[Javier Antonio Mena Chiriboga]
Ah, just, subtle and mighty
opium!
Relief Balm and the hearts of
the poor and the rich alike,
For the unhealed wounds for the
torments that incite rebellion of the spirit.
Opium eloquent! Only you will
bestow such gifts to man, you possess
the keys of Paradise.
Ah, just, subtle and mighty
opium!
Thomas De Quincey
Opium (Papaver somniferum) is perhaps one of
the most complex remedies of the Materia Medica. As a substance, it has been
used since ancient times
to different and varied purposes. The
references to the pharmaceutical use of poppy juice are very old. In the 3rd
century B.C. Theophrastus had already mentioned its
virtues. Arab doctors favored the use of opium
in pills that sometimes had the label “Mash Allah”, which meant “presence of
God”.
In Rome, Opium as well as flour had a set price
that was not to be speculated with. Arab traders introduced the substance in
the East, where it was used for dysentery.
Paracelsus popularized the use of opium
in Europe, which had fallen into disuse because of its toxicity.
The term opium derives from the Greek word opion
(juice), since it is obtained as poppy juice.
Opium contains more than 20 different alkaloids;
its principals are papaverine, tabain, morphine and noscapine.
H.: the first to conduct the proving of Opium
as a homeopathic remedy, and pointed out that “It is much more difficult to
estimate the action of Opium than probably any other medication”
Its popularity reached across Asia to America.
In its name powerful wars were started, and its reputation still stands in many
countries.
Just as complex and similar to Opium, dragons
those mythological and magical creatures who appear in writings and pictograms
in almost all cultures, are full of meanings
and questions that have inspired many to write,
paint or create philosophies that will last until the end of time. If you look
in Kent’s Repertory under the rubric “illusion
of dragons” you will find that Opium appears as
the only remedy, but if looked for in Radar’s electronic repertory you will
find Opium as well as Cann-i.
In this paper I will attempt to understand the
essence of the remedy through the rubric of “illusion of dragons” because many
times the analysis through comparisons or symbols is a valuable tool to
understand the image of a remedy and its profound suffering.
DRAGONS
There was an old dragon under
gray stone;
his red eyes blinked as he lay
alone.
His joy was dead and his youth
spent,
he was knobbed and wrinkled,
and his limbs bent in the long
years to his gold chained;
in his heart’s furnace the
fire waned.
To his belly’s slime gems
stuck thick,
silver and gold he would snuff
and lick:
he knew the place of the least
ring
beneath the shadow of his
black wing.
Of thieves he thought on his
hard bed,
and dreamed that on their
flesh he fed,
their bones-crushed, and their
blood drunk:
his ears drooped and his
breath sank.
Mail-rings rang. He heard them
not.
A voice echoed in his deep
grot:
a young warrior with a bright
sword
called him forth to defend his
hoard.
His teeth were knives, and on
horn his hide,
but iron tore him, and his
flame died.
Professor J.R.R. Tolkien
The word “dragon” according to the Oxford
English Dictionary (1966), is derived from Old French, which in turn derives
from the Latin “Dracon” (snake), which in turn
is derived from Greek “Spakov” (snake). Opium
has also the symptom of “illusion of serpents” and a dragon is none other than
a winged snake. Dragon also derives from
the Greek aorist verb, δρακεῖν – Spakelv (to see
clearly). It relates to many other ancient words related to sight, such as:
Sanskrit: darc (see), Avestan: darstis (view);
Old Irish: Derc (eye), Old English: torht, Old
Saxon: torht, and High Ancient German: zoraht, and all mean clear, or bright.
Opium has symptoms such as “admonition”,
“mental clarity”, “clairvoyance”, and “visions with illusions”. The eye and
vision being something closely related to the main suffering of Opium makes us
now understand some particular symptoms such as: “< closing eyes”, “see
faces when closing eyes”, “insanity for ocular inflammation”.
In the repertory in the chapters of Eye and
Vision it has 144 symptoms. An interesting symptom of an Opium patient is:
“illusion of enlarged parts of the body”, which is on one hand related to the
many symptoms that Opium has concerning the feeling of enlarged body parts (and
it needn’t be mentioned the size in which Dragons are usually represented), and
on the other hand it is said that one of the mental characteristics of Opium is
the making of giant plans. Besides the relation of vision and sight, the eye
also means understanding, and the Opium patient is said to not understand.
Spakelv as seen before meant “to see clearly”
according to the Greek aorist, and the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that
Spakelv is derived from the Greek root (Spak) which means strong. The
connection between dragon’s strength and Opium is obvious, and by analogy we
can relate this strength with the ability to resist external aggression and to
bear pain; this is exactly where we can link the remedy in its effective
ability to not feel pain which means analgesia and anesthesia both physical and
mental.
Opium has symptoms like “indifference to pain“,
“indifference to suffering“, “inability to feel“, “indifference to joy”,
“indifference to nice things” and” indifference to pleasure”. He is incapable
of feeling anything throughout his whole being from the mental to the most
superficial like the symptom “Skin - Painless ulcers“.
In mythology and fantasy, it is known that
Dragon Skin has an ability to avoid injury. As described by Tolkien, or the
famous Scandinavian legends, the dragon does not feel pain, his skin is
impenetrable. It is even curious that in the US, a company created the most
resistant bulletproof vest on the market basing its design on the supposed
arrangement of the scales of a dragon, called Dragon Skin. Opium does not cause
in its primary action one single pain.
It is interesting to deeply analyze this
inability to feel. According to the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary of
the Spanish Language, “to feel” comes from the root sent, which means take a
course or choose a path, and Opium cannot give meaning to his life, he doesn’t
want to take the path to growth.
Dr. Horacio Monsalvo: We imagine Opium as that
teenager who doesn’t want to go into his adulthood, doesn’t want
responsibility, particularly the responsibility of living.
It is a character between boy and man, playing
non innocent games in every act of his life even in business, and those around
him must deal with its consequences.
H’s proving: “Feeling of courage and merriment,
so that he is as if he would carry out what was required with energy, without
repugnance or fear, with a peculiar feeling of voluptuousness (but lasting only
a few minutes) (aft. 1/4 h.); immediately afterwards dullness in the head”.
So, Opium, at any age in life, is riding
between a childhood without responsibility and the adult world that’s full of
it, but he doesn’t want to be a participating member. Opium is the eternal
child in an adult world who feels that the world is always against him. Opium
does not tolerate contradiction, but Opium has to face the world.
Just as the dragon has sharp senses and nothing
escapes him, he lives an alternating anguish. There are moments when he prefers
not to think about what is asked of him and who he is, and he rejoices for the
simple fact of being alive. But then he suddenly becomes aware of his
responsibilities and he becomes anxious, afraid, fearful, dull or directly
indifferent to everything.
Another aspect that can be observed between the
remedy and the dragon is that Opium has acute senses.
Tolkien says in his book The Hobbit, “Smaug,
the most majestic character which you cannot help but mention. Greedy, has a
huge richness, the most feared dragon of shiny scales with embedded gems and
gold pieces, has an exceptional sense of smell and can even sleep with one eye
open, his sense of hearing is even more acute when he sleeps.” An image that
very well describes the senses of an Opium patient.
The dragon as a demonic symbol, as mentioned
above, identifies itself with the serpent. For instance, the heads of broken
dragons and destroyed snakes prove Christ’s victory over evil. In addition to the
familiar imagery of St. Michael and St. George, Christ himself is sometimes
depicted treading dragons. Zen patriarch Huei-neng also sees in snakes and
dragons symbols of hatred and evil. For Schneider, dragons are the symbol of
sickness, usually represented as vengeful soulless creatures without any hint
of mercy. Opium is suspicious, spiteful and appears on the hatred and
revengeful rubrics of the Repertory. What awakens the violence within him is
its incapacity of fitting into the environment around him. It is a permanent
lack of confidence in himself, but he cannot bring that violence to its
fullest. Instead he acts like a spoiled child that feels offended, wants to go
home where he will reproach himself and cry, have aversion to company, will not
want to be talked to and won’t answer.
Some symptoms related to lie and deceit are:
Misleading, false, uncertain in its promises,
lying, liar – never tells the truth and lack of moral sense. Peñalver says
Opium deceives himself; he treats others as he thinks others treat him. It is
said that Opium cannot fulfill his promises or his gigantic plans because that
would only be possible in his unreal world. This is why he lies. It is as if
the world won’t allow him his realization. Yet again it is a curious analogy of
the fight against the dragon and Opium fights to remain in his fantasy world.
The dragon appears to us essentially as a
severe guardian or as a symbol of evil and demonic tendencies. It is indeed the
guardian of hidden treasures and as such is the adversary that must be overcome
to access them. In the Western world he is the guardian of the Golden Fleece
and the Garden of Hesperides. In China in T’sang’s tale he is the guardian of
the Pearl; Sigfrid’s legend confirms that the treasure guarded by the dragon is
immortality. According to Diel, the generic Chinese dragon symbolizes the
sublimated and overcome perversion, in other words a “tamed dragon”. Opium has
a very interesting symptom if we compared the idea that the dragon is the
ultimate enemy to defeat: “illusion that people want to execute him“.
The symbolism of the dragon is ambivalent,
which is expressed in Oriental imagery as the two opposing dragons, also seen
in medieval art, and particularly in the European
and Muslim secrecy where this confrontation
takes an analogous form of the caduceus. It is the neutralization of the
adverse tendencies, also in the Far East; the dragon shows various aspects as
an aquatic, land and sky being, all at once.
Opium struggles between the two forces that are
contained within him; on one side his instincts, his violence, his wild rage,
his immaturity of being yet evolved and to cling
to childish things. On the other side he tries
to understand, his sweetness, his mental capacity for understanding or
evolution and maturity of being.
According to the “Money in the Homeopathic
Materia Medica” by Dr. Bronfman the most notable is this bipolarity of Opium,
that exists between satisfaction and stormy suffering, between the sublime
Oriental dragon and the evil Western dragon. Thus we see symptoms “such joy #
sorrow”, “joy # concerns”, “anger # joy“, “anger # exhilaration“, “joy #
grief“, “gladness followed by irritability“, “anger # mirth“, “mischief games #
sadness“, “joy # sadness”, “hope # discouragement“, “face - red discoloration #
pallor“, “rectum - constipation # diarrhea”, “alternating humor” “industrious
“, “indolence with aversion to work” and “neglect of business“, sweet and hard,
benevolent yet it may be cruel, ruthless and unscrupulous, fearful but at the
same time reckless and brave and bold.
This inner struggle must exist in the patient,
a disagreement that leads him to think the unwanted, or express words he didn’t
mean to say or to perform acts opposite to
his will. He faces stressful situations that
make him doubt, hesitate, make him unstable and sometimes even paralyze him.
This antagonism should not be confused with ambivalence. These conflicting
emotions coexist on the same plane with the same intensity;
it is more common in the emotional level:
attraction-rejection, love and hate. In antagonism rivalry occurs in different
instances of the psyche.
In Opium we find exactly opposite conditions
(Nash). Just as the symbolism of the western dragon and the superior Chinese
dragon, Opium always shows us two alternating states, two extreme opposite
states, like narcosis, stupor or coma, the paralyzing effect, suspended
peristaltic activity or insensitivity these are the main indicators for
homeopathic use of this medicine.
And the opposite state with delirium, eyes wide
open, mental excitement, vivid imagination, twitching, insomnia with heightened
auditory acuity. The first category of symptoms are drug action and the latter
represent the efforts of nature against this action. Such excitement
irritability and spasms in no way can be influenced by the drug action of Opium
unless this state is preceded by drowsiness, stupor, numbness etc. Without this
condition, the remedy will not be able to be homeopathic for that matter
(Nash).
In conclusion we can say that the image of
Opium and the Dragon have many similarities that can help us to create an
essence and allow proper prescribing and patient management. Always remember
polarity, antagonism, violence and peace, lethargy and hyper arousal,
anesthesia or numbness and intense pain, etc…The constant change between the
Eastern dragon and Western dragon.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum