Homeopathic Mind Maps: Remedies of the Class Aves – Birds

I am fortunate to own all of Alicia Lee's Mind Map books and use them frequently.

I have just used this latest volume on birds with a hay fever case and with some success, using the remedy Buteo jamaicensis. What led me to the prescription were the twin clues of soaring and the desire to care for the family, which are both strong themes of the remedy. It also has asthma and allergies in its physical/generals. The patient is obsessed with flying in his microlight aircraft and looking down on the world below. For me, the passion of the patient was overriding.

The format of the books, which is consistent in all four volumes, is one I personally like and find effective. For those who are not familiar with the layout, the author uses the ancient principle of giving visual branching information (which apparently dates back to the third century and which I certainly use as a way of putting my own thoughts down diagrammatically). The author describes this format in her introduction and explains how it works. The departure point is from the top, which is the theme of the whole class and follow it down.

The effect is to let the reader home in on the features of the remedies, with the theme presented centrally and then logically branching off to follow subthemes. There is also source information given on things like provings, as well as information about the orders. The best features include variety of information about remedies, reflecting the characteristics, rather than a formulaic schema, which can be stultifying and fails to bring out what is central or at the root of the remedy.

In this book of the class Aves, my own interest with three cases has been in identifying the ways in which birds fly, as an indication of choosing a remedy. In two cases, the soaring aspect of flight was typical, and in another it was swooping and diving. As with any remedy, we are interested in characteristics, and these factors in the animal kingdom are as important as the more traditional characteristics of, say, the Kali salts. Many critics of the kingdoms approach cite this as a weakness. In my experience, it is quite the opposite.

To go back to the book, Lee points out that she has collected together information from many sources and notes in her introduction that it is not for her to discriminate about the information available. This is very refreshing but is also a warning to readers to be discerning. If you have a prejudice against, say, shamanic provings, then be aware that this may have been a source. For me, it is not a problem, because as long as the proving process has been verified as effective on several occasions, I consider it. However, it is wise to check out the provenance. Sometimes, this is well documented, at other times not so. I am aware that one trituration proving by one person does not sound adequate.

Another excellent feature of the layout is that the author presents information about an order in a tabular form, as a way of helping with differentiation. This does not preclude studying materia medica in depth, but helps to point in the right direction. We live in an age where information is presented in Wikipedia style and people are now used to this as a way of accessing information quickly; but it is up to us to verify through study in depth. A little like Lee's warning to be discerning.

This actually raises an interesting debate about learning and how people learn now in comparison to how learning happened in the past. I had a conversation about this with Alistair Gray, who now looks after on-line learning at an Australian college and he is convinced that homeopathy education has to follow the rest of education in how it trains and educates. We are in the age of more instant and immediate learning, and Lee's books do have a resonance here. We should encourage students to make use of the mind map model of learning materia medica.

One other aspect of the book which I like is the use of myth and legend as part of the picture of the remedy. I have long found this to be a useful part of study when looking at remedies, and it adds to the understanding of how we relate to remedies on a human level. This seems to slightly contradict the point made earlier about more sound bitey approaches to learning, but in terms of fully studying a remedy, both of these are valid.

To sum up, there is great value in books like this in helping to give a broad understanding and knowledge of remedies and the groups they belong to. They are a very good way into a subject. The themes are presented clearly; the information is very accessible and can be followed up easily through good references, and the presentation is attractive, with the spiral bound format as an advantage. The A4 size is a problem for some bookshelves, and they are not easily identified from the spine as most books are, but this is a minor point. And as with all maps, they are representations and guides, rather than the last word. Alicia Lee is very aware of this and advises the use of her books judiciously, but they are also great ways into the study of a kingdom and great fun to use!