Similia Vol 24 No 2 – December 2012

Author: Genevieve Ahearne

Abstract

Subject: the imagination, like the experience of sensation in the body, is a pre-conscious faculty, which, in a proving, acts as a bridge between substance and knower of substance.

I begin with a composite quotation about provings from the Organon, 6th ed: §20, §21, §83 and §130: ‘This spirit-like power to alter man’s state of health which lies hidden in the inner nature of medicines can in itself never be discovered by us by a mere effort of reason’; ‘experiments with medicines conducted by the most accurate observers’ … ‘demands from the physician nothing but freedom from prejudice and sound senses, attention in observing and fidelity in tracing the picture’, ‘provided only the experimenter is endowed with sufficiently delicate sensitiveness, and is very attentive to his sensations.’

Italics are mine. And an apt composite quote from Jung:

‘When observing yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images, generally known as fantasies. Yet these fantasies are facts (…) (a fantasy) is of course not a tangible object, but it is a fact nevertheless, it is a form of energy; a manifestation of something. When you observe the stream of images within, you observe an aspect of the world.’

Keywords: Trituration provings, collective collaboration, alchemy, image making, sensation, nonsense, prejudice, epistemology, Gnosticism.