Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Livin, Svetlana Konnikova [classic fiction .TXT] 📗

Many stories, myths, and legends about amber are still told by people in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania, Scandinavian countries, Czechoslovakia, and other countries where the sunny gold stone is found.

I feel that it is important for me to wear amber from the Baltic Sea. I also have amber necklaces from India and Israel, but my Baltic amber resonates with me above all and is my personal healer. I feel comfortable with this stone. It provides me with solar and healing energy to combat my headaches. Baltic amber is the fossilized resin or sap of various ancient trees, specifically the pine tree ( Pinus succinifera), and was formed during the Eocene period about 50 million years ago. It is found in many locations in the world. Baltic amber takes a higher polish than other ambers and is generally considered the finest in the world. It ranges in color from yellow to light brown and the clarity varies from transparent to opaque. While not the oldest fossilized resin, Baltic amber has the longest historical record of use over many centuries. For ages amber has been considered folk medicine—a healing stone—able to draw disease out from the human body and ease emotional torment. The medicinal and magnetic influence of honey, red, and brown amber increases if insects and other foreign matter are trapped inside the stone. Some years ago a guide in Kaliningrad’s

Amber Museum told me the following story.

An old man strolling along the shore of the Baltic Sea

found a huge, rare piece of amber and took it to a

castle in Konigsberg. The stone sparkled with golden light and was distinct because it displayed a shiny silver snake coiled inside. Out of curiosity the monks began to pass it among themselves. When the fourth monk took the stone, he turned it upside down. The fifth monk, who was waiting patiently to touch it, exclaimed, “Look, brothers, the snake is now alive!”

“This is a miracle!” the sixth monk said.

“Don’t pass this stone to me,” said the seventh monk. “Perhaps it is touched by evil.”

They buried the stone in a secret spot and retrieved it only when the French went to war with the monks’ people, the Prussians. The monks 148 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

showed their treasure to the French knights, who were amused with the amber containing the coiled silver snake. It wasn’t long before news of the miraculous find reached the Pope at the Vatican, who sent messengers to bring the stone to Rome. Meanwhile several French knights wanted to buy the stone, but the monks refused to sell it. They believed the ancient stone was priceless. It could have originated in a primeval forest somewhere in the region of the Baltic (Sunset) Sea and may have lay buried in the ground from the time dinosaurs roamed the earth. But when the French knights persistently offered their glistening gold bars to trade for the stone, the poor monks were lured by the sight of them and sold the amber to the richest French knight before the Pope’s messengers arrived.

The stone became an object of worship for the knight who purchased it. He placed the amber on a big table, surrounded by kettles and mirrors that reflected multicolored jewels. The knight became obsessed with watching the snake and could not eat or sleep. He just gazed at the magic stone, which had won his heart and soul.

One evening, as soon as the knight closed his eyes, the amber turned into a slumberous witch. The flames flared under the kettles around the stone. As some mysterious force stoked the fire, the flames grew intense and melted the amber into honey. At once the snake slithered out.

The knight slept soundly as the snake slid silently down the knight’s neck and struck him fast near his heart. Still the knight dreamt uninterruptedly of his amber. In the morning his fellow crusaders found him dead. Nearby sat the shining amber with the silver snake inside. The horrified monks buried the stone and marked the site with a warning to others.

The monks mourned the death of the French knight, but

the Prussian knights engraved the image of a snake on their bronze belt buckles to commemorate the snake that killed

their enemy. The image became a talisman to protect them on the battlefield.

Clever Remedies to Outsmart Headaches @ 149

Words are the Physicians.

—Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Greek dramatist

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You can’t jump over your own head.

—Russian proverb

I take a sun bath and listen to the hours, formulating and disintegrating under the pines, and smell the resiny hardihood of the high-noon hours.

—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948), American writer

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How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

—William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English playwright and poet ƒ

And that was another gap between us. Between all men and all insects. We humans, saddled for a lifetime with virtually the same body, naturally find it difficult to imagine a life in which you can, at a single stroke, outside a fairy tale, just by splitting your skin and stepping out, change into something utterly different.

—Colin Fletcher (b.1922), Welsh hiker and writer

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The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

—JacquesYves Cousteau (1910–1997), French marine explorer 150 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

Chapter 8

Sleeping Beauty

Life is long, if you know how to use it.

—Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65),