The three substances of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh are known around the Christian world through the traditional bible story of the three kings gifting them to at the birth of the Jesus child in the Saint Mathew’s gospel. Actually, these gifts call upon us to recollect even more ancient inner memories belonging to the Mysteries of old. Kings – wise men, magi, initiates – receiving heavenly guidance, carrying, and bestowing at the heart level, such symbolic substances which were believed to harbor cosmic wisdom and inspire creative impulses.
Two thousand years later, on November 30th, 1999, Jennifer Green from the Water Research Institute sent an inspired letter to many people in many countries around the world, sharing an imagination she developed and researched with her colleagues. Namely, implementing a world-wide spraying of Hugo Erbe’s Three Kings Preparation. Picking up some of what Jennifer summarized in her letter about this new Bio-Dynamic preparation, here are some of the basic thoughts behind it.
After the bombing of Hiroshima, Hugo Erbe, a biodynamic farmer in Germany who had a very close connection to the Elemental world, noticed a massive disruption and flight of beneficial elemental beings from his farmland. He developed this preparation, discovering that these substances were able to:
-Be an encouraging living elixir for the elemental beings through the gold
-Lead healthy elemental beings back to their favorable connections to the environment through the frankincense
-Help the higher cosmic – “I” take the lead over of bereft and abandoned groups of elemental beings through myrrh”.
The new millennium, needed a response to the growing experiences of “atrophying forces of the Elemental world, the chaos in our weather patterns, the more difficult circumstances for growing and a disheartened humanity”. Our times are asking for an inner resolve to offer a healing gift to nature with this special preparation, which potentially introduces a renewed impulse for healing and balance for the elemental world. The focus was less to bring about the exclusion of malevolent beings but more creating a home and connection to the benevolent ones and perhaps to reconnect human beings in a loving way with this world again.
This impulse came alive in me. My personal experience in participating the first year and the many years that followed, is that this endeavor created warmth and enthusiasm adding a seed to the jewel-like time of the Twelve Holy Nights. This seed was made real by our will, holding the pestle, working rhythmically with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh as a group of people connected to the holy mood of New Year’s Eve and spraying it at Epiphany around the land boundaries sometimes in deep snow or frigid temperatures.
Just a couple of years before, I had the opportunity to work with gold in the process of potentizing it to the homeopathic D2 level (using lactose in the 1:9 ratio). This was for a cream to help protect the heart (together with peat and rose oil amongst other things). In the mortar, the very fine precious gold powder disappeared quickly in the lactose, demonstrating to me a quality of selflessness coming from this metal which is known to be connected to the forces of the Sun. Further I felt it was asking me to strive in my consciousness towards the forces of wisdom and “heart warmth” this metal seemed to symbolize and radiate.
Later on, I was introduced by my friend and mentor gardener, Dennis Klocek to working with the substances of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. He is using the three kings spray in interesting ways in different sprays and salves, besides the Holy Nights preparation. In his own words: “The resins of frankincense and myrrh provide warmth during frost outbreaks or cold snaps that stress cultivated plants in the winter. This also gives plants to deal with heat spikes in the summer.
Resins in plants are the result of complex oil and warmth processes and must be converted before they can be used in water-based sprays. (In passing, it is to be noted that traditionally fire was used for these two substances in offering rituals; now, water is the medium for our present time). To that effect the idea is to separate the gum and the resin parts, keeping the later for the preparation. It is done differently for each of the two. Both take a fair amount of time and allow us to get a little deeper into the true nature and processes living in these substances. Thus, we learn their deeper aspects, as we refine the process of separation. When we experience the process, we get to know something in a living way that is already gone when we conceptualize it!
The frankincense is simply done in hot water in a Mary’s bath over several hours, the white gum dissolving in parts, separating from the yellow resin, with the latter hardening into a brittle form when cold. The myrrh takes a good 24 hours, also with a Mary’s bath but with alcohol later distilled off. It took me some time to get to an acceptable result. As Dennis Klocek says: “These processes unfold very slowly and can’t be hurried but lend themselves to meditative states that harmonize the consciousness of the worker with the elemental world. Patience with the process is the lesson that can be learned from these mysterious and powerful healing substances”. The resins once mingled with the homeopathic gold, adding some emulsifiers and drops of frankincense and myrrh essential oil give a beautiful liquid paste to be dissolved in warm water. It can keep for a long time before applying to the earth.
Reflecting on working with the Three Kings Preparation from these different angles, I have come to realize that they bring out clearly and in a helpful way this tension between the tangible and the intangible, between substance and Being, between materialism and idealism, between our capacity of imagination and our Will. This tension is tended by the power of “the middle”: the attention we give, the reverence we create, and the openness we maintain. This tension is a condition we live in constantly when we attempt to grow spiritually, and to go through each day meaningfully, as a seeker, a healer, a farmer, a teacher, or a sister or brother to other human beings. Whatever one’s capacity is of perception of the imponderable, of the subtle active behind the scene, our present-day task is to grow our consciousness of the spirit in such a way that we can work in concert with it. Working with Gold Frankincense and Myrrh has become for me a bit of an archetype of this task because on the one hand you can hold them in the present moment in the palm of … your hand and on the other, they carry a whole gesture that speaks to you from the distance past of ancient times when Kingly wisdom filled the souls of human beings.
Jean-David Derreumaux is a biodynamicmaster gardener who grows many plants and produces tinctures for Uriel and Weleda pharmacy.
The remedy produced by Uriel pharmacy known as threefold balance and also compounded at Weleda pharmacy USA are versions of the remedy first suggested by Dr. Karl Konig MD to help children and adults with special needs. It is a remedy connected to the ancient mysteries of healing. It is especially helpful for the disharmony of the nervous system within the human constitution. Frankincense (Olibanum) the resin of the rubber tree was used by ancient Egyptians as incense to help a person reconnect with the spiritual archetypes which provide regenerative healing forces. It was often used for disordered breathing conditions. Today we know that Frankincense (Boswellia) is excellent for the inflammation of mucous membranes for instance in asthma and even has effects on some forms of cancer.
The bitter Myrrh resin was used by the ancient Egyptian priests to support the physical form. It was used for severe wounds and in the rituals of dying to hold the integrity of the physical body together with its spiritual members.
Gold has a special use in anthroposophic medicine to support the individual “I” or regulatory processes especially in the rhythmical transformative processes of the human being needed to direct healing forces in the right way. This is why it is often used in transforming psychic illnesses like depression for one example.
In different potencies this remedy threefold remedy has been used by anthroposophic doctors for dying patients to maintain and protect the integrity or the “wholeness” of the spiritual and physical human being as we cross the threshold of death. One imagination of this remedy is that it protects the human organisms from malevolent beings and processes that would seek to fragment and distress the human soul approaching the threshold. This is a unique approach to palliative care but in a practical sense translates into maintaining the dignity of the human being crossing the threshold of death.
As a general indication and following the case studies of Dr. Konig and his colleagues these substances can be given as a remedy to support the healthy integration of the physical body (myrrh), the astral body (frankincense) and the individual “I” organization (Gold) which connect the spirit to the body. This frees our etheric body to be directed toward healing and be active in the transformation of illness towards health.
The original indications for this remedy were general. It was used for chronic and inflammatory ailments particularly when there was damage to the central nervous system. It has been used for many psychiatric conditions, functional heart arrhythmias, weather sensitivities and seizures. I observe it as a remedy needed more and more in modern times for patients suffering from the overwhelming assault on the nerve sense system leading to depression and loss of integration of the soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing. This is a typical problem in modern times. We think one thing, feel another and yet act impulsively disconnected from these other soul qualities. These three substances are emerging as a modern remedy which more and more patients are responding to when prescribed. My own personal prescribing of this remedy has been highly influenced by patients asking to stay on it because they feel more “whole” and able to cope with modern stress situations.
Dr. Steven Johnson DO is an anthroposphic doctor working together with Jean-David Derrameux studying ways to improve anthroposophic medicines. They are joined by their gardening colleugues Marc Blachere at Camphill Copake and have all worked with adults with special disabilities.
In the year of 2017 I started dabbling a bit into biodynamic gardening and started using some of the preparations. Given that my birthday is on epiphany, I felt quite attracted to the 3 kings preparation of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. At midnight of the New Year 2017 I mixed the preparation, and then on January 6 (my birthday) I sprayed it on the perimeter around our property. We have about 2/3 of an acre with some large trees, in a residential neighborhood. I didn’t think much of it for the rest of the year. Then on October 8th, 2017 a large wildfire hit our city and decimated many neighborhoods, including ours. We were able to flee in time and spent the night at a friend’s house in a neighboring city.
The next morning, we drove back to see the ravage that had happened. We knew our house would be gone, turned to ash and dust like all the other homes we saw as we drove through the neighborhood. Everything was completely obliterated, like a bomb had gone off and decimated everything. As we drove towards the house I noticed that our trees were still standing. My heart was beating really fast and I could barely catch my breath.
Then, there it was, the house, standing alone, among the ravage all around. Between the tears I noticed that the ground, the grass all around the house was still green. The fence around the property had burned down, but it all stopped there: right where I had sprayed the 3 kings’ preparation. Was it the preparation, the large trees around the house, or the fact that our neighbor had accidentally left the sprinklers on the night before? Yes, probably all of them, but in my heart, I had no doubt that the preparation had protected the elementals inside the perimeter. It was palpable, and over the next year, while the neighborhood was being cleaned and rebuilt, our property provided a shelter for all the birds, wild turkeys, racoons, possums and other creatures that had survived the disaster and were displaced by it.
Clearly, I continue to have an affinity for this combination of substances and I use it frequently in my medical practice as a medicament. Just like the preparation protected the elementals inside the property, the medicine, when used in cream form, provides a protective cloak around our heart against the stressors of life. When taken orally, the remedy is useful for patients when they are going through significant life transitions: like the death of a family member or transitioning into a new phase of life. I find that it helps with the mourning and then letting go and finding new meaning in what is to come. It has a threefold approach: frankincense helps us process our emotions around the situation, myrrh keeps us connected to our body, and gold brings in our higher purpose for what we are here to do. That is why this remedy is also helpful during the time of winter solstice. It helps us contemplate what has been, hold on to the essence of our experiences, and then move on into the new of what is to come.
Daciana Iancu, MD is an anthroposphic doctor practicing in California as is a co-leader of the Anthroposophic Health Association.
You can purchase the Three Kings Preparation from the Josephine Porter Institute here.