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Homeopathy is a simple curative art in the world where psychophysiological medicine and spiritual medicine blur. Much like the African doctor whose spiritual and physical world overlaps like seeing the other side of your living room through an aquarium, the world of the vital spirit, the elemental healing force of our bodies, is blurred together in the healing discipline of homeopathy with the curative world of remedies that we strive to understand.
Where homeopathy manages to distinguish itself from the other shamanic arts of healing has always been in that the practitioner needs no skills in seeing into the parapsychological plane and needs no fake objects to "remove" from the patient's body in order to have proved the removal of a disease entity that the shaman observed beforehand. Homeopathic patients usually feel a strong increase in their energy when a cure is underway.
A shaman who has ingested mind-altering substances so as to see visions is able to see the supernatural reality of the patient's disease. His method of removing the disease is according to the culture and knowledge that surrounds his people. Perhaps he places a few dart-like objects in his mouth, identical to the disease he has seen in his patient. He vomits them out as part of the healing. The people see the material aspects, and he knows the immaterial. In his mind, the essence of the dart of disease has been removed from his patient.
Shamanic training is essentially training in how to conduct a dialogue with the spirits, how to interest them in using their powers benevolently and sharing them with man. It is the unique ability of homeopathy to be able to converse with the sick person without having to see the disease separate from them. Homeopaths rely on the foundation of observation and interview to collect symptoms that will produce an understanding of the disease. The shaman relies on his ability to perceive the disease in the supernatural world and guide his treatment accordingly.
The Western world does not want to believe that the two worlds are one. Skeptics abound who have proved the shaman's ways ineffective only because they have discovered the sleight of hand that is part of the shaman's skills. Homeopathy relies on observation, not just a perception, and can be confirmed by another practitioner easily. Of course, the skill of the observer will increase the quality of the observations and therefore the ability to determine the best remedy.
American Indians contributed much of their ethnobotany knowledge to the pioneers when homeopathy was often used traveling across the Plains. The reward was many new effective substances in the arsenal of homeopathic remedies. Other than this direct transference of knowledge, Indian healers also have principles in common with homeopathy.
In the Navaho healing ceremony, the central element of the sand painting represents the spiritual and physical landscape in which the patient and the illness exist, the etiology of the disease, and the mythology that has been chosen for the cure. It is interesting that predominantly evil things, such as snake, lightning, thunder, or coyote, may be invoked because if they have been the cause of the illness, they alone can correct it. This follows homeopathy's law of similars which states that a substance that causes illness can be used to remove a like illness.
Other parts of the Navaho healing ceremony are used to bring the reality of the supernatural world into the ritual space where shaman and patient are gathered. All of the necessary work of a homeopath is done in the physical plane. Many homeopaths like to add other elements of complementary treatments much like the additional ritual elements of prayer, crystals, sweating and emetics of the Navaho.
Homeopathy uses none of the power of visualization which is the core of the Navaho shamanic healing rites. As Western cancer patients mentally construct a cure by seeing malignant cells redirected out of their body, the Navaho patients concentrate on songs and stories to receive power that affect their illness. But homeopathy has been accused of the placebo response which is akin to visualization in that no real medicinal substance is often given to the patient. Homeopathy uses substances that have been diluted to such an extreme degree that by current physical laws, there is no molecule of medicinal substance left. Researchers have proposed interesting solutions to the problem such as the ability of the water that dilutes the substance to remember what had been removed and still retain its curative power. I am of the opinion that the scientific mind won't find the mechanism of cure any time soon but will spend much of our tax money in trying to dissolve that border between the physical and metaphysical planes where the curative process crosses.
Even though homeopathy has been a dominant medical practice in the US for several centuries and continues to be in many countries of the world, it is currently a medicine without much respect due to a lack of a system based on deductive logic like the world of modern medical practice, often referred to with disdain as allopathy in homeopathic literature. Its vitalistic nature, that is willing to allow the existence of what a shaman sees, and its empirical nature, derived from people as far back as Hippocrates and Paracelcus, have put homeopathy into a world where its clinical practice creates tension for the person who prefers one system over another.
