The Republic and Keys to the I Ching

 

Any notion that Plato’s Republic is to be read as a practical political program is contrary to the plain statements of the text. Rather, the Republic is an exploration of statecraft from first principles. The overall schema is to describe the ideal or perfect polity – as divined from said first principles – and then to describe its decay through the passage of time. The design of the dialogue is to describe the model and then to describe the ways in which progressive copies of the model fall short of that original ideal. This decay is framed by the idea of the Great Year – that is, the fullness of time. The Ideal Polity is pristine, but temporal polities fall short of such perfection, necessarily, and as time goes on and the ages pass, and as forgetfulness sets in, the political life of men becomes more and more aberrant and decadent. Finally, when all vestiges of the cosmic ideal are lost, everything falls into chaos until the cycle is restored and everything begins again. 

 

It should be noted, though, that all of this is actually a secondary conern of the dialogue. In fact, the quest is to find the good man, the virtuous man, the just man or, we might say, the justified man. It is in this quest that Socrates proposes that he and his interlocutors consider the Man-Writ-Large, and it is axiomatic for them that this is the Polis. The entire dialogue, therefore, is built upon the traditional parallel between microcosm and macrocosm. The state is the organic parallel to the man. By finding justice in the state we can find justice in the man. What we can say of one we can extrapolate to the other. We can be sure that this – the Just Man - is the principle concern of the work because it concludes with the Myth of Er, a myth regarding the karmic destiny of individual souls through cycles of incarnations, again mapped onto astronomical time. 

 

Famously, or infamously, Plato provides an exact mathematical account of the underlying cycles that cause Justice to decline in both the hearts of men and in their political institutions. This is the so-called Nuptial Number. Socrates’ account of it is absurdly opaque, but there is some agreement that the number in question is 12,960,000. It’s significance, though, is that it is the number in which a certain class of arithmetic calculations are all resolved. Specifically, it points to an entire group of numbers in a scale that is base 60. Thus, the Nuptial Number is 60 x 60 x 60 x 60. Factors in this scale are all significant in calculations. The number 360 is part of these calculations, for instance. In any case, Plato believes that this sexigesimal mathematics controls the cycles of time. This idea remains with us still – sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute, and so on. 12,960,000 is, in fact, the number of days in a Great Year. As this duration passes the quality of souls declines and accordingly the political life of men falls into deeper and deeper confusion.

* * *

Exactly the same doctrine is found in the Chinese tradition, although in a radically different mode. Namely, the same ideas and concerns, and structures, are to be found in the I Ching, the Book of Changes. This is the real key to this book. An extraordinary amount of nonsense has been written about the I Ching, not least because of its oracular uses, largely because the very nature of the work has been forgotten. It’s concerns are precisely the same as Plato’s Republic: the Virtuous Man and the exercise of statecraft through the vicissitudes and conditions of time.

New Age and psychological readings of the I Ching often overlook the fact that it is primarily a political text. It is a work about statecraft, first and foremost.


The mathematical structure predominates in the I Ching. It is obviously not a Greek dialogue. It is a series of sixty-four hexagrams. The book explores their permutations then illuminated by poetic imagery, and sagacious commentary explaining how a wise man will act in certain circumstances or how a wise ruler will rule in certain circumstances. The thing to note, though, is that its mathematics is part of the same mathematics as the Nuptial Number. (again, the Nuptial Number is the resolution of a whole group of numbers necessary for the calculation of the cycles of the Great Year.) In the case of the I Ching the equation 8 x 8 = 64 represents the totality of the cycle. This is the same maths as the chess board which expresses the totality spatially rather than temporally. A chess board (8 x 8) represents Manifestation – what the oriental traditions (using numerical hyperbole) refer to as the Ten Thousand Things. Similarly, the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching represent the totality of Time. Time is its metaphysical theme, with CHANGE as the primary characteristic of time. Changes are not haphazrd, though. The cycle has a mathematical structure that unfolds and decays. Each hexagram, therefore, represents a certain point in the cycle, and even more, so too does each line of each hexagram.

This might not be immediately apparent because the original sequence of the hexagrams has been lost, and the current sequence, it is universally agreed, has been created according to different (albeit hard to discern) criteria. Nonetheless, this is a key: the hexagrams represent the Great Year (the fullness of Time) – and all the permutations and possibilities therein – and so specific hexagrams and specific lines within hexagrams correspond to specific points within the passage of the Great Year. As conditions change, so does the Great Man modify his behavior, and the Wise King (the Philosopher King) modifies his rulership.

The way to approach the oracular uses of the I Ching is this:

The hexagram and the lines given are comparing the situation to conditions that prevail at certain points in the cycles of Time.

It is as though the I Ching is saying to the querent in a given inquiry:

Your situation is like the point in the cycle when confusion reigns and the Ideal State (The Rule of Heaven) has become remote from men.

It then advises on an appropriate (archetypal) strategy in those circumstances. Every strategy conforms to the needs and properties of that moment.

In Plato’s language we might say that a certain situation corresponds to, say, a point in the age of the democratic constitution (the age of maximum confusion) and strategies must therefore be appropriate to such conditions. How would the Wise Man act at this point in the cycle?

We must recall that the entire cycle is implicit in every point in the cycle, that there is in reality only one point, that change is an illusion and that everything is perfectly matched by its opposite: yang changes into yin.

Assuredly, the Chinese work is replete with an entirely different order of symbolism to anything found in Plato (this is merely to say that the Chinese were Chinese and Plato wasn’t) but the two texts are still parallel in important ways: the virtuous citizen of the Celestial Kingdom and the rule of the Philosopher King are the abiding themes, mutatus mutandus, in each case. All the same, the Chinese symbolism is not in any way inconsistent with Plato. For example, the I Ching relates military stratagems throughout. Plato doesn’t do this, but he certainly values the military arts and military prowess as much as the ancient Chinese. Similarly, the I Ching makes extensive use of the governance of the family as an arena of justice, whereas Socrates – hardly a family man – does not, although we can be sure that Plato would not have been indifferent to good order within families. We must forgive Plato for not being Confucius.

One matter that is related to this, however, presents a parallel of particular importance. The Nuptial Number is so-called because it is supposedly used to calculate the best times for marriages. This is a constant concern for the I Ching as well. There are good and bad times to marry. In traditional societies, right up to modern times, this was almost as important a question to put to an oracle as who to marry – indeed, in the case of arranged marriages, even more so. It is significant that modern people rarely consult the oracle for this purpose anymore. Such matters have thoroughly degenerated into calculations of “luck” and “propitious days” in the Chinese tradition – Chinese metaphysics decays into “luck” – with the deeper significances lost and forgotten through the amnesia of time. But in fact there are questions of “alignment to Heaven” in unions and offspring and, as Plato has it, it is the neglect of this that causes the gradual decline of souls, the slow erosion of souls, through the ages.


The Platonic system is, as always, based upon a model/copy analogy. There is the paradigm, and then there are increasingly inferior copies, versions that fall away from the paradigm. It is a craft analogy. It is entirely typical of Plato’s whole thought. The Chinese text does not use a craft analogy in this way, but there is still a celestial or primordial order to which wisdom adheres and from which folly flees. The movements of change are signally graphically by the descent of the moving line into darkness and its reemergence into light. The hexagrams move and transmute in cycles.


Perhaps it is necessary to underline the parallel between Plato’s Ideal Polis (The Republic) and Chinese notions of the celestial order, Heaven, the Celestial City. The idea of paradigmatic reality being a City, an Imperial City, a Kingdom, extends throughout Chinese thought, religion and symbolism. Deities are envisaged as officials in a celestial administration. In the Republic we are clearly told that the Ideal State exists not on Earth but in the stars. First, Socrates takes us from a consideration of justice in an individual soul to a consideration of justice in the state, but then he places his Just State in the heavens, thereby extending the parallelisms to the cosmic order. Man = State = Cosmos are in parallel. These same parallels are woven through or implicit in the I Ching too (with the additional but entirely consistent parallel of nature.)

* * *

The Myth of Er features a symbolic device Plato calls the Spindle of Necessity. He means a wool spindle (again, a craft analogy), and he uses it as a model of the heavens. Various “whirls” set around the spindle are the planets. The spindle itself is the axis mundi.

The I Ching is associated with the sacred yarrow plant. The long dried stalks of the yarrow are used for the cultivation of hexagrams when consulting the oracle according to the more traditional, ritualistic methods. The significance of the yarrow stalks is that they represent the axis mundi. The symbolism of the whole herb illustrates this clearly. Yarrow is (quite conspicuously) an herb in the umbelliferae family. The flowering head forms a type of “umbrella” speckled with tiny flowers. Thus:

This is the plant's characteristic gesture. The form of the plant is therefore a long straight vertical stalk surmounted by a dome of stars. To the traditional eye this bears the imprint of a certain feature of the cosmic order, namely the axis mundi and the heavens, the axis mundi (the stalk) extending from heaven (flowers) to earth (roots). It is a simple symbolism, but overlooked. The vertical descent from Heaven is typical of the Chinese tradition. The Chinese script is (traditionally) written down the page, not across, as if the characters are falling from Heaven. In the case of the I Ching, the sacred herb invokes the axis mundi, which is both the hermetic avenue for oracles from heaven to earth and is also the Unmoving Pole, the most important coordinate in the Chinese traditional universe.

Once more we might be tempted to apologize for Plato’s Republic and the I Ching being such utterly different works, but on top of thematic consonances and a shared mathematics there is also a common axial symbolism. This is to say nothing of corresponding schemes of caste and social stratification found in both works.
 

It is productive to read the Republic and the I Ching together.

 

 

Harper McAlpine Black

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solon's Unwritten Epic

The following is an excerpt from the author's doctoral dissertation, Myth in the Timaeus. In this excerpt it is being argued that Plato's Timaeus is set upon the greater festival of the Panathenaia and gives reasons why the story of Atlantis is appropriate to that festive setting. 

One further and perhaps more telling point in favour of nominating the Greater Panathenaia as the "festival of the goddess" seems to have been overlooked. It is important in as much as it further clarifies the respective roles of the Atlanticus of Critias and the peri phuseos of Timaeus in the total scheme of the Timaeus dialogue, and helps to explain the relationship between them. This point is that Critias' story, which he relates as it was transmitted to him and which, as we have just said, goes ultimately back to Solon, constitutes, in a fashion, the material of an epic poem. The recitation of the Homeric epics was, as far as is known, an innovative feature of the Greater Panathenaia. Panegyrics concerning the military glories of Athens were characteristic of either the Greater or Lesser festivals; but the Atlanticus is not just a patriotic panegyric; Critias specifically presents it in the genre of epic. He introduces his story to Socrates and the others by relating his first acquaintance with it. He was, he says, a boy of only ten years of age. He was in attendance with many other boys at the feast of Apaturia and on that occasion the fathers present arranged a contest in recitation. Many poems were read, and amongst them were the poems of Solon which, he adds, were relatively new at that time. It was then that a man named Amynander stood up and declared that in his opinion Solon was not only the wisest of men in all other respects but was also the noblest of all poets. In response to this Critias' grandfather - also named Critias, and ninety years of age

 

 "was much pleased and said with a smile: 'Yes, Amynander; if only he had taken his poetry seriously like others, instead of treating it as a pastime, and if only he had finished the story he brought home from Egypt and had not been forced to lay it aside by the factions and other troubles he found [in Athens] on his return: why then, I say, neither Homer nor Hesiod nor any other poet would ever have proved more famous than he.."

 

This is the invitation for Amynander to ask about the story, to request of the elder Critias that he relate it to them, tell them where Solon had heard it, of what it consisted, and so on. Old Critias relates it, beginning with Solon's conversations with the priests of Sais, as the younger Critias and the other boys listen. The story, then, is, we are informed, the poem upon which Solon was working before he was called to deliver his people from discord and devote all of his energies to law-making and the exercise of justice. The elder Critias bewails this because, had he found time to finish it, Solon would have surpassed "Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets". It is Solon's great - but unwritten - poem. It is epic by virtue of the comparison with Homer and Hesiod and by virtue of its grand scale. This is confirmed when Critias (the younger) finally begins to recount the full story to Socrates, Timaeus and Hermocrates. In a sequence of polite formalities Hermocrates, at Socrates' instigation, invokes Apollo and the Muses in the epic manner on Critias' behalf. Critias thanks him and, to that invocation, adds an especial invocation to the goddess Memory. Clearly, then, we are to understand the 'Atlanticus' not merely as a patriotic speech, and appropriate to the occasion on that account, but as standing in the genre epos. It is not, of course, a poem in the strict sense, but it is an account of the poem that Solon would have written had he not been compelled to devote his time to other things: it is the material for an epic poem that, unfortunately, was never composed, or, at least, never completed. In the Timaeus, and in the Critias, we find Critias playing the Homeric rhapsode: this would be appropriate to what we know of the Greater Panathenaia.

 

This ought to be the starting point for any analysis of Critias' account. As it is, in the truly voluminous secondary literature that the story of the lost continent of Atlantis has spawned in the course of Western history, few readers have approached the story in this light. For some Critias' story has been the spring-board for Utopian visions. More recently the story has given rise to wild archeological speculations with author after author taking the story at face value and proclaiming that they had in fact located the lost continent. More credible attempts have been made to read the story as an allegory of political events contemporaneous with Plato, while others have adopted the story and grafted it to their own fabulous theosophical schemes. From what we are told in the text, though, the proper approach to the story is to see it in the genre of the type of epic poetry recited at the great festival of Athene. It should be considered as a story in the same class as the Homeric poems. This is illuminating because at least a few scholars in the past have noted certain similarities between the story and Homer's Odyssey, though they have failed to bring the observation to a plausible conclusion. In the seventeenth century the Swedish scholar Olaf von Rudback noted, investigated and documented a number of parallels between Critias' description of Atlantis and Homer's description of the mysterious island of Phaeacia. Both the Atlanteans and the Phaeaceans are described as sea-going people descended from the god Poseidon, for instance. In both cases the centre of their civilizations lay not on the coast but some way inland, with the inland cities connected to the sea by a series of canals. Both Phaeacia and Atlantis are surrounded by steep cliffs that fall sheer into the sea. The temple of Poseidon given in both accounts is similar, as are the religious observances described. Phaeacia has a sacred grove with fruit trees watered by two springs. In Atlantis the sacred grove of Poseidon is watered by two springs, one hot and one cold. The Phaeacians "come into contact with no other people" and the Atlanteans at one time were "unmixed with other, mortal stock". Atlantis sinks into watery oblivion and Phaeacia is "encircled" by Poseidon, cutting it off from all contact with the outer world. There are more general parallels, too. In the framework of Homer's epic Odysseus' quest for home is played out on the divine level by a rivalry between Poseidon and Athene. Athene is his patroness, protecting him and helping him on his way. Poseidon, however, has been offended by the hero and thwarts his every attempt at progress. Similarly, in the Atlantean war Poseidon and Athene stand in contrast in the sense that the Atlanticus is the story of the struggle between an Athenian and a Poseidonian civilization in which the people of Athene, though the under-dogs, like the much suffering Odysseus, finally triumph. These parallels also appear to have been noted by at least one ancient reader. Diodorus Siculus, the encyclopedic but notoriously unreliable historian, embroiders his 'history' of Atlantis with material taken from Homer, implying a recognition of their common ground. It is not wise, perhaps, to push these parallels too far, but given that Critias' story is presented as Solon's epic - albeit one that was never written - they are at least surer observations than most that have been made concerning Atlantis through the centuries. The story of Atlantis has captured the Western imagination since ancient times and has given rise to the most extraordinary speculations; we are on much safer ground in seeing allusions in it to the poems of Homer and the epic tradition.

 

In this respect one more important point should be made here. This is that, while Critias' story discernibly follows Homer in certain general respects and even in respect to the history and topography of the lost continent, in other respects Critias is at pains to show how different Solon's 'unwritten' epic is to Homer's and how it diverges from the epic tradition. This may be part of the sense in which Critias the elder proclaims that the story, had it ever been completed in epic form, would have surpassed "Homer, Hesiod and the others". Critias (the younger) begins his second and fuller installment of his story with these words:

 

Once upon a time the gods divided up the earth between them - not in the course of a quarrel, for it would be quite wrong to think that the gods do not know what is appropriate to them, or that, knowing it, they would want to annex what properly belongs to others...

 

He then proceeds to draw the battle lines between Atlantis on the one hand and antediluvian Athens on the other. In the context of a Platonic dialogue this must be a disapproving reference to Homer. We are immediately reminded by these words of the most common criticism of Homer and the 'other poets' found in Plato, namely that the epic poets portrayed the gods as quarrelsome and as not knowing their rightful place in the scheme of things. As mentioned at an earlier point, Plato's reverence for Homer was not unqualified. Though, like all Greeks, he considered Homer to be the best and most authoritative source of information regarding the gods, there are many famous instances, as in the Republic, where Homer is censured for showing the gods to be petty, frivolous, cantankerous or silly: it is their quarrelsome nature to which Plato seems to have most strenuously objected. He, or at least his Socrates, saw the idea that the gods fought and squabbled amongst themselves, that they did not know their rightful domains, as a major theological error. This criticism goes back to the very earliest dialogues. Most significant, and of great relevance to this present study, is the passage in the dialogue called the Euthyphro. Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the question of whether or not the gods can be at variance with each other or even, at worst, whether they waged war upon each other. Socrates maintains that it is blasphemous to say so, although it is blasphemy against the gods that he himself is charged with, precisely because he is critical of tradition on this matter.

 

Do you believe, he asks Euthyphro, that the Gods actually quarrel among themselves, that Zeus, for instance, shackled his own father (Cronos), and that Cronos gelded his father (Uranos), and such stories?'

 

EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates, and things even more amazing, of which the multitude do not know.

 

SOCRATES: And you actually believe that war occurred among the gods, and that there were dreadful hatreds, battles, and all sorts of fearful things like that? Such things as the poets tell of, and good artists represent in sacred places: yes, and at the Great Panathenaic festival the robe that is carried up to the Acropolis is all inwrought with such embellishments? What is our position, Euthyphro? Do we say that these things are true?

 

Euthyphro, a representative of orthodox piety and a theologian by profession, responds that such things are indeed the case.

 

The reference to the poets and the Greater Panathenaia are, of course, the object of our interest here. What we have so far said of Critias' Atlanticus responds exactly to this passage, even though, by the traditional reckoning, Critias' story was written by Plato some thirty or forty years later. In the Euthyphro we find Socrates explicitly critical of stories told by 'the poets' and given legitimacy in the rituals of the Great Panathenaic festival, of the gods being at war with each other. In the Atlanticus of the Timaeus-Critias ensemble Critias presents an alternative, with the offending theological error corrected. Instead of "Homer, Hesiod and the others" we are presented, indirectly, with Solon as the surpassing epic poet, and instead of the quarrelsome gods we are presented with gods that know their place and their limits. In insisting, at the very outset of his account of Solon's 'poem', that the gods do not quarrel Critias is saying, in effect, that Solon would have brought to epic a more noble conception of divinity. Athene and Poseidon do not themselves quarrel in the story of the Atlantean war - Critias stresses this. Athene, he tells his audience, became patroness of Athens because that land fell to her (and her brother, Hephaistos) by lot, and it was by lot that Poseidon was given Atlantis. The gods, then, merely founded the two opposing civilizations of the story. That the Atlanteans became the aggressors and that the Athenians were called upon to defend the Hellenic world from them was no direct fault of the gods. Poseidon is described as the father of the first Atlantean Kings, and, in fact, so long as the Atlanteans continue to be born from his divine stock they remain a noble and law-abiding race. It is only when the mortal stock in them comes to predominate and the sacred blood of Poseidon grows thin in their veins, that they become imperialistic and want "to annex what properly belongs to others". One of the morals of Critias' story is then that envy is not of the gods, but is a mortal trait.

 

 

* * * 

 

At the very beginning of this study instances were given of Timaeus correcting what Plato perceived as errors in the thinking of the Presocratic philosopher-poets in their own field of discourse. The monologue of Timaeus, it was said earlier, is Plato's peri phuseos; a work in which he meets the Presocratics on their own ground, in their own style, and brings their ideas into an orthodox perspective. Timaeus' speech is, firstly, the most conspicuously Pythagorean of Plato's works, but it is also the work in which he confronts the challenges posed by his philosophical opponents most forthrightly. Parts of Timaeus' account take otherwise objectionable doctrines, such as the theory of atoms, and 'rectifies' them within the teleological framework of a Pythagorean, or rather Magna Graecian, cosmology. On other occasions Timaeus' words pointedly counter doctrines held by the phusiologoi , such as the multiplicity of worlds, that Plato rejected out of hand. Now, in Critias' contribution to Socrates' 'feast of discourse' we can see the same thing being done, not to the Presocratics, but to the epic poets that came before them. In the speech of Critias Plato is correcting the poets in their own field of discourse. Just as the speech of Timaeus is Plato's most Presocratic undertaking, so the speech of Critias is his most Homeric: and in this 'Platonic epic', if it may be so called, he takes the opportunity to 'rectify' what he regarded as an objectionable element in the poems of Homer. We said at a much earlier point that Timaeus' speech was notable as the most extended single speech in the entire Platonic corpus. Similarly, the Atlanticus of Critias is the longest mythic narrative to be found in Plato's works; both in this respect and in such internal evidence as the invocations to the Muses and the parallels with certain aspects of the Odyssey, it stands in the tradition of epic, meeting the epic poets in their own domain. This is how we must understand its relationship with Timaeus' account. One is Plato's great excursion into the world of the Presocratic cosmologists while the other is his great excursion into the world of the epic poets. The evidence of the Euthyphro tells us, furthermore, that Plato had long been critical of certain aspects of the Panathenaic festivities; it is here that he 'rectifies' those errors as well.

 

It may be objected, at this point, that, as was explained in an earlier chapter, Timaeus follows the Presocratic tradition which derides the genealogical cosmologies of the poets of 'early times' and, by extension, the world-view of those poets. He claimed, for his cosmology, the status of 'likelihood' as against the mere tales of the archaic poets. Why then is he not critical of Critias' story if it belongs to that 'unlikely' world of understanding, the realm of legend and outright myth? Similarly, if we are to understand Critias as delivering a type of epic poem, why is he not affronted by Timaeus' criticism of the unsubstantiated tales of 'earlier times'? That there is no open hostility between the two speakers is, however, understandable: the whole atmosphere of the 'feast of discourse' is one of impeccable cordiality. It is a festive occasion and Socrates, characteristically, presides over civilized and at times excruciatingly polite conversation. Nor is there much occasion for an interchange of opinions: other than their programmatic links the two speeches are, as we have pointed out, remarkably self-contained. Critias makes no remarks about Timaeus' speech, nor does the Locrian comment on Critias'. The actual 'dialogue' in this work consists solely of pleasantries and laudatory introductions; there is no debate or contesting of ideas. This does not mean, though, that the contrasts between Timaeus' and Critias' respective contributions to the feast are not apparent and, in some places, pointed. We have already mentioned briefly the one that is most relevant to the line of exegesis taken in this book. In his contribution to the proceedings Critias makes explicit mention of the myth of the earth-born. In his account, the priests of Sais tell Solon that the story they have to relate to him concerns the antediluvian citizens of his city, citizens that were the adopted children of Athene but the seed of Ge and Hephaistos. In Timaeus' contribution, however, we are not told this myth, though it underpins his whole account in fundamental ways. His task was to "create by his words, so to speak" the first Athenians, ready for Critias' full narrative. In doing so he does not retell the myth; rather, he presents a cosmology based upon the myth. Hephaistos becomes the Demiurge. Ge is refashioned, at least in some measure, into the Receptacle of Becoming. In another manner, the two gods of the myth become fire and earth respectively, the two principal components of the creation. Thus, what is myth in Critias' account is transformed in Timaeus' into the eikos muthos. That Timaeus' is the more 'likely' account is plain enough. By Timaeus' own criteria his account is the superior one. Critias' story is nakedly far-fetched; as far-fetched as the genealogies of the gods. Socrates' remark at 26E that it is all "fact [and] no invented fable...but genuine history" is bluntly ironic. Timaeus, on the other hand, brings to this mythopoeic material the Presocratics' standard of 'likelihood' according to the procedure we outlined earlier. To put it another way, it is Critias who supplies us with the old myths of 'earlier times' and Timaeus who re-forms them into the new and more 'likely' myth typical of the Presocratic cosmologists. What happens here, then, is identical to what happens in the Politicus myth, only here there are two speakers involved. In the Politicus the Stranger tells both the old myths and the new meta-myth. In the Timaeus Critias tells the old myths; Timaeus recasts them. This, above all, is why we cannot regard the Atlanticus as "all but irrelevant" to the study of Timaeus' cosmology.

©Copyright R. Blackhirst, 2000.

Microdosing on alcohol

 

This post is about homoeopathy, the most maligned of all schools of medicine. The historical wars between homoeopathy and allopathy – to give “conventional” or “Western” medicine its correct name as a medical philosophy – ended in a comprehensive victory for the allopaths, and homoeopathy has been consigned to the realm of quackery. Or at least homoeopathy as a developed system, that is as developed by Samuel Hahnemann and his followers, has been so consigned, when in fact the principles and many methods of homoeopathy persist across all branches of medicine. Let us recall that homoeopathy was not invented by Dr Hahnemann, and he never claimed to have done so. He was a translator of ancient medical texts and discovered the principles of homoeopathy – chiefly that like can cure like – in ancient Greek medicine. It is a very ancient observation. What a large dose will cause a small dose might cure. It is, of course, the very principle of vaccines, currently a much-discussed topic. The allopaths might have relegated the homoeopaths to quackery but they embraced the core principle of homoeopathy in the development of vaccines. A vaccine works, as everyone knows, by giving a small dose of a certain pathogen in order to protect from large and dangerous doses of the pathogen. Or, indeed, similar pathogens, sometimes.

 

The mechanism, of course, is immune response. Hahnemanian homoeopathy purports to be a general and systematic application of the same principle, not merely for infectious diseases, and claims to work by stimulating the organism to heal itself. Strategically, the homoeopaths did themselves no favours by claiming that even tiny, tiny, microscopic (or molecullary non-existent) doses of toxins could have this effect. The allopaths had the science; the homoeopaths struggled to explain the action of their microdoses.

 

Microdosing, however, is presently fashionable, albeit in quite different therapeutic models. Most impressive, perhaps, has been the trend of microdosing hallucinogens and other mind-altering substances for the ameriolation of psychiatric disorders. Much of the trend has been led by self-experimentation rather than clincial trials, but it would still be a fair assessment to say that there is a growing body of evidence to support claims that microdosing on psyilicybin mushrooms, for example, can assist people with depression, for example. Other evidence shows some promising results in cases of more severe psychiatric disorders too. In some cases, at least, small doses of hallucinogens are beneficial to mental health.

 

Another case of this appeared in recent studies and chatter in the on-line health community. Studies show, it is said, that a small amount of alcohol can have a profoundly restorative effect upon a damaged liver. Regrettably, the amount is very small – about two-thirds a glass of wine per week and no more – but it has been shown to stimulate a whole cascade of biochemical events in the liver and related systems that are wholly beneficial, protective and healing. How can this be? Alcohol is a toxin. Indeed, it is verily a toxin, utterly poisonous, and outside of its uses as a social lubricant has no benign internal uses at all. It’s noxious, pure and simple. Why would a tiny dose have such health benefits? The answer to this is: homoeopathy. Why does a tiny dose heal the liver? Because a large dose harms it. That’s why.

 

Researchers explain it this way: alcohol is a toxin. When we consume a tiny amount the systems of the body anticipate that more of that toxin is on the way. It therefore mobilizes everything that it needs to protect itself from this anticipated damage. And since it anticipates that the toxin will harm the liver the systems of the liver are “up-regulated” as the researchers say.

 

Perhaps we can hypothesize that the same mechanism is involved in the psychiatric uses of hallucinogens? Certainly, in large doses the same hallucinogens can be destructive. The present author once knew a man who worked as a postman who chanced upon and consumed psylicibin mushrooms all along his mail route. He was eating 30+ a day! Sure enough, within a short while this drove him to complete psychosis: he went barking mad. Admittedly an extreme case, and a sample of one, but in general hallucinogens – in hallucinogenic doses - are not good for a fragile psyche and may be corrosive to a robust one too. Is this why a small dose of magic mushrooms – one instead of thirty a day – can be healing to psychosis and other mental disorders? Is it a homoeopathic effect?

 

By homoeopathic effect, we mean “bi-phasal”. Homoeopathy, in both its ancient and modern forms, proposes that this is a principle of nature. In fact, it is everywhere. Alcohol is a good example. It is bi-phasal. We all know this. When we drink, a small quantity of alcohol is uplifting. We feel light, merry, sociable, outgoing. But then, just a few more drinks further on, we encounter the “bi-phase”. In larger quantities alcohol is a depressant. We feel heavy, despondant, inward, morose. The same substance causes two diametrically opposed reactions. Homoeopathy proposes that all toxins, all irritants, are like this. There are two phases in the action of toxins and irritants. A small dose will have the opposite effect to a large dose. (The symmetry and paradox of this appealed to the ancient Greeks no end. It is the sort of thing to which Greek science was most sensitive.)  Once again, the mechanism involved is that a small dose stimulates the body to “anticipate” and prepare for a large dose. The elation we feel from a few drinks of alcohol is in fact the result of the cascade of emergency chemistry as the body tries to deal with the in-coming toxin. It is not called “intoxication” for no reason.

 

Here is another example that might underline how widespread this principle might be. Health enthusiasts will assure you – based on science or upon 3000 years of Aryuvedic lore, or both – that turmeric is fantastically good for all sorts of sundry maladies. Standard practice is to eat turmeric daily, or swallow it in pill-form, for a thousand healthy outcomes. These days people put it in their latte. It is listed, oftentimes, as a “super-food”. But, in fact, it is an irritant. It is a stressor. It irritates and stresses the body. But this is exactly what makes it beneficial. Irritants stimulate the body to react – and specifically to react in response to what it anticipates to be the threat. Turmeric is certainly toxic in large doses. The biochemists will tend you that of the rhizome’s 200 known compounds, some 183 are known toxins. And, moreover, they are specifically toxic to the organs, systems and processes that a small quantity of turmeric is purported to assist. Turmeric is health-giving because, confronted by the irritant, the body bolsters itself in exactly those areas that a large dose of the irritant would harm.

 

Much medical, nutritional and even herbal thinking is wrongly based on the ‘Deficit Theory’ model. Thus, for example, the experts might relate how turmeric is a rich supply of, say, sulphur, or copper, and then relate how these are essential nutrients for physical well-being. The assumption is that there is a deficit in these minerals and then turmeric promotes health by supplying them. Thus do the chemists trawl through the various “super-foods” and latest herbal pancea from the Amazon jungle looking for bundles of goodies. But, in fact, it is the toxins that are important. It works because it irritates the body, not because it refills depleted stores of substances. We can actually push this much further and say that, in fact, this is how most if not all herbal medicines work: not by filling a deficit but by stimulating – irritating, stressing – the body into action. When medieval scribes reported that bitter rue (ruta gravelons) improves eyesight, we must understand that what is happening is that the compounds in rue (toxic and intense – you can taste them) can damage the optic nerve and so a small dose – what we call a ‘medicinal dose’ – will prod the body into “up-regulating” those processes that preserve, strengthen and heal the optic nerve.

 

No one in early modern medicine appreciated this entire matter like Samuel Hahnemann. His experiments with quinine, trying smaller and smaller doses of quinine to treat malaria, were correct. He established the very worthy principle of the minimum dose, namely: the correct amount of any medication is the smallest amount necessary to initiate a reaction. This is what led him to explore various dilutions. Controversially, he claimed to have found a method of amplifying the stimulative effect while reducing dilutions to microscopic attenuations. Those who ridicule homoeopathy are usually ridiculing Hahnemanian dilutions, not homoeopathy itself. Because the principle of microdosing is sound. In Hahnemann’s time medical wisdom was that more is better. Syphilis? More mercury! It was Hahnemann who – very bravely – declared that less might be more and championed the method of using microdoses of toxins to prompt the body to heal itself.

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As for microdosing on alcohol, it is important to understand that it will only be beneficial if you don't drink otherwise. If you are a regular or even light drinker, microdosing is a waste of time. The idea is to prod the body with an unfamiliar toxin. It also follows that it is best not to microdose (on anything) continually. Again: the idea is to prod the body with an unfamiliar toxin. To keep the toxin unfamiliar it needs to be intermittent. Some time ago the present writer purchased some turmeric root from an Indian grocers, and the old Indian lady commented on it's health-giving properties in Aryuvedic medicine. Then she cautioned: "But don't take it all the time. Only for a few weeks. Then stop for a week." She explained that she didn't know why, but this was what her mother had told her, and she believed it to be traditional best practice.

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On a further tangent: Islamic orthodoxy is of the opinion that alcohol cannot be of any benefit to man even in the tiniest doses. This is a matter of legal principle: since it is forbidden in large doses it is forbidden in small doses. It is uniformly bad. There are hadith of the Prophet proclaiming outright that it cannot be used as a medicine. Historically, this matter went through the typical stages from moderate to severe. In the earliest school of jurisprudence, that of Imam Hanafi, some alcohol was permitted, while drunkenness was frowned upon. This was then challenged by later schools, leading ultimately to the most severe interpretation: total prohibition. This strict view became the prevailing orthodoxy in modern Islam with the ascendency of the Wahhabi. There's no need to ask the jurists: they'll rule that even microdosing on alcohol is haram.   

 

Harper McAlpine Black