From: "Charles Gavette" <chaosmosis-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: beggar's ticks/the supressed arts
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 16:28:10 PST


The shaman harnesses the beliefs of the sick person to assist the body's 
innate ability to heal itself. In scientific-technological periods of 
history, this effect becomes condescendingly known as the placebo 
effect. Yet regardless of the label given, the mind has potentially 
potent effects on processes of the pphysical body. Military-political 
power arose among individuals and groups most suited to lead armies into 
battle for defending territory. These military-political powers latched 
onto the pre-existing social power and influence of the shamans, and the 
shamanic traditions came under organized control and regulation. That is 
why early Taoism was first a scholarly pursuit in China, and is her only 
true and original "religion." Things changed for the shaman in other 
ways. Diseases started to become more serious and epidemic, and 
presented a new challenge: respiratory illness, malaria tuberculosis, 
measles. The Greeks began seeking stronger medicine.The practice of 
medicine, unlike today, was a profession lacking in status, and the 
ancient Greek physocian had no cloak of mystique, veil of religious 
autority, or elitist facade to hide behind. Empiricism was king: does it 
work or not? A more narrow scope of scientific vision, however, 
devloped, and tended to diminish appreciation for ecological, whole 
system patterns of behavior. The data led to a microcosmic view, at the 
expense of a macrocosmic view. Both types are useful, yet allopathic 
medicine has ran the course of the former. Successfully controlling 
physiological variables such as blood pressureor reducing the 
proliferation of pathogenic micro-organisms must not be achieved at the 
expense of an individual's overall health. Allopathic practitioners 
frequently violate this common-sense prohibition whereas an ecological, 
whole-systems physician would not. Later on, as the Roman empire 
disintegrated and as the medical traditions of the region retrogressed 
into a state of shamanic barbarism, the christian church used Plato's 
philosophy, already popular in the region, as an ideological power base 
to promote superstitions among the masses while preserving for its elite 
an isolated life of the mind and the spirit, unconcerned with the 
squalor or the world. Kitsch and organized religion go hand in hand. 
They are intimately involved with each other. The church was quick to 
align itself with the brilliance of scholars, the secular, such as Henry 
of Ghent, and adopt secular concepts to fit the situation. St. John's 
wort is a plant that has come under the the penetrative copy-cat kitsch 
of the church. Its Latin name, Hypericum perforatum, is in Greek, 
"hypericon," which means "over an apparition," since it was thought to 
protect one from evil. Later, the same attributes were transferred to 
christianity, in which the herb became "Herba Sancta Ionnis," or the 
Herb of St. John. The adoption of shamanic/tribal traditions so as to 
futher build a foundation for later inculcation of a belief system is 
still going on today. An example is in New Guinea, along with the 
introduction of money and a western economic view. See D& G's thoughts 
on this in AO. Also see "Evil Spirit Sickness, The Christian Disease: 
The Innovation of a New Syndrome of Mental Derangement and Redemption in 
Papua, New Guinea," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, V.20, #1, Mar. 
1996, P. 1-39. This essay  analyzes the cultural and historical 
processes involved in the emergence of Evil Spirit Sickness, a form of 
mental or behavioral derangement that appeared among the Bosavi people 
of Papua, New Guinea during a period of intense christian evangelization 
and religious excitement. It explores the emergence of the disorder as a 
form of psychological breakdown under the burden of intolerable life 
stress and a socially innovated, ritually structured, and performatively 
achieved mode of seeking redemption in a Papuan christian context. This 
machine loves to find a people who have been weakened by life's 
circumstances. Miscegenation is also used by organized religion to 
eventually acquire land. It was used on the Indians of America, and is 
still being used on many others. Thje weakening of a family structure, 
as the death of the patriarch who leaves behind a widow, is a classic 
example of the type of situation that organized religion looks for, like 
a tyrant scanning the horizon looking for guilt and weakness. Even 
though they claim to alienate themselves from the sin and grime of the 
world, they will certainly jump at the chance to vulturize, vampirize 
and otherwise project their  sickness so as to reinforce thier view of 
the world. Returning to western medicine, it is obvious that the western 
press wants to iognore the fact that the Chinese have proven, and were 
the first to prove that HIV/AIDS is a reversible disease, for TCM 
apporoaches the human system as a whole system, and uses mainly herbs to 
do it. The study done on the conversion to immunosilent of 8 
HIV-positive patients, that I posted a while back, has progressed 
further. What is not good news for western, allopathic medicine is that 
the proven remissions have been monitored now for 49 months. One has 
returned to HIV-positive, the others are still in remission. Allopaths 
will probably continue to do an ostrich imitation about this remarkable, 
history-making piece of work. Beggar's ticks, or beggar's lice come from 
plants of the genus Desmodium. The seeds of which most everyone knows 
well, as they stick to clothing when walking afield. Studying the 
ethnobotany of Sierra Leone, Africa, we learn that it has been 
traditionally used as an asthma medicine. Further studies have revealed 
that the constituents in Desmodium actually can alleviate the discomfort 
of an asthma attack, and the mechanism of action has been elucidated. 
There are many more examples of this kind of plant medicine.

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