Ethmostigmus, or the giant centipede is a member of the chilopoda native to 
China, Southeast Asia and the Australopacific. It is a nocturnal predator, feeding on other arthropods. It, along with another species, Scolopendra subspinipes are used in Chinese medicine (known as Wu Gong). It has an affinity to the liver meridian, and is pungent, warm and toxic[i]. It is used to clear wind, clear spasms, clear nodules and to disspate toxins. Clinically it is applied in lockjaw, seizures and convulsions, sores and carbuncles, headaches and pain in general[ii]. It is often combined with Quan xie (Mesobuthus martensii) in formulas for the treatment of seizures. Modern Chinese medicine has investigated this substance and found a number of effects, such as inhibition of tuberculosis and fungal infections, improvement of microcirculation, prothrombin time and blood viscosity and analgesic effects[iii]. Clinical effects were also seen in the treatment of cancer, intractable migraine, herpes zoster, and post stroke paralysis. This specimen was procured from an online retailer, and was prepared from the head and tail sections (it was quite large).
This specimen did contain a barbeque flavoring, which I attempted to remove by soaking beforehand. However, the picture obtained was consistent with the other species of Arthropods, so I do not believe this impacted the trituration excessively. This is an extract from my book The Table of Animals: The Ecdysozoa: The Nematodes and Early Arthropods.
C1-3
The first three levels of this trituration paints the picture of a being confronted by a powerful other, which is very different than it, but not (unlike the Arachnids) actively hostile to it. The being attempts to reach an accommodation to this other, to become harmonious with it in some way. It is willing to compromise and give up a great deal that is important to it to reach this accommodation. However, the being feels deeply that accommodation is insufficient, and that in order to reach a cooperative arrangement with the other, it will need to give up all of itself, its own distinctiveness and characteristics It feels resentful and petulant about this, behaving very resentfully towards the other, and trying to prevent itself from becoming close to it, fearful that the being will influence it away from its own choices, making it lose its own self, its own characteristics.
C1
Preformed August 14th 2015:
- I feel disturbed somehow.
- I’m cool and calculating, but something is bothering me
- I feel somewhat disdainful of others. I feel as if I am better and smarter than them
- I feel deceptive as well, or maybe just concealing. It is as if I am trying to conceal that I am different
- I definitely feel a little bit riled up by the outside world. I’m keeping my cards close to my chest in reaction to it
- I’m not going to let it get me!
- There’s a definite sense of resistance to it
- It is not that the outside world feels so hostile anymore, but that I resent it
- I’m slightly different from the other, and I feel as if I am better than it
- I can feel the other all around me. It is as if it is hugging me and I do not like it!
- I’m uncomfortable
- I’m achy
- I am frustrated. I just want to be left alone and be by myself
- I’m supremely defensive, and a little afraid
- I feel like my brain is contracting inwards. I am feeling my meninges pulling inwards from my skull, but there is no pain
- I’m not going to let it get me!
C2:
Preformed August 15th 2015:
- Again I feel resentment and resistance
- Even a bit of poutiness
- I feel like I just want to be left alone- something is interfering with me
- I almost feel like a petulant teenager. I’m resentful of someone else getting into my space, but I feel as if it will happen anyway
- What bothers me so much? Why am I so irate about this thing getting so close to me?
- I feel like we are different, and that it helping me might change me in some way, making me more like it
- I want to be me!
- I feel ucky. I’m irritated. This thing is getting to me. Its like a jingly tingling buzzy feeling in my skin
- But this feeling is not as intense as in previous arthropods
- This thing is like a parent, someone older and wiser and more powerful and larger than me
- I just want to withdraw from it
C3
Preformed August 16th 2015:
- Again I feel resentful
- I’m smothered!
- I feel like I am trying to come to some sort of accommodation with something, but that I just cant
- It’s just overpowering me. It’s too powerful!
- I don’t see this thing as hostile, but just as different
- Different, far bigger and more powerful
- It’s just too overwhelming. My attempts to come to some sort of truce aren’t going to be enough
- It is as if despite my efforts to accommodate the other, it keeps coming
- It is as if it is overwhelming me
- My state of accommodation seems like nothing
- Whatever I do it is not enough. It is as if the other, this thing, just wants me to abdicate myself, my own difference. It wants me to give up any sense of myself and become like it
- It makes me want to cry/ I’ve already given up so much to this thing to reach an agreement, to try and keep some shred of my own identity
- I can’t give up everything! I can’t just do whatever this thing says I should!
- What about me? What about my own choices?
- I want to make my own choices and decisions; no one else should make them for me!
- I want to be who I am and express that through my choices!
C4
This fourth level of trituration shows the being outgrowing its previous delusions about its relationship with the other. It no longer believes that it needs to give itself and its own characteristics in order to become harmonious with the other. It now realizes that it can merely cooperate with it, rather than losing its identity to it. The being still feels different than this other, but now can live in a beautiful and harmonious relationship with it, loving it, helping it, and being loved and helped in turn.
Preformed August 17th 2015:
- I feel good. Friendly is a good word. I am no longer so resentful. Now I am joyous!
- Now I feel great joy towards whatever I was so hostile to earlier. It’s no longer a matter of feeling it imposes upon me, or of making compromises with it
- I feel good in this things presence. I love it. We work in a mutually beneficial way together
- The word that keeps occurring to me is cooperation
- I have a cooperative relationship with the other now. A harmonious relationship
- I don’t get the sense of having to give up anything of myself to exist in this harmonious/cooperative relationship any longer. It just inherently exists!
- I don’t need to give up anything to help or to be helped!
- My old idea was that I needed to change myself somehow to live harmoniously. That I needed to make choices that were not my own
- But I do not. Just by a shift in attitude, I can live harmoniously with what is outside of me
- I’m still different from the outside. I am just harmonious and cooperative now!
- I feel good. At peace with the world and my place in it
C5
This level of the trituration restates the conflict of C1-3 in a more succinct way. The being realizes that it must interact with the outside world, and that reaching some sort of cooperative relationship with it is preferable to hostility. However, whenever the being enters into relationship with the outside world, it feels that it loses itself. It feels it must choose between isolation from the other and losing itself to it.
Preformed August 17th 2015:
- I feel concerned again
- I’m withdrawing into myself a bit. I’m holding back
- I wonder how I got myself into this situation!
- I’m cautious concerning the outside world again
- I don’t know how I became so distrustful of it
- It is as if I just gave up on it and decided to chart my own course independently from it
- I feel friendly towards the outside world now, but I want to keep my distance from it
- It’s going to interfere with me in some way
- I don’t want it to interfere with me! I want to do what I want!
- I feel like I cannot relate to this other without my own self being changed by contact with it
- What do I need it for?
- I need to interact with it on some level
- I cannot avoid the world outside myself. It’s better to come to some sort of productive arrangement with it than to be hostile. But when this productive arrangement occurs, I feel as if I am losing myself.
- What do I need it for?
What can I do? Do I lose myself or Isolate myself?
[i] Anonymous. Centipede (wu gong). Acupuncture today. Online Document Accessed September 23rd 2015. http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/herbcentral/centipede.php
[ii] IBID.
[iii] Anonymous. Facts about Centipedes (Wu Gong). Online Document Accessed September 23rd 2015. http://www.chineseherbshealing.com/facts-about-centipedes/
Image Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ethmostigmus_rubripes.jpg
