Homeopathic Mind Maps Class Aves—Birds

The Homeopathic Compendium

Alicia Lee's book on birds is a welcome addition to our Materia Medica as we only have a few books written so far on this animal group.

This is Lee's fourth book in addition to her other Mind Maps of Mineral, Plant and Animal Kingdom. She already had included several bird remedies in her Animal Kingdom book, which overlap with latest Aves Mind Maps. As with the other books, this is a thorough, comprehensive and well–thought-out book.

This current Aves addition is divided into 22 orders of birds. Each section differs with the amount of birds listed; for instance the Galliformes section has many birds listed, whereas the Cuculiformes only has two.

The amount of work Lee has put into this book must have been astronomical to compile all this information. This is true not only in this book but all of her Mind Maps books.

This book brings us information which was not readily available before and homeopaths had to rely on just a few published provings. Now it allows us to be precise when looking for a remedy as we can compare birds within an order. If we were looking for Buteo (Accipitriformes), we can now differentiate between Buteo Buteo (common buzzard) and Buteo Jamaicensis (red-tailed hawk)

The book is nicely illustrated with every bird depicted in a clear, colour photo. For each order Lee does a mind map of the order, followed by individual birds. The author adds in mythology, history and cultural references. Each page shows handy information on what remedies are available.

After each bird group is an abbreviated chart for the birds in that order with condensed symptom information showing the major points such as delusions, affinities, foods etc. This can be helpful when doing a differentiation.

Lee has used many resources from provings to cases to single-case studies, such as Nadita Shah's Egret case and Jeremy Sherr's Haliaeetus leucocephalus and Cygnus cygnus. She also includes information from triturations and shamanic provings, and researched the entire literature from classic authors from Boericke, Clark and Kent to the current authors Jonathan Shore and Greg Bedayn.

In the introduction the author begins with the taxonomy of the Aves and the basic level of taxonomic divisions of birds. Also, she shows the evolution the Neornithes (modern birds) in a tree layout view.

Lee precisely tells us how to read the mind map, starting with the deepest mental beliefs and delusions to emotions to physical pathology as a picture unfolds.

There are some challenges I found in using this book. Every bird remedy is written up as a mind map. Personally I do not prefer mind maps because often they go into directions where I cannot see any connections and they do not give me a global understanding of the remedy. But people who like mind maps will find it easy to follow the many pathways that Lee created with the information. I would have preferred more narrative information to fill in the picture.

It feels like the author made many interpretations made between the themes she chose for the remedies and the symptoms that follow. For instance in Calcarea ovi testae (p. 73) she labels a theme of ‘fear of bad things happening’ and draws a line leading to ‘losing my direction’ with a side arrow pointing to ‘cancer of the uterus’.

In Jeremy Sherr's case, listed in the resources, he made a clear connection why he chose Calcarea ovi testae instead of plain Calcarea carbonica. The patient had this one peculiar dream of flying at low heights and going back to the ground, which Jeremy noted, was the chicken's flight pattern. Calcarea carbonica does not have this type of dream. Lee had an arrow leading from this symptom to ‘I had a dream flying very, very high’ which is not an original patient symptom but is found in the patient's follow-up after improvement. It seems speculative to suppose that because a patient had cured a dream of flying low and not getting far off the ground, that remedy would also hold the opposite symptom of a dream of flying high.

In fairness Lee writes in her foreword ‘It is however for the reader to be discerning in how the information is used’ and that her work is just a one person's view on how the remedy unfolds.

Although this book's data might be too overwhelming for students, I would recommend it for experienced homeopaths who can discern the important information and apply it to their bird cases.

I would like to congratulate Lee for going into such depth on her subject and sharing valuable resources. There are very few in our profession who would be willing to do the hard work to compile such a large reference book. Thank you Alicia Lee.