Down the Rabbit Hole: Exploring Homeopathy Through the Looking-Glass at Our Alice in Wonderland Retreat

Welcome to a world where the whimsical meets the healing, and where mythopoetic tales open doors to deeper understanding. At the Prometheus Homeopathic Institute, we're inviting our students to step into a retreat inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This year, we're diving into the enchanting and at times cautionary tale of The Walrus and the Carpenter to explore the subtle art of homeopathy.

Lewis Carroll, known to the mathematical world as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a Victorian logician cloaked in whimsy. His fantastical writing, born from a deep engagement with paradox, symmetry, and symbolic language, speaks both to the rational mind and the dreaming psyche. In Through the Looking-Glass, absurdity and logic become dance partners in a realm where riddles reveal hidden truths.

One such riddle resides in The Walrus and the Carpenter, a deceptively innocent poem in which two charismatic figures lure a group of oysters from the safety of the sea with promises of companionship and wonder. The oysters, wide-eyed and unquestioning, are drawn into the story only to be devoured. The poem reads like a nursery rhyme but echoes with shadow: seduction, betrayal, and the cost of trust.

It is here that we meet the psychological signature of Calcarea carbonica.

The Oysters as Calcarea carbonica: Innocence, Vulnerability, & the Need for Safety

Calcarea carbonica, prepared from the soft, pearly-white middle layer of the oyster shell, is a remedy of profound interiority. The individual in a Calcarea carbonica state, like the oyster, possesses a plump, tender, sensitive nature encased in a calcified shell of defenses. There is a longing for safety, routine, and structure, yet also a fear of the very chaos that growth requires.

The oysters in the poem live quietly beneath the waves, content in the known, unhurried by ambition. When called to adventure, they hesitate, but their innate trusting nature leads them to follow. This mirrors the Calcarea carbonica childlike quality of unquestioning faith in the benevolence of others, a quality that can lead to exploitation when the world turns sharp-edged.

“Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,Their shoes were clean and neat—And this was odd, because, you know,They hadn’t any feet.”— The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

Even in the face of absurdity, they do not resist. Their social compliance, their innocence, and their eagerness to belong outweigh their instincts of self-protection. The Calcarea carbonica personality often manifests just so: gentle, obliging, slow to action, with difficulty asserting boundaries. There is a deep longing to be liked, to feel safe, to avoid disappointment, and thus, they may ignore red flags or tolerate discomfort too long.

Themes of Overwhelm, Retreat, & the Protective Shell

Calcarea carbonica fears being overwhelmed by sensation, by expectation, by the unknown. The sea (representing the unconscious or the maternal realm) is their comfort zone. Being drawn out of it, even by a charismatic figure like the Walrus, is destabilizing. The moment they leave their element, they lose their ground and are subject to the dictates of others. This reflects the Calcarea carbonica theme of difficulty adapting to change and slowness in response to stimuli, mental, emotional, or physical.

The classic keynote, “fears loss of control", can be seen in the oyster’s silent submission. There is also the theme of betrayal. In retreat sessions, we explore this not as moral failure, but as a developmental wound: when trust is broken in a tender system, a calcification of the spirit can result. The shell becomes harder. The withdrawal is deeper.

From Soft to Strong: The Remedy’s Potential

Yet within this remedy lies great potency. Calcarea carbonica, when in balance, does not remain a passive oyster. Rather, the retreat inward leads to consolidation of identity, to inner stability, and to calm persistence. These are the quiet architects of the world—builders, thinkers, protectors of the hearth. With time and healing, they move from fear into wise discernment, from submission into inner authority.

Much like Alice, who navigates Wonderland’s riddles with growing confidence, the Calcarea carbonica individual may come to understand when to follow and when to question, when to trust and when to turn back toward the sea.

Come Journey With Us

In our retreat, we will use The Walrus and the Carpenter not as a simple tale, but as an invitation into the subtle terrain of the Calcarea carbonica psyche. We will explore how its themes illuminate our own inner oysters, our vulnerabilities, our dreams of safety, our longings to belong, and how homeopathy can restore our sovereignty from within.

This is not simply a literary retreat. It is a soul retreat. A descent into Wonderland not to escape the world, but to understand it more deeply—and ourselves along with it.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Not to be devoured—but to awaken.