Since ancient times copper has been known as the great healing and sacred metal.

Throughout history, healers have understood the value of copper in obtaining and maintaining optimum health. Whether topically applied or ingested, many forms of copper and copper compounds were used throughout history for the treatment of disease. Copper has been used for medicinal purposes as far back as ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome as well as in the ancient Aztec civilization.

However, copper toxicity is a condition that is increasingly common in this day and age, due to the widespread occurrence of copper in our food, our hot water pipes, along with the common nutritional deficiencies in Zinc, Manganese and other trace minerals that keep levels of Copper from getting too high.

Known as a balancing metal copper works with the flow of projective and receptive energies. Shamans and Healers believed copper to be a metal that balances the body’s polarities, thereby removing blockages which are responsible for illness or imbalance.

It is said to provide a harmonic connection between the physical and astral bodies and also align the subtle bodies. It has been used to amplify and transmit thought and healing energy.

With the understanding that copper deficiency can result in gray hair, skin wrinkles, crow’s feet, varicose veins and saggy skin, copper has recently been touted as a “Fountain of Youth” for its ability to improve the elastic fiber in skin, increase skin flexibility, and act as an anti-wrinkle treatment. It has even been said to be able to return gray hair back to its natural color.

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from Latin: cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity.

Copper is an essential trace mineral and is vitally important for both physical and mental health. It has been studied for years, including at government laboratories. However, its importance for health is still largely unappreciated.

It is considered a female element because it is needed more for certain functions in women.  It is called the emotional mineral, because it tends to enhance all emotions when it is high in the body.

Copper is the metal most associated with the planet Venus.  Venus is the planet with the lowest rotation. The character of the planet and goddess Venus is passive, receptive, magnetic, feminine, relating, adaptation to the other one, kindness and gentleness, enjoyment.

Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, art, balance, harmony and peace.

To trace the connection of copper with Venus we have to go back to a distant mythological era: back, in fact, to a Mediterranean isle, once ruled by a love-goddess – the island of Cyprus.

This island was regarded as the domain of Venus-Aphrodite. Aphrodite was referred to as the ‘Cyprian goddess’. In Botticelli‘s picture, The Birth of Venus, she is depicted as being born from the sea on to the shores of Cyprus. It is from the name of this island, Cyprus, that the word copper derives.

The word copper comes from the Latin word cuprum and this derives from the Greek work Kyprus. Cyprus was in antiquity the principal source of copper, and so the metal was named after it. Venus was felt by antiquity to dwell just where such large amounts of copper had condensed. Venus was credited with a sea origin, and copper reminds us of this connection with the water element. All copper salts are sea-colored, blue or green as the copper has the ability to generate a green coating called Verdigrease, or Acetite Of Copper.

In various sea creatures the breathing process is by means of copper, not iron. They do not need the fiery Mars-energy, but have a more tranquil mode of being. A simpler, copper-containing molecule is used instead of the iron-molecule hemoglobin.

The conch shell in Botticelli’s picture, always traditionally associated with Venus, comes from such a creature, one which respires by means of a copper-process. 

That same polarity functions in an inorganic realm in the principle of the dynamo, where the relative motion of iron and copper generates electricity. Iron creates the magnetic field and copper wires carry away the current generated. The energy powering our civilization derives from a pulsating Mars-Venus interaction, making alternating currents.

There was a Mars-Venus conjunction in the sky on the day when Michael Faraday discovered the dynamo principle (17 October, 1831).

As Mars and Venus in mythology were closely related, so are they found bonded together in the depths of the earth: the principle copper ore is in copper-iron pyrites, in which copper occurs together with iron. The darker threads of iron run through this sea-green ore of copper.

Common minerals found in foods can have powerful effects on our bodies. One example is copper. This soft and malleable metal is especially interesting because of its effects not only on physical health but on personality as well.

Do you know anyone who suffers from headaches, fatigue, insomnia, depression, skin rashes, spaciness or detachment, learning disorders or premenstrual syndrome?  These can be symptoms of a copper imbalance.  It is an extremely common nutritional imbalance.  It is often overlooked, in part because it is not always simple to detect.

The one thing we can say about the effect of toxic metals on the mind is that we don’t know much. These metals are hard to detect and difficult to get rid of once you know you have them. That is why you don’t hear much about this subject.

The question arises why there should be such an excellent correlation between our emotional states and our body chemistry. The reason is that the body functions as a system.

The body has an intricate system of checks and balances, which operate through the mineral levels and ratios. If one mineral becomes deficient, another mineral will accumulate and may become excessive.

One principle of the systems theory is that anything that affects part of a system reverberates to affect the entire system. Thus, it is not strange that a person’s emotional make-up and personality affect his chemistry and conversely, that biochemical alterations can strongly affect one’s personality and behavior.

When sodium and potassium levels go down, calcium and magnesium levels will rise. If copper drops, iron increases. If zinc rises, copper will decrease. If iron rises, chromium levels decrease.

The body controls many body functions through the modification of the mineral ratios.

The key fact about the metal toxicity is that it is always related to chronic fatigue and chronic adrenal fatigue.

All chronic illness includes chronic fatigue and adrenal fatigue, whether you feel tired or not. A lot of my patients will say, “Oh, I have lots of energy,” but they do not or they would not be chronically ill. There is no conventional medical treatment for adrenal fatigue unless you have reached the point of total failure, at which time you are put on cortical supplements for the rest of your life. Therefore, like the issue of toxic metals, if adrenal fatigue is not tested for, it is not discussed.

These two problems—adrenal fatigue and toxic metal buildup—are strongly related because you cannot excrete metal without good adrenal function. Adrenal function needs to be pretty close to normal or you will start retaining metals, because the adrenal glands have such a big part to play in the proper handling of metals in the body.

The first sign of adrenal fatigue is reliance on stimulants. If the idea of going without your stimulant is an issue, you have adrenal fatigue. There, you have taken the test, now you know.

What happens next depends on many variables— the types of metals to which you are exposed, and how much, and even where you live.

But the main thing that happens with metal retention is copper toxicity because everybody is getting copper constantly. Almost everything you eat has some copper in it.

Copper is found in certain foods in greater quantity such as meats, eggs, poultry, nuts, seeds and grains.  Other foods are quite low in copper such as fruits, in particular.  Others that tend to be low are vegetables and some nuts and grains.  Refined food diets are low in copper in many cases.

Excess copper is more common than deficiency today, due to the use of copper water pipes, birth control pills, vegetarian diets and stress.  Too much copper is common today and causes a wide variety of common symptoms, especially for women but also for boys and men.  Among them are depression, fatigue, acne, migraine headaches, moodiness, ADD, ADHD, autistic tendencies in babies and children, infertility, premenstrual tension and many others.

Copper sources include organ meats, nuts, seeds, beans, grains and chocolate.  People with high tissue copper are often bright, young-looking, creative and emotional.  This is called the copper personality type.  Each mineral has a personality type.

Each mineral also has “target organs” where it tends to build up.   The places where copper accumulates are the liver first, then the brain and the reproductive organs.

Copper may affect any organ or system of the body.  However, it usually affects about four or five major systems of the body.  These are the nervous system, the female and male reproductive system, connective tissues such as hair, skin and nails and organs like the liver.

Copper toxicity is a condition in which copper is retained and begins to build up in the body tissues. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer and other pioneering practitioners first warned of this problem in the 1970’s.

How did American women become so toxic with copper? The trend started in the 1960s when birth control pills became widely used. Copper is a primary component of the Pill since copper helps control the ovulation cycle. Most IUDs are made of copper, too. Today, the daughters of these mothers are dutifully taking their birth control pills every morning, thus magnifying the problem.

Depending on the severity of the toxicity and the susceptibility of the person, copper can affect the mind very strongly. Initially copper toxicity may make a person active, productive and creative. But eventually such feelings will be undermined by lack of energy. Then we see people who have a million ideas and are always making lists, but who do not have the energy to follow through. This leads to chronic frustration followed by depression.

It’s relation to estrogen levels makes copper toxicity a common cause of menstrual disorders, uterine fibroids, PMS and hormone imbalances. Copper gives a temporary boost to an exhausted system so cravings for high copper foods such as coffee, chocolate, avocados, shrimp and lobster, soy and fruit are very common.

Toxicity is nothing more than an over accumulation of toxic waste material, which happens when the body is not able to eliminate the excess build up. The same can be said of toxic thoughts, toxic emotions and toxic memories, their excess accumulation and your inability to remove or even transform them into a lighter, faster moving resonance blocks your energetic flow. Over time, these disruptive clusters of energy can manifest as disease and numerous nutritional issues.

On average, women have about 20% higher copper serum than men and for iron it is the other way round, with men having a one-third higher iron level than women in their blood.

The deep significance of this fact is entirely ignored by modern medicine.

Iron and copper levels are sex-linked in exactly the way expected from the gender symbolism of their planets. The level of copper in human blood is critical, being around one part per million by weight, and normally it remains fairly steady around this value.

Copper in women’s blood serum has a monthly cycle in tune with their menstrual period, peaking a week or so before the period arrives. This is because their serum copper exists chiefly as the protein, ‘ceruloplasmin’, whose metabolism is closely linked to the female sex hormone oestrogen. The Pill works by emulating conditions of pregnancy where oestrogen is high, and this has a drastic effect upon serum copper levels.

During pregnancy, copper serum in the mother climbs up to double its normal level, reaching 1.9 parts per million. Conversely, iron in fetus blood also increases as the time of birth approaches, so a copper-iron polarity develops between mother and child. Insomnia, depression and changeable moods towards the end of pregnancy have been related to the raised copper levels.

A woman taking the Pill has blocked off her monthly rhythm of serum copper, and instead retains a permanently high level corresponding to the ninth month of pregnancy. Evidence suggests that copper has a dynamic role in the reproductive process, rather than just being a by-product of the raised oestrogen.

In the early 1970s it was discovered that coil contraceptives using copper were much more successful than previous coil designs. The ‘copper-7’ coil became the most popular design and was marketed world-wide, used chiefly by women who have already had one child.

Despite intensive research however, no-one had any idea as to the mechanism whereby copper in the coil helped prevent conception.

The truth is that copper ions have a biological action on the inside of the uterus, preventing implantation of the fertilized ovum. Its method of operation is thus quite unconnected with that of the Pill, where overall blood serum levels are raised. The sole connection is that in both situations a striking Venus-quality is shown by copper’s behavior.

So as modern researches continue to investigate the role of copper in the functioning of the human body, the efficacy of copper as a trace element critical to human health and wellness is slowly but surely being discovered . . . or, shall we say, rediscovered, since the incredible healing properties of copper have been understood and used throughout human history.

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