Fugleman
In the second of this double issue on Birds we again offer some extended cases. Carefully observed, each is a demonstration by a “fugleman”, a word derived from the German, Flügelmann (from the root flug: flying) signifying the leader and exemplar of what is to be performed. The fugleman stands before a group and demonstrates how to do something. Distinct from school-teaching, this form of learning resembles more that method practised by the master for the apprentice. This older method is supported by modern research: only with great difficulty do we manage to teach a cat a new skill but other cats, by watching that skilled cat, can learn immediately.
In homeopathy it is surely the case presentation which is privileged to act as fugleman. The case as published (or as presented in seminar) represents the interaction between practitioner, patient and curative remedy or remedy sequence. Styles of case presentation differ but, regardless of the style preferred, the co-occurrence of patient and remedy must be portrayed.
Being two-winged, in trying to learn from such presentations we often proceed one-sidedly. One “wing”, our left brain, wants results: the name of the remedy and an arrow or two pointing out keynotes or essences. The right brain, our other “wing”, learns more as does the apprentice, unable to say what is learned from the master but learning all the same. To fly true we need both wings, of course.
In turn, every presentation lies somewhere in between two extremes. At one extreme the case record acts like a lawyer's argument – proving only that their client was present at such and such a location, subtracting any loose ends that might allow different interpretations, offering only a systematic proof and nothing but that proof. At the other extreme, the case offers a sound-bite woven of synchronicity, a volume of echoes, symptoms and signs. One extreme is supplied (and appreciated) by the left brain, the other by the right – and it is this latter bias (towards the right brain) that you will find in this Links.
My thanks go to Harry van der Zee for inviting me to be his guest, and the guest of the Links readership.
Iain Marrs, Guest Editor
Rising Above Crisis
The fact that in the past decade so many bird remedies have been proved by homeopaths is meaningful.
We are clearly living in a time in which on a global scale several crises are speeding towards their zenith. The horrors of National Socialism were followed by atrocities committed in the name of other ideologies. After the tarnishing of communism, capitalism has had only a decade to celebrate its victory. Soon the zeitgeist displayed the monsters of greed and egotism that had lurked in the shadows of free enterprise. Clergymen are exposed as child molesters, entrepreneurs as polluters, politicians as liars, lawyers as corrupt, bankers as robbers, sportsmen as cheats, artists as drug addicts and doctors as powerless against the inevitable.
Compared to the moral and spiritual crisis mankind is experiencing, the current financial and economic crisis is harmless, and for Mother Earth probably welcomed with a sigh of relief.
We need to transform this multifaceted crisis and shift our consciousness from the madness of the egoistic mind to the love of an embracing heart and the peace and stillness of being. Clearly the solution to a crisis cannot be found on the same level of consciousness that created it. We need to rise above it.
Millions of years ago creatures that live on in mythology such as dragons were able to add a new dimension to their existence by learning to fly. It may be very helpful to use remedies derived from their offspring to slay the dragons in our collective shadow and raise humanity to a new level of awareness.
Bird remedies can help humanity to overcome the restrictions of materialistic thinking by finding the unlimited freedom of the soul, to break out of the imprisonment of dualism and find the bird's eye vision of unity. Before dinosaurs evolved into birds, big, bigger, biggest was the credo they lived by. Today's birds awaken us to the magnificent reality of our true being by their abundant colours, the enrapturing beauty of their songs and their ability to fly and be free from gravity, to rise far above the struggle of life and in one vision see the totality of life on this planet.
Thank you, Iain, for gathering birds of different plumage together in these two wonderful issues.
Harry van der Zee, Editor
