SAMUEL HAHNEMANN and THE FUTURE OF HOMEOPATHY
By Donald Grabau
At midnight April 10, 1755 during the ‘Dark of the Moon’, a time traditionally associated with the powers of darkness, the underworld, and the unconscious Samuel Hahnemann was born. In fact, the ‘Lord of Darkness’, the god whose distinguishing gift was a helmet which rendered him invisible to others, the god-planet Pluto - at that time not yet discovered, unseen, and even now invisible to the naked eye- was exactly aligned with the Eastern horizon and rising in the zodiacal sign of the teacher-prophet, Sagittarius. At that moment Pluto put his seal of invisible transforming power on the teachings of the man whose occult life-path would lead him directly into contact with the subtle energies of the medicine way he called ‘homeopathy’, totally challenging the resistance and inertia of the collective unconscious.
There was no moonlight at all at the moment of Hahnemann’s birth. The moon remained out of sight below the horizon leaving only the light of the stars and the bright shine of the planet Jupiter visible in the night sky of Meissen, Germany. But Jupiter is the planet of the teacher-prophet ruling Saggittarius and just before its’ light faded over the Western horizon, the even brighter combined light of Venus and Mars rose in the East. For a brief moment then, the light of the Warrior-Goddess (Venus + Mars) in the sign of the mystic (Pisces) opposed the light of the teacher-prophet (Jupiter) in the sign of medicine (Virgo) signifying the beginning of the life long work of a warrior’s struggle to integrate mysticism and medicine.
Within 48 hours of Hahnemann’s birth the New Moon occurred in the sign Aries, indicative of fresh, new, pioneering energies. A spontaneous and childlike delight in self-discovery characterizes a man of this temperament and inclines him to forthright, direct self-expression in his words and actions. An Aries man born with Sun and Moon in the energy-field of initiating fire is gifted with a drive to explore new stirrings within. Such a man likes to stir things up and feels especially vital and alive when he can spark enthusiasm in others, set their personal psyches on fire with renewed gusto for life. Aries initiates the fire of enthusiasm through his own personal example and seeks one-on-one contact of a personal nature by way of his complimentary and opposite energy-field, Libra.
In Hahnemann’s case the sign Libra controls the Mid-Heaven of his birth chart which refers to his impact on the objective world by way of his career. The Sun in Aries is in opposition to his career but aligned with his I.C., -a point which signifies home and the innermost roots of personal power. Consequently, his focus is very private, his power originates from personal, spontaneous and childlike self-discovery for the I.C. is at once the point of greatest personal inwardness, the roots of power, and the private place each man establishes as home. Hahnemann was at his best at home and from his home he could effect changes in his career and offer the fruits of his personal self-discovery to the objective world. Homeopathy is, after all, a combination of two greek words (homo + pathis) and can be translated as the path leading home. It was this home-path which Hahnemann gave to the world when he coined the word ‘Homeopathy’ to describe his career-work. While his essential being was quite private he was also at the same time and in a sense that is difficult to explain, the least private of men. For a man born at the dark of the Moon is wide-open to the forces of nature, to the invisible spirit of ‘God’. Such a man is a vehicle for a new, Aries-like manifestation of this invisible Spirit and functions as what the late, renowned astrologer, Dane Rudhyar, has called a ‘Seed Man’.
A ‘Seed Man’ is one who carries in his being the fruits of the flowering of a previous cycle of manifestation condensed within a hard, protective shell (hence, ‘Seed’ ) which he must sacrifice to the future. He is asked to become an ‘exemplar’, to make of his life a distillation of all that’s best from the past and to project it into a future not yet seen or understood. A ‘Seed Man’ is a fertile entity in which something wishes to birth itself, -something other than an ego-personality. He must be ready to accept sacrifice or martyrdom for the sake of the future. He is a ‘symbolic person’ who focuses upon himself a social drama, the incorporation of the need of his collectivity for a new birth of Spirit. He must be an alchemist of sorts for he must produce the ‘seed’ from the work he does on his own psyche and substance. He affects in his own body the teaching he will pass on to the future. Samuel Hahnemann did just that by ‘proving’ his medicines on himself. He was his own guinea pig, his own laboratory, his own doctor-patient relationship. His work was alchemical and his body was the alembic.
Astrologically speaking, a man’s body-type is indicated largely by his Rising Sign and we have seen that in Hahnemann’s case that sign was Sagittarius and that Pluto was exactly conjoined with it. Pluto is the symbol for profound experiences of death, rebirth, and regeneration. It’s especially significant of the hidden face of the unconscious both personal and collective. Hahnemann used this planet’s energy in his efforts to trace the hidden roots of disease as well as the latent capacities for regeneration within the body.
On a political-social level Saggittarius is the sign of the charismatic teacher (in India, its’ ruling planet Jupiter, is called the ‘Guru’)...the visionary who leads men into the future and it’s clear that Hahnemann’s teachings concerning the body were and are future-oriented and that his life-path required that he challenge the unconscious assumptions of the medical teachings current in his lifetime. That he’d be inclined to challenge these ways by first practicing on his own body arises from the fact that he was born with his central identity core, the Sun, located in the ‘me first’ sign of Aries in a flowing, trine (120 degree) or visionary relationship to his Pluto + Sagittarius body.
But Hahnemann was not content with experimenting solely on his own body-psyche substance, he wanted to share this process with others. This is quite natural for a person with Sagittarius rising at birth, for such people are teachers primarily because of the urge to reach out and touch others. With Jupiter located in the sign Virgo at the time of Hahnemann’s birth and in his natal 8th house of death-rebirth-sharing we can see that his teachings will and have had their greatest impact after his death or posthumously. While Virgo is involved with detailed analysis, careful attention to the specifics of techniques and especially indicative of all concerns with health, herbs, and natural preventative medicine, the 8th house focuses upon the need to share regenerative experiences. Hahnemann’s guiding light, the planet Jupiter, led him to share his gifts for careful, technical experimentation on his own body via mutable substances with others in the hope they would profit from his example. Yet, because Jupiter at his birth was beginning to form a waning square to Pluto his medicine was met with much collective resistance and was frequently rejected. But times are changing. The future of homeopathy is arriving NOW, in the year 1995, as Pluto returns to the zodiacal sign it occupied at his birth. Pluto has a very long cycle; it requires 245 years to circle the zodiac once. It has not been in Sagittarius since Hahnemann’s time and its’ return there this year suggests that the ‘moment’ for the true understanding of his medical-spiritual teachings is upon us. It will not fully blossom until Pluto reaches the exact degree of Saggittarius which it occupied at this prophet’s birth when it rose in the sky with his Ascendant. That will be sometime in late 2001, early 2002. From now until then the homeopathic community of practitioners world-wide will be experiencing a new energy, a call for the rebirth of homeopathy and all that such a rebirth entails.
It is precisely because of this rebirthing now in process that I am writing of the birth chart of its’ founder, Samuel Hahnemann, for there are certain difficulties this man encountered which were due to his own personality problems and which he inadvertently passed along as part of his ‘Materia Medica’. These difficulties need to be understood and eliminated as far as possible if his work, if homeopathy itself is to achieve a rebirth. This will not be an easy task for homeopathic practitioners since Samuel Hahnemann, the Aries Seed-Man and visionary prophet of future medicine quite naturally expressed in all he did and wrote the typical archetypal emphasis of ‘Me First’ Aries.
Hahnemann’s emphasis is nearly always on the importance of the unique individual and that individual’s unique, personal symptoms:
“Nature has no nomenclature or classification of disease. She produces individual disease, and insists that the true physician...shall always treat the individuality of each individual case of disease.”
The uniquely individual person, disease, symptom and remedy is the cornerstone and foundation of the art of homeopathy as Hahnemann himself declared. But one must be able to distinguish this important principle from the worship of the peculiar ‘flukes’ of personality in the man Samuel H. himself. He was a real, full-blown case of ‘personality’. His teaching, homeopathy, must not be confused with that personality. Even though all seed-men are charismatic and avataric messengers from the Spirit, we must not worship them nor confuse their message with their often colorful personalities the way devotees are inclined to blindly worship their Guru. The authority of Hahnemann is seen by the position of Saturn in Capricorn at his birth and this year the planet Uranus is moving in the sky back and forth over that very degree of Capricorn indicating that revolutionary insights into his posthumous authority, his position as the ‘Guru’ of homeopathy must and will be challenged. This means that there is no place in homeopathic practice for slavish following of any rigid Dogma even if such Dogma takes the form of “Hahnemann Says”.
Homeopathy was formulated by an Aries man and the theme song of such a man is the popular: ‘Most of All, I did it My Way’. Thankfully, Samuel Hahnemann was not Frank Sinatra, nor is Mr. Sinatra synonymous with the ‘My Way’ song -even if thousands of night club goers may think so. Each practitioner of homeopathy must sing his/her own song, each must experiment on himself/herself to find his or her practice for that is the essential message entrusted by Spirit to the seed-man Samuel Hahnemann and the cornerstone of his teaching of homeopathy.
Unfortunately, it’s true that wherever we find emphasis on the individual ‘me’ we find also the danger of the imperialistic and rigid power of the ego, but the worship of ego-centricity is not homeopathy nor is the cloak of secrecy the proper tool of the physician. The true homeopathic physician needs to respect and honor the ‘Me First’ principle in each of his clients, he needs to include the patient in the cure and this is to be done by sharing with the patient the knowledge one has as to the effective ‘intention’ of the remedy prescribed in every case where that is at all practicable. To give a patient a ‘pill’ simply saying, ‘Here, take this, note your symptoms and check back with me in a week or month or so’ is no different, after all, than what is done daily by allopathic doctors all over the planet. It’s a form of cloaked, ‘magical’ practice, a way of remaining aloof and independent with one’s secret power to ‘cure’. For if the patient’s powers of self-healing are to be encouraged and brought to the fore the homeopath must share his/her wisdom with the patient by evoking the ‘name’ of the remedy, giving the patient as full an understanding as is possible of the effects and intentions of the subtle substance that is the ‘remedy’ so that he can unite his conscious intentions with the intentions of the remedy. It may strike some as strange or even heretical to speak of the ‘intention’ of the substance known as the remedy, but Hahnemann himself said:
“Medicinal substances are not dead masses in the ordinary sense of the term, on the contrary, their true essential nature is...dynamically spiritual...is pure force...”
Now in astrology, the mass of a substance is found through an examination of the zodiacal sign Taurus, the 2nd house of the chart, and the placement of the planet Venus which ‘rules’ both that sign and that house. In Hahnemann’s birth chart the planet Venus is located in the sign or ‘energy-field’ of Pisces which dissolves all forms and it is also found to be in close union (conjunction) with the planet Mars which symbolizes the active energy of any body or substance. Pisces is a watery and psychic sign ruled by Neptune, the Universal Solvent of Alchemy. Consequently, Hahnemann was born with an innate attunement to the active energy of all substances or what we can term the psychic - spiritual energy locked within any form as well as a ‘feel’ for the way to dissolve the form and liberate the energy within. Since both the substance itself (Venus) and the active energy within it (Mars) are also in astrological opposition to Jupiter, the principle of expansion located in the mutable earth sign of Virgo, it should be clear to us why he was led to dissolve substances in water and shake them vigorously, for Mars in opposition to Jupiter symbolizes restless movement. This procedure, too, was part and parcel of his prophetic teaching for we have seen that Jupiter rules his Sagittarius Ascendant. Furthermore, Hahnemann would have been inclined to perform this work personally since Mars (action) is the ruler of his Sun and Moon in Aries. He would prefer to do this work in his home since his Aries Sun is located in the 4th house of his birth chart and that house symbolizes one’s home.
We would expect to find from all of this that Hahnemann was extremely sensitive to the fact that the personal energy of the individual performing the ‘succussion’ would interact and merge with what he called the ‘dynamically spiritual’ and ‘pure force’ of the life-energy of the substance itself. It is reported that in the last years of his life in Paris with his second wife, Melanie, he began to use remedies produced by Korsakoff and Jenichen of 1000C and 1500C “...but he was uneasy with them, probably because he had not made them himself and was not at all sure how they had been prepared...Hahnemann imagined that the succussion would have to have been mechanical and therefore too violent.”
(Rima Handley/Love Story; p. 128.)
This kind of sensitivity to the treatment of substances would be rooted in his sensitive awareness of his own body since, at his birth Venus in Pisces is situated in the 2nd house of his personal body-substance and sense of values. Furthermore, the sign Taurus archetypally associated with this 2nd house and always symbolizing physical substance + mass is located natally on Hahnemann’s 5th and 6th house cusps, indicating that he would employ a 5th house creatively expressive approach to physical substance in his 6th house work of healing.
Hahnemann was born with the sign of Aquarius strongly influencing his body as well as his value system. Aquarius is the energy-field of the zodiac that symbolizes the highest plain of Mind, Mind in its’ most pure, contemplative and transpersonal mode. Its symbol is depicted as two horizontal lightning bolts or vibratory wave forms floating one above another in harmony and balance. Each of these wave forms may be seen respectively as the planets Saturn and Uranus for these two planets share a co-rulership of Aquarius. The esoteric teaching concerning this Aquarian symbol reveals that, when on the highest plain of Mind, the Saturnian principle of contraction and focus harmonizes with the Uranian principle of true intuitive insight, an ideal Aquarian social vision of a selfless nature can be brought off the Plain of Mind and into everyday, concrete reality. Hahnemann possessed this ability to distill the essence of vision into matter for 3 of his psychic functions = planets (Mars + Venus + Uranus) are located at birth within his natal 2nd house of substance controlled by the sign Aquarius.
In many ways Samuel Hahnemann was a mystic capable of profound, unconditional love. His birth chart suggests that he came from such a past-life heritage into his 1755 incarnation in order to ‘ground’ his mysticism in practical service to others. The primary indicators of this view of Hahnemann are his lunar nodes. The South Lunar Node is found in Pisces in the area of daily communication suggesting that it was natural for him to speak and relate with compassion and love on a daily basis. His North Lunar Node is found in Virgo in the area of communication from and with the higher prophetic mind seeking to speak specific, detailed, and practical knowledge in a spirit of humility and selfless service to others. Of course, I don’t mean to give the impression that he was ‘perfect’ or some sort of totally enlightened being. His friend and contemporary, Franz Hartman, relates the following concerning Hahnemann’s communication skills :
“Unfortunately, the lectures were not fitted to win friends and followers for his theories or himself. For whenever possible, he poured forth a flood of abuse against the older medicine and its’ followers, with the result that his audience lessened every hour and finally consisted of only a few of his students...Any others were present not for the subject matter but to hear the unfortunate method of presentation, so that their sense of humor might be freely tickled..” (Rima Handley/Love Story; p. 75.)
Where, we might ask, did this sort of behavior arise from within Samuel’s natal chart ? Well, Mercury, the planet symbolizing speech of the conscious brain is located in Aries, the sign of spontaneous and non-reflective energy. We can assume the man spoke spontaneously and with passionate, non-reflective enthusiasm. Mercury in Aries is a blunt, to-the-point speaker and when his speech is not received with the enthusiasm he wishes to awaken in others his own enthusiasm turns quickly to impatience. He will bluntly and directly attack with his words, for Aries and its’ ruling planet Mars are also the symbols of the Warrior-Fighter. Any pioneer, anyone promulgating revolutionary teachings must use the fighting force of Aries to cut through the resistance of the past. But the charge of verbal ‘abuse’ is a different matter for generally it speaks of the intention to wound and hurt another. Where did this nasty trait arise from within Hahnemann’s psyche ?
The Astrological answer is two-fold: from the fact that Hahnemann was born with Mercury retrograde in Aries, and from the unusual fact that it was also eclipsed or ‘occulted’ by the Moon. Characteristic of this combination is a ‘karmic’ need to correct speech that is too blunt or aggressive. A retrograde planet is one which appears to be moving backward in the sky at birth. Astrologers teach that such a planet pr psychic function is turned inward against itself. Hence, Hahnemann often turned his own speech inadvertently against himself and he did so when he felt frustrated. For a retrograde Mercury function indicates personal ego-insecurity taking the form of fearing that one is mentally incompetent or unable to communicate clearly. No doubt Hahnemann sometimes felt this way. But the unusual fact that on Midnight, April 10, 1755 the Moon was eclipsing Mercury adds a deeper dimension to the picture. The Moon symbolizes the animal brain, the phylogenetic memory, the autonomic nervous system while Mercury symbolizes the rational and conscious brain. It is highly likely that Samuel Hahnemann in whom both the rational and the phylogenetic brain were, in a sense combined, actually experienced what the 20th Century mystic and teacher, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, called ‘The Mind of the Cells’, a form of consciousness he associated with a transformation of physical matter itself . Not a brain knowledge, but a deep and hidden consciousness within all matter. Certainly, Hahnemann with his intuitive approach to the ‘dynamically spiritual’ energy within his homeopathically prepared substances would not have been surprised by the consciousness of atoms and cells but how could he have found the words to speak of such intuitions -if he had them- in a time like the 1700’s in Germany ?
Hahnemann’s frustration with speaking and being heard occurred primarily in public teaching situations with his colleagues of the medical profession because Jupiter, the planet ruler of his Sagittarian life-path as a teacher is also found retrograde at birth and in opposition to his natal Mars, -ruler of his Aries Sun, Moon, and Mercury functions. This opposition signifies awareness achieved by way of ‘acting-out’ in a kind of tug-o-war or give and take with others. And when Jupiter is involved the others are often a group and the tug-o-war is over a social teaching and philosophy. Hahnemann was a man who fought powerfully for Sagittarian principles and truths he believed in, but he was also a rapturous mystic by ‘past-life’ conditioning and not at all used to verbalizing what he preferred to experience through direct, wordless knowing. In my limited acquaintance with a few homeopaths I have witnessed something of this same verbal frustration. Are such people drawn to homeopathy because of their symbiotic sympathy for this quality in its’ founder ?
Samuel Hahnemann was a persecuted man. This is not paranoid hallucination; it is historical fact. He was persecuted by the deeply entrenched medical practitioners of his time because he directly and personally challenged them and their techniques and practices while offering a revolutionary approach to illness, disease, and patients. He consciously intended to profoundly disturb and even overthrow the medicine of his time, and this was his true, ‘avataric’ role for his teachings were meant to jolt the collective unconscious of his times and even ours. Notice the natal opposition of Uranus to Jupiter with both in square aspect to Pluto on the Ascendant; this configuration is known as a T-square and refers to a need to communicate the unknown on an individual and personal basis while remaining absolutely true to one’s individual, unique genius and vision. There is nothing vicious or abusive in this kind of forceful energy, but there is a need and ability to confront unconscious attitudes resistant to change. Yet Hahnemann was not the sort of simple minded rebel who delights in destroying the past out of a reckless disregard for authority or tradition. On the contrary, this man was born with Saturn -the symbol of authority and seriousness- located in Capricorn, the very sign it rules, the sign of law and order, the status-quo, the commonly shared factor of respect for established public structure in government, business, and profession. Somewhere in his psyche there lived a staunch conservative deeply respectful of the collective human efforts of the past and aware of his debts to that past. Such respect is not found in the birth charts of superficial rebels who rebel for the hell of it. Indeed, Hahnemann conscientiously translated (and many say improved upon) the medical writings of his contemporaries until he reached the age of 45. He didn’t even publish his original, seminal work, THE ORGANON OF RATIONAL HEALING until 1810 when he was 55 years old. He was that rare kind of rebel known as a social reformer who performs his duty to society even when that duty requires that he attack and disturb it.
If one observes that Hahnemann’s Saturn function is precisely in the middle of a square between Pluto and Uranus and semi-square to both, one observes enormous restlessness and a feeling on the part of that man that his social conscience requires that he question authority at every moment. But Pluto and Uranus symbolize forces of a very great, collective nature - Transpersonal forces. Dane Rudhyar refers to them as ‘ambassadors of the galaxy’ because they bring to individuals and groups ‘messages’ from the greater whole of the galactic dimension. It was these planets with their message from that greater sphere to which Hahnemann was attuned and for whom he functioned as an ‘avataric messenger’ to man. Listen as he tries to formulate that message in the vocabulary of his day:
“Now, with respect to the development of physical forces from material substance by trituration this is a very wonderful subject. It is only the ignorant vulgar who still look upon matter as dead mass, for from its interior can be elicited incredible and hitherto unsuspected powers...Who can say that in the millionth and billionth development the small particles of the medicinal substance have arrived at the state of atoms not susceptible to further division of whose nature we can form not the slightest conception ?” (The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, Collected and Translated by R.E.Dudgeon: P 730 - ) What we witness in these words is the language of a man grasping desperately to find his way into the realms of sub-atomic physics, the language of an old occultist imbued with the mystic’s love and ability to merge with matter.
The Homeopathy of Samuel Hahnemann is the medicine of the future and points to the fact that consciousness alters matter. It’s this lived realization on his part that is the great gift of his teaching and not the quirks and eccentricities of his ego personality. Those distortions arose within him because of the persecution he suffered from many if not most of his contemporaries. But times have changed somewhat now, and if today’s revitalized homeopathy is to flourish its practitioners need to stop imitating Hahneman’s eccentric defensiveness and begin to level with their patients, to open up to them as equals and abandon the secret power games of the currently ensconced AMA type mentalities who notoriously do not discuss the medications they give to their patients.
As the next millenium approaches and Pluto returns to the place it occupied in mid-Sagittarius at Hahnemann’s birth, homeopathy will come into its full power and the dark, invisible temptation of negative Pluto will reach its’ height, - the temptation to secrecy and hidden controls. But the real, positive gift of the ‘Dark Lord of the Underworld’ is the gift of the hidden consciousness within matter. Samuel Hahnemann felt those gifts intuitively, -the ability of matter to transform itself, to heal itself, to resonate consciously with the intentions of mankind
If we are to heal ourselves and the planet on which we live we must embrace each other and all matter free from the dark desire to control. Hidden control is the worm in the heart of the rose, the hungry ache for personal power that is the sick root of secrecy.
Donald Grabau is a poet-astrologer living in Santa Clara, New Mexico who has been steeped in the stars since 1968. He welcomes the opportunity to interpret birth charts through writing and tapes. (He went to Berkeley in the 60s!)
