Recipes for Health in Thunder, Lightning, and Rain (1)

By Femi Kusa/

johnolufemikusa@gmail.com

WHEN shall we all meet again? If you caught me red-handed, and on the wrist for that matter, my imagination was with the THREE WEIRD SISTERS or Witches in WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s “Macbeth”. Either providentially or by the diabolical design of witches, the “three weird sisters” were on the homeward route of Macbeth and his cousin, BANQUO, from a  battlefield. They had gone to wage war against a nobleman of Scotland, the Thane of Cawdor, who rebelled against King Duncan.

Macbeth and Banquo were victorious and were to meet in the camp on the way with King Duncan, who was with his eldest son, Malcolm.

 One of the weird sisters asked the others:

“When shall we, three, meet again? “

The second witch replied: “In Thunder, lightning (and) rain, when the hurly-burly is done (and)the battle (is) lost (and) won”.

The English Literature teacher who prepared my class at Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, in 1967 – 1968 for the “O” Level examination 55 years ago, taught us of the diabolism, vaulting ambitions, lust for power, bloody abuse of power, treachery, tragedy and the triumph of good over evil in Scotland of those days which Shakespeare tried to encapsulate in MACBETH, mingling some fiction with reality. 

Those witches gave Macbeth assurances that he would become the Thane of Cawdor and, later, the King of Scotland. Already, Macbeth was Thane of Glamis. A Thane was a royal title of a nobleman with vast land ownership in exchange for loyal military service to the king.  Macbeth’s first cousin, Duncan, was the King of Scotland. Duncan succeeded his grandfather, Malcolm the II (1005-1034), a very weak king under whose rule the Vikings, a seafaring people from Scandinavia, raided and ravaged the four kingdoms which made up Scotland of those days. Macbeth, alone, would meet with the witches again during which they would promise him that no man born of a woman would ever defeat him in battle until the woods of BIRNAM moved to DUNSINANE. Birnam was a forest near the castle of Dunsinane where Macbeth lived. But they told him too, that he had to be wary of Macduff, a Thane completely loyal to Duncan and his son Malcolm.

During Macbeth and Banquo’s encounter with the witches, these women told Banquo, to Macbeth’s hearing, that the children of Banquo will become Kings in Scotland. These prophecies set up confusion in the souls of two cousins. Meanwhile, DUNCAN, their blood relation, was the king of Scotland. This made the confusion even more riotous, especially after Duncan, happy with the victory of Macbeth, made him the Thane of Cawdor and named his own son, Malcolm, as the heir apparent to the throne of Scotland.

Macbeth was destabilized. The witches said he would be Thane of Cawdor and that the sons of Banquo would be King.  Now, King Duncan has made him Thane of Cawdor and announced Malcolm as the successor to the throne. Did this mean Macbeth will no longer be King as the witches prophesied? Did this mean Malcolm would be King in his place? Did this mean the sons of Banquo, and not him or Malcolm will succeed King Duncan? It is this confusion that led Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, and now Thane of Cawdor, back to the three witches.

To help us understand this play better, our English Literature teacher took my class 100s of years back in history to when Scotland of today was a group of four communities constantly invaded by the Vikings. Duncan was a very effective king who not only united the four kingdoms and chased away the Vikings but became so confident of the security of the nation and his monarch that he even undertook a State visit to Rome. Macbeth was a Thane filled with respect and gratitude for the State and Monarch until King Duncan announced him as the Thane of Cawdor after the incumbent Thane was arrested and executed for treason. 

Macbeth remembered the witches had said he would become Thane of Cawdor, and, later, King of Scotland. Vaulting ambition erupted in Macbeth. He began to dream of becoming the King. The opportunity came when King Duncan visited Macbeth and his Dunsinane Castle. Lady Macbeth encouraged her husband to murder the King. Macbeth gave the King and his entourage a grand dinner. Lady Macbeth made sure the King’s own guards drank themselves to stupor. That night, Lady Macbeth pushed a hesitant Macbeth to murder King Duncan in his sleep. Macbeth was timid. He brought to their bedroom the blood-soaked dagger he plunged into King Duncan. Lady Macbeth thought this was a stupid thing to do because it could make the murder traceable to them. So, she collected the dagger from Macbeth and took it to where the drunken guards of King Duncan stupidly lay fast asleep to implicate them with the King’s murder.

In the morning, Macduff, a Thane loyal to King Duncan, and his son, Malcolm, accompanied by a young Thane, LENNOX, came to visit the King at Macbeth’s Dunsinane Castle. Macduff was the Thane the witches told Macbeth to beware of. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth pretended to still be asleep when the visitor came. LENNOX blamed the murder on the drunken sleeping guards who were covered with blood and found with a blood-stained dagger. Beholding the murder, Macduff rushed back to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who both pretended to be shocked. Macbeth executed the guards, pretending to love King Duncan. Suspecting evil drama, Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, fled to England, paving way for Macduff, their father’s loyal Thane, to suspect them of the murder.

In a series of rapidly unfolding events, Macbeth became King of Scotland. Macbeth murdered Banquo. Banquo’s ghost appeared to Macbeth at State dinners, causing Macbeth to behave unusually. Lady Macbeth would make other excuses for Macbeth’s behaviour imbalance and dismiss the gathering.

Later, Lady Macbeth became insane and died. Macduff found Scotland unsafe and fled to England. Macbeth ordered the murder of his household in Scotland.  Before Macbeth could kill Banquo, Banquo asked his son to flee as well.

The fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies that  Macbeth would be Thane of Cawdor, and later King of Scotland, was causing confusion in the royalty. Macbeth wondered if Duncan’s son, Malcolm, will fight back to reclaim the throne and if Banquo’s sons would supplant him. Meanwhile, the sons of Duncan, supported by Macduff, decided in England to raise an army, and fight back.

Macbeth went back to the witches. They gave him two assurances. One was that no man born of a woman would ever defeat him in battle. The other was that he would come to no harm until the woods of Birnam moved to Dunsinane. Despite these assurances, the witches warned Macbeth to beware of Macduff. Macbeth was confident he had secured the throne. How would the forest of Birnam ever move and come to Dunsinane? Would the trees uproot themselves and walk, or would they fly like birds? And where is that man not born of a woman?

But soldiers of the resistance army did move through Birnam forest, cutting tree branches which they used as camouflage. This gave the impression of the forest moving towards Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth, alarmed, felt deceived and betrayed! Why were they not straightforward? He still trusted, though, that there was no man a woman didn’t give a bath to. The battle raged on. Soldiers from Birnam forest entered Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth’s guards were killed. Finally, Macbeth stood face-to-face before Macduff. The witches had warned him to beware of Macduff, the Thane loyal to Duncan and his son, the heir apparent, Malcolm. Macbeth told Macduff to not waste his time because no man born of a woman could kill him. Macduff shocked Macbeth with the revelation that he was not naturally delivered of his mother but taken out of her womb through cesarean surgery. Macduff killed Macbeth, and Malcolm, the heir apparent, became the King of Scotland in the triumph of good over evil, and of Light over Darkness. Banquo’s son did not become a King in the play.

OH! WITCHES!

Men have not stopped being men, nor have women stopped being women since the days of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the struggle for power. Murder still takes place, although not always in the physical sense. Men still breach agreements and dash hopes. These are forms of murder. But, everywhere, the universal law of good always overtaking evil has never changed. We learned in Macbeth that men need to be wary of women and of diabolism which always double-speaks. 

Duncan was too trusting. He ought to have slept in his strange castle with one eye open. It is not wrong to TRUST. Trustworthiness is an ideal quality every human being should struggle to possess and adorn his or her soul with. The trouble is that it may be foolish to absolutely trust in a world where the majority of mankind is not deliberately striving toward Trustworthiness. His personal guards were gluttonous. Did no one brief them to not touch alcohol in a foreign Castle?

The sons of Duncan were wise to flee Scotland. A Yoruba adage says a wise child does not ask the elders about who killed his father until his hands are firm on the handle of a sword. Banquo was foolish. Another Yoruba adage says IKU T’O N PA OJUGBA, OWE L’O N PA F’ENI (The death that is killing our mates is speaking in parable to us). Who in the Nigeria of 2020 and 2021 visited a Covid 19 patient at home?

HEALTH

While I was contemplating a column for today, I did not know how and why my thought kept wandering to the opening question of the three witches in Macbeth… WHEN SHALL WE, THREE, MEET AGAIN…, in Thunder, lightning, or rain? And the reply of one of them… When the hurly-burly is done and the battle is won and lost. I remembered that the 2023 election campaigns have pitched friends against friends. So, I wondered: when shall we all meet again as friends? I know that the next date for this column is next Thursday 2nd March 2023, by which time we should have known which battle has been won and which one has been lost, and who the incoming President of Nigeria is. The various consultant groups of the various candidates would by then have amounted to nothing more than the three weird sisters and their prophecies which have taken out health through catastrophic storms of “thunder, lightning and rain” in our hearts and souls. The dust will not settle so soon and so easily, and that is why this column suggests recipes for health in thunder, lightning, and rain. For, like the weird sisters, that is where we all shall meet for some time, learning to peacefully co-exist again for all time.

POLL EFFECTS

The battle will be “won” and “lost”. Winners will rejoice. Losers are likely to be depressed. But joy also does kill. So, this is a dangerous season for health. The man or woman going into depression self-detects the slide. It all usually starts with disappointment, followed by grief, anxiety, sadness, withdrawal, insomnia, inferiority complex, hatred for the victor, dysperception (deconstruction of positive values always into negative values, expressing no gratitude for good turns, hating those who love them, taking from their environment and giving nothing back in return, etc), hallucinating and soliloquizing.  Soliloquizing, talking to oneself, is an interesting feature. The person who locks himself or herself up within himself or herself soon built-up powerful pressure within enough to blast the mind. Soliloquizing helps to reduce some pressure and prevents emotional, mental, psychic, or spiritual blasts and damage.

These attitudes may suggest that the mind is becoming congested with negative values and becoming sick. It is not wrong at this stage to seek the help of a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist. What can be wrong is an absolute belief that these health specialists and others have all the magic wands in their practice. Hospital medications do not always effectively affect the mind if it does at all. They treat the body and not the SOUL OR SPIRIT, which many people erroneously call THE MIND. Thus, hospital medications treat THE OUTSIDE, the body, and not the spirit, the man or woman who owns that body.

The inner man or woman may profit, however, if the body is made unusable to those entities which possess it on account of poor blood RADIATION and lock out the rightful owner of that body from the brain. In order words, depression may devolve into possession or occupation by a soul which is not the original owner of that body. The answer to this problem is the consumption of the RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS AND DRINKS and being in THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND, always.

The clinical psychologist and the psychiatrist nurse may help if he or she is armed with the knowledge of who or what man is, the coming into being, of man on earth, a man in relation to the Universe in which he exists and of which he is a part, the various spheres of existence in the Universe, particularly the POWER CENTERS, some of which  Christians call THE PRINCIPALITIES.

POWER CENTER

These are locations in the universe where human beings congregate after Earth-life if they are heading homeward to Paradise or descending into the abyss, depending on their nature. Thus, there are uplifting power centers and there are dark, depressing ones. They are all like “broadcasting stations” sending signals to the earth. On earth, humans also transmit signals (telepathy, for example) and receive signals. Like receiving “radio or television sets” each one of us receives signals from the power center he or she tunes to. If the election rigger seeks ideas from within himself for his occupation, he will receive “broadcasts” from a power center of the nature of his activity where like souls congregate. Persons who are always afraid are made more afraid likewise, whereas courageous persons are made more courageous by the power centers of courage which feed their souls with courage. Thus, the person who feels the world is after him will find no peace in his mind whereas the man who believes he can storm the mountains will never be deterred even if all men on earth confront him.

LESSER ILLS

This column is not concerned about the psychiatric aspects of post-election traumas. It wishes to address only some of those much simpler conditions which nutritional food supplements may resolve. These include:

1. Stress

2. Insomnia

3. Elevated blood pressure

4. Indigestion.

5. Anxiety

6. Nervousness

7. Elevated blood cholesterol

To be continued…

FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.

Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.

0