VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2015

experience and the hormones of pleasure. The copper level in blood goes up and down along with the female sex hormone estrogen; there is more copper in the blood of women than men; and during pregnancy copper levels even rise threefold (Pelikan 1981). How can old myths contain knowledge that is being discovered today only by virtue of advanced analytical chemistry and molecular biology? Could our ancestors have discovered it by means of some simple experiment or accidental experience? Yet until now it has been said that priests and alchemists assigned metals to spiritual archetypes on the basis of their manifest qualities. Iron is hard and firm, it is suitable for the production of weapons and tools. So let it be the metal of men, the metal of the god Mars. Copper is beautiful and amenable (malleable), has an interesting color and appeals to the emotions. Apart from gold, all the other metals are greyish. Copper makes for beautiful minerals as well. So let it be the metal of women, the metal of the goddess of love and beauty. Silver can mirror objects better than any other metal. So let it be the metal of the goddess of imagination – Luna – with her silvery shine. Suppose our ancestors reasoned in this (erroneous) way based on magical analogies. How then is it possible that it resulted in correct conclusions about the inner effects of these metals? Suppose they experimented with the inner effects. How then is it possible that these effects have external analogies? Why should a metal that is beautiful from a physical and mineralogical point of view be the one that has a psychophysiologic part to play in the experience of beauty and falling in love? How can the physical attribute of silver to mirror and create images be related to the fact that when applied internally it arouses the imagination? How come physically strong iron strengthens the will and makes it in fact more active? The iron level of blood is characteristically higher in men than in women. But the ancient Greeks could not have known anything about the structure of haemoglobin, whose core consists of an atom of iron. Is this mere coincidence? These are facts that lie completely beyond the way modern science thinks. But in the logic of the ancient doctrine of signatures, they appear as self-evident. According to this doctrine, the Maker gave us one herb for every illness and marked it with indicators for man to recognize what he could use them for. A renaissance medicineman could have contemplated herbs in the following way: a herb is like myself. It is threefold like man, only turned upside-down. The root is like the head; the rhythmically formed stem with leaves resembles the human chest; and flower is the sex organ. These three parts of the plant will cure the corresponding parts of the body. For example, if the nervous system or the metabolic system interferes too much with the rhythmic system, they disturb its regular pulse and so it needs to be strengthened. The rhythmic system dominates the other systems in some herbs. Not even the flower can stop the ongoing growth of the stem in these herbs – on the contrary, growth draws the flower into a neat rhythm. Such a herb teaches one’s heart to beat regularly. The Lily of the Valley, Foxglove, Motherwort really do contain the cardioactive glycosides convallatoxin, digitoxin and leonurin Spirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 59 (23)

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