Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose

Homeopathy

as Energy Medicine

"Richard Grossinger is the Joseph Campbell of our time. The scope and depth of his knowledge of planetary medical systems are unparalleled. Homeopathy as Energy Medicine guides the reader to a place of self-discovery on their healing journey, offering insight into interpreting pain and suffering with wisdom. This profound book charts new territory in understanding the recovery of the human body, its sovereignty, and interconnected complexities, catering to both professionals and laypeople alike. Medicine is preexisting in our own bodily being and environment, waiting to be recognized by a knowledgeable therapist. This book places homeopathy in the rarified pantheon of correct evolutionary medicine. Brilliant!"

MICHAEL J. SHEA, PH.D., AUTHOR OF

THE BIODYNAMICS OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

"Homeopathy as Energy Medicine plumbs the historical depths of homeopathy and the various ancient principles from which it draws and then explores the last half-century of developments in the science and art of homeopathy, with a healthy nod to its futuristic concepts and applications. Grossinger was originally trained as an anthropologist, and this training is clearly evident as he describes with elegance and eloquence this amazing, compelling, and somewhat strange system of healing."

DANA ULLMAN, MPH, CCH, AUTHOR OF 10 BOOKS

INCLUDING THE HOMEOPATHIC REVOLUTION

A splendidly written, impressively researched, and erudite text. Richard Grossinger restores energy medicine to its rightful place, which is at the center rather than the periphery of medical history. A treasure trove of remarkable and indispensable information.

JERRY KANTOR, L.AC., CCH, MMHS, AUTHOR OF SANE ASYLUMS

AND THE EMOTIONAL ROOTS OF CHRONIC ILLNESS

This book is illuminating. In clear, coherent language, Richard Grossinger explains the history of homeopathy, how it works, and why sometimes a smaller dose is more powerful. Highly recommended for anyone interested in homeopathy and energy medicine.

ELLEN DEE DAVIDSON, AUTHOR OF

WILD PATH TO THE SACRED HEART

Healing Arts Press

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Rochester, Vermont 05767

www.HealingArtsPress.com

Healing Arts Press is a division of Inner Traditions International

Copyright © 1980, 1982, 1990, 1993, 1998, 2024 by Richard Grossinger

Portions of this text were originally published as part of Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing by Anchor Press in 1980, Shambhala Publications in 1982, and North Atlantic Books in 1990.

Edited and expanded version published in 1993 as Homeopathy: An Introduction for Skeptics and Beginners by North Atlantic Books.

Revised and updated version published in 1998 as Homeopathy: The Great Riddle by North Atlantic Books.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Note to the reader: This book is intended to be an informational guide. The remedies, approaches, and techniques described herein are meant to supplement, and not to be a substitute for, professional medical care or treatment. They should not be used to treat a serious ailment without prior consultation with a qualified health care professional.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-64411-966-2 (print)

ISBN 978-1-64411-967-9 (ebook)

The text stock is SFI certified. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® program promotes sustainable forest management.

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Text design by Debbie Glogover and layout by Priscilla Baker

To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication, or contact the author directly at richardgrossinger.com.

For MDs and other mainstream physicians

searching for the true medicine:

Stefan Andren, Chiara Battelli, Steve Curtin,

Michael Heniser, Caitlin Kaufman, Brian Keroac,

Sirish Maddali, Gordon Murphy, Jessica Radway,

Marcey Shapiro, and Peter Then.

Foreword

by Vatsala Sperling, M.S., Ph.D., PDHom, CCH, RSHom

PREFACE

Homeopathy: The Great Riddle

1What Is Homeopathy?

2The Origins of Homeopathic Medicine

3The Tenets and Rubrics of Homeopathic Medicine

4Homeopathy and Modern Medicine

5Samuel Hahnemann and the Fundamentalist Basis of Homeopathy

6The Homeopathic Tradition in North America

7Homeopathic Parallels: Other Similars and Microdose Effects

APPENDIX I

Thou Cannot Know: A Case Study

APPENDIX II

A Comparison of Homeopathy to Other Modalities

APPENDIX III

Homeopathic Resources

For Further Reading

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

Ever since Samuel Hahnemann, a German medical doctor, linguist, and researcher, discovered homeopathy and published the very first edition of The Organon of Rational Medicine in 1810, people have asked, What is homeopathy? This question is being asked even today, more than two hundred years after the birth of homeopathy, and this is the reason why you are drawn to reading Richard Grossinger’s book Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose.

This question has not stopped people from using homeopathy for the past two centuries, and presently, despite the heroic efforts by health authorities to eradicate homeopathy, it has survived successfully on every continent of the world, and in many countries it is supported and approved by the government as a valid healing modality. Homeopathy could survive against all odds, even while facing questions about what it is, only on the basis of the clinical results it gives, both historically and to this day. People, now more aware, informed, and literate than in the past few centuries, see the results for themselves. They see that homeopathy does not cause dependency, addiction, suppression of the immune system, or noxious side effects. They see that the oft-repeated phrase The treatment is worse than the disease does not apply when they use homeopathy for their acute and chronic health complaints. Encouraged and emboldened, they continue to use homeopathy for pregnant women, for newborn babies and the elderly, for their pets and farm animals, and even for their plants and gardens. Nevertheless, its popularity, based purely on clinical results, does not stop the curious folks from asking, What is homeopathy, and how does it work? Fair enough.

Richard Grossinger has attempted to answer this eternal question in his book Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose. Richard has more than fifty years of intimate experience with homeopathy. As a university professor, he taught courses on homeopathy; as a consumer, he used it successfully for himself and his precious family; he has written books and papers about it; and he regularly refers his peers, friends, and relations to various homeopaths. Over and above all, he is a deep thinker, philosopher, and prolific writer, habituated to sinking deep into a subject and coming out of that deep dive with a unique, brilliant, and in-depth understanding of the intricacies of otherwise complicated matters. Richard has done the same magic this time, and he has devoted ample time (several decades) to scrutinize, study, understand, make sense of, and imbibe the truth contained in homeopathy into his psychic being and his vast intellect. This book, Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose, born out of such heart- and intellect-based scholarship, will enable you to see homeopathy with fresh insight and understanding.

As you read this book, you will come to appreciate the fact that Dr. Hahnemann used the most sophisticated terminology and concepts available to him in his day to explain the philosophy, research, methodology, experimentations, and findings in The Organon more than two hundred years ago. As a medical doctor at the cutting edge of his field, Samuel Hahnemann revised his Organon six times, and this book became the bible of homeopaths. It was translated from German into English and carried to every corner of the world by his students. Since Hahnemann’s time, there has been a prolific explosion in understanding the mind-body-psyche axis. Many other healing modalities have come to light that have based themselves on this holistic view of the human organism, just as homeopathy has since its birth. Richard Grossinger has studied this bible of homeopaths and synthesized his own thinking, interpretation, observation, and understanding of homeopathy using the sensibilities of the twenty-first century. Alongside that work, he has studied other healing modalities as well to see how homeopathy compares with and differs from them. He uses the latest scientific paradigms to examine homeopathy and lays out the intricacies of this healing art and science in terms and concepts that resonate with the modern reader. He helps us make sense of heart, soul, meaning, and purpose of homeopathy.

After reading Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose, you will certainly know more and better about what homeopathy is. You will also understand that homeopathy is undoubtably the medicine of a utopian time when the human organism will be seen as a holistic entity that engages and interacts with the visible and invisible energies of the universe, and the mind-body-psyche of humans will be seen as a part of the cosmic web of energies, of which homeopathy itself is a part.

VATSALA SPERLING, M.S., PH.D., PDHOM, CCH, RSHOM

VATSALA SPERLING, M.S., Ph.D., PDHom, CCH, RSHom, is a classical homeopath who grew up in India and earned her doctorate in clinical microbiology. Before moving to the United States in the 1990s, she was the chief of clinical microbiology at the Childs Trust Hospital in Chennai, India, where she published extensively and conducted research with the World Health Organization. A founding member of Hacienda Rio Cote, a reforestation project in Costa Rica, she runs her own homeopathy practice in both Vermont and Costa Rica. She lives in Rochester, Vermont.

There are many books about the practice of homeopathic medicine, including self-help manuals, primers for patients and parents, and applications for cats, dogs, horses, fish, even hedgehogs. These texts depict its principles, remedies, and character types. This book, Homeopathy as Energy Medicine: Information in the Nanodose, explores what homeopathy is and attempts to place it in a larger framework of energy medicine and microdose effects.

By energy medicine, I mean healing—cures or beneficial changes in organisms—through stimulating or enhancing their immune systems, vital force, and natural resilience—reestablishing their homeostasis and mind-body-spirit field, as opposed to ridding them of symptoms. Energy medicines are holistic, constitutional, psychosomatic, and morphogenetic; they are synergized through mitochondria and other organelles and cells and their networks of organized tissues. The roster of energy modalities is broad and diverse: acupuncture, homeopathy, cranial osteopathy, shamanic rituals and ceremonies, Reiki, prayer, crystals, mineral baths, and treating by sound, color, scent, and taste. The effects of energy medicines are usually unquantifiable, but when they take, they are deep and cascade outward.

While homeopathy is holistic and dynamic in the way that many Indigenous medicines are, it is not for the same reasons. Homeopathy is clinical and objective, not totemic or ceremonial. At a Global Healers Conference, homeopaths and shamans would head to opposite sides of the hall.

By nanodose, I mean the chemistry of trace, micro, nano, and/or quantum-entangled substances and those substances’ imprints in water and other mediums and their radiation into living systems. In particular, I cite the assimilation, activation, catalysis, and synergization by tiny potentized molecules in homeopathic pharmacy. Though I use the word nanodose in this book’s title, I more commonly use the word microdose in the text. That is because microdose is the accepted homeopathic term—the entire nano world was unknown at the time of the origin and development of homeopathic medicine, but it is a more accurate description of the scale at which homeopathic medicines are prepared and transfer information.

Homeopathy may also work by focused and intentioned thoughtforms, hence the possibility of placebo effects and other telekinetic thoughtforms.

Homeopathy also activates the life code. By that I mean RNA and DNA—amino acid helices in spiral strands that store and transfer biological information in cell nuclei. DNA may also form interdimensional helices such that they become nadis that transfer life codes from the Etheric realm into matter. Throughout this book, I will allude to the Etheric as well as the material basis of health. You can take the Etheric plane as a metaphor for energy medicine or as an actual transdimensional field. Etheric and Astral energy and information may be the main features underlying health, as they flow from the subtle body into embodiment as tissue layers. They may explain homeopathy’s seeming placebo effect.

Defining homeopathy is next to impossible, as you may already suspect. For one, by modern experimental standards the system has no physical, biochemical, or anatomical explanation. Originating at the close of the eighteenth century, when modern sciences were emerging, it has rested almost solely since on its apparent success in curing sick people, particularly those with chronic diseases—a success that its detractors, if they acknowledge homeopathy at all, attribute to placebo or by doing nothing, hence causing no iatrogenic harm—physician- or treatment-instigated diseases.

Three things stand against this appraisal: (1) homeopathy’s cure rates exceed ordinary placebo effects; (2) placebo is unjustly denigrated, for if the mind—as thoughtforms—can cure pathologies, it is one of the most powerful forces in nature; and (3) homeopathy’s cures arise from discrete protocols rather than nebulous suggestibility around pill-taking.

In chapter 2, The Origins of Homeopathic Medicine, I discuss medical and pharmaceutical forerunners of homeopathy. Homeopathy borrowed many of its principles and methods from earlier medicines and recombined them in a new system.

The core of this book is chapter 3, The Tenets and Rubrics of Homeopathic Medicine. It is a brief immersion in homeopathic philosophy and practice. Followers explain homeopathy by a medley of archaic and futuristic paradigms ranging from alchemy and voodoo to quantum physics and chaos theory.

In chapter 4, Homeopathy and Modern Medicine, I examine the relationship between homeopathy and the general practice of medicine as a clash of principles.

Chapter 5 follows the discovery and development of homeopathy by Samuel Hahnemann and explains how a doctor and medical scholar codified ancient and unorthodox healing methods while converting them into the most advanced medical system of his time.

Chapter 6 describes homeopathy’s brief renaissance in nineteenth-century North America, followed by its almost total abandonment in the 1920s and then its revival in the counterculture of the 1970s.

Chapter 7 discusses three broader applications of homeopathic philosophy: pill-less pharmacy, the microdose basis of astrology, and psychic and dream homeopathy.

Appendices include a case study, a comparison of homeopathy to other alternative and mainstream modalities, and a short resource guide.

A briefer version of Homeopathy as Energy Medicine appeared as four chapters in Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing (1980). After being edited and expanded, these chapters were published in their own volume as Homeopathy: An Introduction for Skeptics and Beginners (1993). I revised and updated this volume when I renamed it Homeopathy: The Great Riddle (1998). The book in your hands represents the most recent full revision and the most extensive one, expanded to cover energy medicine and nanoscience in general.

Homeopathy was developed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) at the turn of the nineteenth century and soon became a popular medical modality in much of the Western world. Its ascent was swiftest in North America, cresting during the decade from 1880 to 1890. Its decline was swiftest there too. When laboratory science took over medicine, homeopathy was undermined by its own internal contradictions and absence of biophysical and biochemical evidence. It lost its independent identity as part of a general recompartmentalization of medical education.

So, what is homeopathy? In a 1992 article in the New York Times Magazine, journalist James Gorman noted confusions fostered by homeopathy’s revival within a cornucopia of alternative medicines. He acknowledged that it is not a botanical or New Age pharmacy, remarking, Few people who buy the new over-the-counter homeopathic remedies realize that homeopathy is not herbal or Chinese medicine. It is not naturopathy, osteopathy or acupuncture, not bodywork, shiatsu or chiropractic.¹

That excludes the usual suspects, so what is left?

Homeopathy is first, and perhaps foremost, an extension of empirical and vitalistic traditions in Western medicine. Its paradigms and philosophy arise from direct observation and treatment of sick people, and its claims are based on results, not theory. You can practice homeopathy without understanding or even believing in it, and you can be cured by its medicines while presuming that they are something other than what they are.

By today’s reductionist requirements homeopathy is not a science; it doesn’t check any of the boxes: peer review, universal repeatability, evidence-based cause and effect. While many of its supporters proffer that it is another scientific medicine, I would more accurately call it the medicine of an unknown science. The quantum leap that its principles require is decades or centuries ahead of its clinical practice. It shares that status loosely with Lamarckian evolution of acquired traits, paranormal phenomena (psi effects and UFOs), Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity, Wilhelm Reich’s orgone biology, and spooky influence at a distance in quantum mechanics.

Homeopathy also combines elements of alchemy, hermeticism, and early pharmacology reconceived as a single method.

In another sense, homeopathy is the single branch of hermetic and vitalistic science that earned professional standing in a secularized world. That alone is an accomplishment for a nineteenth-century system once relegated to a historical memento.

Homeopathy is based theoretically on the responsiveness of an organism’s defense mechanism and general homeostasis. These attributes are not associated with any organ, protein, enzyme, or biochemical network, though they are integrated within the molecular processes of the immune system. Their operation is intrinsic to the integrity of the organism, whether that is understood as a morphic field, a biomolecular cohesion, or the interplay of chi (often anglicized as qi) and yin and yang.

The organism’s defense mechanism, when homeopathically activated rather than (in baseball parlance) pinch-hit for by pharmaceuticals or surgery, has the capacity to respond dynamically to any disease. In that state, it is a direct heir to the vital force of Greek and medieval medicine and a descendant of the alchemical botany of Paracelsus and Jan Baptista van Helmont. In all vitalistic systems, disease is an invasive idea imposed on a self-healing matrix at the core of every life form. That matrix is the vital force’s epigenetic driver without which it could not exist. Whether its prototype arises vibrationally in Etheric, Astral, or other subtle planes is a metaphysical question that can be ignored in matters of homeopathic medical efficacy, though it will always be a part of existential inquiries around homeopathy.

Homeopathy is based on three central principles: the Law of Similars, attunement of tiny bits of information (micro- or nanodoses) in biological systems, and potentization with specification. Separately, each is scientifically accepted—the Law of Similars in vaccinations; microdose transmission in the biochemistry of enzymes and trace minerals, exoplanet exploration, and telecommunications; and potentization in applications ranging from music, applied algebra, and biotech to data storage and bartending—crickets, pipes, and crystals each attune at specified frequencies.

Combined in homeopathy, these precepts do not receive the same scientific pass.

The Law of Similars

The idea that a disease can be treated with a remedy whose effects mimic those of the disease being treated is known historically as the Law of Similars. Treatment by Similars uses substances that cause symptoms resembling those caused by an ailment in order to cure that ailment, matching medicinal and disease frequencies even if the match means initially increasing symptomology.

The Law of Similars challenges modernity’s prime medical dictate: the Law of Contraries or antidoting pathological responses almost exclusively by drugs or surgery. Whether you treat symptoms as healing responses that a doctor should enhance or as diseases a doctor needs to eliminate is a fundamental medical dichotomy in both model and practice.

In action, the Law of Similars tells a physician to stimulate the body’s natural immunity, vital energy, and internal coction (metabolism) instead of imposing an external intervention. If, for argument’s sake, we consider homeopathic pills to be drugs, which they are and aren’t, then following the Law of Similars means prescribing activating and aggravating rather than sedating and enervating ones.

Isopathy, healing by injecting or ingesting a form of the disease-causing substance itself (most notably in immunization), resembles healing by Similars but isn’t. Homeo (like, meaning "not the same") is different from iso (equal, meaning, yes, the same). Likeness makes use of natural substances’ vitality, whereas sameness requires deadened proxies: disease products, depotentized viruses, or genetically modified codes. A corollary of the Law of Similars is that isopathic substances, even when refined for vaccines or allergy shots, do not provide the differential leverage needed for an organism to recognize its own disease state.

In pre-Hahnemannian medicine, the use of Similars as remedies was liberally mixed with the use of Contraries, and most doctors treated maladies on a circumstantial basis. By basing homeopathy solely on the Law of Similars, Hahnemann formalized the distinction between a medicine that encourages symptoms and all other medicines. While homeopaths define their systems as treatment by Similars—homeopathy (from the Greek for like treatment), distinguishing it from allopathy (from the Greek for other treatment)—allo does not mean healing by Contraries; it means all medicines that are not homeopathic (not chosen according to the Law of Similars). Hahnemann included in allopathy common treatments based on the Law of Contraries, plus any other medicines prioritizing individual symptoms over disease wholes or by abstract categories of pathology rather than ailments in actual patients.

Today, allopathy has become synonymous with the medical establishment, its name used pejoratively by homeopaths and proudly by allopaths who happen to know the word. Yet these same allopaths paradoxically use isopathy—vaccines—to prevent diseases and antidote allergies. Isopathy has immunological benefits but (again) does not treat according to whole constitutions and disease complexes or by differentiations of tiers of energy. Treatment by like is not energy medicine. Contemporary homeopathic author Dana Ullman highlights the key distinctions between homeopathy and isopathy:

Some conventional medical treatments are ultimately [also] based on the Law of Similars, though they should not be considered homeopathic medicines for two basic reasons: 1) each medicine is not prepared in the pharmacological procedure of dilution and succussion common to homeopathic medicines; 2) each medicine is not individually prescribed in the sufficient detail common to homeopathic medicines.

A homeopathic medicine is not prescribed for a specific disease per se, but for the pattern of symptoms that the original medicinal substance in crude form is known to cause in overdose when given to healthy people. The concept of a pattern or syndrome of symptoms is an integral part of homeopathic care. This is simply a systems concept of looking at symptoms in context with the whole. The challenge to the person prescribing homeopathic medicines then is this individualization of drug prescription.²

In order to understand the Law of Similars, we have to recognize that it is not only discrete but parabolic. Though based on treating like with like, it goes past simple stimulation of the immune response toward a ricochet effect at the source of life, health, disease, and healing. On the spectrum of energy medicines including homeopathy but also (as noted) traditional Chinese and ayurvedic pharmacies and other shamanic and psychic modalities, each arrives at its own nonlinear application of Similars, reactivation of the defense mechanism, and homeostasis.

A homeopathic remedy resembles—mirrors—an illness, sometimes to a T, but it is not the illness, so in effect it fools the organism into both recognizing and then curing the disease. The vibration of the Similar, resonating through the nucleic codes of the body, provides a safe, biologically compatible context for clearing a pathological predisposition, much as it likely cleared away impediments in the embryonic development of the organism. The underlying pathology is relieved by a matching nonpathology. Without that intercession, the distortion will continue to blossom into new symptom-bearing diseases.

Homeopathy (again, if you accept its premises) uses individual diseases themselves to boost and reinforce health, and that is secondary to removing their symptoms forthwith (or not). We might also say a homeopathic medicine elicits what was constitutionally lacking so that its deficiency is no longer expressed pathologically. A minute dose of a Similar shocks the system into action, causing it to supply the missing ingredients itself.

Most diseases (by homeopathic rationale) are themselves the precisely correct response of the organism to a mind-body lesion, but a sick organism can get stuck in its own stalled homeostasis. It engages with its pathology in systemic folly, even to death.

But energy must be individually energized rather than mimicked or replicated—the definition of a Similar. Otherwise, the patient’s resistances and systemic torpor may snub or wrongfoot the cure—so-called side effects. It is as if the organism needs a good show to acknowledge how complex and suspenseful or vivid its situation is. It needs to be seen. Potentized Similars are a total outrage, the organismic equivalent of a good joke or prank, or a molecular expression of Carl Jung’s trickster archetype. Lay homeopath Theodore Enslin put the matter this way:

[The Similar] is a parallel. It is a recognition of the fact that the unwanted manifestations can only be braked by producing other unwanted manifestations which are similar. And there’s a great difference between similar and the same. There’s a popular conception: if the guy gets gas from eating cabbage, you give him a high dilution of cabbage, and that’s going to cure him. That’s not what’s done at all. Actually, the medicines are not medicines at all. The process is an outrage of the system itself. A diseased system is an apathetic one: it just doesn’t give a damn. But in many—most cases, unless the thing has gone too far—that apathy can be overcome by introducing a parallel. When that parallel becomes apparent to the organism, it’s outraged—and cures itself. The medicine actually has very little to do with it.³

An organism that responds to Contraries or medicalized isopaths is still basically sluggish. To avoid relapse, it must ultimately be treated, or treat itself, homeopathically.

Disease is a natural expression of misdirects or obstacles in nature. It can’t be manipulated or uprooted by material interventions, nor can it be effaced directly. If it goes away, it will return, probably in another form. One might as well, like Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, attack the sun. The only rival to a disease is the life essence of the organism. If that life essence can be provoked into dialogue with the pathology, then even the most severe ailment can, in principle, be healed. Conversely, an allopathic attempt to alter a