Our modern life has accelerated enormously. Restlessness and concentration problems are the result of a hectic lifestyle. People lack orientation; they feel abandoned and leaderless. Material things, outward appearance and sexual attractiveness are valued higher than ethics, empathy and compassion. All these themes are found in the homeopathic remedy pictures of insects, as Jonathan Hardy exemplifies in the sensations and in the provings and repertory symptoms of the butterfly Limenitis bredowii and the migratory locust Schistocerca.
Although many new insect remedies have now been well proved, themes and signature in the sense of biological characteristics play an important role in the homeopathic approach to this ancient and most species-rich class of animals. This also applies to long-known remedies such as Apis mellifica, Formica rufa or Coccus cacti in the case studies of Rajan Sankaran, Shekhar Algundgi and Sigrid Lindemann, or the vesicant Cantharis vesicatoria presented by Ulrich Welte. Working with themes and signature enables initial homeopathic distinctions within the complex insect kingdom. Peter Fraser pursues a particularly original approach with his contribution on insect feeding behaviour. The differentiation between blood-suckers, cannibals, plant-lovers, dung-eaters and nectar-sucking beings yields astonishing insights for homeopathy. The same applies to the question of parasitism, raised by Jörg Wichmann and Angelika Bolte on the basis of Coccus cacti and Hirudo medicinalis. Ulrich Welte supplements this with further illustrative material on bugs, fleas and other pests. These certainly include the annoying two-winged insects Musca domestica and Culex musca, whose stress-response patterns Andreas Richter presents in detail.
With the contributions of Jonathan Hardy, Mike Keszler, Alize Timmerman and Jenna Shamat we learn a great deal about butterflies, which, in addition to the fluttery hyperactivity already researched by Patricia Le Roux, are also associated with the themes of love and metamorphosis, death and rebirth.
The diverse contributions in this issue can only reflect part of the incredible spectrum of the insect world, which remains a terra incognita for homeopathy, where themes and signature can provide important orientation without replacing new remedy provings. This issue of SPEKTRUM aims to give a sense of the special energy of insects and to encourage deeper exploration of their realm.
