From Horse-Goddesses to Hippocrates…..

‘When one enters the World of ancient wisdom from the unavoidable worries of everday life, encounters herself the lost friend that has been longed for a while, and the comforts of the apprehension of past lives. Those are the familiar sensations of thousands of years’ …..

There has been several diseases, infections and plagues since the beginning of humanity. People have always searched for solutions for their well-being like all other living things experienced a challenge to survive. However, among them, human beings are the luckiest ones (although it is a relative concept). They can think and react against the threats. Nowadays, a pandemic disease is forcing the scientists to make a strenuous effort to find a treatment. They are having the vital mission to find a cure and the healthcare professionals are devoting themselves to rehabilitate the infected people. Some people are deeply affected and coping with this tragedy. Unfortunately, quite a number of infected people have already passed away. Yet, for some of them it is the time to question their lives. Everyone is experiencing this Chaotic time in their own way. Who knows, may be making differences in invidual lives might create some changes worldwide like the Butterfly effect. Although Butterfly effect is often used as an example in cases where a small effect may cause Chaos, can humanity reverse this Chaotic time into a more balanced life? Time will show it eventually even though we might feel helpless in striking back the current threat.

The latest advance of Humanity over the last 100 years helps to a certain degree, but is not able to find a prompt cure yet (although it is in progress). Therefore, this threat makes us to seize the concept of timelessness and think about the previous times. How people reacted during the similar chaotic situations in older times? This time at some point is not very different from thousands of years ago. Yet, it justifys the validity of Hippocrates’ aphorisms who also got much of his doctrine from the Ayur Veda of Susruta. He said:

“Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” 

“Everything in excess is opposed by nature.”

“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.”

“The opposites are the cures of the opposites.”

Hippocrates is a name given to an ancient Greek physician who is known to have founded a medical school on the Mediterranean island of Kos in the 5th-4th century BC. Probably, like the name of the ancient writer “Homeros”, the name “Hippocrates” was given to several physician teachers at the famous medical school, but it is more considered as a single person who emerged as a precursor in medicine and called as “the Father of Medicine”. The collected writings attributed to him is also called the “Hippocratic Corpus”. When we search for the meaning of the name “Hippocrates”, we might find more clue about this personalized knowledge of medicine. “Hippocrates” is a Latinized form of Greek name Ίππο (hippo)-κρατης (kratos) Hippo-krates meaning “horse power”. Is there a relationship of this word with “healing”?…..

In ancient times, healing concept was particularly associated with horse-goddesses who retained human personification. The anthropomorphized horses and hippomorphic goddesses are known in the mythologies of many Indo-European cultures. In Hittite/Hurrian mythology, she was called Kamrusepa (or Sausga, Ishara…) who was responsible for the earth’s fertility, health/magic and ritual purification. During the critical times in Hittite history, the healing goddesses were known to reconstruct the welfare and harmony. Among the Celts, she was known as Epona, whose name is suggested to be derived from Proto-Indo European word ekwo-s “horse”. Besides that, many Greek goddesses were given the same epithet “Hippia” horse, like Athena Hippia or Hera Hippia. Hippia “horse” symbolized power, grace, beauty, freedom, nobility, strength and life force. Today, one can observe the symbolic power of horse still alive among the modern Shamans’ healing rituals since it symbolizes the journey a healer takes to retrieve the lost soul of the patient. Therefore, may be this might explain why Hippocrates’ name was called as “Horse master” Hippo-crates”.

Although Hippocrates was recognized to have turned away from divine notions of medicine and used observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge, it should be noted that he collected all kinds of knowledge. He probably intermingled all different approches with his scientific methods like the threads of wisdom have been collected and preserved over the ages.

“I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant” Hippocratic Oath

“The material world is all feminine. The feminine engergy makes the non-manifest, manifest. So even men (are of the feminine energy). We have to relinquish our ideas of gender in the conventional sense. This has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with energy. So feminine energy is what creates and allows anything which is non-manifest, like an idea, to come into form, into being, to be born. All that we experience in the world around us, absolutely everything (is feminine energy). The only way that anything exists is through the feminine force.”
Zeena Schreck

“Throughout the history of medicine, including the shamanic healing traditions, the Greek tradition of Asclepius, Aristotle and Hippocrates, and the folk and religious healers, the imagination has been used to diagnose disease.”
Jeanne Achterberg

The shaman is the figure at the beginning of human history that unites the doctor, the scientist and the artist into a single notion of care-giving and creativity.     Terence McKenna