Illness And Original Sinfulness

ILLNESS AND ORIGINAL SINFULNESS

Illness is merely the accomplishment of the Fall on a microcosmic level. Man and the whole of material creation are sick. There is no such thing as a healthy person – this is a medical fiction. Hans Blüher writes: “The healthy, ideal man, hygienic and free from original sin, is a hypothesis contrived by medicine, merely for the purpose of demonstration.” Hence the failure of all medical systems, whose highest goal is the prevention of illness.

People still believe that illness is an avoidable misfortune. They do not comprehend that illness is the most precious gift to mankind. Indeed one can say that it is precisely what makes us human, since only the sick person can be healed. Illness makes man able to be healed, but for this he must pass through it, not circumvent it. Just as illness is a microcosmic version of the Fall, so healing must always be a microcosmic version of redemption. The sick person is guilty – in both the concrete and the metaphysical sense – and must be confronted with this guilt, if his or her illness is to be transmuted into health.

In connection with homeopathy we said that the primal principles become dense and may fall into matter and thus poison the organism. Through homeopathic and alchemical methods of preparing remedies nature is released from its materiality and can help the sick person to “transpolarise” his sickness into a state of wholeness. Curing of an illness should always go hand in hand with an increase in maturity and development. Parents know how a child is strengthened every time a childhood illness is overcome – although, of course, one can avoid this by inoculating in advance.

C. A. Meier and Herbert Fritsche have linked the motif of the tree encircled by the snake in Paradise with the staff of Aesculapius. It was on account of the snake that man fell and became ill – therefore it is likewise the snake which must be raised up again through the art of healing – as on the staff of Aesculapius. Just as the poison becomes the remedy, so redemption arises from confrontation with guilt, and so the poisonous snake becomes the healing snake. Whereas on the tree of Paradise it is pointing downwards, on the staff of Aesculapius it is turned round and is pointing upwards. Suffering must be outgrown by man, not circumvented. So let us repeat here the passage from Herbert Fritsche which we quoted at the beginning of the chapter: “The avoidance of suffering, however and wherever it may manifest itself, always indicates that he who practices it is fundamentally of the un-initiated.”

Jesus became the Saviour because he did not avoid suffering. He did not demonstrate his power by accepting the challenge: “Step down from the cross if you are the Son of God”. Rather he took suffering – the sins of this world – upon himself. He became the doctor of this world. Indeed when God made himself like man (though not equal to him) he himself became the world's medicine. Since then the sick body and the spilled blood of Christ have been given to human beings as a healing remedy in high homeopathic potencies, using material bread and wine as carriers.