In my previous posts, we discussed the earliest ideas around the infinitesimal dose. In recent years, these ideas and the pharmacy techniques stemming from them have been advanced considerably. This advance has mostly stemmed from the work of a German, Witold Ehrler (1)
Witold was a german student who was dating a homeopathic pharmacy student in the 1990s after a period of spiritual growth and exploration. After reading one of Catherine Coulters books (2) he became fascinated by the idea that substances had psychological profiles (as described in the last post : The state). Using his girlfriend’s homeopathic pharmacy textbooks, he began making a well known homeopathic remedy, called calc-carb.
Little did he know, Witold was using a textbook that had a minor error specifying four rounds of grinding and scraping with milk sugar (known as trituration), rather than the three specified in the organon (3). As he began the trituration, Witold began experiencing a number of unusual mental symptoms, such as fear he was going insane, all of which were quite typical of cal-carb. Homeopaths have known since the 1800s that people who triturate a remedy will often prove it ( see previous post on provings). The first example of this was that of the great homeopath Constantine Hering, who triturated and proved the remedy lachesis in 1828 (4). Up until Witolds triturations however, homeopaths usually stopped at the third round of trituration.
As Witold began the fourth level of trituration ( or C4 level) he began noticing that he developed an insight into the delusions and symptoms that had occurred in the previous three levels. He specifically described moving to a place where the conflicts in the mentality of the previous levels (C1,2,3) were overcome, and no longer an issue.
Witold repeated this process a number of times, finding the same pattern again and again in the experiences of triturators in each of the following levels:
C1: The physical symptoms, aches, pains and syndromes
C2: The emotional symptoms, angers, sorrows, hurts
C3: The mental symptoms, delusions, thought processes and ideas
C4: A new level, resolution of the previous levels, and an awareness of the lesson behind them.
Over time, Witold and other people (myself included) began doing these triturations at higher and higher levels, noticing subsequently broader and more advanced levels of sensation, which will be described in subsequent posts.
Most interestingly, when people are given remedies from C4 and above, they tend to pick up the awareness of the solutions to conflict that the higher levels of the remedy embody. The clinical use of c4 homeopathics is still undeveloped, and will itself be a topic of a future post.
Take care of yourselves!
- Hogeland, A. & Schriebman, J. The Trituration Handbook: Into the Heart of Homeopathy. 2008 Homeopathy West: El Cerrito, CA.
- Coulter, C. Portraits of Homeopathic medicines. Vol 1-3. Ninth House: Arlington: Mass.
- Hahnemann, S. The Organon of Medicine. Trans O’Reilly, WB. 1996. Birdcage: Palo Alto, CA.
- http://www.homeoint.org/clarke/l/lach.htm