Solanaceae Anhang 3
[Tim Shannon]
Discussion about nightshades
Massimo mentioned how the nightshades are
related to controlling ones instincts. The drugs were used in the old times to allow
someone to release their inhibitions - to be out of control. In patients
requiring nightshades, you often find this conflict. In children who are less
compensated, the wildness comes out more readily. But with adults you often see
someone who is more controlled, more suppressed as this patient was. This
patient talks repeatedly of keeping his anger and rage under control.
This is why archetypes like the dark, water,
and wild animals can receive such strong projections with nightshade patients.
They have suppressed their “dark side” in order to be able to matriculate
in society. They often feel rejected or
neglected and are quite resentful and angry about it – as this patient was. Yet
sometimes they feel they can’t fully express their outrage as they may loose
what little support they feel they are receiving. So they can present as timid
or controlled, yet they are often sitting on Pandora’s box. This is stronger in
the toxic nightshades or their look-alikes (Bell./
Stram./Mand./Hyos./Lyss./Gall-ac.)
The nightshades well known for congestion,
which he mentioned regarding his pounding headaches. His sensitivity to light
and sound during the headaches also helps to confirm the nightshades.
Nightshades (the poisonous ones: Bell. Stram.
Etc.) are parasympatholytics. They are neurological toxins that suppress the
parasympathetic nervous system. This leaves the sympathetic nervous system
unrestrained – the fight or flight response is thus intensified. This leads to
a type of “wildness”, a lack of inhibition. This is why you’ll see some
nightshades somewhat shameless in presentation.
Often we are told to consider Stram. Bell. or
Hyos. in children who are violent and out of control. However, nightshades in
adults often present as over controlled. They may have a very violent history,
but often learn to suppress or even over-control their reactions. They can
become emotionally somewhat cold for this reason – this is true in particular
of Belladonna. So they present with nervous tics, impulse control issues,
rages, etc. This is indicative of their system’s attempt at keeping things
under control.
Adult Nightshade patients can also often get
stuck in their head, in their intellect, to avoid emotions. This is seen in
this patient as he talks about always trying to wonder why this happened, or
brooding on the past always with trying to find an answer. They can also avoid
emotions via this physical restlessness as he describes. Used as strategies to
avoid experiencing feelings directly.
In this case too, you can see the split between
the “dark-side” or the unconscious and the conscious side. He often refers to
having lost one side of himself, or the repeating dream of darkness on
one side and light on the other. The voice
calling him to the dark side. This again shows the common conflict seen in
nightshades with this split, or lack of integration.
Of course the toxic nightshades are also
narcotics. But their use in the old times was different from the sacred
psychedelics of the old times. Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Psilocybin have been
traditionally used to alter consciousness and then come back with a lesson,
something learned for our conscious side.
Yet the toxic nightshades were often used
before battle, to help one do their killing without remorse. Then when the drug
wore off, they couldn’t recall their violence. This helps to understand why
these different broad classes of narcotics have different applications in
homeopathy. Patients needing the sacred narcotics are often struggling with
being too open to the universe, struggling between feeling too blended with the
larger world, or feeling totally isolated. The nightshades are certainly can
also be oversensitive to the world around them. Yet the emphasis is more on
struggling with trying to keep their “dark-side” under control. Nightshades are
useful for patients with difficulty integrating their “dark-side” with their
daily life. It appears that their dark side is their feelings or needs they had
to suppress in the past for fear of being forsaken.
A parting note about Massimo Mangialavori’s
teaching:
I’ve been studying with Massimo Mangialavori
since 1998. He talks about studying materia medica via cured cases. This has
become a growing and profound reality for me. Of course learning from the
provings and repertory are always important. However, I was never able to read
materia medica and understand the Rx and how it might apply to a patient. But
once one has seen a cured case, whether someone else’s or one’s own, that is
the beginning of understanding a Rx. By extension, this also helps to learn the
family of the Rx.
Another fundamental teaching is that of
learning to see the greater themes or trends in a patient rather than just
symptoms. He also talks a lot about understanding Rx’s and people by looking at
the underlying strategy of the patient – how they are getting their needs met
as constrained by their pathology. These lessons have particularly helped with
autistic patients, unwilling teens, and some delusional patients. Often these
patients won’t give us some of the deeper symptoms we prefer. Using themes, and
patient strategies has helped to solve some very difficult cases where the
patient was unable or unwilling to disclose deeper details.
As examples, I currently have two autistic boys
who were unable to speak. One case is doing wonderful on Lac Felinum, the other
on Coca. I also have a paranoid delusional patient who was adamantly claiming
she had no problems or complaints– physical or mental. She was brought in by
her daughter, who in a separate interview revealed some very intractable
paranoid delusions. That patient is doing wonderful on Thea. The above cases
were solved using the larger themes and strategies of the patients rather than
looking for symptoms that were simply not available. Using Massimo’s specific
theory of families was also fundamental to solving these cases as well as many
others.
Massimo also uses a lot of contemporary
psychology to elucidate a more contemporary understanding of the psyche.
Besides teaching with his long term cures, he also shows his deeper
understanding of the patient and the Rx from many different angles. This has
helped me to truly understand Rx’s, instead of just seeing a Rx as a list of
symptoms. It is hard to use words to convey how profoundly this teaching has
impacted the accuracy and ease now common in my practice.
In the beginning as a student, one needs to
borrow other good prescribers knowledge by studying their long term cured
cases. But as I’ve seen good cures of many families of Rx, rare as well as
common Rx’s, it has completely altered my perception. It is common now for me
to give a Rx that works well and deeply right from the initial intake, doing
all the repertorization and differential during the initial intake (mine are 2
hours or less).
As my working body of knowledge has expanded
I’ve seen more and more cures with a full range of Rx’s. I mostly credit this
to Massimo’s grounded clinical knowledge as well as my own growing database of
long term cured cases. Massimo’s teaching is about learning how to fish for oneself.
It has helped me to grow and express my love of homeopathy via beautiful and
growing success with my patients.
[Wilhelm Pelikan]
Mandragora officinarum, the mandrake
For the peoples living around the Mediterranean,
Mandragora, the mandrake of the Middle Ages, is undoubtedly one of the oldest
and most efficacious medicinal plants. The records go back over almost three
thousand years, and the ancients had very sound and detailed knowledge as to
the actions of this plant, despite the fact that they did not have the
facilities of modern chemical analysis to identify the active principles and
test them accurately in animal experiments. In fact, the modern age and the
development of present-day methods of investigation may be said to have caused
the gradual disappearance of this plant from
the materia medics. By the beginning of the last century it had ceased to play
any proper role in medicine, and merely figured obscurely on the dark
stage of superstition and decadent occult
practices. Then, towards the end of the nineteenth century, chemical analysis
revealed the presence of a number of highly active alkaloids in the Mandragora
root; serious attention began to be paid at that time, not to the mandrake, but
to a close relative, Scopolia. A mixture of morphine and scopolamine, one of
the Scopolia alkaloids, has since been used to induce twilight sleep, to
relieve pain during childbirth, etc. The mandrake itself may be said to be
waiting still for its resurrection as a medicinal plant.
It was quite a different form of consciousness
which made use of Mandragora as a therapeutic agent, a consciousness very much
alive to the essential nature of the plant, rather than to the physical
substance through which such a plant demonstrates its existence to our sense
organs. The ancients saw in every tree a wood-nymph, and in every plant
elemental beings that were spiritual in nature.
In poisonous plants they saw evil spirits. And
so they surrounded the mandrake with mystic rites and cults, for they saw it in
a context quite different from what modern man is generally able to perceive.
Istereng — luminous root — was its Persian name, because a flame-red light and
bright rays were felt to be emanating from it in the evening, something also
experienced by peoples in the Mediterranean regions. Merdomgie — like unto man
— was another name, and this strikes the same note as the expression used by
the Pythagoreans, Anthropomorphon; or Ebrewi ssanam, face of an idol. Then again
the plant was called the dog-drawn, Segken, and this motif we find recurring
again and again later on, in the directions to let the root be drawn from the
ground by a dog, as it was said to emit a piercing cry on coming free from the
ground, a cry which brought death to any who heard it. Sacrificing an animal to
appease the demon who is driven from his home when a plant is dug up or a tree
is felled, is a custom not confined to those times and to Mediterranean
regions. The unlawful damaging of trees, particularly in holy places, was
atoned for by cutting off the arm,
or even with death. Sacrifices are still made
by primitive peoples today when a tree is felled or a field harvested. The
Chinese, we are told, still believe that from the falling tree a threatening
figure
in the form of a blue bull emerges. Animal and
plant are experienced in a context which obviously still exists, or did exist,
for that level of consciousness. A Javanese approaching a Sarcolobus narcoticus
tree to obtain the bark he needs to prepare his arrow poison, will do so on all
fours, as if he himself were a poisonous animal; he bites into the bark and
then scrapes it off with great care. Quite recently information has come to
light on "hunting-magic" plants. Among primitive tribes in South
America, and also elsewhere, the hunters rub the juice of such plants into
their skin, or their weapons, in the belief that its magic will attract the
animals they seek to hunt. There is also the belief, held all over the world,
that the spirits of the dead are for a time intimately bound up with plant
life, and go to dwell in trees, for example.
When Mandragora was taken from its natural
sphere, into areas of human use, this was accordingly done with due ritual, a
ritual wholly appropriate to the type of consciousness we have touched upon.
The root was dug in the evening, after bowing to the sinking sun and paying
homage to the infernal gods, the chthonic deities. With an iron sword not
previously used for any other purpose, three magic circles were drawn around
the plant. Then the root was exposed, all the way down except for the very last
bit, with the face averted to avoid noxic vapours. The body also had to be
properly protected, with oil, lest it swell up in those vapors. In later
periods -we know of this from Dioscorides- it was the custom to tie a dog to
the root and let the animal pull it free from the ground. Then the old magical
and mythological consciousness vanished for mankind in the course of the
centuries, and weirder and more and more superstitious customs became
established,
but we shall not go into these here.
From the 16th century onwards,
Mandragora was increasingly forgotten, and the sceptical atmosphere of the Age
of Enlightenment finally extinguished the last glimmer of the old knowledge.
Yet at the turn of the present century, when
scientists began the systematic investigation of the traditional medicinal
plants by means of chemical analysis, it was found that behind the mystery
of the mandrake there lay after all a tangible
reality. Alkaloids were found in the plant, some of them known already from
other poisonous Solanaceae (the family to which Mandragora belongs),
and one apparently specific to Mandragora. Yet
while such details are undoubtedly of interest, they do not bring us one whit
nearer to the true essential nature of this medicinal plant, just as knowing
the amount of cash in the safe would tell us little of the nature of a great
trading empire.
Details like these make up the picture which
modern consciousness has of Mandragora. It has to be admitted that it is
abstract and rather then compared to the one painted by the old form of
consciousness, which was in rich tones and included the whole of the human
being in the experience. Yes, of course, the new one is scientific and exact,
whereas the old one does seem fantastic to us. But scientific accuracy does not
get us anywhere near the true nature of the creative plant-whole which actively
produces out of itself such remarkable active principles as hyoscyamine, mandragorine,
etc. These substances are secondary, the other aspect is primary.
However, modern consciousness must not stop at
this point. It is apparent in this very consciousness, particularly if one
compares it with older forms of consciousness, that it is undergoing a major
transformation and, driven by inner necessity, is seeking to extend its
boundaries. For a consciousness thus expanding, one starting point towards an
exact science is Goethe's teaching on metamorphosis; the continuation and
extension of this is the inward purpose of the modern science of the spirit
which was founded by R.S..
The mandrake is a typical member of the
nightshade family, but it is a very particular variant of it. We shall probably
come closest to grasping its specific nature if we consider it against the
background of the Solanaceae type. Then the essential nature of this medicinal
plant will stand out clearly.
The plant develops a mighty root, growing
straight down into the ground to a depth of up to 60 cm. It is a tap root, thick,
relatively soft, a plastic structure which lower down frequently divides into
two or more branches, each continuing downwards on its own, and swelling into
thickness. When it is dug up, the whole structure of head, trunk and legs does
vaguely resemble the human form.
In spring, a shock of elongated leaves,
undivided but slightly sinuate, unfolds from the root. A luxuriant rosette
develops, but no stem, no leafy shoot rises above it. All the substance formed
in the leaves is claimed by the root, all power of growth is drawn down and
held fast down below. Spring has barely reached its zenith, and we now expect
the plant really to come up, when the leaves begin to yellow around the edges,
curl up, and there is no further growth for this year. That is how the young
plant develops from seed, sending forth leaves which get longer with each
spring, until finally they reach a length of something over a foot. At the same
time the root increases in length and thickness. Mandragora will permit only
the forces of the sun in very early spring to act upon
it and build it up; among the Solanaceae it is
more or less what the crocus is among the Iridaceae, or the winter aconite
among the Ranunculaceae. The majority of Solanaceae are summer plants.
The henbane will start into growth only when
the soil has become really warm; and the deadly nightshade, the thorn-apple,
tobacco, tomato and potato, all need the full powers of high summer. Mandragora
drops out of this rhythm completely; with its appearance in spring, it leads
the annual procession of nightshade plants, or else, in form of its variant
Mandragora autumnalis, it comes
at the end of the line, in late autumn, like
the autumn crocus among the Liliaceae, or the cyclamen among the Primulaceae.
A number of years must pass; each spring makes
the root grow bigger and more rich in substance, until finally the plant is
ready to flower. Then for the first time an abundance of greenish-white flowers
spring up in March (Mandragora officinarum) to April, at the center of the
rosettes of leaves. Each on a separate stalk, 2 or 3 inches high, and just over
an inch in length, bell-shaped, though the upper half divides into five pointed
petals. The flower is held in a calyx about half its length, gamosepalous and
five-cleft to the middle. The leaves rise considerably above the flowers, and
the whole inflorescence, drawn together as in a small umbel, seems to disappear
among the rich, swelling foliage. More than in any other of the Solanaceae, the
inflorescence has moved down, penetrated into the root region, forcing the
leaves down to the ground. One might try and visualize a Belladonna, say,
transformed into a Mandragora, by imagining its strange inflorescence one floor
lower down, and the foliage moved down until it reaches the surface of the
soil, with the root, as it strives downward into tremendous length and
circumference, giving full expression to this downward movement.
From the flower, the berry develops rapidly,
round, slightly pointed at the top, yellow, juicy and the size of a plum. The
scent of the berries is peculiar and slightly narcotic, though not unpleasant,
and the fruits contain a number of small
seeds.
The main part of Mandragora is its root,
however, with its fleshy body that has taken up so much from the flowering
process coming up close to it. The root, too, gives off a peculiarly sweet,
narcotic scent, particularly if it is cut up; it is not surprising that in
earlier times both berry and root were used as a hypnotic which acted simply
through its smell. An extract of the root gives a browny-yellow essence showing
faint violet phosphorescence in transmitted light. It contains methylaesculin,
which is closely related to the iridescent substance found in the horse
chestnut to aesculin. As already mentioned, at the turn of the century the root
and essence were the subject of chemical analysis. A mixture of nightshade
alkaloids was found, including the hyoscyamine of the henbane; scopolamine and
atropine, both closely related to hyoscyamine; norhyoscyamine, also known as
hyoscine; and an alkaloid specific to Mandragora, mandragorine, though not much
is known about this so far.
Four of the five Mandragora species belong to
the Mediterranean region, one to the Himalayas. They are particularly at home along
the coasts of the Mediterranean, in Greece, Crete, Syria, North Africa, Sicily,
and Spain. They extend eastwards beyond this through Palestine and into
Mesopotamia. In all these countries, spring brings plenty of rain, for a brief
period of abundant vegetation; this is followed by a long, hot, dry summer.
Mandragora opens out in moderate sunlight, but withdraws into the darkness of
earth when the sun comes into full force. In this way the plant has its own
variation on the theme generally followed by the Solanaceae in their attitude
to the light of the sun.
If we review the actions of Mandragora as they
have been known empirically through thousands of years, the following keynotes
tend to recur:
1. Hippocrates wrote that very small doses of
Mandragora would soothe fear and cure deep depressions. Slightly larger doses
cause the pupils to enlarge, an action characteristic for many of the
Solanaceae. The eye becomes a "night eye", behaving in bright
daylight as though it were in the darkness of night. Sense impressions are felt
to be excessively strong, and restlessness and over-excitement develop. The
blood wells up into the head, as happens in lesser degree when sleeping. Larger
doses tend to sedate, and finally induce a deep sleep. The ancients thought this
hypnotic effect could be produced by merely sniffing the fruit or the root, or
preparations made from them. Even stronger doses induce anaesthesia. External
application of Mandragora can cause analgesia and even loss of sensation,
whilst high doses taken internally will finally lead to total anaesthesia and
death-like sleep; this enabled the ancients to do extensive surgery and
cauterizations on the body and limbs, and may be seen as a precursor of modern
anaesthesia. If the dosage is increased further, fatal poisoning results.
Apart from these physical effects, note must be
taken also of actions on the psyche. These tend to take the form of visions,
hallucinations, and even delirium.
We can see from all this how the supersensible
bearer of sentient life, the soul principle, is step by step forced out of the
physical organs of sensation, depending on the size of the dose, and how the
Mandragora action takes it place. Above, an attempt was made to describe the
abnormal pattern of life dynamics which contributes to the development of the
poisonous substances found in the mandrake root. In the sphere of the
life-bearing, ensouled organism, this pattern provokes an abnormal pattern of
dynamics that is its polar opposite, and this in turn calls upon the whole
human being to counteract it.
2. If the human soul principle, the astral
body, acts too strongly upon certain organic regions which should be subject to
its normal activity only, this gives rise to certain symptoms of spasm, or
cramp. Mandragora has spasmolytic action in these cases, and its action will be
stronger than that of belladonna or Hyoscyamus. Because of this, colics,
persistent tenesmus in conjunction with hemorrhoids, and also asthma, hayfever
and whooping cough have at various times been among the indications for this
medicinal plant.
3. Mandragora is an ancient aphrodisiac; it was
said to promote conception, particularly if the fruit was used. Mandragoritis
was one of the names given to Venus. The Arabs called the fruits devil's
apples, because of the exciting dreams said to follow their consumption, but
also genies' eggs, because they ensured conception. Similar properties have
been claimed for other nightshade plants, for instance certain species of thorn
apple. The abnormal degree to which the vegetative sphere of the plant is
penetrated by intensive flowering processes comes to expression here, and those
flowering processes do in a certain sense correspond to the sexual sphere in
man. An added factor is that Mandragora immerses its flowering process so
deeply in the elemental forces of spring, forces which find expression in the
sprouting growth and development of the whole plant world at that season.
4. One finds repeated mention in the old
literature that the mandrake leaf – a part of the plant free from the alkaloids
which cause the root, the flower, fruit and seed to be so poisonous – is
excellent for the treatment of wounds and inflammation. Thus the analgesic
action was seen in conjunction with an anti-inflammatory action.
5. The actions which have led to the inclusion
of Mandragora in the materia medica of anthroposophical medicine lie in a
sphere, however, which is quite different from those mentioned above. This is
the field of remedies for certain forms of rheumatism, and particularly for
gout.
Here we refer to what is said about gout in
chapter 11 of the book Fundamentals of Therapy, An Extension of the Art of
Healing through Spiritual Knowledge by R.S. and Its Wegman. This chapter bears
the title "The configuration of the human body and gout". It
describes a function of the eliminating processes which until now has been
given little attention. This concerns particularly the processes of production
of uric acid and it distribution throughout the organism. The whole of the
human organization, with all the members which contribute to its being, is
actively taking part in the production, distribution and elimination of
characteristic substances of this type; moreover, this is done in an individuality
not only in the shape of his features, or the proportional relations of his
limbs, but also in the way in which a substance like uric acid is produced,
deposited, and eliminated. In this chapter of the book, R.S. sets forth that
catabolic and not anabolic processes provide the material substrate for
conscious experience, and that a particularly remarkable catabolic process is
the production of uric acid. This process is brought about by those members of
man's being which develop consciousness, the ego and the astral body. The ego
specifically governs the extremely subtle excretion of uric acid in the brain,
the astral body governs the more substantial secretion throughout the whole
body, and the elimination of uric acid in the urine. For man to be the
conscious being he is, his organs must be impregnated to the right degree with
inorganic matter. The bodily economics must be right in the healthy organism to
provide for the distribution of uric acid to the various regions. The proper
distribution of uric acid deposits is a very major factor in human health. It
indicates whether the right relation exists, in any organ or organ system,
between ego organization and astral body. The whole of the individual human
being is always involved in every process in his body – his life organization
(ether body) his soul being (astral body), and his individuality of spirit
(ego).
"Let us assume that in some organ, where
ego activity ought to predominate over astral activity, the latter begins to
have the upper hand . . . The organ will then receive an excess of uric acid,
and this cannot be dealt with by the ego organization . . . the uric acid is
deposited not outside, but within the organism itself. If it accrues in areas
of the organism where the ego is not able to be sufficiently active, then
inorganic matter is present, that is, matter belonging to the ego organization
only, but relinquished by it to astral activity . . . Here we are dealing with
gout . . . The cartilage
of a joint or a section of connective tissue
may be getting too much uric acid, resulting in an excess of inorganic matter
in them, so that in these parts of the body ego activity falls behind in
relation
to astral activity. The whole of the human form
is the product of ego activity; the irregularity we have described must
therefore lead to deformation of the organs. The human organism strives to
leave its form."
To grasp this aspect of the Mandragora action,
let us remember that this plant pushes its flowering process down to the root
process, and in doing so takes excessive astral impulses down to the tip
of the root, in the production of alkaloids. In
the root region, plants are predominantly engaged in activities relating to the
mineral and salt processes of the soil. They conquer the mineral element,
enliven it, and arrange it in its multiplicity, according to the formative
laws of the species. In the root of the mandrake, domination of inorganic
mineral nature comes face to face with excessive "astralization". The
Mandragora process, as we see it in the root, is therefore well suited to
counteract excessive activity of the human astral body where the production and
distribution of uric acid
is concerned and restore the ego organization
to its position as a power able to guide and to prevail within this totality of
organized catabolism, this "uric acid organization" within this
organism, that is so important for the development of conscious awareness.
Atropa belladonna = deadly nightshade/=
banewort
One of the few Solanaceae that may be said to
be truly at home in our parts is the deadly nightshade. It is highly typical
of the family, a perennial growing in mountain forests, where it mysteriously
makes itself part of these places where nature is so elemental, part as
something dangerous, something demonic. The twilight border zone, where the
light of day meets the humid darkness of the forest, is the area where the
deadly nightshade likes to place itself. It may be at the edge of the forest,
in a small clearing, or an area where all trees have been felled, providing the
soil contains dark humus, and there are sufficient forces of shade. If the sun
comes through more strongly and there is not sufficient darkness to hold the
sun forces in balance, the plant will soon disappear.
Not only the habitat, the whole form of the
plant expresses the battle between forces of light and of darkness. One major
organ, the strong root stock which develops several heads as it grows older, is
for ever hidden away in darkness. From it, spring energetically calls forth the
shoot with its large petiolate foliage leaves, oval in shape with a pointed
apex and margin entire, taking them up into the upper region - until autumn,
when the nether region demands the return of their essential principle down to
the root. The shoot grows strongly and rapidly, one would expect to see it
develop to more than a man's height, or even into a tree. Yet how soon an end
is put to this vitality of growth. There, it has stopped - what has inhibited
it? A flower has stepped into its path, an unsurmountable obstacle. Having got
going, the powerful current of growth cannot stop at the height it has reached,
which is about a meter; it breaks apart into lateral rays, usually three, not
unlike the water of a fountain will be deflected to go up at an angle when a
fist has come down to stop it gushing straight upwards. But from this point
onwards the whole plant has become something other. Something which has
announced itself so early and so clearly with that first flower, has now taken
hold of all further growth and development, lateral deflection having brought
no escape. The plant structure now is one of three rays forming a funnel
opening out wide at the top, and this has become one whole inflorescence,
though we also see rich herbage. In the process of developing to full power its
abundant foliage, the plant was literally assaulted by the flowering process.
The lateral shoots forming the funnel have thus
become a strange mixture of intermingling leaf and flower elements. The
following trinity may be observed, rhythmically repeating itself all the way
up the branch: a small leaf which, being a
bract, intimately belongs to the flower, and from its axil the bud rising on a
stem; beside them on the other side, a large leaf, wanting to appear as a bract
subtending that flower, though in fact it is a bract belonging to the flower
below, one floor lower down; its stem has fused with the shoot and been taken
one floor up with it. The large leaf thus belongs more to the shoot, and owes
its size to the stronger etheric forces of the shoot; the small leaf belongs
more to the flower, and the astral forces of this have obviously reduced its
growth.
The flower buds are all on the inside of the
funnel formed by the plant, and face upwards. This needs to be emphasized, for
the proper appreciation of what is to follow. As it opens up, the flower makes
a strong movement, seeking shade, rotating downward and outward and creeping
under the large leaf beside it – as under a parasol. It flees the light and in
doing so, falls subject to gravity.
A deeply invaginated throat opens up, its
colors revealing a struggle between a weak, fading yellow and a gloomy
brown-violet. The "earth bee", the heavy bumble bee, gathers the
nectar. Then the many-seeded "cherry" swells, black-violet, like the
eye of an animal, and as it does so, leaves the shade of the parasol and rises
up again into the lighter twilight. The dark hues apparent even on the stem, in
shades of black, violet and brown, lending their tinge to branches and flowers,
reach their final peak in the shiny black berry. Thus the whole plant is
sensitive to the interplay of light and darkness. The leaves show it; they are
real shade leaves, finely structured, though structure changes when more light
washes around them. The seeds however need light to germinate, they only come
up reluctantly if in deep shade.
The characteristic nature of Belladonna lies,
however, not only in the interaction of light and shade, but also in the
interweaving of water and air. The roots, the growing shoot, suck up water
greedily from the moist humus of the forest, and exhale it into the atmosphere.
This intensive "aerification" of the fluid element becomes apparent
if we pick a branch of the plant. Within a very short time it will hang down
limply, for no more fluid follows up, to make up for the losses due to
evaporation. Drying-out, withering forces from the astral element, the air, are
constantly striving to get hold of the plant, but all the time this is made
good, as water, the element of the etheric, pulses afresh through the plant. A
powerful life process generally counterbalances the effects of excessive
"astralization". We have seen this already in the way in which flower
and leaf processes blend; the flower succeeds in prematurely irrupting into the
plant form, but it must suffer the leaf element to continue unchanged by its
side, right to the tip of the shoot. It is also evident in the vitality shown
by the petals of the calyx, for these survive long after the flower, forming a
wide green dish with the black violet berry at the center. Vitalization and
devitalization are thus constantly contending for supremacy. The plant flowers
in June and July, and the berry ripens during the autumn.
Poisonous to man in all its parts. Birds,
rabbits – animals in whom, in a sense, the nervous and sensory processes are
preponderant – feed on it with impunity. The chemist will find in it the
typical Solanaceae alkaloids (l-hyoscyamine, atropine, l-scopolamine,
apoatropine, belladonnine) and in addition a substance called
a-methyl-aesculetin; this shows blue Fluoreszenz
and is closely related
to the iridescent substance found in the horse
chestnut (aesculin). The ash contains silicic acid and magnesium in appreciable
quantities and also a trace of copper. The first two relate to the hidden
longing for light in this plant, for both silicic acid and magnesium are
connected with light processes, serving them, and are "light
elements".
Belladonna is one of the "great"
remedies. Its actions, for all their multiplicity, arise from the processes we
have described which make up its specific nature. The action is directed at the
mode of coordination of the members of man's being; it applies generally, and
also in specific organ spheres. As we have become aware of the special relation
of the deadly nightshade process to light and darkness, it will come as no
surprise that the eye holds a special place among those specific organ spheres.
The encounter between light and darkness, the world of night and that of day,
is not limited, however, to one organ, the eye, "created in the light and
for the light". As the transition from sleeping to waking consciousness,
it concerns also the human being as a whole. In the 19th lecture in Spiritual Science and Medicine, 2
a description is given of how certain plants resist the immediate forces of
earth and then reserve many of their form-giving forces for the development
of flower and fruit (and Belladonna does this
most noticeably). R.S. then continues:
"As the plant resists those forces of
earth it becomes exposed to forces from outside the earth when the final stage
of seed-formation, of fruiting, is reached; it then becomes a plant which
desires
to look out upon the world in the same way as
higher beings, beings from a sphere above that of the plant kingdom, look out
upon the world. The desire to perceive is revealed. The plant is not organized
for perception, however; it remains a plant though it desires to develop
something of the nature found in the human eye. Yet it is unable to develop an
eye, because its body is that of
a plant, not of a human being or animal. And so
it becomes a banewort, a deadly nightshade (German Tollkirsche; toll = mad,
Kirsche = cherry). I have attempted to give you a clear and rather vivid
picture of the process which occurs as the deadly nightshade comes into being.
It becomes a deadly nightshade, and as it does so, and has in its roots already
the forces which will finally cause it to produce its black berries, the plant is
related to everything which in the human body tends to impel towards the
development of form and shape, to impel towards something which can actually
only take place in the sphere of the senses, i.e. to lift man out of the sphere
of his organization into the sphere of his senses. The process which occurs
when small amounts of Belladonna are given in potentized form is indeed highly
interesting. It is terribly like the process of waking from sleep, when one is
not yet quite perceiving with the senses, and sensory perception is still
potentized, within, to fill our consciousness with dreams. At that moment one
always gets a sort of Belladonna action in man. Belladonna poisoning occurs
because the very process which normally goes on when human beings wake up,
when their waking is permeated with dreams, is now evoked in them by the poison
of Belladonna, but in this case becomes a continuous state and is not taken
over by (daytime) consciousness. The phenomena of the transitional state thus
become lasting. This is what is so interesting, that here one can see how the
processes evoked by the phenomena of poisoning are processes which, if they
have the right timing, actually pertain to the whole human organization . . .
waking from sleep in man has something in it of becoming Belladonna, but toned
down . . . limited to the moment of waking."
If the moment of waking were to become a
permanent state, R.S. concludes, it would be fatal - like Belladonna poisoning.
Thus Belladonna may be said to bring the
"night-time man" close to the day-time man, though night-time man is
everywhere projecting into day-time man. Their eyes are open, but in broad
daylight they look as though they had opened to total darkness. Lower man,
blood man, is forcing his way up from the subconscious, unconscious depths into
nerve-man, into the region of the head. For in its senses the organism is
awake; in its metabolism it is asleep, always, even during the day. The blood
pushes upwards, the head grows hot, the face red. Under the influence of
Belladonna poison, the blood principle erupts into the nerve principle. The
blood vessels in the eye become engorged, epistaxis occurs, the salivary glands
and tonsils become enlarged, and the tongue grows red and swollen.
Hypersensitivity to external cold develops. A similar state is seen with many
diseases involving acute temperatures and the initial stage of inflammation,
and the homeopathic school has come to regard Belladonna as a major remedy for
these initial stages. Other conditions are migraine, congestive headaches, and
also the treatment of sequelae of influenza (Raeff's Bulgarian cure). Here we
see the effect on the head of the powerful root action of Belladonna.
A plant in which astral activities are forced
in to such abnormal degree will obviously act on conditions in the human
organism where certain organic regions are subject to abnormal action on the
part of the astral body, so that cramps or spasms result. Belladonna has
accordingly been used to treat whooping cough, asthma, gastric and intestinal
spasms, the spastic component of biliary and renal colic, spasms in the uterine
region, and even paralysis (sphincter vesicae).
In the sphere of the nerves and senses,
"day-time man" is able to live fully in conscious activity of the
spirit; in the system of metabolism and limbs, man is unconscious, he is active
in a state of consciousness dimmed down to sleep; this activity is very much of
the spirit, but it is unconscious; "night-time man" lives in it.
Spiritual qualities, in remaining unconscious, are shackled, one might say, to
organ activity and the preparation of physical substance. With the poison of
Belladonna, part of this spiritual principle is driven out of the physical and
liberated. Normally such a liberation
of the spiritual principle from its organic
base and support should take place only in the brain, the nervous and sense
organs. If it rises unfettered from the depth of the metabolic organs, abnormal
soul contents will be experienced in form of visions and the like. At the same
time a mad, pathological urge to move takes hold of the muscular system. The
role of Belladonna in the treatment of "mental disorders" may be discerned
from this.
We must remember, however, how we discerned the
intense struggle between etheric and astral principle going on in every part of
the deadly nightshade. Particular note should also be taken that
the plant remains soft and resists hardening at
all stages of growth. In autumn, the whole handsome structure withers away to
almost nothing. One aspect of the Belladonna action, therefore, is that given
in suitable dosage it stimulates the life processes (the activity of the
ether-body) and combats processes of hardening and mineralization such as might
occur in the organization as a whole, or in an organic region (especially the
eye), due to premature aging.
It would however, go far beyond the scope of
this book to enter thus deeply into purely medical aspects. Anyone interested
in specific details and in the many possibilities of medicinal action, is
strongly advised to consult the detailed and comprehensive studies in Dr.
Simonis “Die unbekannte Heilpflanze”.
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