Plantain

Plantain (Spitzwegerich) has – as the botanical species name lanceolata indicates – lance-shaped leaves, which are longitudinally divided by five to seven parallel veins that stand out strongly on the underside. The leaves form a basal rosette. The veins are tough and can be partly pulled out like threads from a torn leaf. When you look at the leaf with its longitudinal ribs, the resemblance to an exposed muscle fibre is striking.

On the surface, one might infer an effect on muscles, but this is not the case. The true meaning of this sign can only be understood if one connects Plantain not with the muscle itself but with its essence. Muscles enable animals and humans to move about and elevate them above the immobility of plants. They allow active movements within the body such as breathing, heartbeat, and intestinal peristalsis.

Muscles are the instruments of a higher level of existence through which humans and animals differ from plants. This is the realm of drives and emotions. The latter term contains the Latin motio, meaning movement. Emotions are the forces that move us, and muscles are their instruments.

With the help of muscles, emotions can be expressed within our bodies. Plantain, through the muscle-like character of its leaves, has an essential relationship to strongly moving emotionality. The leaves rise very dynamically, like flames from the basal rosette, among other reasons, indicating intense movement. It is evident that there is a close interplay between the emotional level and the vital forces. A harmonious emotional life characterised by calm rhythms without extreme outbursts is the best guarantee for promoting vital forces and thus health, whereas impulsive, intense emotionality escaping the measured control of reason depletes the vital forces and damages health.

Plantain is now a medicinal product for states of weakness caused by the intense emotionality mentioned. Such states are characterised by the moving force of emotions being unable to be directed towards purposeful activity and instead exhausting itself. There is, so to speak, a lack of permeability for information transfer at the interface between emotions – the element of air – and the vital forces – the element of water. Plantain restores this missing permeability with the help of its mucilaginous substances.

Mucilaginous substances are compounds that perform a protective and mediating function at the interfaces of organisms. Plantain is thoroughly permeated by mucilage. The leaves, roots, and seeds of the plant contain mucilaginous substances. On the physical level, they are responsible for the irritation-soothing effect in bronchial catarrh.

There are further signs indicating a weakening of the vital forces. The leaves contain aucubin, which transforms under the influence of an enzyme from the plant into a substance with antimicrobial activity. Freshly pressed plantain juice contains a high concentration of preserving substances; by killing the natural germination of microorganisms, the plantain juice is temporarily withdrawn from the life cycle. The fungus-like smell of the juice or of the essential mother tincture points in the same direction, as fungi owe their existence to the decomposition of other living organisms.

Applied to the essence of Plantain, this means that decomposing forces from the emotional level of existence have pushed back the vital forces. This finding becomes clear from another observation, which requires some background to understand. Every researcher who has examined many plants and animals with a stereomicroscope or possibly a highly magnifying botanical lens notes that there is a fundamental difference in aesthetics between plant and animal microstructures. Plant parts are structured in meticulous detail and harmoniously designed.

Every observer experiences the microstructures of plants (at 10- to 100-fold magnification) as wonderfully designed and very beautiful. Every plant particle reveals itself as a harmony in miniature, filling our soul with enthusiasm and joy. The inflorescence has an animal-like microstructure. How different are the microstructures of animal organisms.

These generally lack, with few exceptions (e.g. butterfly wings and bird feathers), harmonious structuring down to the smallest detail, and their appearance at medium magnification often causes the observer, who approaches the subject not only from a purely scientific stance, to experience more or less considerable discomfort – in many cases even disgust. Where does this great difference between plant and animal structures come from? Why are animal organisms not harmoniously designed even in the smallest structures?

Which forces shape the smallest structures? It is primarily the vital forces, those powers that act most strongly in plants. The transition from plant to animal life is possible only because part of the vital forces is pushed back by the newly added emotional forces. Thus, the microstructuring vital forces must be weakened to enable animal mobility; therefore, animal structures appear unfinished to us and often provoke feelings of rejection. Animal forces only exert harmonious shaping effects in larger structures.

Only the shapes of animals and humans recognisable to the naked eye do we perceive as beautiful. When I first viewed the inflorescence of Plantain at 20-fold magnification under the stereomicroscope, I was startled and very unsettled. What revealed itself to me was not the harmonious structure of a plant organism but that of an animal. In particular, the strongly hairy styles, as well as the dry-skinned calyx and corolla petals, have an insect-like rather than a plant-like character.

This is another sign that forces are at work in Plantain that weaken the harmoniously designing vital forces. Lastly, the strong association of Plantain with the lung needs to be explained. The lung is the organ through which we connect with the air. The element air is assigned to the level of emotions, just as water is the carrier of vital forces.

This is evident not least in the fact that emotional states are often expressed with terms from meteorology, whereas in connection with vital forces one speaks of, for example, the source of life in water. The lungs and heart are the organs with the strongest emotional connection, with the lung having direct, physical access as it inhales and exhales the air, the carrier of emotional forces. The lung is the organ that only gains significance at birth (with the first cry), through which we enter the air of the world and become an emotionally autonomous being. It is the essential relationship of Plantain to emotionality itself that simultaneously establishes an organic connection to the lung, which is why this medicinal plant can be regarded as a specific lung remedy.