Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2006
Table of Contents
The Thuja Tree is known by many names. The family name is Coniferae but the
common names include Arbor Vitae, Tree of Life, American Arbor Vitae, Cedrus
Lycea, Western Arbor Vitae, False White Cedar, Hackmatack, Thuia du Canada and
Lebensbaum.
The Thuja was introduced to Britain as early as 1536, from its native eastern
Canada and USA via France. The tree is best known these days in the form of
numerous garden shrubs, mostly dwarf forms. The tallest rarely grows above 30
feet high. These trees have regular, graceful conical forms that make them
valuable as high hedge trees. The leaves are of two kinds, Both have a small,
flattened gland, containing thin, fragrant turpentine. The flowers are very small
and the cones mature in one season, but remain on the tree throughout the
winter. Thuja Occidentalis is the larger species of the tree that may grow to 200
feet.
The wood is used for fencing and palings, as a light roofing timber and, as it is
both durable and pliable, for boats and also for limekilns, bowls, boxes, cups, and
small furniture.
The fresh branches are much used in Canada for besoms (tools for space
cleansing), which have a pleasing scent. The odour is pungent and balsamic and
the taste bitter, resembling camphor.
Thuja also contains volatile oil, sugar, gelatinous matter, wax and resin. The
leaves and twigs yield also a camphor-like essential oil. A yellow-green volatile oil
can be distilled from the leaves and used as a vermifuge (medicine that expels
intestinal worms). The foliage is rich in vitamin C. The American Indians used it to
treat scurvy.
Medicinal Action and Uses: Aromatic, astringent, diuretic. The twigs may produce
abortion by reflex action on the uterus from severe gastrointestinal irritation. It
has been used in fevers, rheumatism, dropsy, coughs, scurvy, and as an
emmenagogue (induces or hastens menstrual flow).
The leaves, made into an ointment with fat, are a helpful local application in
rheumatism. An injection of the tincture into venereal warts is said to cause them
to disappear. For violent pains the Canadians have used the cones.
The oil can produce convulsions in warm-blooded animals and paralysis in cold-
blooded animals. Sixteen drops of the oil, taken by a girl of fifteen, caused
unconsciousness, followed by spasms and convulsions, with subsequent
stomachic irritation. It causes great flatulence and distension of the stomach.
The resin, known as Sandarac, was used as a drug, and for ointments and
plasters. At present it is used as varnish and incense, and the powder, or Pounce,
is used to prevent ink spreading on paper after letters have been scratched out.
Sandarac is said to be used in India for haemorrhoids and diarrhoea.
Symbolism
Trees make ideal metaphors to convey the notion of growth, strength and
longevity. Trees, especially true cedars, that tower above 50 metres and are a
thousand years old become emblems of grandeur, survival and incorruptibility.
Due to their longevity, incorruptible resin and evergreen leaves, cypress and
Thuja have been associated with immortality (Tree of Life). For this reasons the
cypress is planted in graveyards and has its place as the funeral tree in the
Mediterranean region. It is planted beside the graves to protect. It has durability
and it repels insects. It is the tree of life but also the tree of death, a tree for all
seasons. This is also the mental picture of Thuja. It shows the extent of the
pathology it presents in the fully developed state of the sycotic miasm.
The name Thuja is a Latinized form of a Greek word meaning 'to fumigate,' or
thuo ('to sacrifice'), for the fragrant wood was burnt by the ancients with
sacrifices. The tree was described as 'arbor vita ' by Clusius, who saw it in the
royal garden of Fontainebleau after its importation from Canada
The Greek word Thujas means “raving women”. The Greek word Thusia means “a
burnt offering”, a sacrifice. Cedar was often burnt at the altar of the Gods. Cedar
was also used to make coffins and in embalming.
Symbolically the tree is elegant, erect, has poise and presence, is strong and
inspirational. The pine cones it bears are a phallic symbol, connected with the
open sexually of the conifers and our Thuja patients at times.
Characteristics of the Sycotic Miasm
Thuja is a strongly sycotic remedy. The most evident characteristic of the sycotic
miasm is overproduction and excess. These individuals may have inflated egos
with an ability and tendency towards performance.
*They suffer lots of guilt as they cover up their perceived failings and try and be
all things for all people. They fear that their weaknesses may be exposed. They
play many roles according to their company and surroundings and model
themselves on people in their lives that they admire and hide behind that mask.
Pathology
Self abuse – poisons – they have a feeling life is hostile, goes out into the world
an abuses himself. Drug abuse, excessive alcohol, excessive tea/coffee drinking,
tobacco, sexual excesses.
Worse from sweets, onion, garlic, alcohol, chemicals (sulphur and mercury)
(Hepar Sulph is the antidote to mercury amalgam fillings).
Typecasting
Sensitive to cold/wet.
Affects all organs that are ovoid (shape of the tree/bush) – polyps, ovaries,
testes, pancreas, spleen, endocrine glands, thyroid. Exuberance of excess,
anywhere there is excess of discharges.
Fleshiness (leaves) – increases water retention, they put on weight. Vast changes
in weight (morning to night), they swell when they travel or go to the seaside.
Slow metabolism.
Thuja in health are splendid to see – very handsome men and very beautiful
women with the perfect body, athletic. They create a mask through the body
itself. Perfection through plastic surgery. Great attention to diet, eating, drinking,
can reach obsessive levels.
Then as the sycotic miasm takes hold, the metabolism slows down, they have a
tendency towards true obesity. They take on an oval form. The trunk becomes
fat. They have thin legs and arms. Extra breasts if it’s a man, overhanging
abdomen – legs and arms are ok. As a young girl she is perfectly formed. Pill -
lymphatic oedema – they gain weight and are never able to get rid of it. HRT –
breasts grow, one may grow and the other may not, either side, become
overweight. Heaviness in the neck – short neck. Metabolism lets her down – also
seen in Sepia. Sometimes the weight may be another mask (Calc the weight is
another shell – Thuja is v like Calc). Thuja also for infertility where indicated
constitutionally)
High cholesterol.
Hair:
Poly cystic kidneys, cystic fibrosis of the pancreas, pancreatic remedy. In sickness
everything can be perfect in the middle of the line Thuja state. Lovely hair,
luxuriant, not hairy, hair where you want it and not where you don’t want it.
Sallow complexion – slightly greenish/yellowish hue, particularly around the
mouth. Eyebrows often run short (Phos), peter out and are lost on the outside. In
very hairy Thuja, hair is in abundance – nose, collar, back – if you’re a Thuja, you
shave it off. Very hair conscious. Tend to get folliculitis (in growing hair). Very
often problem on the neck when he shaves, pimples on the pubic area when she
shaves.
Nail:
Thickened, deformed, overgrowth (sil), undulations of the nail, elongated stripes
and ridges that you can feel and see. Transverse corrugation, going out and
coming back – often as a reaction to stress and it#s laid down in the nail bed.
Skin:
Facial skin can be course. Orange peel skin. Old acne scars. Great acne remedy
(as Med). Affinity for Small Pox in the remedy. Hair starts to fall out. Skin starts
to peel off. Like the tree it’s like dandruff. Lose hair from parts they don’t want to
lose hair – eyebrows, pubic – the older Thuja particularly. Sweat on uncovered
parts. Sweat when asleep. Smelly feel, armpits, groin. Nature conspires to make
them ugly nearly! Close to Lyc. Lacks musculature, eruptions and growths, warts
and tumours of all sorts, particularly to the face, red tumours, red nodules,
papillomas, port wine stains. Broad fleshy nose. Red veins and capillaries on the
nose. Conspicuous temporal arteries – can be high blood pressure. Cushings
disease, Addison’s disease, pigmentations of the skin (may be from hormone
therapy, the pill, HRT), vitiligo, patches of skin which have lost pigmentation.
Scars and keloids,
Lips – are sexy. Allure. Raised around the outer edge. Looks as if you’ve been
drinking milk – a little ridged raise that frames the lips (Puls, Plat). Linked to the
sexual aspect – the pelvis – Michele Phifer. Thuja and copper are closely linked.
Dionysian love – erotic love as opposed to Aphroditean love. It’s not a prescribing
symptom it’s part of the totality of the individual.
Gross excess – areola too big on the breast, nipples too prominent, internal lips of
the vagina too pronounced, labia minora protruding beyond the labia majora,
clitoris too well developed, foreskin too long in a young boy, genitals too large –
sycotic overproduction.
Beautiful physiques – put a lot of effort into getting the bodies, toned, tanned.
Appearance of clean but the overproduction is masked. Colonics, cleansing diets.
Recreational drugs can induce the Thuja state and can also be quite strongly
craved by Thuja.
Mental and Emotional Thuja
Thuja types are very secretive and deceitful. They believe themselves to be
fragile. They often maintain that their health will always let them down, so may
present as hypochondriac.
These patients can be very religious. Here is a good indication of the extremes of
the sycotic miasm. They have an image of themselves as being clean-living and
upright members of society, yet they have low self esteem. This may be covering
hidden sexual desires which are gilt-ridden.
Thuja women have a great fear of pregnancy, often feel as though they are
pregnant and this brings about feelings of guilt relating to this. This is in contrast
to the Medorrhinum patient who is overly sexual.
(Sankaran) Thuja comes from a situation which demands rigidity of thinking. This
occurs when religion becomes very strict. Social security lies in adhering or at
least appearing to adhere to religious norms. Inside however the person feels
brittle or fragile. In his manner he looks straight and fixed and his ideas and
views do not allow for any freedom of thinking. Yet from inside there is always a
fear of being exposed and his whole cover breaking down; this makes him stiff
and cautious in the presence of strangers. The fall from grace is symbolised in
dreams of falling, from which he wakes up with a fright.
(Sankaran) One of the main indications of the remedy is a feeling of being frail or
fragmented – a feeling of weakness within oneself, that something is “wrong”
with oneself. Patients think that food and alcohol are bound to cause them
problems and that their system cannot take things such as drugs, allergens,
emotional stress or exposure to a draft of air. They try to avoid all such things
and attempt to keep themselves covered to avoid exposure to the same. These
avoidances only reinforce the fear and this vicious cycle is not broken, making of
Thuja one of the main remedies for neurosis, with several obsessive compulsive
tendencies, fixed ideas and behaviour patterns.
(Sankaran) In the emotional sphere the feeling of fragility is manifest in the fear
of losing face in society. The person believes that he has a certain image in
society of being a religions, upright, clean, honest person, free from human
failings such as dishonesty, sexual temperament etc. this he presents an elevated
picture of himself as he is afraid that any slip on his part might reveal the real
him or the bad part of him which he has tried so hard to cover up. In this “bad
part” lies his dishonesty, sexual desires (which can even be for close relatives),
his immoral or irreligious feelings. If this is discovered, he will fall from his
imagined elevated position and will be finished. Thus his survival depends on a
complete cover up and there is tremendous anxiety of being exposed. The Thuja
person is secretive and talks to the physician as if sharing a secret. He is ever
conscious of the presence of other people, especially strangers. There is also a
feeling of floating in the air. He dreams of falling from high places – representing
his fear of falling from his elevated position.
Mentals:
Boerland – “all Thuja patients are truthful scrupulous in everything they do” – i.e.
they are so deceptive you will think they are being honest. Thuja is also a Silicea
look-alike. Silicea can degrade into Thuja. Thuja is very devious/deceptive
however.
Closed. Perfectly symmetrical, not a hair out of place. Perfect. Perfectly in control.
Nothing can be wrong. Can’t be spontaneous.
They try and conceal, to hide what they can’t suppress. What they can’t conceal
becomes sexual.
Buoyant step, even when sad. He has suppressed his emotion/grief, much farther
than Nat Mur, they are in fact really sad and are soliciting for sympathy which we
don’t give them and then when they don’t get the sympathy they are resentful.
Where awful traumas have taken place and the grief is so deep they can fall into
coma. They didn’t want to some into the world and they try and make the mother
pay for making them come with confrontational behaviour. This is the shadow
self.
They can be haughty and overbearing. At their best they have poise, presence,
poise but it can appear as pompous. They can be very condescending. Lyc can
degenerate into Thuja and Ginko is between the two.
They are solitary, separate, secretive. They resist intrusion. Covered in warts,
resinous excretions. Desire solitude, solitary, secretive and clandestine.
Manner – poise, hurried and agitated, impatient, never enough time for Thuja.
Time is too short. Person who intentionally slows down time – poise, equilibrium,
feels he’s on a carousel and he’s trying to get off.
CONTROL (Ars),
Have to look at the glandular area and all the endocrine organs.
Sycotic child, sexually abused – loss of identity from abuse – negative images
from the unconscious and a new personal being born from this negativity. “I am
bad”, “I am abused” “I am wicked”. The sycotic has to descend into hell, confront
the shadow and in that conflict he must rise up and resurrect. They are not
destroying anything, they are bringing the two things together (like Sil) and there
is a reformation to transcend.
Sycosis in Greek means “standing up” rising up. It also means resurrection and
transcendence. The risen God Dianesos – he died and was resurrected.
Easy to see the transition from Calc Carb to Thuja – Calc has a fear of life so they
create a shell. Thuja has a mask. The fear of the incarnation experience is equal
to both. Both have a fear of insanity and germs. Thuja is always washing his
hands – need to cleanse. Calc has the feeling that life is awful. With Thuja there is
a he need to hide, to be invisible.
Causation:
The Sycotic Home – sycosis is transmittable (STD) so it is highly contagious
through promiscuity. In the home there are sycotic energy. Where there is sycotic
energy and there is lack of education possibly you have big families, where
fundamentalism is practiced. They have lots of children – status thing – there are
fears of infertility. Role models are cold, calculating, cruel, manipulative, child is
given contrasting messages. Everything is permeated in deceit, hidden,
subterfuge, clandestine, secret, private, nasty, weird, ugly. Because very often
they are projecting the exact opposite image to that which they are indulging in.
Masquerading with puritanical piety. Child is being fed messages that sex is dirty,
disgusting, while the very things that they are condemning they are indulging in.
They externalise your crimes and your iniquities and implanting them in the ears
of others. Jimmy Swaggart – impassioned on the pulpit – there were prostitutes
at home. Announcing the very things he desires and he condemns it from the
pulpit.
These parents are talking dirt. They never talk about sex. The more the energy is
suppressed the more energy it has. All the messages in the family are
unpredictable, underhand, under cover. A Silicea born into this environment has
the subjectivity to grow away from this situation, but Thuja doesn’t. Thuja has a
loss of identity. There’s a suppression from all around them.
Marital strife. Deviousness with that conflict. They dream of confrontation and
war. Sometimes the child is sent aware from the home which intensifies the lack
of identity.
Emphasise the relationship with the mother (Thuja, med – all the sycotics).
Where there is a predatory mother, a perpetrator, these are the worst possible.
The mother is also an accomplice. Or the mother is passive, not involved, turns
her back, the intrusion of the father is not believed. The mother who is unable to
help as she her self is a victim. Incest is common. Discrepancy between the
behaviour at home and the behaviour in the workplace/school. Or husband who is
wonderful at work and horrible at home.
Loss of identity follows. Emotional problems. Frightful that the footsteps are
going to stop outside your door. Beaten, subjugated, humiliated. It creeps in to
you (like lac-can). An awful state of over-adaptation takes place. Over-
domestication.
Indulgent parents – where the child is born with an aversion to mother from the
word go, from breastfeeding. There is Oppositional Defiance problems. They have
the worst tantrums, immense, both in adult and child. He punishes mother with
the silent treatment. As an adult they still do it. Thinks the mother emasculated
him. The mother is the victim. The victim of her own passion.
Rescues – when out of the energy of the family situation, he rescues. He is the
victimiser and then he rescues.
Neglectful parents – love and care is not flowing or consistent and unpredictable.
Where it only comes from behaviour of a certain type. The child begins to think
that like is unpredictable, cruel and cold that everything is about manipulation.
That he has to fight and manipulate and be devious to get what he wants. He is
born with the sycotic feeling of being stained so this situation perpetuate the
feeling that he is unworthy is their care and attention. – UNLOVABLE. Thuja
loses identity. Goes into herself. Develops a quiet, silent, internal life which
gradually becomes more warped due to the sexual sycotic energy. Suppressed
sexual energy become deviant. She will make love her herself with her
imagination. Masturbation. Kissing the image she sees in the mirror. At the same
time there can be a sense of sexual inadequacy in adulthood. It can become and
weird and twisted picture. The need is a desperate one, for love.
They go inwards and become desperately compliant – the models child – out of
that emerges the immaculate adult. Always dressed correctly, does things
correctly, extra vigilant because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.
They become hypersensitive to sound, smell. They can become androgynous
(asexual, genderless). They can become very sensitive to pheromones. Tactile,
sensitive children (autism).
Sexual shame. Puritanical parents giving the child messages that sex is dirty.
Tremendous sexual energy in the Thuja person so that when it’s su[pressed it
becomes distorted.
Fixity, rigidity – everything about it is durable however, even it’s emotions are
durable. It is as persistent in its emotions as Nat Mur but deeper *** Dwells on
past disagreeable events *** anger and resentment that is present on the
surface. Homeopathy must be combined with therapy. A person who is totally
shattered and torn apart by psychotherapy, think Thuja. Because it comes up into
the consciousness and it doesn’t resolve and it becomes fixed – must go gently
with Thuja – 30c will do – nudge them along. It will come out in a way that
dissipates – emerging. Use counselling with Thuja – council the patient.
Feeling of being out of touch with reality. Creates a obsessive compulsive anxiety.
Thuja is anally retentive. As part of oppositional defiant disorder in certain
children there is a refusal to pass stool – ties in with the bashful stool syndrome
of Thuja. Anally retentive here also.
Immaculate in his presentation – he’s gone into every little detail about his
disease – Ars, Calc.
They are consummate lovers, suitors, can manipulate a woman into bed better
than most remedies. Very MANIPULATIVE. Conquest is not the issue, it’s sex for
sex only, the act only.
Religious obsession and fanaticism – need for identity and security. Tendency
towards fundamentalism with deep hypocrisy.
A major shock is normally what we find in Thuja. Where the goodness in a person
is antidoted by a shock – he becomes violent and obsessive.
Survival Strategies after Abuse
1. OCB
2. Adopt the stance of the model child coupled with vigilance – conforming.
“I am bad” – they take it on board and have a dual impression of the abuser – a
means to disassociate the care-taker from the abuser. Feeling guilty for the abuse
they are receiving. They can hold two conflicting pictures, though deep
rationalisation and delusion, of the abuser. This can only be achieved by
assaulting your true identity. They have to make themselves bad. They then get
to have some degree of control. “If I am bad then I am being abused with some
justice. If I am good the abuse will stop so if I comply with what is being
demanded of me, give in, yield, I’ll be alright”.
The problem here is that the personality being created is wrapped around the
concept of being wicked. Those feelings of hatred that are so profound in Thuja,
suppressed deep inside, increase their sense of wickedness and badness.
Sometimes they are sexually stimulated by the abuse. This is confirmation that
they are wicked.
4. Disassociation – project themselves out of the body. They make their body
numb and they feel nothing while the abuse goes on. Delusions he is floating on
air, mind and body is separated, abstraction of the mind. Depersonalisation can
occur. The cause of the disassociation has past later in life but they use the
disassociation to deal with all personal traumas later in life – false personal,
fragile, brittle. Amnesia as a result of abuse is very big.
5. Control freaks – chaos where the control is imposed by something else. They
become histrionic (hysteria).
7. Being busy all the time, workaholics. Industrious, Mania for Work,
9. Excessive masturbation after sexual abuse. Self love. To sooth and to comfort.
10. Kleptomania – it engenders the same feeling they get when they are fearing
the abuse – adrenaline rush, intensity of the emotion.
13. Paedophilia
Loss of inner control. Outside control goes. These compulsions assume another
identity – Delusion, I am under the influence of other powers. The rise and fall of
Thuja.
Rubrics
Religious Fanaticism
Fanaticism
There is also a feeling of floating in the air – Delusion Body is lighter than air.
Dreams of Falling
Crafty
Dancing, wild
Deceitful
Delusion, Assaulted is going to be
Destructiveness, sunning
Hurry, movements in
Industrious
Insanity, love, from disappointed
Insanity, threatens destruction and death
Music ameliorates
Phatak:
Activity, fruitless
Constipation, purgatives, no relief from
Hanks restless
Walking, impulse to
Delusions
Feelings of Dismemberment
Feelings of Fragility
Body parts in danger of coming in pieces
The continuity of body parts will be dissolved
Body parts are delicate. Brittle
Body made of glass/wood
Duality
Need to be invisible/transparent
Danger of being dismembered/broken apart
Fragility of the personality structures built up in response to abuse
Suppression privacy and dignity
Industrious, Mania for Work,
Occupation, Diversion ameliorates
Self mutilation
Lac-can,
Arg Nit,
Nat Mur – silent solicitation but when they don’t get the attention they crave they
resent it. Thuja will be more jaunty. The grief is so suppressed they give no
indication of it’s existence.
Sulphur can deteriorate into Selenium and selenium can deteriorate into
Thuja.
Calc Carb – fear of life – the shield and mask – fear of contamination, constantly
washing hands.
Cham, Dulc, Ran –b, Rhus Tox and Thuja – Thuja acutes
Lachesis - Duality
Anac – duality
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