy, is not a process just of reason, but of uncoveringthat which is hidden, that which lies in the collective uncon-scious and maybe even the individual cells of the organism.

References1 Kuhn TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1st ed. USA:

University of Chicago Press; 19622 Hahnemann S. Organon of the Medical Art. [O’RiellyW, ed.] USA:

Birdcage Books; 19963 Ibid Hahnemann4 Ibid Hahnemann, p. 3615 DiamondJ.Guns,GermsandSteel (P19). London:VintageBooks;19976 Cave painting. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Cave_painting7 Ibid Hahnemann, p. 3628 Why Great Minds Can’t Grasp Consciousness. Available at: http://

www.livescience.com/366-great-minds-grasp-consciousness.html9 The Mental Universe. Available at: http://www.newdualism.org/

papers/R.Henry/436029a.html10 Quantum Consciousness. Available at: http://www.quantumcon-

sciousness.org/content/overview-sh11 Durkheim E. The Division of Labor in Society. [Halls WD, trans.]

New York: Free Press; 199712 Science and Nonduality. Available at: https://www.scienceand-

nonduality.com/did-the-vedic-philosophy-influenced-the-con-cept-of-free-energy-and-quantum-mechanics/

13 TheWorld Soul of Science and Religion. Available at: http://www.lovolution.net/MainPages/gaia/WorldSoulCSS/WorldSoul.htm

14 Unified Quantum Field Theories. Available at: https://www.mum.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hagelin.pdf

15 Gathering of Global Mind. Available at: http://noosphere.prince-ton.edu/story.html

16 Teilhard de Chardin. The Future of Man. Doubleday/RandomHouse Edition; 2004

17 Milgrom LR. A new geometrical description of entanglement andthe curative homeopathic process. J Altern Complement Med2008;14(03):329–339

18 Jung CG. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed.[Hull RFC, trans.]. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1969

19 Jung CG. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. [Hull RFC,trans.] New York: Pantheon Books; 1960

20 Ibid Jung (1969)21 Adamski A. Archetypes, collective unconscious compared to

development quantum psychology. Neuroquantology 2011;9(03):563–571

22 Herbals and Natural Remedies. Available at: http://herbal.global-summit.com/abstract/2015/the-role-of-artistic-expression-in-de-ciding-on-a-homeopathic-prescription-with-special-reference-to-working-with-practicing-artists

23 Eliot V, Haughton H, eds. The Letters of T S Eliot Vol 2, 1923–1925.London: Faber and Faber; 2009

24 Eliot TS. The Waste Land. New York: Boni & Liveright; 192225 Weston JL. The Quest of the Holy Grail (The Quest series). USA:

Bell; 191326 Frazer JG. The Golden Bough. London: Macmillan; 191127 Weston JL. FromRitual to Romance. USA: The Libraryof Alexandria;

192028 Crawford R. Young Eliot (P381). London: Jonathan Cape; 201529 Ibid Frazer (1911) chapter iii30 Mead M, ed. Cultural Patterns and Technical Change. Paris:

UNESCO; 195331 Eliot TS. The Sacred Wood. New York: Knopf; 192132 Ibid Hahnemann S (1810) Organon of the Medical Art33 Ibid Hahnemann S (1810) Organon of the Medical Art34 Berger J. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books; 197335 Shelley PB. A Defence of Poetry. London: Edward Moxon; 182136 Ibid Shelley (1821)37 Ibid Hahnemann S (1810) Organon of the Medical Art

Homœopathic Links Vol. 30 No. 4/2017

Homeopathy, Mythology and Poetry Hamilton 7

Author Query Form (HPL/1797)

Special Instructions: Author please write responses to queries directly on proofsand then return back.

Q1: AU: Please confirm that given names (red), middle names (black) and surnames (green) have been identified correctly.