Comparison
Calcium
carbonicum + Limestone + Marble
[Angela Hair]
The Family of Calcium carbonicum - Limestone
and Marble
I was born in Limestone country. This has implications. It is a
different thing to be born to clay or schist or basalt.
To be born in limestone country is to learn a deeper lesson. You live on
top of a reef. For millions upon millions of years a milky sea has washed over
the ground on which
you stand. Tiny creatures have lived here in numbers beyond counting.
There is no word for their abundance. Fish and snails, marine worms, shrimps
and pipis and mussles
and outnumbering them all, minute creatures called bryozoa.
They still exist at the margins between sea and land. Hundreds of
species and each possessing brain, mouth, gut and bum. Each living out its life
in a shelly box - no more than a mm wide. The box may
be square, hexagonal, oval. Whatever makes the neatest fit with its neighbours.
The creatures form a colony. Clustered at the tidal margin, contained within
their boxes, they live an uncomplicated life.
And the most extraordinary thing about them, the thing I love most, is
this - they have acquired the knack of resurrection. Within their tiny boxes
they live for around 6 months but during that time they die three times, they putrify, brain and gut and mouth and bum melt down to brown
slush. Seemingly dead they rot inside their box then amazingly after a few days
they revive. Brain and gut, mouth and bum take their previous forms. The lid
flips open, the feeding tentacles reemerge. The
creature is reborn.
They live and rot, live and rot, until finally they die for good. Brain
and gut, mouth and bum melt. The little shell box crumbles. It dissolves. So in
a perfect reversible reaction, dissolution and precipitation, in near exact
equilibrium, by infinite tiny accretions, the colony expands.
Isn’t that astounding?"
[Fiona Farrell]
From Limestone by New Zealand.
What are the themes we can take from this passage?
- tiny individuals that are part of a complex colony
- a substance evoluting over millions of years
under water
- life precipitating in a tiny shelly box and
dissolving again
- birth, death and resurrection
Compare these to the proving symptoms of Limestone by Nuala Eising and 9 others in 1994
“Went walking and walking over fields and walls. Feeling of fear
that I'd be absorbed into the landscape and never escape. I turned back. I felt
part of the stones. They were almost invisible because they were part of me -
fluid, water, merging.”
“I
am just lying still - my voice is still. It has the stillness and quietness of
death. I feel I am lying in a glass coffin, no part of my body moving. It's
like the stillness and
quietness
of death. Only I'm not cold.
It's not unpleasant or fearful. It's
like being dormant for the winter.”
“Tired, body thin, arms and
hands very large, watery feelings, all fluids moving, relaxed, air of
benevolence, lovely.”
When you look at the rubrics of Limestone (Lap-c-b) you see the same themes :
Absorption in nature
- Mind, ego, devoid of ego (1)
- Mind, Absorbed, buried in thought
- Mind, Cares, nature for, animals, plants (1)
- Mind, Monomania (for nature; for sea; for water)
- Mind, love, nature for (2)
- Mind, Anxiety sudden change (1)
- Confusion of mind, reality, can’t tell what is real and what is
not (1)
- Mind, fancies, absorbed in table2
Diffusion/ dissolution
- Delusion - body, body parts, lighter than air
- Delusion - separated, mind
and body are
- Delusion - body, body parts, diminished (2)
- Delusion - body, body parts, diffused has (1)
- Delusion - body, body parts, enlarged
- Delusion - body, thin (2)
- Head, enlarged sensation
- Delusion - unreal, everything is
- Delusion - vanish, she will (1)
- Delusion- water, under water (1)
- Dream, as if in a
Precipitation/entrapment
- Mind, home, desires to be
- Delusion, enslaved (1)
- Delusion, trapped (1)
- Mind, escape, attempts to
- Delusion, waiting, he, is
- Stomach, vomiting, morning, coughing on (1)
- Throat, mucus, detach, difficult to table
Estranged
- Mind, forsaken
- Mind, estranged, from her family
- Mind, estranged, forgetful of relatives and friends
- Mind, estranged, from society
- Delusion, deserted
- Delusion, appreciated, not
- Delusion, dirty, is
- Delusion, wretched, she is (when looking in the mirror)
Fears
- Mind, fear, observed, of her condition being
- Mind, fear, insanity, of losing his reason
- Mind, alone, of being
- Mind, fear, evil
- Mind, fear, happen, something will, terrible, horrible
Sensitivity
- Horrible things and sad stories, affect her profoundly
- Irritability, disturbance, from any (1)
- Irritability from trifles
- Mind, sensitive, noise to
- Mind, offended easily
- Mind, sensitive, external impressions, to all
Violence
- Dreams of America and Africa, and the slave trade
- Delusion injury, inflicit on, someone (1)
- Delusion, poisoning people, she is (2)
- Mind, shrieking, anger during
NB: Limestone dreams are not
included in the Mac Repertorisation
What is the particular challenge for people who need Limestone?
It seems the challenge is to experience the feeling of belonging.
Limestone people have this sense of oneness that comes from being with nature,
with animals.
Without ego, simply being. Yet, in the human world they struggle with
feelings of isolation and disconnection, where they may perceive themselves to
be estranged
from society, trapped, and enslaved. Our little calcium shells
dissolving and precipitating, as we are trapped and released.
I received an email from a person who works closely with animals and who
found that Limestone helped him move through times of being stuck in this state
of disconnection. I was amused to read as the byline
of his email this quote :
"People commonly presume unity to be a positive value. But they are
typically thinking of unity as something to be "worked toward".
"Working toward" is not what I am talking about. I am talking about
prior unity. I am talking about people entering into a dialogue that is based
on the working-presumption of prior unity, and non-separateness, and ... global
indivisibility..."
The resurrection of Limestone comes from finding connection after being
disconnected; coming alive after being dead, asleep, or unconscious for a long
time; waking up into our inner connectedness with the human colony, realising
we have never been separated; it is simply a delusion.
Could Limestone literally raise Lazarus from the dead? Who knows what
possibilities are locked within those ancient bones.
There are many other manifestations of being trapped and thus released:
Teeth are trapped and released; Teeth, pain, sore bruised, molars
Putrid discharges are trapped and released; Ear, discharges, thick; Ear,
discharges, offensive; Nose, discharge, orange
Menstrual blood is trapped and released; Abdomen burning, hot rocks
like; Female, mense,painful, dysmenorrhea;
Abdomen, pain, torn, loose,
“As if mucus is trapped and released”; Cough < night,
waking from cough; Stomach, vomiting, gen, morning; coughing on
I have used Limestone acutely with babies to assist with teeth that are
slow to come through (Calc.) and a
boy with undefined abdominal symptoms, who developed appendicitis within a few
hours of having Limestone.
His appendix was promptly removed and his general health improved. For a
young woman abandoned by her family and adopted by another family, Limestone
was used for boils which rapidly healed after two doses.
Other members of her adopted family needed Marble, Anthrac.
or Kali-i.
We are all aware of the rubric “Egotism, self-esteem” in the
repertory.
There is Calc. and Lap-gr-m (granite) and Lap-mar-
c (marble), to which we will come back later. Scholten
identifies “ego” as a theme of the carbons, so its not surprising
that these remedies are coming up in this rubric.
In Limestone, however, the rubric is: “Devoid of Ego”.
So why is this rubric, devoid of ego, important?
If the rubric “Egotism” is about self esteem, does
“Devoid of Ego” mean no self esteem? I do not think so. I think the
correct interpretation is lack of attachment to ego.
Echkart Tolle in “The
New Earth” says:
“There is a sense of self, of I (ego), in every thought, every
memory, every interpretation, opinion, viewpoint, reaction and emotion.... the basis of your identity is
precarious because thought and emotion are by their very nature
ephemeral, fleeting... So every ego is continuously struggling for survival,
trying to protect and enlarge itself. Ego is identification with form.”
“You realise your true identity is as consciousness itself... The
ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.”
“When I (Ego) criticise or condemn another, it makes me feel
bigger, superior.”
So maybe feeling devoid of Ego is about being present, being in the I AM
state, in the state of calm abide, a state we find in meditation for instance.
Where do we come closest to freedom from attachment? Through drugs that
take us into altered mind states and through those experiences in nature often
described as ‘going into the void’. We saw earlier a similarity
with some drug remedies and Limestone.
One of the provers said :"Time is so slow
- but that's alright. It's like experiencing every moment and living in each
moment totally. Feels like I'm over sensitive to everything. Absorbing everything that is going on
for everyone.
I have no protection, no boundaries. For the past few weeks I've noticed
that I get totally engrossed in what ever I'm doing. Anything sudden happening completely
freaks
me out and I feel like screaming and screaming with terror. Like if I'm
sitting in a room with people conversing - I'm totally there. If someone
suddenly walks in - I want to scream and scream. I feel it inside but don't let
it out... I feel I am going insane. I want to move very slowly and gently with
nature and life. I don't want to disturb anything
or be disturbed. I want everything to be gentle and easy and
free.”
A interesting dream from a patient, M., evokes this sense of beingness.
“ My partner and I were running back to a house when we spotted a
snake. Black and yellow head, coral snake I think. She got too close and it jumped
on her, so I went back to help and it chased me instead. I ended up lying face
down on the ground with this snake on my back looking to bite me. I Invoked Adi Da and breathed and relaxed
and the snake eventually calmed down and slid off. It kind of knawed at my hand like a cat but didn’t poison me. It
has the feeling of a Significant dream, though I haven’t analysed it,
past being very pleased to remember to invoke the Divine in a dream. Thought
you might be interested.”
He also told me about working with a horse that did not want to be
ridden but simply wanted to hang out with him. He loved the feeling of being
together with the horse,
just being. How do these Limestone themes come out in our patients ?
A woman, H., recently returning to NZ after many years overseas,
describes it like this.
Dissolution:
“Coming back to NZ I
am leaving attachments behind, to return home, I chose to release a lot of my
personal possessions, down- sizing, everything I get for me has an attachment
for me, when I choose to give them up, a part of me is given up.”
Precipitation:
“I have made a decision that I will find my place. Coming home is
like slipping into your slippers that you left at the back door; you put them
on and you are home.
Just fill up the space again.”
Fear of estrangement:
“As a child I had a
fear of being left behind, when people would go out and we stayed at home, I
would scream and run after them, I didn’t want to be left behind.”
And the insecurity of loss of identity, one of our main ego-attachments:
“I had a dream the
other night that my purse was taken, all my credit cards and my identity. No
identity, no evidence of who you are. The loss of identity is so traumatic,
you immediately become a person of suspicion.
At Vancouver airport I left my purse at the counter but the lady of the
shop had turned it in. I can see how you can become so easily separated from
society and a person
of no identity. If I am at home I can call up the relatives, but in a
foreign land you have nothing, no one other than your work mates.”
When we are strongly attached to our ego, there is greater internal
threat as seen through these patient dreams:
“I have dreams of
flying and being chased and having the ability to land. By sheer will I had to
hold myself up to stay up there, I had to actually demand that I stay flying.
There were people trying to come after me or
chase me. I had to will myself to be aloft. Other times it’s
lovely to settle into that flying mode.”
M. tells how he had to do the opposite to stay aloft - to not think
about it or use his will: "After Limestone, I did have a dream where I
just flapped my wings and took off. Normally I have to flap hard and not try
too
hard or think about it or it stops working.”
When I first saw this patient, he described this dream to me: “I
am a superhero, flying, got to run and jump and not try, if I try it turns to
custard, some terminator character chasing me, I can't fly properly or trying
to fly over trees and crash into them.”
The idea of using your will to escape danger, intrigued me. This has
certainly been something I have experienced as a mountain climber in a storm,
where you apply every ounce of concentration and effort to survive.
Eckehart Tolle
talks about choosing to stay unconscious or waking up into the state of I am.
We apply our will to it.
It was interesting to hear M. describe “anger and frustration at
not being heard by several intractable people who couldn’t be flexible
enough to hear what I was offering. Under all that was the hurt of not being
heard/wanted/appreciated.”
H. describes how she would drink wine to go into an “unconscious
state of not being present.” Yet, she loved the quiet, peace, trees, and
river of home - the place where she could be very present.
And M. says: “the challenges I have before me are maturing into
being "manly"(whatever that is), and also actually arriving, being
present and having faith that there is a place in the world for me and perhaps
we could stretch that to accepting that I have something of value to
offer.”
When he feels disconnection, he describes it like this: “My body
stretches, my feet get very far away, and my hand and arms turn to thick heavy
stone and my body is pencil thin. Not quite out of body, but very hard to get
out of. I think I am panicking about being deserted - I feel physical pain up
my centre line. I feel solid like I can't move,
an out of body experience, black and white, rejected and
deserted.”
These are the same feelings that the provers
had; feeling enlarged, thin, heavy, cannot move as if dead, rejected and
deserted.
In the novel “Limestone” Fiona Farrell talks about living on
the limestone reef - all those tiny creatures who live in their little hard
boxes - the perfect analogy of human life and particularly
human life in 2009, connected around the world as we are by internet and cell
phone.
Is not this fascinating that we call our telephones: cell phones - we
also call a prison, a cell; the basic unit in the human body is a cell; a monk
lives in a cell; a smaller compartment of a larger whole is a cell, like a
honeycomb; a cell is the small unit of organisation in the natural world, and a
cell is the local area covered by a transmitter in
a phone network.
Limestone contains the bones and shells of marine creatures, calcium
carbonate, similar to but more complex than our old favourite Calc. The
sensitive soft creature in the inside of the hard oyster shell, now meshed with
millions of others to form a complex whole. Like Calc carb,
Limestone has visions of phantoms, animals and immense fear. Limestone also has
sensitivity to horrible things, violence, cruelty. In Limestone,
this sensitivity leads to a feeling of estrangement from the colony,
compensated through absorption in nature.
Pearl (Peter Tuminello’s
), Myt-e-p (Mussel Pearl) and Nautilus are other
remedies made from Calcium carbonate and should be studied alongside Limestone.
Of course Bell.
known as the acute of Calc., because it contains Lime. In
Belladonna, we see the themes of dissolution (Limestone) (e.g., Del, transparent; Del, floating
in air; Del, enlarged) and delirium with frightful images (Calc./Limestone)
(sees people, Del, fires; Del, phantoms; Del, animals).
There are many other Calciums to study
alongside these remedies and lets not forget Hep. (= Calc-s.) burned in the
crucible, with its extreme sensitivity and reputation for suppuration.
When Limestone comes under pressure and heats, Marble forms. Just as
when carbon comes under pressure and heat, Diamond is formed.
So what do we know about Marble?
It is recommended for use after exposure to radiation. When it was first
proven, it was used for children from Chernobyl.
[Nuala Eising]
“Before I did the Marble proving, the man who comes into my dreams
gave me a lecture about marble and the people who had been affected by
radiation.
He said that the heat and intensity and pressure changing limestone to
marble is the exact same process when someone is exposed to radiation. Marble
is metamorphic.
What happens to someone exposed to radiation is that they get an
incredible amount of heat.
The calcium in the body changes and they become metamorphic versions of
what they were initially. When you get the peripheral effect of radiation,
Granite is the
remedy. But he said if somebody has been left with the radiation, and
the changes have taken place, then they need the Marble. He said, "Look at
white marble:
it crumbles easily, it's translucent." I would say bloodless as
well. He said, "Look at the children of Chernobyl.
They are white and translucent, they crumble from the inside. Radiation
affects you from the inside out. Look at marble - it is only the shine on the
surface that keeps
it together. And it's the same as the kids."
Nuala goes on: “You get a lovely picture as
well from the kids. On the psychological level, when somebody starts feeling
that they have nothing on the inside, what they
start to do is make themselves a showpiece and it's because of an
intense need to be taken care of. So Marble feels that the only thing they can
offer is to be beautiful,
graceful, charming and everybody will love them and take care of
them-that type of thing.
That's what Marble is about and that is what happens after somebody is
severely affected by radiation. “
I wonder if Michael Jackson needed Marble!
I have used marble a number of times, when I see intense whiteness or
paleness of a child for instance or a person has been overexposed to cellphones, electrical currents
in the home, cellphone towers or from radiation
cancer treatment. It is worth studying the many ways in which body systems may
be broken down by over-exposure to radiation. The work of the late Dr Neil
Cherry records neurological problems, cancer in various forms, problems with
melatonin/ sleep and even DNA changes.
Recognising this remedy before the functional changes have occurred in a
person may be life-saving, and it may be very helpful for cancer patients undergoing
radiation
therapy.
It is a great remedy for boils, which will dissolve very quickly after a
dose or two, when the picture fits. I have also used it for bed-wetting,
over-sensitive children, coughs, and so on.
In the Marble provings, you may, on one side,
see hardness, avarice, cruelty, inhumanity, emasculation, pleasure-seeking,
fury, desire for abundant riches, dreams you have
to kill a mouse, stealing. Dreams of being a noble person, a cat.
Adulterous. On the other side, there may be sensitivity to cruelty, to
criticism, forsakeness, delusion he is
a new born kitten.
The provings of Limestone and Marble contain
many dreams, which you will not find represented in Mac Repertory. Most curious
to me, are these dreams in the Marble proving: Dreams of India - with its vast poverty and huge
riches, the Taj Mahal made
from shining white marble (Princess
Diana’s moment of estrangement)
Dreams of Russia - cold war, vast whiteness, Chenobyl,
split into sometimes warring factions.
And remember, in Limestone we had dreams of America and Africa
Dreams of America - the slave trade and the abolition of slavery, speaks
with an American accent. (many of our teenage children walk around speaking
with American accents!)
Dreams of Africa - entrapped by slavery, poverty, AIDS
I wonder where China fits into the calcium carbonate story?
How does Calc. connect with Limestone and Marble?
Through these 3 remedies of stage 2 of the ferrum series, we see an evolution of consciousness in the
world.
In Carb. our issue is about security; can we
emerge from the safety of our family to seek and find freedom from judgement in
the outer world?
[Sankaran] the main feeling of Calc. is:
"I need security to be alive".
One of the important rubrics of Calc. is the single symptom:
"Delirium, talks of nothing but murder, fire and rats". This delirium
represents his fears of humans and of natural and animal dangers.
Carbon, says Sankaran, which forms the very
basis of the living kingdom, represents the survival instinct, the basic
reaction required to live. The situational Materia Medica
of Carbon is one of fright, where there is a threat to survival and the
person finds him/herself too small and poor in the race for survival.
In Limestone, we sense a lack of belonging, which leaves us feeling too
small, too thin, estranged, and not appreciated yet, longing to feel part of
the human colony and compensating through our immersion in nature.
In Marble, we experience estrangement in the outer world, when
‘heat and pressure’ become too much and the ego attaches itself to
riches, deceitfulness, absurd fancies
and indifference to the welfare of others.
Calcium and carbon are the basis of a new form of farming, called
biological farming, which restores humus to the soil and grows healthy plants
to nourish animals and humans. Farmers have traditionally manipulated
nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the soil but now recognise the
importance of lime, crushed from limestone. It is applied with humates (a soft form of carbon) to activate the millions of
microbes in the soil that dissolve the minerals so they can be taken up by the
plants. In the soil beneath our feet, millions upon millions of organisms,
bountifully alive and entombed in calcium, live to rejuvenate and create the earth.
We rely on this extraordinary interconnectedness.
Limestone and Marble have become favourite remedies in my practice. I
came to understand how to use these remedies through muscle testing and by
studying the provings, the materia
medica, and my cases.
Sometimes, Limestone will be a layer that is needed acutely, often to
help the body to throw out some obstruction (much like we have used Silica) and
at other times the patient will require help resolve deeper chronic ailments.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum