M is for....

1) Médoc. This is where the third flashback in Despite the Angels takes place. It is the wine growing peninsula just north of Bordeaux. I took a camping trip there some years ago to research, and to find a surname for Lucy’s past incarnation as Eloise. I went to several graveyards, and finally picked ‘Seurin’ which appeared frequently. This is a tiny detail, but I get a quiet satisfaction out of getting things like this right. On the other hand, I have fun making up stuff too - David’s past incarnation is called Daniel ‘DeVrac’ which is a silly joke. I got good information about the wine and salt industries from my trip, and also a visit to Madame Cassou-Mounat in Bordeaux. She was a retired Professor of ‘Historical Geography’ from Bordeaux University, and lent me a wonderful document about the salt trade of the time.

2) Mediterranean Sea. If I have lived before, I think many of those lives were near the Med. I always feel relaxed and at ease there, whatever part of the sea it is. I love Provence and Crete, and on shorter trips to other parts have felt right at home. This is not just because of the weather and the palm trees- I visited Santa Barbara in California on my way to a hypnosis course. It is a Mediterranean-style town, with palm trees, lovely weather, and mountains rising behind, but I felt at sea there, like a real stranger. To use the language of reincarnation - I had never been there before in all my lives!

3)Merc Sol. If Hepar Sulph doesn’t hit your bacterial infection, Merc S might

L is for ....

1a) Libraries. I'm not sure who it was who said "Libraries will get you through a time of no money better than money will get you through a time of no libraries", but isn't it true? It is sad that as my book is having to be published privately, it may never find a place in a library and be read by those who cannot afford to buy books. The spirit world is said (Michael Newton's books) to have a library too, where souls returning from a life can go to learn about their successes and errors, and check up on how they managed things in their previous lives.

1b) Lucy is the heroine of Despite the Angels, but was also a Yorkshire Terrier I had in the 1980s. I don’t know why I chose the name for the dog, but I think it got into the book because it is short. No-one wants to have to type out Esmerelda-Maybelline over and over, even if they liked that name...!

2a) Left-handed. That’s me! I am not as strongly left-handed as most people around me are right-handed, but I think that is because the world is arranged for right-handers, and we ‘citheogs’(the Irish expression) just have to cope with it, (though I am guilty of pulling pens in banks off their chains so I can use them at the left side of the hatch!). When I was a child there were no left-handed scissors, so I am proficient at using ‘normal’ ones. Mostly being left-handed doesn’t affect my life, but it irritates me a bit when people say “Oh, you’re left-handed!” (I swear one day I will reply ‘am I?’!) and more so when they express surprise at the quality of my handwriting, or my ability to do craft work. Left-handers are just as deft as anyone else, there is nothing inherently clumsy (or dirty) about the left hand. The prejudice against the left hand originates centuries ago in the belief that it had something to do with the devil. I don’t believe in a devil, so I just dismiss that as nonsense.

2b) Luck. I have had my share, and also my share of the bad sort. I wonder does it exist, or is it, as a famous golfer once said, ‘I get luckier the more I practise’?

3) Lycopodium is good for some sore throats that start on the right side of the throat. Lachesis is useful for those on the left, and also for some PMS. 

K is for...

1) Karma. This is a very misunderstood word. Many people think it has something to do with punishment being meted out to transgressors, but it is not as simple as that. It seems that we choose to experience things in our life, either out of curiosity, or to learn. So, for example, a blind person is not ‘being punished’, as is suggested in the Gospel of John, Chapter 9, but may have chosen to be blind in order to experience dependency, to accentuate musical abilities, to get away from too many lives which in some way have over-stressed the visual (for example, someone who has been an artist in many lives might choose to be blind in order to force himself to find another life path.) A child may be born blind because he has volunteered to do so as his parents will benefit in some way from the experience. I have seen this more clearly in a few families where there is a Down’s child - I remember a Mum saying to me ‘we have learnt so much by having him’, and her daughter said ‘every family should have a Down’s baby, Mummy’ ! It is possible that the soul inhabiting the Down’s body may be quite advanced, as it is often mature souls who volunteer for life’s hardest roles.

2) Knitting. I can knit, and used to do a lot, but it had slowed down in the last years. I can also crochet and sew. I used to do most of my own dressmaking. I also do beading and scrapbooking. In other words, I’m quite good with my hands. When I was a child I loved to be let loose with card, paper, scissors and glue. My mother used to tease me that I was ‘sticking flap A to flap B again’. But she and my dad were where I got it from, Mum is a very good calligrapher now, but also knits and sewed most of my childhood clothes, Dad was a DIY expert, and also drew very well.

3)Kali Bich. This is a great remedy for nasal discharge, especially if it is sticky or stringy, and greenish.

A Guest Post by Catherine Brophy

I'm interrupting the flow from A-Z to bring you a piece by Catherine, whose book "Burning Bright" just came out. It is well worth a look. Catherine is a born story teller:

The Power of Stories.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing a Native American storyteller.   Her name was Dovey.   She is a member of the Lakota.   She told us that, in her culture, children are never punished for bad behaviour.    The Lakota believe that if a child is continually disciplined she will learn that discipline is something outside themselves and never learn self-discipline.  So do they just let them run wild?   No, they use stories.

When a child does something dangerous, or rude, or in some way unacceptable. A parent, or more often a grandparent, takes them aside and tells them a story from the great treasury of traditional stories.   The story is of course related to the child’s behaviour and shows what effect that act has on the world and on the individual.   And this approach works,

Stories are more than mere entertainment, they can change behaviour.   I was travelling one time with a friend in the car of a boy-racer.   He was way over the speed limit thinking he was Louis Hamilton and I was terrified.   I begged the boy-racer to slow down.   He laughed and called me a stick in the mud.  My friend made no comment on the driving he just told us a story of a speeding car and a hideous accident.   The boy-racer slowed down and stayed within the speed limit for the rest of the journey. 

When I write stories I want my readers to enjoy them.   A lot of what I write is humorous because I want to entertain but I also because humour is subversive.  When people laugh they open their hearts and their heads. I want to show how humans behave and what makes them do what they do.   But often there’s more to it and sometimes I do not realise what it is till the writing is done.   Sometimes it takes someone else to tell me what it was!

Writing Burning Bright gave me the chance to laugh at the madness of the Celtic Tiger years and also to look back to a time when we Irish had little else but out pride.  And the question I’m asking myself and my readers is; can we hold on to the best of both worlds?

J is for...

1) Jotin. ‘My name is Jotin’ is the first line of my novel, and Jotin is one of the two ‘spirit guides’ in the story. He looks after David, the hero. But really, Jotin and his friend Trynor are the heroes, or heroines -spirit guides or ‘angels’ have no gender. It was fun making up other-worldly names for the spirits, but at work I meet people from other countries and often their names are just as unusual, so if there are any Jotins or Trynors out there, I’m sorry!

2) I struggled for a while to think of a ‘J’ to represent me, until my wonderful daughter came round last weekend to announce her engagement, and I remembered: she was born in January, and her brother was born in June. Probably the most significant events of my life!

3) Jealousy. There are no useful remedies starting with J, so I’ll mention Ignatia, which is a good remedy for the jealousy felt by a toddler when her younger sibling is born.

I is for ....

1) Imagination. So important, both for the author, and for the reader. When I read, I go into another world, and my mind’s eye produces the pictures for me - so much so that I am usually disappointed in the films made from books- the pictures are rarely right! The world within my book,“Despite the Angels”, is imaginary, and I hope potential readers will take it as such, and enjoy the story. Some people have said to me “Oh, but I don’t believe in angels (or reincarnation)”. So what? I don’t believe in talking rabbits, but can enjoy Alice in Wonderland; or flat worlds, but love Terry Pratchett’s discworld series. Animal Farm became famous though no one thinks pigs can actually talk! This is all possible because we all have Imagination, and the ability to let go of the mundane, and let our minds roam free.

2) Irish College. I am Irish, and in Ireland it is still compulsory to learn the Irish language. In fact when I was in school, if you didn’t pass Irish you didn’t get your Leaving Certificate. (A Levels/High school graduation). So summer schools were popular, as a month of total immersion was supposed to make us fluent. I thoroughly enjoyed my month at “Trabolgan”, (then a boarding school which acted as an Irish College for girls in the summer, but now a holiday camp), but I never became fluent. The way Irish was taught, as though it was a dead language, was not designed to produce either Irish speakers, or people full of love of the language. In fact, I think the language has survived despite being compulsory, not because of it. I can say only a few useless phrases, and more importantly, never need to...

3) Ipecacuanha is a great remedy for cough which ends up as gagging or vomiting

H is for...

1) Hierarchy.  Michael Newton’s books, Journey of Souls/Destiny of Souls, give much information about the age or developmental level of souls. He also describes the “Council of Elders” which every soul meets on their return from a life. Some people find themselves becoming nervous about this as it seems judgemental and hierarchical, but this is actually not the case. Souls may well be at different stages in their learning, but the more advanced souls are in no way better than the less advanced, any more than a child in the final year of school is better than the infant in kindergarten! We are all on the same journey, some of us are a little further along, that is all. And the wise souls who look after us are more like nursery school teachers than policemen or lawyers. This is why the souls who are just a tiny bit ahead of us are called ‘guides’, because they guide and help us.

2)Hypnosis. This is the most recently learnt of my three modalities, and I think it suits me because there is a story-telling aspect to it! Not in the sense that I make up nonsense and put it into peoples’ minds, that would be appalling; but that I have to think on my feet when issues arise for the client, and work out quickly how to help them explain it to themselves, so that it will no longer cause pain. This also uses some of the improvisation skills I learnt at many Drama Summer School sessions.

3)Hepar Sulph is a good remedy for many infective processes. It can help some sore throats, especially if there is pain on swallowing, also pimples/boils and so forth.