The alchemists understood that when dealing with living systems it is better to let the mysteries gradually be revealed in their own way to the mind.

In science today the driving force is to solve mysteries by innovation. Innovation is the clever manipulation of what is already known. As an effective research method for solving technical problems innovation has created wonders. But life evades technical solutions. Uncontrolled pandemics and complex climate change issues result from technical innovation being applied to issues in the life sciences.

The alchemists understood that when dealing with living systems it is better to let the mysteries gradually be revealed in their own way to the mind. Living systems evolve rapidly away from preformed solutions. Living things teach in a way that require the researcher to develop a disciplined imaginative capacity. This is to induce the hidden orders of things.  Once a relationship in the natural order is revealed to a receptive, disciplined mind, hidden orders emerge in their own way. 

These hidden or we could say inspiring properties point to possible healing potentials in the inherent relationships between humans and plants. Hidden potentials are revealed to imaginative minds. Imagination fosters creativity needed to meet future challenges in living systems that are unprecedented. Innovation lures the mind into rearranging what has worked technically in the past. This approach is too brittle for the evasive and elusive, yet intelligent, order in natural wisdom. 

 The following article is designed to point out the hidden formative aspects of what contemporary science would see simply as predictable, disparate chemical reactions. The innovative chemistry of today is the corpse of the imaginative science of the alchemists. Their science was based on observation with no preconceptions. That was seen as the right approach to dealing with a mysterious living world.

 Their living science has become a remarkably complex shell today.  This death process has arisen out of the urge to apply technical solutions to rapidly evolving living systems. By studying life science through technical innovation science has become a maze of complex, abstract naming systems available only to the initiated. 

By contrast the use of levity / gravity alchemical relationships can serve as the basis for a systematic, mandalic approach to sequencing natural phenomena.  This develops a reliable pictorial based research system available to anyone. Pictorial thinking can support the idea that the macro(species) and micro (hormones) levels of plant development are based on resonant universal patterns inherent at all levels, and in all organisms. Revealing the  universal resonant patterns in organisms at all levels opens the door to forming research ideas that can link plant growth to human physiology in profound ways.

The ever evolving challenges of human health can not be solved by technical thinking about the life sciences. The  language of a living, growing plant forms, as well as the human embryo is inherently pictorial. The basis for this present work is to show pictorial patterns shared between the molecular diagrams used today to depict plant chemistry and the changes happening in a growing plant form itself. A Lewis diagram for the chlorophyll molecule is an image of a flowering plant.

 These formal patterns are inherently resonant in all living things at all levels of inquiry. The hope is that this series of essays will enable a non-scientific person to see more deeply into how medicinal plants interact with the human organism. Those who grow and love plants will find this series challenging but hopefully rewarding of effort.