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Eleanor C Merry – The Flaming Door

The most important sciences [in Druidic life] were those connected with agriculture and healing; and healing was recognised as an ever-increasing necessity, in order to combat the dark powers (represented by Avagddhu in the Ceridwen myth) which were believed to be always ascending into man out of the Earth-depths.

The becoming physical of man they saw as a great spiritual battle between the forces of light and darkness. The more intense the physical intelligence the greater became the possibilities of ill-health…………..

Every plant has its own characteristics ................ The root contains the greatest amount of mineral salts, it is the hardest and most earthy part. In man, it is his head which corresponds to the root.

In the leaves and stems there is the living flow of saps and the assimilation of " life " not unlike man's system of breathing and the rhythm of his circulation.

In the blossom, in scent and colour and the pollen-dust, the saps are expending themselves and becoming dissolved into the light and warmth of the atmosphere -or better said, into a " cosmic " existence. And in the human metabolism there is also a sublimation- the continual arising and passing away into the " fire "-of the streaming saps of life.

As the plant lifts its creative forces heavenwards in the ripening seed, so man bestows his creative forces on the Earth.  He is a heavenly plant inverted in the Cosmos, rooted above, and blossoming below.

Thinking of plant and man in this imaginative way one must go further and see that this suggests that roots would heal illnesses connected with the head, the brain and nervous system; leaves and stems in the rhythmic processes; blossoms and fruits in the digestive system.

For in each member of the plant's organism forces lie waiting to be released, and to be used to re-establish harmony in disturbances of the corresponding processes in the human organism.

A strong moral element pervaded all ancient methods of healing because the connection between the life of the soul and that of the body was more clearly perceived than it is to-day.