Saturday 24 March 2012

Homeopathy celebrities on the couch: Whitney Houston, the devil under the skin

Whitney Houston on a concert in 2011, by vainstyle, Flickr.com 

Whitney Houston has been the soul of pop music for over two decades. She died tragically on February 11th 2012, drowned in the bath in her hotel suite, her system was filled with several recreational drugs such as cocaine and marijuana as well as pharmaceutical drugs.

The coroner’s inquests deliberated that she died by accidental drowning, due to cocaine intake and heart disease.
Whitney had a long history of drug and alcohol addiction and as with many stars fame and addictions seem to go hand in hand.

Without going through her life history and her emotional ups and downs, we can still draw a broad sketch of her personality in order to try to understand the degenerative process that eventually led her demise.

It is somewhat ironic that as a seven years old child she used to hold “secret concerts” in the family’s empty swimming pool and she ended up drowning. 

Whitney Houston homeopathic remedy is Coca:

It was a sacred plant for the Incas but nicknamed by the Spanish priests who evangelized them as a “Devil’s illusion”, it is therefore interesting to note how Houston when asked on an interview by Diane Sawyers to pick "the devil"  from a list of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and prescription drugs, replied: “the devil is me”!

Coca, the plant from which Cocaine is extracted was widely used in South America to enable workers to climb up the Andes without feeling the characteristic weakness, dizziness that altitude sickness can bring.  While masking Coca leaves their performance improved, and they were able to go on for days with very little water, no food, and impervious to physical pain.

Just as Coca has a tradition of being used by climbers in the physical sense, it is also known for being used by high achievers in our society: the so called high flyers – people who go through an enormous amount of psychological pressure in their professional lives and who are expected to endure long hours of work with very little rest or sleep.    

In homeopathy Coca remedy is used to treat ailments such as weak vocal cords: a tired voice from overuse – which was a recurrent problem in Houston’s career probably due to her cocaine abuse. 


Dizziness, fainting, desire for isolation, insomnia, heart failure, blood clots, and a characteristic skin itch where the suffer has a feeling that there is something crawling under their skin are also well known ailments for this homeopathic remedy.  

It can also include loss of libido and kidney weakness, a prickly sensation in the mouth, and a desire for alcohol.  
We know that Whitney Houston suffered from stage fright to some extent – she talks briefly about it on her interview with Diane Sawyers – there is a link to the video at the end of this post.

The coroner’s inquest also mentions heart illness possibly due to the use of Cocaine: although this might have been the physical trigger, her death was probably due to a destructive lifestyle that led Whitney to abuse herself in many different ways.

 
Incidentally Cannabis Indica is the homeopathic remedy used to treat the phobia of drowning: Houston was a frequent Marijuana smoker but she surely didn’t have this phobia or she might have been more cautions of drowning.  
Link to 2002 interview with Diane Sawyers where Whitney admits to a drug addiction, and talks about where she imagined herself to be in 2012 The biggest devil is me...

By the Undercover Homeopath




 









Wednesday 14 March 2012

Homeopathy celebrities on the couch: Sinead O'Connor, the Venus trap


The wolf is getting married, from the new album: What about me being me (and you being you)
Sinead O’Connor has been angry for most of her life.
She had a traumatic early childhood witnessing her parents' acrimonious separation and forced to live with her mother who suffered from depression and drug addiction. 
O’Connor also went through a stage of self-abuse through drugs and depression: she has seldom been happy. 
She has spoken candidly about her dark times: at the hands of her mother who allegedly abused her physically and mentally. Darker times at a Catholic institution where she was sent at the age of 15 to curb her school truancy and shoplifting. 
Dark, sad and confused times when she found herself raising a child on her own. 
Further dark times when gripped by depression and quite possibly bipolar disorder unable to shake her inner demons.
She has issued very public cries for help, even threatening suicide. 
O’Connor’s presence in the Media over 25 years of her career span has been riddled with scandal mostly from her own actions. 
She tore a photo of the Pope on live TV in protest for the Church’s silence about child sexual abuse in Ireland.
She spoke of being lesbian in very graphic and un-complementary terms when an admission of homosexuality, especially of female homosexuality could end careers, bring on public disapproval, and condemn people to ostracism. 
She has spoken of her private life, and even her sexual preferences in vivid detail - She has caught controversy. 
     Recently she confessed:  "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more         towards the hairy blokes" 
     She also mentioned a “hot-date with a banana” on Twitter. 
But she has also revealed her human side, her anxieties, her fears, her loneliness, and her vulnerabilities in a way that not many public figures have dared to. 
And throughout the last 25 years or so she has kept many of her fans under the spell of a beautiful if somewhat hoarse voice, a voice that can reach high notes even when chocked with tears, a voice that sometimes is so full of anger that sounds more like a bark than a human voice.  
It is also the voice who sang “Nothing Compares 2 U”, the song that talked about the immense void after a break-up, something that most of us understand and can relate to.

 
"Nothing Compares 2 U"
Some quotes: 
'Everyone thinks I’m mad,” 
“But I still believe you should only make a record for one reason, and that’s because you are going to go crazy if you don’t.”
Her anger as a young artist: 
“I was a very unhappy person. Young and angry. I couldn’t understand why people liked my music because for me the only reason I was making it was because I was mad and I had to.”
“went straight from hell into the music business”. 
“The greatest thing about it was money, ’cause it meant I could send my kids to a good school and I could have a nanny. I was terrified I would be a really bad parent. The money made a difference.”
O'Connor has said she's been consistently misunderstood by the media, and "nasty people" generally.

"Since my first record, all that has happened is I get treated like a crazy person, in a world where crazy is used as a stick with which to beat someone. It's very nasty … And loads of people than in our life think its ok to treat u like shit and dismiss u as 'mad'. It's very sore." 
“When I was younger, I was making music because I was fuckin’ mental,” she says. “And it was the only outlet for me. That’s why I love Bob Dylan because when he came along he changed what you could say in songs. Up until then, it was all ‘baby, baby, I love you’, but with Idiot Wind, he showed that you could say stuff in songs that you wouldn’t be able to say anywhere else."

“For me, starting out in songwriting, I did it because I lived in a society where I couldn’t actually discuss these issues. Now that I’m older, and I’ve worked through a lot of that, I have different reasons for writing songs... .I don’t have this enormous pain, which I would have felt before – and which was very healthy then. Now, I’m driven more by the need to make music or the enjoyment of singing the songs live.”

Music as healing:
“My records are diaries to me. They started out in anger and recovery, and there is a journey and I’m pleased that it has reached a place of happiness.” 
from her new album, she says “to regain some of my dignity would be nice”. 
“When I sing, it’s the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It’s not about notes or scales, it’s all about emotion. You must be in the song, see the picture and tell the story. If this room burst into flames, you could sing 'fire!’ at the highest octave of your voice, you’d go to a place you can’t reach any other time."
“I’m on fire when I’m singing, I’m completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It’s a very special thing."
“Nobody gets between me and my microphone.” 
She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and for a while thought this would be the end of her career, but soon after she made a come back by experimenting with other musical styles.
Child abuse: 
“When you are a very tiny female living in a situation as violent as the one I was in, the only way you’re gonna survive is to be very tough,” 
“You cannot be a poppy in a tsunami. The more delicate and fragile you are, the tougher you have to act.” 
“People who experience child-abuse situations can be terribly angry, partly from fear,”

Early years: 
“I think anger is really a fist made out of tears. I would definitely be dead if not for music. I prayed very fervently as a small child that God would give me a way out. And I remember distinctly walking home down this laneway, I can’t have been more than five or six, and with the rhythm of my feet I began to hear music, and within that second I made the association with the Holy Spirit, and I said thanks to it. I felt it was the answer to the prayers. I get to stand there and scream and I have a right to, ’cause what else am I gonna do? You’ve got to stand up for yourself somehow. That’s what singers are, people who have to get everything out.” 
Relationships: 
“I don’t think about these things rationally. I just go impulsively with feeling. It doesn’t matter how strong a woman you are, the feminists will hate this, but we all want some big, hairy bloke to snuggle us and tell us everything’s going to be grand.” 
“growing up the way I did, you have this terrible longing for the normal family. You’re trying to get something through a man that no man can actually give you, all the hugs and holding you didn’t get, you’re almost trying to heal a wound.” 
“my husband is a very gentle and delicate and private kind of person, so the last six months have been really kind of awful and I’ve learnt some very hard lessons, and one of them is I am never going to talk in public about anyone I love.”


Coping with fame: 
"They're like sunglasses – they put a bit of distance between me and the audience. I'm very shy when I sing." On wearing rimmed glasses to go on stage. 
"A lot of people say, 'You destroyed your career by tearing up a picture of the pope'" – on US TV in 1992 – "but I define success differently in this spiritually bereft business. To me, it's 'Can I be myself?' I could stand in the street and sing and get enough to pay the bills. I don't need millions of dollars. That was why I tore up the pope's picture – I knew I had enough money that I didn't have to marry a man with a very small penis to get the bills paid. I don't want any man to have control over me. And that is success." 
"The reaction I had from people … the usual, 'She's mental,' and that it was the culmination of my lack of self-esteem. 'Send social services round!' It made me depressed about being me." 
Her home:
It’s currently in Ireland by the seaside, with a rather bare front garden and a big warning to hackers and snappers. 
“Home, for me, means my kids, a place of safety, a place where I know who I am,” she says. “When I’m away working, I find it hard to know who I am or what I am. I don’t have the things around me that normally make me know what my role is.”
About her new album “What about me being me ( and you being you)”:
“I think also artistically, it’s about returning to doing my own thing, after a circuitous journey. I’ve made quite a few themed albums, and this one is really all about coming home.”

On drug addiction: 
 
“Well, obviously if someone is taking Class A drugs, they’re trying to cover up something,” she explains. “Only an enormous amount of pain would require heroin. But I don’t think it just applies to drugs. We all use different means of keeping people away from us. I used to be a terrible weed head. There was this smoky mist all around me, which I could see afterwards, was my way of creating this haze because I was afraid to love someone or let anyone in. And that was because I was afraid I’d lose them. In my case, I was smoking like a fuckin’ maniac, but it would have been because I was a crazy bitch rather than because of anything else.”

Breaking taboos:

“There’s a whole load of obvious stuff in the world that nobody ever talks about, like pooing, pissing, wanking, dying,” she says. “I have a great T-shirt that says ‘Death ... bit of a worry isn’t it?’ I’m sure death is something that nearly everybody thinks about at least once a day – but no one ever talks about it.”
"It is sickening to have it suggested by anyone that I am 'insane' for talking openly about sex. The researcher said to me that since I suffer from depression do I not think it's insane behaviour to be talking publicly about sex. I will never as long as I live, consider appearing on The Late Late Show again.” Well... she was, just a couple of days ago.


Love is…

When I’m an Old Lady has O’Connor singing a poignant line that ends with “that’s my girl”, which echoes her 1992 album, Am I Not Your Girl? Rainforests have been felled in the name of O’Connor’s (admittedly eventful) love life. Does this song reflect a primal need within her to belong in a relationship? “It’s actually a song about being in love with your boyfriend’s best friend. And that did happen a number of years ago, that a guy said those words to me, ‘That’s my girl’ – and even though you’re middle-aged, you still act like a 16-year-old and get carried away.

“Up until recently, I probably would have been the kind of woman who feels like I have to have a fella in order to be alright or to feel secure. But I actually don’t feel that anymore now. I think it’s just me growing older. Now, I’ve got used to doing my own thing ...I feel better now, in terms of feeling a sense of belonging in the world. Sometimes being with people in the past, I felt more lonely than being on my own.”

“Not minding whether I'm in a relationship or not does not mean that I don't want to shag the arse off every man I could possibly get my hands on, she says. In fact, while I may be happy enough without a partner, I would wilt away and be depressed if I wasn't having sex. With nice people.”
And after the whirlwind on/off/on again latest marriage whose emotional ups and downs led to her latest suicide attempts, she tweeted: 
“Guess who had a mad love making affair with her husband last night?” 
“I’m been spoiled rotten by my hubby”.


About her song “I Had A Baby“ and on being a single mother:

“It’s a subject not really written about,” she declares, referring to the challenges of rearing a child whose father is absent. “The only other song that’s tackled it, at least that I could think of, was Papa Was a Rolling Stone. I read so many books, but no one talked about what to do when the father isn’t around. My main objective was to tackle it without being accused, and if it blames anyone, it’s me. It says quite clearly in the song that a child shouldn’t suffer over things that I’ve done. It’s more about what do I tell the kid ... What would the father want me to tell him?

“It’s not just fathers who bugger off. Mothers do it too, and they don’t ever have to look back and watch the damage that it can cause. I mean, it can really ruin a kid’s life. It became a terrible stress for myself and my kid for a while, and it was a real source of sadness in my life.

“It’s all sorted now, and I certainly had no desire to cause any hurt in the song to the child or to his father. Anyway, anger is a temporary emotion. There will come a time, years from now, when we [the child’s father and O’Connor] won’t be angry with each other, so I didn’t want to put something down that would be permanent, and which just wouldn’t be true at some time in the future.”

Child abuse in Ireland:

 “I spent some time after the Murphy report came out trying to encourage various Irish and other artists to get involved,” she says, “and they were completely indifferent. They did not want to know, and I was very wounded and very angry about that. At the same time, I’m aware that I have no right to tell people how they should or shouldn’t act. And that raised the question in my mind: what is a real VIP?

“In music, we all think we’re great, yet the real VIPs are these children. The song talks about ‘a face that never was, nor will be kissed’. Well, that’s about these children who never felt a mother’s kiss on their face. I think it’s easy for a lot of us to lose the sense of what’s important.”

“One hundred years from now, Irish kids are going to be learning about this, which is to me the most important event in Irish history. And they’ll be asking: ‘Well, what were the artists doing?’ This is what I would call real Catholic emancipation: the loosening of our psyches from the Catholic church."

“Enda Kenny’s speech is the most important speech ever made by an Irish politician. He nailed it with his ‘gimlet eye of the canon lawyer’. So I feel there are a cowardice and a hypocrisy about the silence that’s come from Irish artists – and artists in general. And there are times when deafening silence from artists is really criminal. Don’t they say ‘All that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing’?”

Religion:

“We don’t necessarily need religions but we like rituals, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s basically a charity and we could run it ourselves. The only real use for priests is for bereavement or dying. In the 21st century, we don’t need anyone dictating to us what we should think. It’s fuckin’ stupid.”
Her physical appearance: 
Masculine: shaved head, masculine clothes, spectacles and a heavy set tattooed body displaying many religious symbols, often wears a top with a picture of Jesus on the upper chest.
She says: "I don't feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I'm an old lady, I'm going to have it."


Her spirituality: 
"I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we're all going home... I don't think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally". She also expressed a belief in Pantheism, viewing the physical universe as a body with divine "energy". 
You can also watch an interview where she talks at length about her Christian believes and what was like to grow up in a profoundly religious country, by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
One of her most remarkable quotes from that interview is when she describes how as a 7yrs old child she perceived the Holy Spirit as a bird, but a bird that couldn’t breathe and how this made her feel suffocated too. 
She also talks about Catholicism being deeply imprinted on her DNA, and of children being criticized and chastised by their parents and by priests if they told that they had seen ghosts. 
"It felt like I was living in a coffin," She said about her latest marriage and the reasons for the breakup "It was going to be a coffin for both of us, and I saw him crushed. The whole reason I ended it was out of respect and love for the man."

Her ideal man: 
Recently she advertised for a boyfriend. She didn’t want any unemployed men or those who use hair gel, aftershave, hair dye and hair dryers. 
Instead, she requested stubble as a must, and any potential men to be "snuggly". 
"Must be living in Ireland but I don't care if he is from the planet Zog." 
"Must be blind enough to think I'm gorgeous." 
"Stubble is a non-negotiable must. Any removal of stubble would be upsetting for me." 
"a very sweet sex-starved man".  
Depression:

"I am tired of all this 'Sinead is crazy' crap. It's a disgrace. It has caused me enormous pain in my life as an artist and has many times led me to consider ending my life.

"Thankfully I have four beautiful reasons not to. Those are my precious children. But no woman should have to walk around feeling like someone has driven a tree through her heart. I can honestly say that is how I felt since my conversation with the Late Late researcher."
"Had to go to the psychiatrist for routine renew prescription etc. She says I'm a bad mum and mental for talking so openly about sex in public. All this shit we’re not allowed to say. Including suicidal feelings, sex etc. You just get treated like a crazy person."

I want to go to heaven SO bad. Have for years. But I don’t wanna abandon my kids. But if I cud die without them knowing I did it myself I would.


"Anyway.. If any1 knows how I can kill myself. Now I f****g wish suicide wud kill me."

Sinead O’Connor Homeopathic remedy is Drosera:
About Drosera:
Drosera is a carnivore plant part of the Sundew family closely related to the Venus Flytrap.  The plant grows in the wetland in peat or sandy soil with very poor mineralisation. Its leaves are permanently moist, their filaments resemble hairs and are covered by Mucilage: a natural glue designed to trap and decompose the insects the plant preys on. 
An average size Drosera consumes about 2000 insects per season, they supply the nutrients the plant needs to thrive and which cannot be absorbed from the soil. In fact too much lime in the soil and the plant can easily die, the poor the soil the better. 
In homoeopathy, this remedy is used for whooping cough, malnourished children, lung problems, asthma, skin growths such as moles, weak bones particularly the ankles, visual disturbances – where there is a flickering and difficulty adapting to artificial light, as well as long sight. 
Patients who benefit from this remedy can have many pains: sharp and sudden, prickling sensations, and a bruised feeling on the bones. 
Their voice, as well as their cough, can be like a high pitch barking sound, they also tend to have a hoarse voice.
They are angry people: angry about social injustice, about an injustice done to others, particularly children. They distrust their own friends and have a short temper. 
They are idealistic but feel easily disappointed, cannot focus their attention unto anything or anyone for too long. They can be paranoid and feel prosecuted by others. 
The plant also treats urinary infections particularly when the patient can only urinate a drop at the time, and the ailment is related to excessive sexual activity. The plant also has aphrodisiac qualities.    
Patients who benefit from Drosera as a homoeopathic remedy feel very lonely especially at night, and can have delusions/dreams of ghosts.  They always feel better when accompanied. They suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts, with a particular tendency to commit suicide by drowning.
Drosera is well suited to O’Connor for her need to be in a relationship and yet not being able to maintain a long-lasting commitment – she has four children from four different fathers.
Her strong libido is also addressed by the remedy. The need for sex comes from a constant feeling of emptiness: the feeling is typical of the carnivorous plants' mental picture - they need to "fill themselves with their prey in order to survive". 

The pain that she has suffered for most of her life, first emotionally and later physically when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia: a condition that causes a lot of pain, can also be addressed by this remedy.
Her depression and suicidal tendencies as a cry for help – even her choice of email for the event was a cry for help: imwonderful@me.com wonderful is hardly the word someone would describe themselves with if about to commit suicide.
Her very intriguing video-clip of “The wolf is getting married” suggests keynotes for the Drosera plant energy: the trap is set, the “bride” is covered in elastic white lace that peels off every time a string is pulled.
Her interview about her album Theology a few years ago is also revealing of this same Drosera energy:

Check at 2.15 as she speaks of a feeling of suffocation as a child growing up in a Catholic environment where the Holy Spirit was a bird locked up in a cupboard…

Check at 17.28 when she plays with the large mole on her chin while she is thinking: Drosera is also a remedy for moles and other skin growths.
She broke an ankle recently: Drosera is a remedy with an affinity for treating weak bones particularly ankles.
Drosera thrives on wet ground boggy or sandy soil: O’Connor lives by the sea.
Plant remedies that grow on soggy conditions tend to treat patients who are emotionally needy, who need to be in an emotional/sexual relationship in order to feel complete. A well known homoeopathic remedy for this is Pulsatilla which is, however, a more feminine, timid female type.
Drosera is just as needy but with a more aggressive and predatory mental disposition: after all is a carnivorous plant – it sets up a trap in order to attract its prey which will eat once decomposed. 
O’Connor has an interesting choice of words after she was reconciled with her fourth husband: she tweeted several that she was being “spoiled rotten” and “sickly happy”.  The way she talks about loving someone as losing them in one of her songs also points to this same Drosera theme: where possessing the insect means killing it! She even mentioned that the reason why she was breaking up with her fourth husband was to release him…
And then there are other minor but no less important signs: she wears glasses, Drosera being also a remedy for eyesight problems.  She wears her hair shaven, and she also likes her men with stubble: they also match the plant’s appearance with its hairy/spiky appearance.


By the Undercover Homeopath

Further link:

The Theology video where Sinead O'Connor discusses spirituality, religion and her music. Interview by Dr Rachael Turkienicz


Saturday 10 March 2012

Homeopathy celebrities on the couch Nicholas Cage, the dark magician

The Sorcerer's Apprentice Nicholas Cage
Nicholas Cage in The Sourcer's Apprentice, photo by Christopher_Aquino Flickr.com

He is a creative genius, but he’s also eccentric, and individualistic. 

He comes from a family of cineastes, the most famous: his uncle Francis Ford Coppola. To avoid taking advantage of his family connection he changed his name early in his career. 

He is a method actor, taking his characters to the ultimate consequence.  While he plays, he morphs with his character, and that’s why he's able to improvise on the film set to the annoyance of his fellow actors. 

This is also why he evokes such strong feelings in his audience: they either love him or hate him. They tend to associate the real life individual with the character he is playing confusing both.

Nicholas lives in between states: between several parallel realities, fragmenting his ego amongst the many characters he plays. 

Drawing heavily from mythological concepts, both ancient myths and modern ones through Comics which he considers modern mythology, he has been able to completely immerse himself in the collective consciousness and unleash deep emotions. 

He is a dark magician of the film industry:

Able to conjure light and darkness to create a figurative mirror where we watch the reflection of Nicholas Cage playing a character playing Nicholas Cage, and reflecting back at us the symbiosis of both until we are no longer certain of who we are watching.

Cage has a great sense of humour, childish but somewhat dry and ironic.  Throughout his career he's been been linked to rumours of a connection to the supernatural, which he has dismissed with a few jokes.

As incredible and ridiculous some rumours have been, such as the latest claim that he is a vampire, there is clearly a strong attraction to the occult and the desire to explore the subconscious in Cage.

One of his favourite Comic characters which inspired the film sequel Ghost Rider is a supernatural creature travelling through past lives into the present to face his enemies and avenge the past, its superpower is to suck out everyone soul.  Nicholas has this skull in flames tattooed on his forearm.

He also has a racing monitor lizard with a hat tattooed on his upper back. These are symbols of his acceptance of his own underworld or subconscious, they are also symbols for deep personal transformation.

Nicholas Cage has played over fifty films, but one theme that keeps reappearing in his cinematographic career from time to time is that of “Faust”: Goethe’s character whose soul he sells to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge and pleasure.

Cage has more than a passing fascination with the Gothic. He’s owned and lived in several properties resembling castles, and according to him in a haunted property. 


Quotes from Nicholas Cage:

On his new movie: Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance: "He’s dark, literally. He looks like he crawled out of hell and straight into your face. We just think, immediately, you’re going to know you’re in a different world."

Bryan Taylor recalls Nicholas’ behaviour on the set:  “He wanted to feel different and he wanted everybody around him to feel different, so he devised a make-up that was this nightmarish, terrifying, Santaria, voodoo-ish thing. The first time he showed up as Ghost Rider on set, it was this silent, creeped out feeling, where nobody wanted to say anything. It was just like, 'Nic’s in a weird place.' It was awesome! He wouldn’t talk. He was very quiet. He had glass eyes. At one point, Mark said, 'Do those things hurt?' He said, 'It’s personal.' He would not talk about it."

Explaining the subtle difference between playing a living dead, and a living man turned into a demon:  "They’re totally different. In Drive Angry, I was playing a living dead man. This is a living man who turns into a demon, so it’s a totally different kind of energy. A living dead man has to be a little bit more dead, whereas a living man who turns into a ghost can still be very alive when he’s living."

About eating a cockroach in the film Vampire's Kiss: "Every muscle in my body didn't want to do it, but I did it anyway."


Nicholas Cage acting method:


"To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new."

"There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic."

"I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."
“Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.”
“Pablo Picasso said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?”
“I needed to change my name just to liberate myself and find out I could do it without walking into a Hollywood casting office with the name Coppola.”
“It's good to make movies that are tragedies, where people can think about things in life that are undeniable, that everyone has to deal with. But at the same time, it's also healing to make movies that are entertaining, that are a lot of fun, where you don't have to think about your problems.”


“When I did Vampire's Kiss I got so wound up. It was so important to me that this vision I had of Peter Lowe's character get on film exactly the way that I wanted it, that I frankly don't think I was very easy for anyone to live with. Certainly, I was not easy for myself to live with. I remember that I wasn't drinking or anything at the time. One night I felt so wound up that I was about to snap. I ordered a martini. And I just relaxed, and I could tell my body really needed a rest. From then on, I learnt you can do good work without torturing yourself.”






On channelling his performances: “I think that Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was mentally taxing, if only because I had to go to a Christmas party shortly after I had wrapped photography in Romania at 2 in the morning as the Ghost Rider. The invitation had a Christmas ornament on it with Ghost Rider's face on it as a tree. I had a couple of schnapps and went to the party; I had not entirely let go of whatever magic I had been channelling, and all hell broke loose. In fact, I think I kept saying over and over: "Merry Christmas, you assholes!" I am lucky I'm not in a Romanian prison.”
“What happens is, you become different people in your path as an actor. When I was doing those things, I was a very new actor. I didn't have a lot of training, and I was trying to make some sort of impact, because that was what was important for me at the time - to get on the map. There were things I would do that were more shocking, or approaches I would do to try and live the character, because I didn't have the training. But then, as I went on, I started to find other methods, ways to get into characters that weren't exactly destroying my life.”

“we are all going to get older, and there is something to be said about doing some of your best work when you are younger, when you still have that virility, something visceral and raw.”

On the toughest aspect of preparing for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call -New Orleans": “Trying to figure out how I was going to entertain you while playing a guy who was completely out of his mind on crack. At the same time, trying to be responsible so it didn't become an advertisement for doing drugs. The other thing is, I wasn't sure I could play the part totally sober, which I was. I was trying to look at it more impressionistically from a landscape of maybe 25 years ago to see what would come out of that filter of my imagination. I was doing a scene (on "Bad Lieutenant"), it was in my second day of shooting -- and we all know the imagination and preparation (required) to think I was on cocaine (for the character). There was a little bottle of baby powder, and I'm snorting that.”

“Usually it's very cathartic. The hard stuff is when you're not feeling great and you have to do a really happy scene.-- on the personal toll acting can take on a person.”

Asked if he wanted to do theatre work: “No, I have stage fright. I don't like it. I've never gotten over it.”

Self-doubt: “I know what I want to do, I'm doing it, but I'm still very much a student of the craft and I think I can go further. I still torment myself. I have a lot of self-doubt.”


In his personal life he’s known for being impulsive, and as a result he has been married a few times.

About his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley: I'm sad about this, but we shouldn't have been married in the first place.

Nicholas Cage traumatic experiences:
“I was being stalked by a mime - silent but maybe deadly. Somehow, this mime would appear on the set of set of Bringing Out the Dead, and start doing strange things. I have no idea how it got past security. Finally, the producers took some action and I haven't seen the mime since. But it was definitely unsettling.”
“I remember my prom was a complete disaster. I used bonds my grandmother had given me to rent a tuxedo and a limousine so I could go to the prom with this beautiful girl. And at the end of the night I went to kiss her and she responded. I was so nervous that my stomach got really nauseous and I said, "Excuse me" and just threw up on the street all over my shoes and my rented tux. The limo driver wouldn't let me in the car. He split and I had to walk home. That was my prom night.”


“Years ago I was driving a car I'd bought, an Austin Healey with a V-8 engine, sort of a makeshift Cobra. I had taken it to a mechanic to put an automatic shifter in it. The mechanic did a really sloppy job. If you barely knocked the shifter it would go into separate gears. I was driving on the Hollywood Freeway and I accidentally bumped it into park. I was doing 80 mph at 10 p.m. and I started doing 360s. I wound up facing traffic, and then a Mack truck was coming at me. I thought, 'This is it, I'm dead'. The truck driver had a CB radio and said, "Put the car in reverse." I did and drove backwards until I got off at the exit, backwards!”

Religion:
“I do not have a religion in my life, I wasn't raised that way. My father always believed that if I was going to have a religion I should discover it on my own and not have it crammed down my throat at a young age. I kind of wish I had some religion.”

An encounter with a reptile and some strange eating habits:

“I was once surrounded by rattlesnakes in a rattlesnake patch with my cousin Roman when we were 16 or 17. We were fishing in Napa Valley and walked right into it. There was a huge one coiled in front of us. A bigger one, to the left, was uncoiled, so I knew he wasn't a problem. We had to go over the coiled one, so we felt trapped and paralysed with fear. There was nowhere to run, we were surrounded. I saw this pole with a nail through it, and I knew that I had to do something, so I grabbed the pole and pounded the snake. Then it came up and started rattling and was about to strike. I killed it, but felt bad about it. I felt anything you kill you've got to eat, so I took it home, cut the poison glands out, took the rattles off and cooked it.”

"I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are dignified with sex, so are birds, but pigs not so much, so I don't eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl"

Nicholas Cage homeopathic remedy is Mandragora:




 

Mandragora is part of the Solonaecea family which also includes Belladonna, Stramonium and Hyociamus. All of them contain a combination of atropines which act upon the nervous system causing neuralgic disturbances to some extent, with a wide range numbness and tingling sensations, visual disturbances, and headaches. The headaches are all of hepatic origin resulting from liver problems.

Psychologically mandragora is the more controlled of the four, less inclined to rage or to outrageous behaviour, we could say that there is method in its madness, but there is also a delusion that they are possessed by a dark entity.

Mandragora is only a small remedy in the Homeopathic material medica: it’s not used often, and it’s symptoms are mostly physical. They relate to blurred vision, blurred speech, worse from alcohol intake, and as if alcohol induced, dizziness, a sensation that the head is surrounded by fog, strong heat sensation on the head, colic and diarrhoea.

Mandragora or mandrake has a long tradition of use since ancient times, and a strong association with alchemy: there are tales of a connection to the underworld. 

It’s said to be the herb that the Greek goddess of sex-magic Circe used in the Odyssey to turn Odysseus’ men into pigs.  She invited his crew to a feast of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but also laced with one of her magical potions, and she turned them all into pigs with a wand after they gorged themselves on it. 

Mandragora was also according to traditional lore attributed to Hecate, the Greek goddess of the crossroads and of the un-dead, of birth and death, the passage between light and darkness, and the doorway to the underworld.

Described by Theokritos as: “chasing whining dogs, while walking across the graves of the dead, and through dark streams of blood”, Hecate was often depicted in a triptych form: as three maidens facing different ways in a reference to parallel realities,  surrounded by dogs and snakes which are well known symbols of the underworld.

During the medieval ages Mandrake was a prised talisman against all sorts of ailments, supposed to bring wealth to those who possessed it. It was also used as an aphrodisiac. 
 
Its connection to witchcraft and magic was strengthened by the believe that the herb grew from the last ejaculation of a hang man, and that mandrake represented an unnatural sexual connection between man and land, a conception without the female intervention, without sex or a womb.

The root of the plant often resembles a human body without the head, giving rise to speculation that those who were exposed to the plant would lose their mind. There was also the perception that the plant represented animalistic impulse without human morality, and a physical body without a soul.

All these tales and traditions have become embed in the human psyche, and through them we find a connection to Faust: selling his soul in exchange for success in the material world; the Ghost Rider a dark entity from hell with his skull on fire: a body without a soul.

Nicholas Cage’s obsession with dark characters and the underworld, his quirky eating habits: a reluctance to eat animals such as pigs because of their undignified sexual habits has a resonance to the myth of Circe in the Odyssey. 

His deliberately drawling voice as if permanently intoxicated, his dipping into alternate parallel realities with the multiple characters that he lends himself to when he acts are all resonant with the mandragora psychological character.

 By The Undercover Homeopath



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