The Four Elements in Homeopathy is an extended update of the popular booklet Mappa Mundi and the Dynamics of Change. It gathers together and fuses ancient wisdom with contemporary ideas to present us with a unique visual tool that will aid healers in perceiving the central dynamics of any case.
This book places the homeopathic remedy quest within the wider context of life and nature, and illustrates how this enlarged understanding can be applied to help the student or practitioner view homeopathic philosophy, materia medica and case work from a 'new' perspective. It also illuminates many remedies and provides a clear guide to potency selection.
This book has been written by Misha Norland who has been continually active in the resurgence of homeopathy in the UK since the early seventies. In 1981 he founded the School of Homeopathy. He also teaches internationally.
Through developing the traditional teachings of Earth, Water, Air and Fire, the book encourages us to reclaim doctrines that have been embedded in world cultures, both Eastern and Western, for thousands of years. Not only do they inform us culturally but also they are eminently practical tools with which a healer can better understand what is going on in their patient.
The book aims to link images, sensations and feelings, symptoms of mind and body, modalities and preferences, by grouping firstly according to correspondence and secondly by polarity. The polarity principle states that action and reaction are equal and opposite. In living systems this mechanism provides homeostasis which regulates the internal environment so as to maintain a stable condition. When this equilibrium is lost, we struggle and fall sick. As we become chronically ill, because of unresolved trauma and inherited predispositions, our energy is harmfully drained as our homeostatic systems strive but fail to maintain stability. By 'placing' these failures of homeostasis on the Map of the Four Elements an inherent tension of opposites is graphically revealed. This informs us of the relevance of an individual's symptoms, however disparate they may at first glance seem, and in so doing, this guides us in our quest for a similimum.
The energetic profile of hundreds of remedies, obtained by considering signature and source and applying the Map's methodology, is given for comparison with the profile of a patient - a match indicating a remedy to consider. Linking the dynamic disturbance in a patient to the remedy source is at the core of this work.
It will provide students and newcomers with an inspirational guide, and also provide experienced prescribers with many insights.
Mani Norland says "Misha's vision, as demonstrated by this book, is driven by principles which both predate and inform homeopathy. Working with him on illustrating the Map has taught me a great deal because the book is packed with seminal ideas that can be engaged with and put into practice. It is a beautifully constructed whole that draws together so much. For this reason the Four Elements Map is taught at the School of Homeopathy and by Jeremy Sherr at the Dynamis School. I feel sure that many homeopaths outside of these two schools will enjoy and be enthused by this elegant book."
- Author: Misha Norland
- ISBN: 9780954476625
- 160 pages
- Paperback
- Printed in United Kingdom
Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths (from "The Homeopath" Journal Summer 2009). Reviewed by Robert Bridge.
As a student I remember circles appearing on the board to illustrate patients and remedies, circles with axes and diagonals and numbers and weird compass points that were always in the wrong place accompanied by a whole other vocabulary of elements and temperaments and planets. As a final definitive line transected this strange geometry there would be gasps of admiration from my colleagues. To me it was as intriguing and baffling as a game of Mornington Crescent.
Misha Norland's The Four Elements in Homeopathy offers a key to this arcane code. What was then a plain old Circle has now become the Mappa Mundi, a complex piece of kit whose construction and explanation provide a point of departure for a dizzying grand tour of intellectual and philosophical enquiry from Tao to Bhagavad Gita, Newton to Einstein, alchemy to quantum physics, spanning millennia, often within a single sentence.
The author describes the four elements, the four temperaments and the seven ages, taking in kingdoms, Hermetic alchemic levels, potency, and polarity en route: all of life, quite literally, is here. The resultant map becomes a template on which to plot our patients and their remedies, their aspirations and inhibitions, contradictions and tensions, in the continued quest for their similimum. This is an exhaustive labour: in the three cases that Norland discusses, even the lengthy transcripts of the consultations are dwarfed by the subsequent analyses, themselves interspersed with extensive essays on materia medica.
From a quick scan of the mini-maps of 192 remedies that appear as an appendix it will be apparent that even obtaining an accurate map of a case, does not uniquely define a remedy or even a coherent remedy group: a predominant choleric/phlegmatic axis in a particular patient might equally suggest Nux vomica, Carcinosin, Pulsatilla, Arnica, Selenium, Rhus tox, or Ringworm, amongst others. Whilst this system may be both fascinating and attractive, it is clearly not a quick fix.
Misha Norland clearly relishes the opportunity to ruminate and expand, and handles the diverse strings of his eclectic scholarship with the dexterity of a master puppeteer. On more mundane details he is less strong: pictures appear without caption or do not show what they are supposed to; many quotations and almost all the poetry remain unattributed; and disappointingly, for a book of such wide-ranging reference, there is no bibliography. And for the patients: prescriptions and follow-ups are mentioned briefly or not at all, and the ethical concerns of requesting that a young girl's mother leave the room for most of the consultation are apparently ignored.
The beautifully designed and coloured pull-out map that accompanies the book is the work of Mani Norland, Misha's son and collaborator.
For prescribers who love to ponder their cases and let their imagination take flight this book is an inspiration and a cornucopia.
Me? Still intrigued. Still baffled. Totteridge and Whetstone?
Reprinted with the permission of The Homeopathic Links Journal, Volume 22, Summer 2009. Reviewed by Petra Wood.
The homeopathic Mappa Mundi is an attempt to map the different elements and humours in a system that allows applying this map to remedy pictures and patient cases.
The four elements are Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Fire (hot) and Air (cold) are the polarities on one axis and Water (wet) and Earth (dry) those on the second axis. Added to this are the axes of the humours or temperaments: Choleric (hot and dry) and Phlegmatic (cold and wet) on the third axis, Sanguine (hot and wet) and Melancholic (cold and dry) on the fourth axis.
The author fits other aspects into the Mappa Mundi: four seasons, 24 hours in a day, four developmental stages of man, four archetypes according to Jung, colours, sounds and tastes, to name a few. Each aspect focuses on one particular pole and axis.
In a healthy state, the individual is able to move freely between the different poles and axes. A diseased Vital Force will be restricted to one or possibly two poles (the central disturbance), creating a counter-force in the opposite pole (the compensatory state).
Each symptom in a patient can be seen to focus on one (or two) axes with the majority of symptoms focusing on the same one (or two) axes. Symptoms therefore cease to be isolated phenomena and become symbolic of the whole (the central disturbance). Mapping a patient's case in this way clarifies which symptoms and rubrics to choose (and which to lose).
The author gives sample cases to demonstrate the mapping of symptoms. One of the example cases is analysed according to miasm, kingdom and family. The author then shows how this type of analysis still corresponds to and is complemented by the Mappa Mundi.
The book covers the historical roots and philosophical background of the Mappa Mundi with an interesting chapter on Alchemy. The author explains how the Mappa Mundi can be used to identify kingdoms and to choose potencies. For quick reference there is a summary of the key points of each of the 8 different poles, followed by mini maps for nearly 200 different remedies.
The book is laid out in a clear and uncluttered way, with straightforward diagrams throughout. The content is arranged in a cyclical fashion, helping the reader to assimilate the information gradually.
Personally I would have liked to see the maps of more remedies explained in detail. But maybe the author deliberately left it as an exercise for readers to explore the Mappa Mundi of the different remedies themselves.
Reprinted with the permission of The ARH from 'Homeopathy in Practice' magazine, Winter 2009 edition:
Reviewed by June Sayer MARH
The Mappa Mundi was not a topic that I was fortunate enough to study during my college days, so it was with interest and enthusiasm that I began to read this book.
The opening chapters begin with an insight into the historical roots of the Mappa Mundi. The Greek philosopher Empedocles was cited as laying the foundation stones of Western science and medicine when he termed Earth, Air, Fire and Water as 'roots'. These roots, when combined in different ratios, formed the physical world. Hippocrates applied the four elements to human temperaments and named them 'Humours'. By drawing on the four elements of Empedocles and the four humours of Hippocrates and including references to other cultures, the Mappa Mundi is presented as an aid to homeopaths in our search to find the similimum.
Having come across the choleric (fire), phlegmatic (water), sanguine (air) and melancholic (earth) temperaments in various homeopathic texts, this book shows us not only where each of these temperaments are located on the Mappa Mundi wheel but also their direct opposing axis; for example, the opposing axis of choleric (fire) is phlegmatic (water). There is a further expansion of the Mappa Mundi wheel as a twenty-four hour clock; fire is located at the top of the wheel in the position of mid-day whilst air is located at the bottom, its opposite time being midnight. Further segments of the wheel are identified by season, colour, bodily systems and functions.
The practical application of the Mappa Mundi is explored with the aid of various cases. I was particularly interested in the case of 'Mr Abraham'. The selected rubrics were analysed using MacRepertory and the three top remedies for this case were Falco peregrinus, Lachesis and Haliaeetus leucocephalus. I do not use a computerised repertory programme so I decided to work through the listed rubrics using Murphy's Clinical Repertory and Schroyens' The Essential Synthesis. This was an interesting exercise. While some of the rubrics were identical in each of the repertories, I found that Falco p was not listed in the repertories I had used, so, had I been analysing the case, I would undoubtedly have been led to another remedy.
Returning to the MacRepertory analysis, the chosen rubrics were then compared with their positioning on the Mappa Mundi wheel. At this point, and with my interest held firm, I found that I was referring back to earlier pages in the book as well as using the colour chart included so that I could remind myself of all the aspects of the Mappa Mundi wheel.
A mini Mappa Mundi on the remedy Haliaeetus leucocephalus was given along with simple graphics and, while I could follow the proving precis, I don't know how successful I would have been at trying to interpret and utilise the information without guidance.
Being familiar with the essences of the remedies selected for the other cases, I could easily see how they matched the case and the importance of the differentiation but personally I would find it time consuming to use the Mappa Mundi approach; even though I respect the fact that, if you already have an understanding of the wheel, it could be of tremendous benefit to help unravel a case that seems to be stuck.
The practical application in respect of potencies is discussed and consideration is given using Kent's potencies in reverse order. This means that potencies of MM and CM levels would be prescribed for elemental levels of ether. High potencies such as 10M and above suit those at elemental fire level, gradually descending in the range through air, water and finally elemental earth. At the lowest level, that is, elemental earth, mother tinctures and low potencies are most suited.
The final section of the book lists a number of homeopathic remedies along with their mini maps as a guide and the author does suggest that you prepare your own Mappa Mundi first before comparing it with the one given.
I enjoyed reading the book and the poetic verses scattered throughout, as I am sure others will. I found it interesting and informative with the outcome that, while it opened my mind to another idea of working, I know that I would have to spend time exploring this method more thoroughly before I felt confident enough to use it.
