For me there are worlds within words just as there are worlds both beyond clouds and stars and beyond what we can see around us. Words have their own gravity and history and most of the time, by using them without knowing their origins, we float above their meanings and roots. It's like a treasure or a discovery right below our noses. We construct our sentences, thoughts and ideas using these sacred things. It seems too easy but words have traveled a long way to get to us and not just in English but in all languages.
Lately, I have been reflecting on the word 'health'. When I was sick in my twenties, 'health' was something I spoke about but didn't quite know. Being ill was being outside of health. And to think, at twenty, two years before I faced disease, I took for granted my youth, I assumed health was a given, that nothing could strike me down.
During the time of ill-heath, I read books on wellness, well-being, healing, medicine and natural remedies. I came across Dr.Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing. In the book he wrote something that never quite left me: "The literal meaning of 'healing' is 'becoming whole.' It is possible to have an inner sense of wholeness, perfection, balance, and peace even if the physical body is not perfect."
And from another book by Weil, Health and Healing, the doctor describes health itself as 'wholeness', the word coming from the Anglo-Saxon and pre-historic German, khailaz (whole). By adding the suffix -itha, we arrive at khailitha (health).
Growing up, whenever I sneezed my father would either say Gesundheit or the Dutch, gezondheid which literally means 'a state of health' but implies a continuation of 'good health' (when we sneeze, our heart stops, apparently).
Yet in both German and Dutch 'health' (Gesund and gezond) refer to the body's health while heil belongs to the soul's health. Geheiligt and geheiligd translate to 'hallowed' as in 'Geheiligt werde dein Name - 'Hallowed by thy name'. Yet, to be cured in German is geheilt, implying something sacred in the process of retaining health or wholeness.
Yet reflecting on Weil's summation of healing as becoming whole and his idea that we can be in a state of emotional well being without the physical intrigues me. For the Shamans of many cultures, the person who is deathly sick has lost themselves. The shaman must travel to the underworld to find and recover the lost self and return it to the ailing body. The implication is that the body suffers because the self is dis-united with the physical being.
For the Romans, specifically Juvenal in his tenth satire, mens sano in corpore sano ('a healthy mind in a healthy body'). Though we know this line, we rarely know the context. Juvenal, like many of the Latin poets and authors of the Roman Republic and Empire were all-too-aware of the excesses of their times. Towards the end of his satire about the vanity of fame, fortune and desire as well as the difficulties of old age, he advises his readers to pray for a
a valiant heart,
Without fear of death, that reckons longevity
The least among Nature's gifts, that's strong to endure
All kinds of toil, that untainted by lust and anger
That prefers the sorrows and labours of Hercules to all
Sarandapulus' downy cushions and women...
One might construe that Juvenal is offering 'sane' advice. And it is interesting to note that both the French and English derive benefit from 'sano': santé, the French word for health and our term for mental well-being, 'sanity'. Both are ultimately related to sanus, a Latin word of unknown origin though it too, like the pre-Germanic khailitha means 'health'.
From sanus we also get 'sanatorium' (or 'sick' room) and 'sanitary'. Sanus is in turn related to sanctus (holy) and our source of 'saint', 'sanctuary' and 'sanctify'. Even in the relationships between words, there is this bond between the spirit, the mind and the body.
The French, naturelement, use the word santé as a toast. Glasses clink, health is wished for, lips sip wine. In Spain and other Latin American countries, there salud is both the word for health and a toast. Also of Latin origin, salud is directly derived from salus, relative of salvus (safe, safety) and our source of 'safe' and 'save'.
(The word 'salve', as a side note, meaning a medicinal ointment is related to salvus - alternatively, it might stem from the West Germanic salbo, the Greek élpos, both meaning 'oil'. Ointments are typically 80% oil based and can be greasy - Sanskrit spras - greasy).
The concept of 'salvus' (source of salvation, salvage) applied to me back in my twenties. Being sick, you never feel quite at home in your own body. Another Latin writer, Seneca the Younger once wrote that you should never let yourself be subjected to something alien to your being. I felt as if I was invaded and the longing to be whole was stronger than any desire I ever had in my life.
The idea of a lost self is something I encountered in the writings of Mircea Eliade, a Romanian historian of religion. He wrote widely about Shaman culture as well as the origins of religious rituals and practices.
In his book, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Eliade writes that religious
man’s "desire to live in the sacred is in fact equivalent to his desire to take
up his abode in objective reality, not to let himself be paralyzed by the never-ceasing
relatively of purer subjective experiences, to live in areal and effective
world, not in an illusion.”
Elaide describes the Hierophany (Hieros - Greek for holy and phainen, to reveal) as the manifestation of the sacred in the Earthly. "The
manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world... the hierophany
reveals an absolute fixed point, a center."
Learning that health is related to wholeness and the spirit, I gradually discovered that I had to be whole within my psyche and self long before I could be whole in my body. The idea of not feeling safe, of not being home in myself is related to the idea of the 'abode' above. The body was revealing the fragmentation, the misinterpretations of what I believed about myself and my life. But because I couldn't be honest with myself, my body had to be the truth teller.
I like how in the Russian language Здоровье (zda-roe-vye) is health. The prefix Зд- means to build, create. In Russian there is building (Здание), creature (Создание) and author (Создатель).
Like in French, to greet (salut!) is found in Russian (Здороваться). To be sane, similarly, also derives from
Здоровье - здравый (zdrah-vee).
Здоровье - здравый (zdrah-vee).
To return to health is truly to build, to create. One thing I kept thinking when I was sick is I wanted to go back to the way things were. Yet, the more I thought about it, the way things were lead to me being sick. That kind of return was not going to favour a full recovery. With what I had, with who I was, I had to truly be the author of my well-being. I had to replace the foreign and alien, i.e. negative misinterpretations of myself aside and create newer, healthier perspectives.
I had to learn compassion.
