Imagine you’re a 16-year-old woman. Actually, more a girl than a woman as you, an only child are raised without a father (he abandoned her mother in the beginning of her pregnancy) by a mother who is deeply religious and has taught you the highest achievement in life is to be ‘a child of God’ (married to God and not some man).

In your secluded and overprotected youth you’ve barely come into contact with male energy. Life is filled with religious ceremonies, classical (religious) music, Rudolf Steiner schooling and helping in household chores. When the teacher at school asks you what your ambitions in life are you answer ‘to be Holy”.

This is the starting point in the case I would like to share with you. My patient is now a 70-year-old woman who comes to me for frequent coryza’s, sinus problems, otitis, bronchitis, toothaches. headaches and throat inflammations.

She’s otherwise very vital for her age but lives a secluded life. Her days are filled with reading, coloring, writing poems, studying and listening to music. Society is ‘too crude’ for her and she enjoys the company of herself. She’s not selfish, just sensitive. She will spend most of her income on all kinds of charities and she is very empathic with the people she befriended over the years.

Each morning she wakes up with a painful throat filled with mucous she has to hawk up. If she has to go out, she has to dress warm, even in summer, because a cold is easily caught and can last for weeks to months. It seems her body has a lot of difficulty in maintaining its core temperature. The slightest draft or cooling will have big results. So she is rarely without some form of cold.

Her speech is both elegant and with a childlike affectation. There are mannerisms, a certain haughtiness as if you were talking to royalty. But at the same time there is a childlike quality begging for acknowledgement in her daily strife to keep the colds out.

Over time I have given her several remedies for the colds: Pulsatilla, Silicium, Psorinum, etc. The usual suspects. Some worked temporarily but nothing long-lasting.  And then, on discussing her diet, she tells me that she needs chocolate. Although I asked about aversions and desires before it never came out this emphasized. Chocolate is her life’s force.

She eats one bar (a large one) per day. Actually one every evening. And it has to be of a good quality, creamy, milky, biological and yummy. It is her comfort, her companionship, her barrier against the world, her source of love and affection, a gift from God.

So my homeopathic heart went thumpety thump thump and I started differentiating Lac Humanum and Chocolate. And in the next 4 months I prescribed both in different potencies without the slightest improvement. (deep sigh of disappointment by yours truly)

So what was I overlooking? If you eat a 300-400 gram chocolate bar before bed having some mucous in the morning is no mystery. But why was this so important to her. There were days where she hardly had a meal during the day. Not feeling like it. No inspiration to cook. No desire to go outside with all its risks. But chocolate in the evening was an absolute must!

So I asked her again: what does chocolate represent in your life?

Well, I am not made of stone. I have desires. I want to be touched, caressed, held. But these are things I cannot and must not give into. And chocolate helps as a substitute.

When I ask why she must not give into these desires she says the high priestess lives through the highest form of life. All her love can be directed to God. And this way you can become a being of pure white light.

Mmm, Liliales? Medorrhinum? Apiaceae? Yes, in fragments they all match but within the larger picture they didn’t click.

And than it came to me. She was literally telling me the core of the remedy: I want to be a high priestess and do not want to become the victim of my ‘lower’ desires. I should rise above them.

Remedy: Amethyst 200!

Amethyst literally means not to be under the influence. Soldiers used to carry a piece of amethyst with them on the battlefield not to fall victim to fear. In the middle ages people would put an amethyst in their glass of wine or beer not to become drunk and boorish.

There is a beautiful poem about amethyst by the French poet Remy Belleau about how a beautiful maiden named Amethyste preferred chastity over the romances by Bacchus. To help her remain chaste the goddess Diana turned her into a clear crystal. Bacchus, who could not help but admire this sacrifice poured some of his wine on the crystal turning her purple. So purple is the color of nobility, the color of the high priest.

Amethyst is a Silicium-di-oxide with traces of iron (and sometimes also Manganum, Sulphur or Titanium). They have an idealistic element (close to Ignatia and rose quartz) but the willpower of the Iron series is more prominent.

One of the most common types of amethyst prescription in my practice is the couple of whom one has an autistic spectrum disorder. They both can have an idea on how a relationship can be, they can invest a lot of time and effort into it but eventually end up disappointed.

People needing a remedy of the Iron series are often very difficult to feel attached to because they place demands on the relationship. The partner can easily lose him or herself in trying to meet these commands. I’ve successfully given amethyst for both camps.

Emotions become suppressed and they lose contact with them. Another example is the couple where one is narcissistic. The narcissistic person knows exactly how the relationship should be and is often not looking inward. And the other person is often sacrificing him/herself on a promise that the relation could be so much better if only…. Again both sides may need this remedy.

In the above case she knows, from a mental point of view (she calls it a spiritual point of view) how a relationship should be. But it is not real spiritualism, it is suppression. And as often happens what is suppressed becomes perverted. And things are needed to maintain the suppression. We see a lot of addictions or addictive tendencies in Amesthyst. Whatever is needed to keep the relationship working, or to make it work.

In Dutch there is a saying: when there is a marriage of two people with different religions, the devil will sleep in between them. Another beautiful example of the amethyst situation.

Think of this remedy with very old grief that has gone to the heart. The emotions were overwhelming at the time and a path of suppression was chosen. Especially the Freudian oral fixations. Starving in love will be compensated by eating, drinking, smoking. Always something to steady the nerves.

We repeat the remedy twice in three months and when we meet again there is something she wants to tell me.

I was so pure! I was truly a child. I was always with my mother or my grandmother. There was no male energy in my life. I even went to a girl’s school.  My sexuality was dormant. I had no interest in boys whatsoever. And then one of my friends organized a party when I was 16.

There was pop music. Until then I only listened to Bach, Madrigals, Psalms. And there was dancing! And boys. Girls were dancing with boys. And one of the boys came to me and wanted to dance with me. I didn’t know any of these dances so we just talked. But the music was so loud so we went to another room where it was more quiet.

He asked me to undress. I didn’t understand. Why? So we talked some more and he got us drinks from the main room. Again he asked me to undress and I wanted to leave but he blocked the door. We argued and he hit me. After that I only remember waking up on a big pile of coats and feeling terrible.

My body felt bruised and I was nauseous so I left for home. But the nausea became worse and after a few weeks I went to the doctor who told me I was pregnant. Everything was taken care of. I was sent to a special house for pregnant girls like me where I got an abortion and sexual education. But the abortion went horribly wrong.

I lost a lot of blood and I nearly died. The doctor told me I would not have lived another 30 minutes if it wasn’t for the surgery. After the emergency operation I could no longer have children but at least I was alive. They told me I was very lucky. And so ended my childhood. I didn’t know fear until men came in my life. But tell me: if I am truly devoted to God, I don’t need sex right?

Again, she beautifully describes her remedy. I give her Malus Sylvestris 200.

After Malus the body has started to feel more warm. The abortion experience has transformed from a life shaping traumatic event to an experience that brought her a lot of wisdom and has led her to meetings with interesting people (she’s travelled the world for all kinds of lectures and meetings).

The desire for chocolate is much less and the colds are also less severe and less often. And now instead of reading and studying by herself she has joined all kinds of clubs and is enjoying socializing. In the next year I repeated the Malus several times (and the amethyst also once) and she is now at a point where she is no longer ruling out any relationship. She’s become healthily assertive and her affectational tone is now replaced by a playful jest. “Wiet tell me, where should I go to meet a nice spiritual man?”

Malus (apple) is a plant from the Rose family. These remedies all have a strong connection with love, falling in and out of love. Traumatic experiences in love. The sexual identity is often traumatized before it could come to full bloom.

These people often have a childlike quality. Something is still naive. They often become pleasing completely forgetting their own needs. And then the thorny side comes up. They love or they hate. Ironically Malus means both apple and Evil. Our word malignant comes from the same root.

It is also good to know that if you plant an apple seed from a Golden Delicious apple it will never become a Golden Delicious tree. The apple seed is not stable and the tree will become a wild apple again with a different taste. The only way of getting a Golden Delicious tree is by using grafting techniques,where you graft a branch unto the stem of another tree.

Can you imagine a process more beautifully illustrating the trauma of the malus patient? People needing this remedy are often too sensitive to deal with the world.  Malus is a remedy that has been well proven by Madeline Evans, Edward Bach, Colin Griffith, Dana Stechow and Andra Dattler, Brenton Ricardo Moonsamy and Jean Pierre Jansen. These actually cover 3 different types of apple (out of >8000 species) but they all confirm the same core.