kingdoms of resonance

Homeopathic medicines are infinitesimal and potentized dilutions made from just about any substance medicine-makers can get their hands on (including plant, mineral, animal, microbial materials) and some that they can't (moonlight, X-ray radiation). Just as with any medicine, there are commonalities amongst remedies that are derived from related substances. Categories such as the Plant, Mineral and Animal Kingdom remedies have some broadly distinguishing traits and patterns--and theory is that the patterns and themes of a particular substance are reflected in the physical symptoms, personality characteristics, the world-view, even the dreams, of a person who would benefit from the medicine made from that substance. I don't know what my homeopath friends would prescribe for me these days--in the past I've benefitted from two remedies that derive from sea creatures...but one is categorized as a mineral, because it's the shell that's potentized, and the other is categorized as an animal remedy. You can read some interesting notes about remedies made from sea animals here.

Bombay master homeopath and physician Rajan Sankaran has said that in this time of great extinction, the essence of the animals and plants that are disappearing is showing up more and more in human beings.

Another expression of the way humans and the "more-than-human" world reflect one another: one of the enchanting aspects of the world created by Philip Pullman in his series of books, called His Dark Materials, is that every human being there is born with a "daemon", an aspect of their soul who appears in animal form, inseparable from the person, their visible essence. (Another enchanting aspect is the two male angels who adore each other and have been together for eons.) The daemon plays with changing from animal to animal all through childhood, and then at puberty settles into the right stable form. Pullman says (in the interview linked to above) that a person can't choose what their daemon is; and for us here, who can't (usually!) see our own, we have to ask others who know us to tell us what ours is.

And then, there is our own internal resonance. A homeopath might match me to one aspect of this world, and in Pullman's world I might cleave to another aspect; in my own imagination, I feel most at home in the kingdom of the plants. And I'm pretty sure that if I were a plant, I would be a vine. One of those vines that climbs up things with curly tendrils towards the sun, and sprawls into all of the available space and slides between and into other plants, and flings out new growth when it's whacked back to the roots. Oh, and has flowers that attract hummingbirds!

The vines I have in my small yard: red honeysuckle, clematis (5 kinds), wisteria, two kiwis (a fuzzy male and smooth female), passionflower, jasmine, cardinal creeper (and usually I have annual morning glories and cup-and-saucers and sweet peas, but I didn't get around to planting them this year), and unfortunately there is also perennial morning glory (otherwise known as bindweed). And in the house I have two hoya carnosas (the photo at the top is the silhouette of one of my hoyas, when it was in my office).

Here is my friend and relation, the passionflower (Passiflora caerulea) out on the deck behind our house: