Many of those who read this blog regularly are healers, magicians or psychics. All of you have seen the deterioration of our society as Common Sense has been outlawed by the actions of the stupid, power hungry and obscenely greedy people who always rise to the top in a materialist society. Some of you may have seen the old version of this obituary, now truer than ever.

For those of us who value evidence over dogma, humanity over bureaucracy, beauty over ugliness, civility over bad manners and love over hate, I post it at a time when people are mindlessly celebrating some things that disappeared long ago: freedom, civility, equality, tolerance,trust and ethics. They were watching TV and never noticed how things had changed.

Maybe I should entitle this “Lotions and Potions.” Allopaths sneer at folk lore remedies that have worked for centuries because they have no scientific explanation available for how they work. But they don’t know how aspirin works either. Lotions and potions have been viable remedies for centuries.

When I first began as a health writer about forty years ago physicians sneered at the possibility that applying some folk remedy to the skin could possible affect the inner workings of the body. Now we have all sorts of patches available from Big Pharma, and of course the physicians act as if they knew about it all along, as they sneered at vitamins and supplements for decades, and now want to make them prescription only.

Last time I went into the Bach Flower remedies, the eminent British physician who discovered their effects, and some of the history. A person ignorant of the theory behind their use would be likely to assume that they were just magic potions.

Before I get into Animal Essences, which are just as remarkable, I need to point out that Bach Flower Essences are not the only flower essences. If you want to check out an amazingly comprehensive and beautifully explained modality for emotional and spiritual well-being you owe it to yourself to explore www.flowersociety.org and their astonishing book Flower Essence Repertory. It contains dozens of remedies and is totally cross-indexed by emotional and spiritual effects and the individual remedies. Looking up either a remedy or a symptom will give you total access to how the remedies are used by alternative health practitioners.