Homeopathy

The two main principles of homeopathy are:

treat like with like
use of potentized substances, principle explained on the potentization topic page.

Aspects

Potentization

Potentization is a way to awaken the spiritual influences in matter, by applying a process of dilution and dynamization. Matter has passed through a process in various stages in which the spiritual seed gets a form and clothes itself as it solidifies down to physical matter. With potentization, matter gets processed back into those higher states. This enables different faculties or spiritual influences with which it can work, eg on the human body with homeopathy.

Acceptance

Homeopathy will never be accepted by mineral science and government health care stakeholders (and established pharmaceuticals industry lobby), unless it is informed and openly accepts the etheric formative forces, and hence a broader scientific framework. See the worldview wars page for more background.
Famous cases: A well known case was Jacques Benveniste (1935-2004) who found the same potentization curve results as dozens of other people before, but dared to publish it in Nature. See also reference [1] on the Potentization page for info on what really happened.
Many books and articles are written from both sides, for example:
- Das Hochpotenzproblem (Heinz Schoeler 1950 and 1971) in Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung
- Michel Schiff: 'The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science Paperback' (1998)
- just as an illustration (plenty of such examples), a recent article about the war between skeptics and homeopaths (2019, in DE)

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.012 shows several examples of potentization curves taken from different sources.

Lecture coverage and references

1920-03-22-GA312

Let us think of the qualities proper to any sort of material substance, that is, the qualities essential to its working when absorbed into the lower sphere of the organism, e.g. through the digestion. But if I may use the expression — we can homeopathise, we can dilute the aggregate states of the substances in question. This is what happens if one dilutes in the way of homeopathic doses.
Here something occurs which does not receive due attention in the natural science of today, for mankind has a strong tendency to abstractions.

They say, for example, that from a source of light — for example, the sun — the light radiates in all directions, and finally disappears into infinity. But this is not true.

No such form of activity vanishes into infinite space, but it extends within a certain limited orb and then rebounds elastically, returning to its source, although the quality of this return is often different from its centrifugal quality. (See Diagram 5).

In nature there are only rhythmical processes, there are none which continue into infinity. They revert rhythmically upon themselves. That is not only the case in quantitative dispersion, but also in qualitative.

If you subdivide any substance, it has at first certain distinctive qualities. These qualities do not decrease and diminish ad infinitum; at a certain point, they are reversed and become their opposites.
And this intrinsic rhythm is also the foundation of the contrast between the upper and lower organisation. Our upper organisation works in a homeopathic way. In a certain sense it is diametrically opposed to the process of ordinary digestion, its opposite and negative. Therefore we might say that when the homeopathic chemist manufactures his minute dilutions, he thereby transfers the qualities which are otherwise linked with the lower organic sphere, into those which belong to the upper sphere.
This is a most significant inner relationship and we shall discuss it in the ensuing lectures.

1920-04-06-GA312

see longer extract on: Schizophrenia#1920-04-06-GA312

When we consider this aspect we are offered an important clue for the further estimate of actual dosage of remedies. You see in the process of organ formation itself a continuous oscillation between sympathy and antipathy. The genesis of the bodily constitution is dependent on the production of sympathy and antipathy, and their interplay. Moreover smaller dosages of substances used pharmaceutically have the same relation to highly potentised dosages, as sympathy has to antipathy, in the human organism. High potency has the opposite effect from low potency. That is bound up with the whole organising force.
...
Today on the one hand, in the diagnosis of so-called physical disorders, attention should be given to the state of the soul, and on the other, i.e., in abnormal soul states, the physical disturbances should be examined.
Physical sicknesses should always prompt the inquiry: “what is the temperament of the person in whom they appear?”

Suppose we find the sufferer is of hypochondriacal nature, that alone should be an indication for treatment of the lower organic sphere, with materially effective remedies, that is with low potencies.

If we find that apart from the illness, the patient is of active mind or “sanguine,” it will be necessary to use high potencies from the outset of treatment.
In short, the state of the soul is something that needs study and coordination when we consider bodily sickness.

1923-02-17-GA349

See Medicine#1923-02-17-GA349, stating homeopathy gives effective treatment for sicknesses that have their origin in the head (as opposed to illnesses of the metabolic system as treated by allopaths).

1923-10-06-GA229

The possibility of these high attenuations has been shown by the work of Frau Dr. Kolisko. At our Biological Institute in Stuttgart the attempt has been made to put this on an exact footing. It has been possible to make dilutions of substances up to one part in a trillion, and in fact to establish precisely the effects which such high dilutions of particular substances can have. Hitherto, in homoeopathy, this has been merely a matter of belief; now it has been raised to the level of exact science. The graphs which have been drawn leave no doubt to-day that the effects of the smallest particles follow a rhythmical course. I will not go into details; the work has been published and these findings can now be verified. Here I wish to point out only that even in the earthly realm the effects of enormous dilutions must be reckoned with.

Discussion

Note 1 - General 'popular' statement

The below was written for the wikipedia talk page, where homeopathy and the etheric formative forces are regarded as 'pseudo-science'. The statement written many years ago can no longer be found online.

More positioning about this on this topic page.

Homeopathy is not a treatment than can be fitted in, or judged by, the current physical and medical science, because the underlying contemporary scientific framework is focusing solely on physical matter and its laws. This corresponds to what the greeks would have called ‘earth’, meaning the mineral kingdom. What the greeks meant with the other elements (water, air, fire) are other dimensions of our reality where other laws apply, and they referred to the etheric life forces in nature, such as we find them in the plant kingdom (but also in Man) as ‘water’. The element names do not refer to the physical components such as water or earth.
The above means: there is a wholly different physics for the etheric, than the one that applies to and is successfully used for mastering physical matter. Put differently, the physical laws underlying growth in the plant kingdom are NOT the same as what is covered by physical science thusfar (a.i. gravitation, thermodynamics, electromagnetics, quantum physics ..). Implying also a different paradigm for medicine.
Homeopathy is based on these etheric formative forces, something contemporary science ignores or places out of scope by saying it does not exist. So of course a conflict arises, as any belief system sets up blinders – or develops a dead angle - as it tries to focus, justify itself and protect its foundations. The fact that ‘mainstream’ believes something, does not mean that is necessarily the only truth. You don’t know what you don’t know.
This conflict of different perspectives can not be resolved. Wikipedia policy is to only reflect mainstream. As we are on this site, that needs to be respected. That being said, if we may share a personal opinion, maybe a certain nuance would probably be appropriate attitude-wise, given the history of science (remember all those who were burned or whose books were put on the codex because they were right a few hundred years before ‘mainstream’ found out). The difficulty faced here is obvious: where to draw the line, who decides when something is to be given the status of trustworthy.
The etheric formative forces have been positioned and explained by spiritual science, and there are various experimental domains that have ‘proven’ their effects for over a century (se below). However the mainstream (=materialistically focused) scientific majority of 'mineral science' scopes this out; so a minority is pursuing this research, pioneering the next area and future of physics slowly and against the stream. It has never been different.
As this is a new and developing area of a type of new physics, a decent background reading and study is required as no established body of knowledge is available. However one can start by reading Ernst Marti (two books), Olive Whicher (two books), Nick Thomas (two books), Iwer Thor Lorenzen (one book), Gunther Wachsmuth (two books). For mathematical foundations see non-euclidean geometry, specifically projective geometry and the concept of counterspace from for example George Adams Kaufmann and/or Louis Locher-Ernst. Experimental work has been done by Lily Kolisko, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Lawrence Edwards, and many others. Water research was done by a.o. Theodor Schwenk and Victor Schauberger. Note also biodynamic agriculture is based on this, as was Goethe’s theory of plant metamorphosis. Foundational spiritual scientific knowledge has been provided by a.o. Rudolf Steiner (see collected works 1902-1924), but also here many others.
Three more short notes to conclude:

The key to homeopathy are not the molecules of matter, but the dynamic potentization process.

People will always have data to prove right or wrong, whatever they want to prove and show

The etheric formative forces, are also what has been called Chi, Prana, or Reichenbach’s Od.

Related pages

References and further reading

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843): 'Organon of the Medical Art' (published in 1810, in English use the 1996 translation by Steven Decker)
Heinz Herbert Schöffler: 'Homöopathie' (1975, 1985)
Ernst Marti: The Etheric: Broadening Science through Anthroposophy: Volume 2: The World of Formative Forces (2018)
- Marti's book has a chapter that elaborates on the workings of homeopathy based on many references from Hahnemann and Rudolf Steiner's lectures.

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More literature references in the same section of the Potentization page