E. D B. You were in the hot-seat last year but due to lack of time, the hot seat interview was not really completed. We did not treat the subject of the C4 dilutions that you have been experimenting with and about which there is some confusion. We are very grateful to have you with us again this year and since this edition touches mostly on the subject of dilution and dose, this is an ideal time to set the record straight. Would you explain to the reader what the C4 dilution refers to?
A.T. Yes, there is a misunderstanding of what I meant when I talked about the C4 dilution. The C4 stands for trituration. Not so long ago it was discovered in an old pharmacopoeia that Hahnemann advised that all remedies should be triturated before further diluting. Everybody knows of course that substances like metals, that cannot be diluted in water, are first triturated by grinding in a mortar with lactose until the C4 dilution. The trituration obtained can then be further diluted in the liquid phase to the desired potency (12, 30, 200, 1M, etc).
Although Hahnemann himself was not always true to his directive, it appears that he advised that all remedies, even plants and other water soluble substances, should be first triturated in lactose to C 1, 2, 3 or 4, depending on the effect desired, before they are further potentised to the appropriate level of dilution. It is important to distinguish between trituration and potencisation.
By preparing all your remedies in this way, first trituration in lactose and then potencisation, you will find that remedies become more active. It is our experience that there is a difference. We estimate that we have 15% better results when using the C4 remedies.
E. D B. What is the difference if we start to prepare a dilution from a C2 or C3 or C4 initial trituration? If this is important we will need to increase the number of remedies we keep in our dilutheques fourfold.
A.T. Remedies diluted from the C1 trituration can be potentiated to the C12 dilution to influence biological, physical and physiological processes. Typically this will allow for the treatment of local symptoms that carry no modalities or characterised symptoms.
When diluting from the C2 trituration, we make remedies that will be effective on the emotional level. An awareness of the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ starts. The patient is emotional about his symptoms. There are contradictions, there are local modalities and there is a logic, or a causality.
Starting from the C3 trituration, we can prepare potencies that will touch on our delusions. There is good and bad, there are fears, there is religion, the patient asks questions, there is a contact of the body with the soul and the spirit. ‘I’ becomes central, we think and develop a personal responsibility.
The C4 trituration allows the preparation of remedies that help patients to understand their story, accept it and therefore become at peace with it. This process is necessary to solve the patient’s problem. The understanding and acceptance of the problem through receiving the appropriate remedy is the beginning of the healing process.
This learning and acceptance process works better through using the trituration potencies. For ease of reference, we call them the C4 potencies but this refers to the use of all the trituration potencies starting from C1 to C8 trituration.
E.D B. This means that there are more than 4 trituration potencies, like C5 and C6 up to C8?
A.T. Yes there are. In practice we only use the C3 and C4 potencies. The C4 touching on the core/essence level. The C5 triturations address the miasms, family constellations, individual archetypes and The Situation. The C6 triturations take us to the collective archetype and the vitality and energy.
Initially, the importance of the (C4) triturations is in the proving. The preparation through trituration of the substance starts to reveal the substance to the preparer as soon as the C1 is triturated. The preparer is therefore also a prover. Before the trituration, at the C0 state, there is no information on the substance available, it is hidden. The triturating will allow the triturator to discover the remedy, level by level when he prepares the substance.
This is something I would advise all homeopaths to experience. When you triturate the remedy step by step it will reveal itself to you and you will develop a better understanding of the remedy. Then you know what the pathology is and why it unfolds in that particular way. You are with the patient in the same way that you are with a substance when you triturate. There is in a sense no pathology; pathology arises out of a system with polarity as something bad which you have to remove in order to be OK. In a resonant frame of mind, you take whatever is going on as an indication of where someone might be stuck and also as an indication of where the healing will come from.
Even just preparing a remedy from a bottle in a little water and dynamising it manually before giving it to the patient will also add something extra to the remedy. The mechanically prepared remedies are not so reliable. There is an added value from the interaction of the homeopath/preparer and the remedy that is prepared, that will increase the results obtained with the remedy given to the patient.
We have to reduce our intellectual attitudes to the discovery of our remedies and rely more on the alchemist way of respectfully asking the remedy to tell us about itself. It is a little bit like houseplants that grow better if you give them lots of attention.
E.D B. How do you decide whether to use the C3 or C4 trituration and then how do you decide what potency of this triturisation to use?
A.T. I use mostly the C4 trituration. It is the trituration that helps patients to accept their situation and helps them to gain an oversight of their situation. This help is very much needed by the patients in our modern world.
For instance when treating a psoriasis, the patient should arrive at the following sensations using a C4 trituration remedy: my psoriasis is a gift, it helps me to understand the misery of life, the itching has helped me to transform.
The potency chosen should always be higher than the problem. If the patient’s suffering is of the sensation kind, lower potencies can be used. When the patient suffers with deep mental problems, higher potencies should be used. In case of mixed pathology, one can use both dilutions depending on which one the patient needs first. There is no difference between physical and psychological problems, it is about where the patient is stuck. The purpose of the remedy is to cause things to flow again. Where the suffering of the patient happens, is where he/she is stuck. The potency we choose has to be just above where the patient is stuck.
I promise to write up a few cases for Homeopathy for Everyone to illustrate this principle of choice of dilution more clearly. You can’t really say that remedies cure patients. The remedies allow the energy of the patient to flow again. The remedies trigger a liberation from where the patient is stuck.
E.D B. Would you mostly use the C4 triturations in your practice or do you use the common ‘C1’ potencies as well?
A.T. I use the C4 potencies when the patient needs to gain oversight of his/her situation. Otherwise I would use the usual dilutions. They can sometimes achieve more than the C4 triturations. The C4 triturations are also not indicated so much for animals and children.
E.D B. We thank you very much for these clarifications which I am sure will trigger quite some interest from the community. I am sure that they will help in producing better results for many. We will of course be looking out for your cases that will illustrate more clearly your views on how to choose the best dilution for the patient.
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