Healing Plants
Insights through Spiritual Science
Wilhelm Pelikan

Healing Plants, by Wilhelm Pelikan, was written to bring a new dimension into our understanding of herbal medicine, one which is rooted in both a natural and spiritual symbiotic relationship between the plant and human realms, and one which relies on a heightened perceptual sensitivity to the natural world around us in order to perceive the healing virtues of nature's vast range of healing plants.

This new botany of medicinal plants is based on indications given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, founder of the spiritual science of anthroposophy. This science makes it possible to re-establish an understanding that had fallen into oblivion for a long time and to make us aware again of the relationship between the human being and medicinal plant.

In a lecture given to physicians in 1923, Rudolf Steiner outlined this function of the new pharmaceutics―here for the first time presented in systematic form―with the deeply significant words: "The beauties of outer nature are really nothing but imitated disease processes. In human beings we have internal disease processes, and outside these are the wonders and beauty of nature. We must see the connection, however, and know how to bring disease functions from the vast field of natural processes into the human being, so that the supersensible aspects of the essential human being can be relieved of disease processes."

This approach to the natural world allows us to discover in a comprehensive and "holistic" way the myriad healing relationships between the human being and the world of nature. The aim is to open paths for the human mind to a rational pharmaceutical botany on the basis of which new insights on the healing powers of plants can be gained which are based not merely on ethno-botanical tradition or on chemical-analytical discoveries, but on a heightened perception and a deeper understanding of human and natural processes, viewing them as an over-all organic whole.

The illustrations by Walther Roggenkamp complement the descriptions of the various plants and their properties by showing what nature has withheld from our purely physical senses and revealed only to our inner sense of vision. Aspects of the plant's essence, only hinted at through physical perception but visible to the minds eye, have been conveyed through the artist's graphic creations.

Mercury Press
396pp; abundantly illustrated (b/w); paperback
ISBN: 0-929979-64-8
 

To purchase this title, please click here: Healing Plants - Wilhelm Pelikan

See also: The Secrets of Metals - Wilhelm Pelikan
 

Prompt delivery within the United Kingdom and overseas.
 

Copyright © 2004 Skylark Books