The Bullfrog: a C4 trituration experience

In the end it is about loving the questions themselves and almost without noticing it, ?to live into the answer.
Rilke?

In November 2014, I met with students and teachers of the Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy in Minneapolis to do a C4-trituration of a bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana, lately sometimes classified as Lithobates catesbeianus). We were thirteen gathered to go on this adventure, myself being the only male participant. Three of us knew about the nature of the substance we were going to triturate; the others did not. Grinding down a substance with mortar and pestle is an ancient act which healers of all cultures all over the world have performed for thousands of years. In pharmaceutical terms, this is called a trituration. When we use milk sugar as carrier substance and follow a specific sequence of grinding, scraping, and diluting, this is called a homeopathic trituration. In the past, triturations were thought to be merely a mechanical process necessary to prepare a remedy. However, this is not the case. In grinding down a tiny bit of a substance, which might be of mineral, plant, or animal origin, we set free the energy held by that particular substance. This creates an energy field vibrating in the room. Now we resonate with that field. This process is called a C4-trituration. During the 20 years of immersing myself in these exciting experiences, my personal style evolved. I call them Shameeah. A Shameeah is a sacred ceremony of communion with nature, the mechanics of which come from homeopathy. The transformation taking place during the process is alchemical in nature, and the ceremonial aspect comes from the wisdom of indigenous peoples. Where homeopathy, alchemy and shamanism meet, this is where I am at home. Let me take you with me on the journey into the world that arises, when bullfrog and humans meet on an energetic level. In quotation marks you find the exact expressions of what the participants experienced.

Some interesting sensations came up on the physical level. Throughout the experience we felt chilly. “My nose is cold” - “The right side of my body feels cold.” - “Ice cold thighs and a hot face”. One participant felt that her fingers and toes were very much elongated; she had the feeling to touch her neighbor with her toes even though they were still far apart. “My tongue is getting restless and feels bigger than usual. I am licking my lips with a sensual feeling.” - “My tongue feels coated with mucous.”  Salivation was common in the group. ”My jaw is tense as if I am ready to bite.” - “My whole body is getting more flabby, especially my sternum loses its stability, it feels as if it could bend. I am crouching, slumping down in my seat.” -  “I need to pee but don't feel like getting up. Why do we make it so complicated instead of just letting it run?” It expressed a vague feeling that we are dealing with a more primitive energy. Several of us felt nauseous, “I could vomit” and “as if I was pregnant”. This later became a sense of disgust. Several times participants mentioned to be attracted to bright colors, especially yellow[1]. Symptoms showed up that we know to be general for all animals. “I feel territorial. This is my spot, my tea, my chair! Stay away.” Or the tendency to compare oneself with others, leading to jealousy. “What do the others have that I don't?”

Imagine a girl playing innocently in a beautiful landscape. The sun is shining, she feels calm and strong, no worries. “I am content with things.” She is longing for someone to hold her. “I want to be held, to be caressed.” - “I am looking for my mother.” - “I am a little girl soaking up the sun. I want to sleep like on a lazy summer day.” ?One participant indulges in innocent sexual fantasies. “I have a sensual, erotic desire of melting into each other.” She was drawing a doodle in which the fish she was intending to draw looked almost like sperms, and a bunch of round balls seemed to be “eggs in the womb”. Later, when she learned that she had triturated bullfrog, she discovered that the sperm-like fish looked like tadpoles and the “eggs in the womb” closely resembled a batch of frog eggs.

At the same time many women felt a desire for mothering and caring. Both the longing to be cared for and the desire to care had an undertone of sadness. “I feel a deep sadness and empathy. I want to help my boyfriend, I want to help my cat.” - “I felt an incredible tenderness. This (showing the mortar she was grinding in), this is my baby. I want to caress it, to rock it, to hum lullabies to it. Then I felt a wanting to be held, wanting to be caressed.” - “I am having a huge grief, sadness, tears and loss.”

Into this tender yearning for physical comfort quite a different energy burst in with a shock.?“I feel like a sexual predator. 'Ha, I'll get you! I do not care who you are, I do not care what you want or how you feel. I want you and I'll get you.' It feels like a very physical desire. The desire to swallow something, to devour and a sexual lust exist at the same time or even are the same. 'I'm gonna get you, no matter how.' This you is almost exchangeable, it is whoever attracts my attention. But once this attention is attracted, then I am totally focused, it is as if I attach a slimy sticker on her saying: 'It's you that I want.' I feel fat, like having a large body, a big belly. There is a total shamelessness. It is as if my craving for someone attracts her. This craving is insatiable. I could eat and eat and still have the same lust for more. At the same time I feel like lurking, waiting for my chance. There is no drive for activity. It's the feeling: 'I'll get you. I simply wait for my chance.' This waiting is not a hidden waiting in the shadow. I feel bold, openly visible. ?I see obese men in suits, a cigar in their broad mouth, belly hanging out, shirt open. Broad, primitive faces, a broad grin in their faces. 'I'll get what I want.' What is it that I want? Money, jewelry, a Mercedes, sex. There is not the least sensitivity for others, no empathy. 'If I'll buy women, trap them, drug them, surprise them, it doesn't matter. I'll get them'. “I saw myself opening the legs of a woman, pressing my thumbs into her thighs[2]. I know what I want, I only see that; otherwise I am completely empty and unfeeling. Penetrating without empathy. I want to penetrate, so I do it. There is no anger, no violence, no vengeance. I simply want it, so I do it. I feel numbed, walled off towards any other feelings or influences.” A participant dreamed that a man was wrestling her from behind. It is clearly a frog dream as a male frog embraces the female from behind during mating.

“I am completely fearless. It is not bravery. I do not care nor worry. This fearlessness feels like: Fuck you! Very unsophisticated.”

“I hear the song: 'Money, money, money makes the world go round'. I see people dancing around to the music putting golden coins into bras of women and underpants of men. It is about gluttony, indulgence and debauchery, totally unrefined.”

“I do not feel any remorse. There is not any feeling that there could be something wrong with satisfying my craving in any way possible. I even feel attracted to an easy prey, to an unsuspecting girl, to a sad woman in an unhappy marriage yearning to be loved. I would give them alcohol or drugs. It makes things easier. Connection? I do not feel connected, for sure not to women, maybe to buddies who are in the same game. When I'm through with one, move her aside, get her out of my sight. Like after a meal, get the dirty dishes away. I do not have the least moral feelings. None. It is as if this part of my brain is missing. I do not have the feeling that I could learn or wake up. Even if I would have to face a woman in pain who got hurt, I would not have any feelings. What a drag! It is disgusting! Get her out of my way! Do you keep staring at a half eaten pie that starts rotting? Get a new one. There are enough of them!”

Dirty sex and child abuse came up.

Foootnote: the expression “Dirty sex” is a very accurate description of what is going on here. There was no mentioning of violence or rape, as is the case in remedies like Bufo, Anas platyrhynchos or Lyssinum. Research shows also that even though Bullfrogs have a very intense and compared to other amphibians exceptionally long lasting breeding season, mating only occurs when the female had signaled its consent. This is quite in contrast to the toad Bufo bufo. The expression 'Get her out of my way, make room for another one' might be a pretty accurate translation of the biology into human terms as male bullfrogs have a breeding season of three months, the females are receptive for mating only for one night, then breeding season is over for them.

Images connected to the source came up. “I have an image of mud wrestling, of rolling in the mud. Then Jabba the Hutt comes up from Star Wars. Things should be easy and not hard work.”

The joy and the complacent feeling of safety and calm, the desire for caring and being cared for turns more and more into deep, “piercing” sadness. “I feel lost and alone.” - “I curl up like an armadillo.” - “I am sad, quiet, dark and empty. I want to be consoled but at the same time I do not want to be consoled.” - “I need to hide. I do not feel safe anymore.” - “I felt joy and now I am sick. I had an innocent desire and now I am pregnant.” - “I had been trapped.”

It was hard to recognize and almost painful to acknowledge that both sides, the credulous girl / the caring woman and the primitive sex predator are two sides of the same energy, both representing a pathological state. One cannot exist without the other one. Both in the end will require the same remedy.

A sensation as if drugged came up. “My forehead is numb, as if paralyzed. I don't care anymore, I should care but I don't.” -  “I am thinking about cocaine.” - “I would give alcohol or drugs to my victims. It makes things easier.”[3]

Perception seems to be distorted or deluded. “What's in the bowl smells like perfume.” It actually had a disgusting smell. “I follow a beautiful snake into a forest with bright colors. The snake disappears and I am alone in beautiful nature.” ?Are these statements expressions of the theme of being drugged?

A conflict was obvious. “I want to be noticed but then want to hide. I want sexual attention but then I do not feel safe. Be careful, men can hurt you. But I want to say yes to life, yes to everything.”

Irritability starts to rise. “I feel impatient and irritated. Stop making this noise!” - “I am getting angry. I want to throw something against the wall, smash it. Fuck it, I had enough! I am so sick of it. A little later I want to be totally passive, want every inch of my body to be massaged.” - “I want to bite people, want to bite a junk out of their legs. It feels great!” In a dream a participant had “strapped a man to a board and cut him open alive with great joy and delight.” I was deeply touched as it reminded me that I had been doing similar experiments with frogs in the beginning of medical school, a memory that keeps haunting me and fills me with great sadness. The same evening a friend of mine, a seasoned veterinarian, wrote in an email that “I had to do horrific anatomy and neurology experiments on frogs in my first year at vet school; I will carry that torturing memory with me for ever!” Once more a cold and unfeeling way of hurting others showed up as was also the case in the following dream: “Aliens treated us as if we were bugs that needed to be eradicated. They did not have any empathy with us, they just beamed us down with their weapons.” ?

After the whole drama had been laid out, after all the pain had been felt and expressed, we started to understand. Some of us felt like trapped, like cursed, caught in a body, in a role that was both not their own and at the same time they felt completely helpless in that situation. “It feels like a punishment, like being cursed. As if I had been condemned to an existence of a very primitive being, of something that I am not. There is no chance that I can help myself because in this state, I cannot even see that I am in a prison. I cannot see my ugliness, I am completely in a delusion. I feel completely helpless, completely hopeless. I can only hope for someone to help me from the outside, for someone who sees through the guise, who recognizes who I truly am. Or someone who destroys me, kills me, destroys completely this shell I am caught in. I feel utmost dependent on a miracle, on something that is very unlikely to happen. Because I would soil, I would hurt or even ruin everyone who tries to come close to me.”

“How do I get out of it?” That was the question we asked.

We were hungry for clarity, craving to understand what's going on here. “I have a desire for purity and innocence. The bowls have a muddy sound, I want them to be clear.”

Simultaneously four participants saw that we are carrying masks here, that we are engaged in a role that is not who we truly are.

“I saw masks, Halloween masks and I get a giddy, bubbly feeling of apprehension like going for a party in my 20ies.”

“I am wearing a mask and I am oozing across the land. I am getting a head pressure because this mask becomes too tight, so I am getting foggy, dull, sleepy. I am trapped inside and I can't get out.”

“I am Kali now, sheer blood lust. I want to destroy everything.” And then a while later: “I take off the Kali mask, I am a woman again. Now what?' “I saw a group of people with scary masks on and one by one they took them off. There was a completely different face underneath, like cherubs, these angelic, innocent, beaming faces, innocent and pure. They look so convincing, these masks. One with lips like as if to kiss came really close, I was a bit scared, they were not like romantic lips, they were scary. Those lips were coming closer and closer and closer, and I had all these feelings of getting away and just in that moment, the mask comes up and underneath there was a face that was very sweet, innocent, pure and light. It was a golden yellow, warm light. One pure kiss would be needed to transform it all.”

We had a lot of similarities in our story with the fairy tale of the Frog King. The innocent princess playing in a peaceful place in nature, the frog showing up, a lady being so upset that she wants to smash something against the wall, the frog being in reality a cursed prince. Still, the bullfrog story does not quite follow the script of the fairy tale. A major difference is in the way transformation happens. Even though we all had degrees of anger leading even to cold blooded cruelty, no one felt that this would lead to transformation. Anger and aggression surely was a part of the process, maybe even a necessary one, yet it did not end the curse; it could not remove the masks and bring forth the pure truth. It is one pure kiss that is needed. One pure kiss has the power to break the spell, to remove the masks we are wearing and to bring forth the pure, innocent and shining truth of the cursed being who had to wear the mask. Getting angry and violent could lead to the princess taking off her mask also and becoming real. Now that there was violence and abuse on both sides, the conditions are met for seeing each other's truth. Only then can the one pure kiss happen, this one pure kiss that ends the masquerade, that re-establishes the transformational power of love. ?

At the same time as this solution showed up the visions of the source became clearer. “I am on a river bank, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, the water is flowing by.” This sounds like the description of a bullfrog habitat; it is exactly what a bullfrog would experience basking on a stone by a river. “A snake is oozing across the land. No, I am not a snake.” - “I see frogs and lizards.”

This was the first day of our trituration. At this time (C1, C2 and C3 had been completed), the participants were told that they had been experiencing the energy of the bullfrog. 

In the morning of the second day, we shared our dreams. The dreams with frog themes had already been mentioned above. We went to triturate a fourth hour, the C4 level. In the C4-level we usually find completion of a problem, we touch the spiritual level and often can feel the sacredness and wisdom which is in the core of every natural substance, in every mineral, plant and animal. This is something that is hard to express in words, it truly has to be experienced. For homeopaths it might be mentioned, that C4 usually is not part of the remedy picture anymore. It is not what we prescribe on, it is the solution.? ?“The nausea is gone.” - “It feels like a deep integration.” “I let the pieces come together now. I can look at my own traumatic experiences now with a detached but compassionate feeling.”

“I had gathered all instincts. With those in place I reached a new level of completion. Now it is possible to leap forward, to make more than a big step, to truly leap into the future.”[4] “It was beautiful. I was waiting for the anger but I found stillness. The pressure that I had felt in my head before, was released. I could see the divine in the bullfrog. All judgment was wiped away.”

In the end, we were grateful for this adventure even though it surely was challenging to allow all the painful or embarrassing feelings and to express them. We thanked each other; we thanked the bullfrog.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the participants who dared to go into unknown territory, who had the courage to face pain and who had the trust to go the path all the way until they reached healing. May this remedy be a blessing for many people who had been traumatized or abused in a cold unfeeling way as we experienced it here. It is an honor to go through a painful process until the healing is reached, it is a privilege to pass it on and to support others in their healing. I want to thank the leadership of the Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy in Minneapolis for the opportunity they provide for the students, to experience a remedy inside out, to experience the intensity and clarity of the process of a C4-trituration and the miracle of transformation of pain into a gift. This is truly a gift for every student to know that solutions are found in the core of a problem and not somewhere else. May we learn from triturations how to make a sacred ceremony of the problems we face in our lives, to cherish them as mysterious questions waiting to be loved until the answer shows up.

[1] The male bullfrog has a bright yellow throat, which it shows to attract females.?

[2] This is an interesting detail. The thumbs are in some amphibians very important during sex. In some toads they have so called nuptial pads during mating season. These are dark and rough swellings that help the male to have a solid grip on the slippery skin of the female during the amplexus which is the embrace of the female from behind. In that position the toad males really press their thumb very forcefully into the soft body of the female toad. Bullfrogs do not have this feature of nuptial pads. That it still shows up here might be evidence that in homeopathy the importance of the thumb could be a symptom of the whole class of amphibians).

[3] Some of the most poisonous creatures on earth are amphibians. The native Rough Skinned Newt is one of the most poisonous animals in North America, deadly poisonous. Many toads, frogs and salamanders have poison glands in their skin, some are even hallucinogenic. So the drug theme is not far away. The connection to cocaine is also interesting, as under the influence of cocaine people experience the perfection of physical sexuality without having to deal with any emotional problems.

[4] In the Native tradition this is frog medicine. The frog is the teacher of taking a leap, of daring to jump even from a place from which you cannot see where you might be landing. It is a leap of faith.

Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Male bullfrog; Alan D. Wils; CC BY-SA 2.5
Fuck sign not directed at anyone; vidrio; CC BY-SA 2.0