Sacred Plants, Human Voices

This book studies seven new provings by Nancy Herrick on some very special plant remedies.

• Lotus
• Ginseng
• Peyote
• Ayahuasca
• Mandragora
• Rose of St. Francis
• Ancient Rose

These ancient substances have been significant forces in healing for millennia. They are now powerful new tools for our 21st century materia medica. "In the ever widening landscape of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, it is only the scientific method of provings that will illuminate every flower, animal or substance hitherto unknown. Hence, on the heels of animal provings like Lac delphinum (dolphin) and Lac equinum (horse), this new book on plants is a much needed addition to understand these remedies in a deeper way.

The provings are enriched by Nancy's artistic instinct and instinctive feel of the remedies and linked to the universal truth through folklore. A must read for every homeopath who wishes to achieve the similimum for the patient." - Divya Chabra

"Once again, the homeopathic community is indebted to Nancy Herrick not only for her pioneering investigations of new remedies that deserve to be better known, but above all for her courage in daring to try, in a serious, principled fashion, what nobody else will touch with a ten-foot pole, namely, to seek the bioenergetic 'essence' of each proving, and thus to provide a basis for students, colleagues, and future generations to establish or improve upon." - Richard Moskowitz

"Nancy has given us a great gift with her exciting provings on the sacred plants. I have prescribed her animal remedies, based upon the provings, with much success, and am looking forward to learning and using these fascinating new plant remedies." - Jeremy Sherr

"Nancy's book on Sacred Plants opens up a vital area which has not received enough justice so far. Like her book on Animal provings, this one too shows her painstaking research into each plant, followed by a detailed proving which is grouped according to themes and then made accessible by accurate indexing into rubrics. This very important work will go a long way in bringing these Sacred Plants to good use in Homeopathy." - Rajan Sankaran

• Author: Nancy Herrick
• ISBN: 9780963536839
• 553 pages
• Paperback
• Published in 2003
• Printed in United States

• View PDF

Reprinted with the permission of The Homeopathic Links Journal, Volume 17, Autumn 2004. Reviewed by George Guess, MD, DHt, USA.

Sacred Plants, Human Voices is a humbling piece of work. The incredible amount of labour, attentiveness, devotion, and cre­ativity that went into its production is in­spiring and, especially to those of us who have yet to do a proving, humbling. The homeopathic community owes Herrick and those who worked with her a huge debt of gratitude for the volumes of information contained in the book.

In her introduction, Herrick was no doubt stung by some of the criticism levelled at her first book of provings. It's my impression that the rubrics selected or created based upon the provings are accurate and valuable additions to our repertory. Additionally, Herrick endeavoured to keep the creation of new rubrics to a minimum. I did find, though, that in a few instances some appropriate rubric selections were overlooked. For example, on page 124 in the chapter on Ginseng one finds symptoms suggesting all of the following rubrics (some new), none of which were selected by the au­thor: 'Unfriendly', 'Lack of self-confi­dence', 'Lack of control', 'Fear of inti­macy'; on page 128, still describing Gin­seng, good evidence exists, I think, to include this remedy in the rubric 'Re­proaches self.  Animal Mind, Human Voices, lays out precisely the methodology employed in these provings as well as her procedure to identify the themes she ascribes to these new reme­dies. I find little to criticise in this method­ology.

Herrick's proving method is thoroughly described in the introduction. Ten to twenty provers were used for each prov­ing; all provings were conducted double-blind, and lasted three to four weeks (would a longer period be better?). If no significant symptoms resulted from the first dose of the proving substance, with a supervisor's approval, up to two more doses were allowed. (Herrick neglects to mention what potencies were given and the length of the initial period of observa­tion for a drug's effect.) Daily journals were maintained for three to four weeks. While proving supervisors were provided, their use was left optional. At the end of the three to four week period, a meeting was held with provers, proving supervisors and the proving master present. Tran­scripts were made of these meetings. The remedy was revealed to the provers only at this stage. Once the remedy was revealed no further symptoms were taken. Two to five homeopaths or homeopathic students worked with the proving master to de­velop themes for each remedy, which were derived from repetitive themes, words or main points appearing in the proving. The selection of remedy themes had definite criteria: 1) Each theme had to be con­firmed by proving entries from at least three different provers, 2) Themes had to come exclusively from the words of the provers, 3) No theme was based on study of the substance proved, 4) A theme was considered very strong if confirmed on multiple levels; i.e., emotional/mental states, events (more about this later), dreams, and physical sensations.

A number of what I feel to be important issues were not raised in the book. There is, regrettably, no mentioned of whether or not provers were discouraged from dis­cussing symptoms with one another, or whether they even associated with one an­other. There is no comment relating to any prescriptions placed upon the provers; eg, other remedies, coffee, certain foods or drugs, etc. Neither is there mention of whether or not provers' cases were taken initially - a procedure I believe necessary to elicit as much information as possible from a proving; such as, complementary remedy relationships, pre-existing sympto­matology that might be cured or aggra­vated by the proven remedy or incorrectly ascribed to it. There is no comment about the use of control subjects, which can be a sticky issue itself in homeopathic provings; i.e., what does the master prover do with control symptoms? Eliminate them? Eliminate them as well as all similar symptoms appearing in provers? In­clude them, as some have done? Of this last strategy I am highly sceptical, even were one to accept the possibility of some group mind phenomenon induced by the proving influencing controls.

As mentioned, themes were determined by a consistent repetition of symptoms in provers' journals. It was only subse­quently, while writing up descriptions of the proving substance to serve as pro­logues to the provings themselves, that she noted that many of the themes re­flected the remedy's source. Thus, Herrick's provings are not testaments to the Law of Signatures, as some have asserted, but rather to the "Law of Circumstance" (for the sceptic) or the "Law of the Es­sential Nature of Things" (for those who acknowledge some connection between a substance's nature and the symptoms it might produce). Herrick, as she states, wishes to make her proving infor­mation more accessible to practitioners. Every homeopath has experienced the daunting challenge of extracting useful prescribing information from a new prov­ing. It is Herrick's hope that the themes she provides will aid the reader's assimilation of the material and its utilisa­tion in practice.

While some feel that remedy themes should be relegated to subsequent publi­cations and not included with the original presentation of proving data, I, for one, appreciate the author's efforts in this area. After all, if not the author and her assis­tants with their deep familiarity with the proving material, who can better provide such information? The themes help to provide a basic starting point when studying these, principally new remedies. Depending upon the reader's preference, they can be either ignored or utilised as a memory and focusing tool, helping one to grasp the possible overall image of the remedy. My only complaint is that the themes seem quite general, which is probably the best that can be achieved with such preliminary information. An example - "Emotional" is part of one theme of Ginseng. Further refinement or alteration of these themes will come with clinical ex­perience. In a couple of cases, though, a bit of fine-tuning of the themes seems possible from just reading the proving. For instance, some of the themes for Rosa gallica include 'Loving Feelings/Compassion', 'Heart', 'Relationships', which are quite broad; however, one prover's cura­tive experience (which carries extra signifi­cance to my mind) suggests one better de­lineated theme might be the 'angry, ag­gressive pursuit of love'. In the case of Mandragora, the general theme of 'Ani­mals' is identified, yet much of the symptomatology reveals the more specific theme of 'sympathy and affection for ani­mals', among other possibilities.

While reviewing themes, I have to com­ment upon one category of data that Herrick uses to confirm themes, namely events occurring during the proving. There were times when I was struck by the sheer ordinariness of some of the events and the provers' reactions to them that were taken as proving symptoms. An example: one prover commented that it sprinkled immediately on taking the rem­edy; this was taken as a symptom con­firming 'Weather' as a theme of Rosa St. Francis. I think it would have been better to enter the specific effects of the weather in the generalities data, where it seems far more appropriate. In another case, a prover's experience of some difficulties in­curred one day while traveling are in­cluded as confirmation of the 'Travel' theme of Ginseng. There are several simi­lar examples. So, should events occurring during a proving be included? I suspect Herrick, in doing so, is honouring Carl Jung's observation of the principle of Synchronicity in nature, of the seeming relationship between events which might otherwise be viewed as only circumstan­tial. But are we ready to acknowledge Synchronicity as a scientifically objective fact? Granted, when apparently unrelated events occur in such a manner as to es­tablish an unusual pattern of occurrence and do so repeatedly, it tends to give one pause; one might concede that a synchro­nous phenomenon is occurring. But it is quite a leap to proceed from such a com­mon sensical concession to the incorpora­tion of a single event, a possible chance occurrence, as relevant data in a scientific experiment! It is my feeling that symp­toms noted during a proving, and the themes developed from them must be based on unassailable raw data from the provings; thus, we should be highly cir­cumspect about what we include as valid symptoms.

And while raising a yellow caution flag re­garding proving symptom selection, I feel the need to mention another example of questionable symptom inclusion.

On page 189, while describing Mandragora, the first symptom to appear under the theme 'Mental Illness' is a description of the rather aberrant behaviour of the prover's brother. Publication of this symptom re­ally surprised me. The behaviour of an­other individual, one not participating in a proving, has no place in a proving report. In fairness to Herrick, who I am sure had some justification for including that 'symptom', I can only surmise that she did so because the prover, when describing the brother's behaviour, used terms alluding to mental illness, which established a connection with the theme. Nonetheless, I feel in this specific instance that she over­reached.

The remedies covered in this volume in­clude: Nelumbo nucifera (Sacred Lotus), Ginseng, Mandragora, Rosa Gallica, Rosa St. Francis, Ayahuasca, and Anhalonium - all substances that have 'sacred' connota­tions in a broad sense, in that they either have a history of ritualistic use based upon their psychotropic properties or some magical, spiritual, religious, or mythical associations. A thorough description of the plant, including its history and 'sacred' as­sociations, precedes Herrick's listing of remedy themes with supporting proving symptoms; next follows a detailed listing of rubrics based on the proving; and lastly the text from the provers' journals ap­pears. No index is provided. With the exception of the last remedy, Anhalonium, the physical symptoms produced during the provings appear only in the rubrics section and the provers' journal entries, where they are quite difficult to extract. This, I feel, is a major shortcoming that I hope is corrected in any future provings Herrick conducts. I would like to see physical symptoms listed separately under body sections, a format with which most of us are familiar. Failure to do so gives the mistaken impression that the provings concern themselves only with psychological symptoms.

For each remedy Nancy Herrick also identifies a corresponding miasm. However, she offers no explanation for her choices, which, I think, would be a useful addition to the volume.

What of the themes themselves? Here is a sampling of a few remedies:

Nelumbo nucifera (Sacred Lotus):

Psychosis/Inside vs. Outside

Killing/Violence

Irritable/Anger

Sharp/Stuck/Stabbed

Police/Prison

Lost/Travel

Indifference

Clarity/Expansion/Energy

Altered States

Heavy vs. Floating Feeling

Vertigo

Anhalonium (Peyote)

Calm/Quiet

Energetic/Productive

Weil-Being

Dullness

Sadness/Compassion

Anxiety/For Children

Danger/Violence/Explosions

Escape

Surreal

Old Things/Ancient

Sensual impressions/Smells-Sight-Taste

Water/Tropical

Sexuality

Animals

Rosa St. Francis (Rose of St. Francis)

Transformation

Blood/Lacerations

Calmness/Serenity

Confusion

Care for Animals/Dogs

Embarrassment/Inadequacy

Opinionated

Old Acquaintances/Lovers

Desire to Help Others

Gardens/Nature/Weather

Old Ailments

Challenging Authority

Loving Feelings/Compassion

Food/Hunger

Spiritual Teachers/Mentors

Order/Discipline/Organisation

Water

The themes and symptoms brought out in these extensive provings suggest that all of the remedies appearing in this book will prove to be very interesting and valu­able medicines in our practice.