This book review is reprinted with the permission of the American Institute of Homeopathy
The Provings of Granite, Marble and
Limestone
by Nuala Eising and The Burren School of
Homeopathy
Reviewed by Karl Robinson, M.D.
The Provings of Granite, Marble and Limestone by Nuala Eising and the Burren School of Homeopathy in Ireland may be the first book on homeopathy that is compellingly interesting reading. Nuala Eising never mentions elves or leprechauns. She doesn't have to. What she does relate is equally chimerical though she doesn't intend it to be.
The first section, the proving of Granite, begins:
"I first considered Granite as a homeopathic remedy
following two dreams which I had... Prior to this, I
knew nothing about granite except that it is a rock
common to parts of Ireland. The dreams should explain why I considered it important to conduct a
proving of Connemara granite."
Indeed they do.
In the first dream Eising finds herself looking at
a picture of Connemara which is grey and bleak. The
picture is captioned, "CONNEMARA IS THE DAY
AFTER." Then follows five more pictures, each of a
Connemara person, each in a wooden frame, each
with a different caption:
Number one reads: "Connemara People Are Introverted."
Number two reads: "Connemara People Are Incestuous."
Number three reads: "Connemara People Are
More Prone to Cancer than Anywhere Else in the
Country."
Number four reads: "Connemara People Have
More Downs Syndrome Children than Anywhere
Else in the Country."
And number five: "Connemara People Are Taller
on Average than Anywhere Else in the Country-
They Have In Fact Grown Like Cancer."
The dreams ended with a question and answer in writing. "Question: What have Connemara people got in common? Answer: Granite."
In the second dream Eising is looking at a white dot in the sky which she intuits is homeopathic Granite. "As I look at the dot, it explodes, becoming a piece of beautiful white lace. Slowly, it moves through the atmosphere, changing shape as it moves. It takes on the shape of butterflies and birds, always remaining as white lace. When it has moved through the whole atmosphere, it drops to the ground in front of me. I look down-it is a white dove dead because it has cleared the atmosphere of radioactivity."
Eising learned from a geologist friend that Connemara granite has one of the highest levels of radioactivity of the granites found in Britain and Ireland. She also learned the area has a higher level of cancer and Downs Syndrome than the rest of Ireland. "Granite in Ireland is considered responsible for 35% of cancer in the country," she writes. Connemara people are known for their introversion; there is a lot of inbreeding and, she opines, "It is my impression that Connemara people are certainly big."
There were 15 provers, eight women and seven men ranging from 20 to 40 years of age. The following symptoms occurred in 12 of 15 provers:
The above symptoms occurred in an improbably
high number of provers. There were many less frequently occurring ones. But, of course, all this occurred in Ireland where the improbable is probably
likely, even commonplace.
It gets better.
The next section is devoted to Marble and also begins with a dream. Eising relates that a man who has been appearing in her dreams for years tells her that now the Granite proving is done she needs to go to the Inagh Valley. He specifies it must be the Inagh Valley in Connemara, not in Co. Clare. He showed her examples of people who live there. "They were wild and lawless," she writes. "They seemed like very nice people so long as one did not mess with them."
On waking, she realized she did not know where the Inagh Valley was, but soon located it on a map. She also did not know what she was supposed to find. She visited the valley many times, but nothing was clear. So she waited.
The next bit of imponderabilia came in another dream, this one from one of Eising's homeopathic students. She related Eising had taken her somewhere in Connemara where she got crushed under a large, white rock which thoroughly disturbed her. She asked Eising what to do, and (still in the dream) Eising simply told her it was okay, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis. From that dream Eising understood the rock had to be either marble or quartz, those being the only white rocks in the area.
The next clue was equally strange. Eising and some students had had "a few drinks" when one student said to her, "I can't understand your stamina. You must be on something. You must be on marble." The student hadn't a clue why she said what she said, but Eising tucked it away in her head.
Hold on! It gets weirder yet. In 1993 Eising was presented with the opportunity to work with a group of 12 children from Belarus, about 40 km. from Chernobyl. The children, aged 9 to 12 years, were brought to Ireland for six months, primarily for homeopathic treatment.
Eising's impressions: "The most noticeable thing about the children was their sadness and sense of resignation. They were very pale and translucent in appearance. They were also very "wide-eyed" looking directly and very seriously. Their fear of being touched was also very apparent. All of us who met the children at this stage were mesmerized by them. We felt we would do anything for these children."
What to do? Fortunately for Eising, and fortunately for the rest of us, she had another dream. The
same man appeared and told her explicitly the children would need Granite first, but then they must
have Marble. He told her in the dream: "Granite is
always appropriate for the initial and peripheral effects of radioactivity. These children have undergone
a metamorphosis. Look at Limestone and Marble.
They are both calcium carbonate. The intense heat
and pressure when Granite is forming turns Limestone to Marble. Although Marble is calcium, it is
metamorphic calcium. When people are close to a
major radioactive disaster like Chernobyl, there is at
first an intense internal heat, and gradually their
calcium cells begin to change. These children are the
metamorphic version of their original state, and as
such, they need Marble, which is the most similar.
Look at the children, their pallor, their translucence just like white marble. Marble crumbles from the
inside-the shine on the outside holds it together. The
same happens to people affected by high levels of
radiation-they disintegrate from the inside."
That did it. Eising then proved Marble.
At this point, the observant reader might recall the section on Granite where on page one Eising mentioned dreaming of Connemara and seeing the caption, "CONNEMARA IS THE DAY AFTER." Now that caption's true eerie meaning becomes apparent-it is the day after a radioactive catastrophe such as occurred in Chernobyl.
Before she relates the Marble proving Eising tells how (following her dream instructions) she gave all the children from Belarus Granite. She doesn't say it like that, however. What she writes is that they gave Granite 30c on these symptoms (which all the children had):
The children all improved. Eising and her children assumed that once the Granite "layer" was out of the way, they would need Phosphorus or Platina as they seemed to have symptoms of both remedies. It didn't work out that way. Instead she had another dream. Again her man appeared and said, "Nuala, look at these children. You were a cat when you were doing the Marble proving. These children are cats all the time. They need Marble and they need it now. The thing with Marble people is that they are likely to look like Phosphorous, be as arrogant as Platina, and be as charming and deceitful as Thuja. While Platina may dazzle with possessions, name-dropping, etc., Marble will only do so with their eyes and bodies. These children need Marble now."
The children did get Marble and they did extremely well. And by that time the proving was underway. Lo and behold, many of the provers reported feeling cat-like and thought they were gorgeous and charming. Many seemed to feel "wide-eyed," and a number of their friends confirmed they indeed looked that way. All the hardness and coldness and icy charm that had been predicted in Eising's dream showed up in the provers.
One woman prover dreamt her husband was being hanged. They were in India. "I felt no trauma. I was only concerned that I do the right thing. There were social forms to be followed. It was most important that I be graceful and silent. Even though I could see him hanging, the most important thing was social form. I was very sweet expressioned, eyes down, almost closed." That dream, strange as it was, entirely captured the mood of some of the Belarus girls.
The third section of Eising's book is on Limestone. But by this time you, dear reader, should be sufficiently interested to contact Ms. Eising directly to order her book:
The Burren School of Homeopathy, Caherawoneen, Kinvara, Co. Galway, Ireland.
JAIH Summer 1999
Volume 92, Number 2