By Femi Kusa
Another season of the Black Walnut is here. It must be a special gift from Modern Nature which signals the coming of May, in the season of regeneration or rebirth throughout the Universe. The thought of a season has has given us an opportunity to deeply ask ourselves what the seasons are, what they bring and why they bring them, because there is no accident in Creation. From the outcomes of scientific studies, we now know that the Black Walnut is a load of anti-oxidants, nutrients and medicines, particularly for the brain, eyes, heart, intestine, pancreas, skin and the reproductive system, to name only a few part which the Black Walnut impacts.
If everything which exists had a purpose, everything in the sky, from the sun and the moon and the stars to the solar systems and the galaxies are no happenstance or accidents. They exist to help man achieve the purpose of his existence outside his home, Paradise. A tracting and repelling one another through energy impacts as science has shown, they pour energy (radiations) upon the earth. The earth absorbs this energy and unite it with its own energy to form everything we see on earth, rivers, oceans, forests, fruits, vegetables etc. One question this scenario throws up is: why do different food crops, fruits, vegetables etc come up seasonally? The answer, provided by Astrology, the Royal Art, is to be found in The Law of Motion. Everything in the sky and our earth are mobile, forming different constellations or assemblies which produce different configurations of energy from time to time. It is as though mankind stands amid an ocean of energy in a flux for which the body requires special protection from time to time as the seasons of energy changes. The earth provides through foods and foods in season to match the seasonal energy currents. And that is why, this season, the Black Walnut is in season. It is, therefore, in his interest that man enjoys the foods, fruits, nuts and even the herbs in season!
Maria Treben
This legendary Austrian herbalist gives us an introduction to the Black Walnut in her Help Through God’s Pharmacy. She says that the leaves, we use as tea, “cleanses the blood and is an effective remedy for intestinal disorders as well as for constipation and lack of appetite”. The tea also treats “jaundice and diabetes”. When a decoction of the leaves is added to bath water, it addresses “scrofula, rickets, caries and swellings of the bones as well as for festering toe and finger nails”. She suggests washing cradle crap affected, scabs and scurf with a decoction of the green leaves. She says the tea also addresses acne, festering eczema, sweaty feets and whites (leucorrhea), a type of vaginal discharge. For people who have one problem or the other in the mouth, Maria Treben suggests using the decoction as a wash for “stomatitis, inflamed gums, throat and larynx”. For people who battle falling hair, the decoction is suggested to be “beneficial …when it is massaged frequently into the scalp”.
Treben adds: “About the middle of June, the unripe nuts are picked. A pin should easily run through them and used to prepare a delightful cordial, which cleans stomach, liver and blood, strengthens weakened stomach and improves foul intestine. It is an excellent remedy for thick blood”.
One Nigerian Grandfather who bear witness to the suggestions of Maria Treben is Pa Olajide Shoboyede, 84(08035500595). With kind permission, his story is told below….when he was 76 or 77, Pa Shoboyede experimented with Raw Black Walnut. He chewed six and went to bed by about 7pm one day. At about 11pm, his bowels became cathartic, moving rapidly several times.
“My eyes were turning, and I was so extremely weak from exhaustion that I thought I was going to die,” he recalled last week, adding: “I lived alone, and I had locked the door downstairs. So, I thought that if I didn’t do something and I died, it was the smell of my body that would make the neighbours know something had happened to me. I had a towel around my waist. I could not stand or walk. I tied the towel around one knee and a cloth around the other and began to crawl to the kitchen. I knew Sea Salt could help me. I put some in a bottle of water and began to sip it. I crawled back to my bed when I began to feel stronger and after a while, I slept off.”
Pa Shoboyede doesn’t give up on experimenting with natural foods to help his health. So, one week later, believing six raw walnuts were an overdose for him, he ate only one, and it gave him only “a light” bowel movement.
Mellie Uyldert
This psychic writer in her The Psychic Garden, subtitled: “Plants and their esoteric relationships with man,” says, like Treben, that the Black Walnut tree is a “tree of Jupiter”. Her reference to Jupiter goes beyond the knowledge that Jupiter as one of the planets in our Solar System. Jupiter is believed to be one of the leaders of the Animistic Beings who are behind the forces of Nature which brought about the material worlds and maintain them in unconditional obedience to the Will of the Almighty Creator.
Google says of Jupiter: “Jupiter gives us confidence in life. Saturn transmits prudence and perseverance. One invites transcendence, the other demands respect for order and structure. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. It is much more evolved than our earth, according to theosophy.” However, Helena Blavatsky writes: “If, for instance, the esoteric philosophy teaches that the “spirit”(collectively again) of Jupiter is far superior to the Terrestrial Spirit, it is not because Jupiter is so many times larger than our earth, but because its substance and texture are so much finer than, and superior to, that of the earth’.
Mellie Uyldert gives us the signature tune or the secret code of the black walnut by which we can recognise how and where it chiefly impacts on the human body. The signature tune of plants, foods and herbs is what enables herbalists and Nature healers to know what they were created for. She tells us: “The kernel has the shape of a human brain, complete with the division to the left and right. According to the Doctrine of Symbols, the Walnut must, therefore, be the right food for the brain and this is a fact. People who do much mental work should eat plenty of them. Since the damp going nuts cannot be kept long without becoming mildewed, the trades stores them in Sulphur on the course of which they become steadily drier and less tasting through the winter. They contain oil and resin and are very nutritious. The felty pith is infused in boiling water against high blood pressure. The thick peel contains Vitamin C in abundance and can be used externally as a styptic”. We are taught, also, by this psychic writer that Walnut keeps us “sober even when large quantities of wine are drunk”. This would appear to the one of the ways by which the Black Walnut impacts the brain.
We are reminded, for example, “At the time when Austria formed part of the Roman Empire under the Noricum, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelus Probus(278-282) had vineyards built for his soldiers in the foothills of the Alps since the spring water was hard to reach in the jungles which then existed. However, when drunk, the soldiers fought so much that great numbers were killed. The Emperor thereupon had more trees planted all over the vineyard. A wine still exists called Nussberger after the nut hill on which it grows. Everyone shop had to offer but free with the wine and, in this way, drunkenness disappeared, with its consequences. This habit still exists at the Hecken Write, where people can sit and drink wine outdoor in the autumn, plates of nuts are placed ready on the tables.
Wasteful people
Nigerians are wasteful. Surplus harvests of food crops, fruits, nuts and herbs get rotten and thrown away because we do not know how to preserve and store them for off season consumption as Mellie Uyldert has just described. In Europe and America, it is possible to eat dry tomato or dry yam or dry pineapple two or three years after they were harvested. It is possible, also, to freeze-dry just about anything to powder for consumption, long, long after that harvest. Thus, orange peel is converted to fine powder or flour and shipped around the world year after for use in Alternative Medicines against such ailments as cough, high blood cholesterol, hypertension, asthma, diabetes, constipation etc. In Nigeria, we lose plenty of Black Walnut yearly. It is either that harvests are not promptly evacuated from farms, or transportation delays cause late deliveries in the markets or the retailers bought more than they can quickly sell. Thus, more than half of the Black Walnut sold by petty traders and hawkers are rancid. Walnut is rich in fatty acids and the oils easily become rancid over a period of time, forming free radicals. Sometimes, I yield to the temptation of eating Black Walnut with offish taste that is not terribly repulsive to the tongue or nostrils. When I do, I follow the examples of some researchers whose works I study. In their experiments with edibles, anything can happen. So, they take anti-oxidants along with whatever they put in their mouths. I take any of the popular anti-oxidants vitamins or minerals such as Vitamin A,C,E, Zinc, Selenium or a proprietary blend such as Alpha Lipoic Acid and Pure Excel, which packs about eighteen anti-oxidants in one capsule. These includes Bioavailable Glutathione, Superoxide Dismutase(SOD), Aloe Acemannan, N-acetyl L-cysteine, Organic inner leaf, Aloevera powder, Alpha lipoic acid, Moringa oleifera (leaf) extracts, Tumeric, Sulphuraphane extracts, Cordyceps Sinensis, Milk Thistle, Blueberry, Schisandra, Grape Seed Extract, Black pepper extracts, Pomegranate extracts. People who cannot stand the smell and taste of rancid oils may very well prefer Black Walnut Oil from abroad.
Another way I eat Black Walnut is by chewing it with fresh palm fruits parboiled in salt water, preferably Sea Salt. Palm fruits contain the six d-aplha tocopherols and the more powerful d-aplha tocotrienols, all of which help to compose a wider Vitamin E spectrum. I chew the chaff for the oil, cast it out but not throw it away, chew the nuts with the oil and reach out later for the chaff where I congregate it over time. When I have enough orange peel to burn and chase mosquitoes from my environment, the palm fruit chaff serves as fuel. Nothing is a waste in Nature! That is why people who do not waste or who do not lay waste do not want.
Psychic nature
We are back to Uyldert. She advises us: “It is not surprising that a tree of Jupiter should endow both intelligence and healing power. The goddess Pallas Athene, who ruled the art of war and signs was born from the hands of Zeus. The thinking of Jupiter judgment and ethnic are, of course, cited in the forehead of man. The nut tree’s healing power are great. Both the leaves and the nuts are astringent and the clean intestines. The tanic acid in the leaves ensure that the infusion of them when applied internally and externally, is very stable for the lymphatic type of person, in whose mucus and other fluids tend to pile up. And whose glands are, therefore, too quick to smell up through an excess of fluid, for example, scrofulous children and women who suffer from whites and inflammation of the womb. For a good bath, take two handfuls of fresh leaves to a liter of water, though much less of dry variety and allow them to infuse for a quarter of an hour. Mix this with cold water to the desired temperature and the leaves remain in the bath. The tea of the nut tree leaf, when drunk with meals, cures diabetes, eczema and impetigo and expels intestinal worms. Infused in combination with Yarrow and Gentian, it produces an effective tea against piles.
The juice of the green peel, traditionally known as Robnucun when pressed out and allow to thicken cures sore throat and inflammation of the uvula and tonsils. The oil pressed from Walnut and kept for about a year “since it is better the longer it is kept”, removed gravel in the kidney if given as an enema. The oil can be effectively applied to burn together with chalk water. Boiled in wine, it cures sore throat. The roasted nutshell mixed with wine produces a potion against loss of hair. The catkins, like those of Hazlenut, are a strong sudorific and are infused as a tea for fluey people on the early spring.
Finally, Uyldert suggests that the products of the Walnut tree are good for people with low self-esteem, people who easily give into depression as “it impacts steadiness and self confidence to the human soul, so that we feel capable of tackling the problems of life through the power of mind”.
Other benefits
Black Walnut is reputed to have more anti-oxidants than any other nut. Anti-oxidants helps us defeat free radicals which cause premature aging and disease. Chief among those in this nut are Vitamin E, Melatonin and Polyphenols. More than other nuts, the Black Walnut has a higher Omega-3 content called Alpha Linolenic Acid(ALA). These anti-oxidants are essential fats, which the body cannot make and we have to obtain from the diets, helps to lower risks of oxidative stress and damage by Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL), which may cause blood vessel and heart disease, and even death. This power house nut contains Magnesium and the Amino acid L-Arginine, which, along with the aforementioned, combat Inflamation, the condition which is behind many diseases such as Type-2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, to mention a few.
In several studies, people who ate Black Walnut for, say, eight weeks had better intestinal health and function than those who did not and, slowed less likelihood of being obese because they were so filled up with fibre that they ate less frequently and little at each meal. Besides, there are compounds reported by science to be present in the Black Walnut which have shown activity against compounds and hormones linked to breast, prostate and colorectal cancers. The results of brain research are exciting in outcomes such as brain flexibility, memory improvement. Sperm motility and morphology have been improved as well on a Black Walnut supplementation of the diet high in refined sugars and grains, a possible causes of fertility challenges.
In Nature, nothing is a waste, we always say. And that is why the shell or cover of the nut has become widely recognised through its use for centuries to treat many intestinal afflictions and as a natural dye for clothes and hair. The extracts of Black Walnut Hull are used to treat parasitics infections and conditions such as diphtheria and syphilis, and it is also used to treat wounds and to expell worms. In the 1990s, the University of Mississippi carried out a study which certified the Black Walnut Hull as a powerful anti-fungal remedy. It is active against Helicopter pylori which is present or is the cause of many stomach ulcers. It acts on both diarrhea or constipation with normalising effects on the digestive tracts. In candida treatment, several studies show that Juglone and Juglandic or Juglandin, active ingredients in Black Walnut Hull, inhibit activity of enzymes which Candida, a form of yeast, requires to grow. This should be good news for anyone troubled by Candida or any yeast condition.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mother Nature has set up our table again for the healing of our health challenges through the eating of Black Walnut. Let us arise and eat it, be merry, healed and happy, filled with gratitude for the abiding Grace of the Almighty Creator.
