Alice & the Queen of Hearts: A Homeopathic Descent into Becoming

In the whimsical, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland, Alice is more than a curious child; she is a luminous symbol of becoming. At the Prometheus Homeopathic Institute, our Alice in Wonderland-themed retreat invites our students to journey alongside Alice, not just through talking teacups and The Heroine’s Journey.

This descent mirrors the homeopathic principle of healing from within outward, from above downward, in reverse order of symptom appearance. To individuate, to become who you truly are rather than who you were conditioned to be, you must first go down into what has been suppressed, denied, or driven inward. In classical homeopathy, we say the remedy must match the totality of the person, not just the disease, but the whole being: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. In Neo-Classical Homeopathy, we go further: the remedy becomes a living archetype, a mythic teacher that speaks not only to symptoms but to the soul's developmental task. The substance carries a story, and that story mirrors the patient's journey. Individuation demands the same totality. The heroine cannot individuate by addressing only her conscious mind or her acceptable traits. She must meet all of herself: the shadow, the wounds, the unmetabolized grief, the unexpressed rage, the parts that don't fit the story she was told about who she should be.

Just as Alice must endure nonsensical riddles, shifting sizes, and the dissolution of all her certainties, the individuating soul must tolerate the liminal space where the old self is dying and the new self has not yet been born. This is the homeopathic aggravation writ large, the temporary intensification of symptoms as the vital force gathers itself to heal. In homeopathy, we understand that symptoms are not enemies to be vanquished but messengers pointing toward imbalance. The cough, the rash, the anxiety, the rage; each is the psyche or soma attempting to speak what cannot otherwise be heard. The heroine's descent is into this symbolic underworld where symptoms reveal themselves as teachers. She meets her own Minotaur in the labyrinth: the parts of herself she has exiled, the shame she has walled off, the vital force that has become distorted by concealment. She cannot skip the underworld. She cannot think her way out or willpower her way through. She must feel her way: through sensation, through dream, through the body's wisdom.

The homeopathic journey and the individuating journey are one: both require surrender to a process that cannot be controlled, only trusted. Both ask us to believe that the body knows, that the psyche knows, that the symptom is not random but meaningful. Her contradictions are not problems to solve but paradoxes to hold. She is both innocent and knowing, both child and woman, both lost and finding her way. And when the heroine finally emerges, not up and out, but through, she is not the same. She has integrated what was split. She has brought the underground into the light. She has become, at last, herself: not the self she was supposed to be, but the self she actually is. Whole, contradictory, fluid, real. This is individuation. This is homeopathic healing. This is the spiral path that descends to rise.

© 2025 Je Norbu (Jason-Aeric) Huenecke, CCH, RSHom (NA)