The provings described in this book contain essential information that we are looking for as homeopaths in these times of the deep impact of imponderables in our prescriptions. Patients become ever more influenced by new technologies and natural elements and ever shifting perception of energies surrounding them. This book also shows that people really connect to that field of awareness and even connect to the source of these subtle energies.
In the past number of years the different kingdoms such as animal, mineral and plants have been explored more extensively. But even with these known kingdoms, there is a very important kingdom that needs our special attention, and that is the kingdom of the imponderables.
Nuala Eising connected us years ago to the language of the hidden forces in earth compounds like Granite, Marble and Limestone and made them come alive in her provings, and Granite has become known as a remedy indicated in nuclear radiation. Every new proving of Nuala's is a step forward in remedies we need in these times. Clients who need these imponderables just show up, and we cannot wait to have even more of these wonderful provings.
Really deeply from my heart, I wish that this book of Nuala's finds its way to many homeopaths, as there is really a need for these imponderables to be accepted in the homeopathic arsenal. - Fons Vanderleyden, Homeopath, Belgium.
- Author: Nuala Eising
- ISBN: 9789076189406
- 844 pages
- Paperback
- Published in 2012
- Printed in Netherlands
Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths. From 'The Homeopath' Journal, Summer 2013 edition. Reviewed by Hazel Partington.
This volume contains provings of five remedies: Mobile Phone, Magnet, Time, Volcanic Ash and Meteorite. The presentation of each proving follows roughly the same format. The introduction to each proving tells us of the prompts that inspired Nuala Eising to focus on a particular remedy, how the remedy was made, details of the provers (number of groups, number of provers, gender), interspersed with Nuala's impressions and experiences during the proving, sometimes including poems, songs or details of books that were significant to her during that time. Books of provings can sometimes be rather dry reads as authors seek to present a neutral, objective view of the proving. Nuala however embraces the subjective and reflective in her introduction to each remedy, taking us along with her thought processes and experiences of the proving. She then returns to the neutral and objective and presents the actual proving in the usual way beginning with a gathering together of emergent themes expressed through reports, followed by a listing of rubrics in Kentian hierarchy. There is a debate to be had as to which paradigm provings fall into; positivist (there are concrete facts that we can prove) or interpretivist (our interpretation of reality is subjective and we cannot help but influence the phenomena we study). I would suggest that provings are an interpretivist activity, with the master prover presenting a second order interpretation of the provers' own interpretations of their experiences. In research terms, when working in the interpretivist paradigm, the positionality of the researcher should be reflected upon and presented to give the reader a more rounded picture of the phenomena and I think this is evident in Nuala's writing style.
Some of the material presented will be familiar to some from conference presentations. The timing of the provings range from Mobile Phone in 2002 to the most recent of Volcanic Ash in 2010. The publisher's website tells us that: "The provings described in this book contain essential information that we are looking for as homeopaths in these times of the deep impact of imponderables in our prescriptions." Although I would hesitate to group all five remedies under imponderables as two of them, Volcanic Ash and Meteorite, are made from physical substances, and indeed the author does not list them as such. The volcanic ash was sourced in Iceland, not far from Eyjafjallajokul, the volcano that erupted in April 2010 and grounded over 100,000 flights causing extensive disruption and chaos for travellers. We are not told how the source material for Meteorite was obtained, but Nuala used a diamond drill bit to extract some dust from a piece of iron meteorite and then made the remedy herself. The creation of the remedies for magnet and mobile phone is as one might expect: exposure of a phial of alcohol to carefully positioned magnets or to mobile phones (and one cordless phone) calling each other. The creation of the remedy Time is truly imponderable, having decided to attempt to prove Time, Nuala reasoned that she needed to 'find speed, intensification of gravity, something cyclical and capable of disintegration or degeneration' (p 157). At the suggestion of her scientist daughter-in-law, a phial of alcohol was put into a high powered centrifuge. Nuala reports having been asked why she did not call the remedy centrifuge, her instinct was that she was proving Time and she would let the proving speak for itself, and this seems to be justified by the proving which contains only two references to spinning and many references to Time. If you enjoy reading provings or are interested in any of the remedies presented then this is one for your bookshelf.