John Kercher
by Christa Maria
The IDMA, a list for essential oil enthusiasts is not for sissies...Flaming wars often shoot up and one is always grateful for a sensible, sound , reasonable but also passionate voice, where you also knew that a lot of knowledge was behind it.
Such a voice was John Kercher.
John had a PhD in Botany and was a published author of Aromatherapy books. He lived in Holland but contracted to companies that needed his knowledge about botany and how to obtain plants from all over the world for the cosmetic industry or as in his last job for Greece, experimenting to come up with an herbal pesticide to treat tomatoes.
John also spoke several languages and he loved to read ancient books and journals in their original language, especially if they had to do with herbs and essential oils. He traveled all over the world, working the past years often in Romania , Yugoslavia and Greece. Traveling through Romania, he would ask little old ladies why they had no wrinkles and discover old wise women herbal recipes, always gladly sharing them with the internet lists that he was on.
His enthusiasm over discovering historical facts or plants unknown to most of us and how they were used in other lands had no bounds. On his travels he gifted us with wonderful stories and pictures, digging up historical tidbits that were gems. Some of it can be read at: http://www.kercher.nl/phyto/
He would help anyone who asked and was about the most generous person I have ever known. He was not rich, but often at his own cost would mail samples of what he had discovered to the people on the Kercher list without cost, but postage.
All of us in Aromatherapy are aware that the matter of how the body processes the essential oils is a hot debated subject.
John used to believe in the olfactory method to a large extent, until he met a monk on one of those monasteries in Greece that are very remote on some rock in the Aegean. This monk, originally from Austria was at his life's end journey and gifted John with a lifetime of study and applications related to the use of essential oils as medicine.
This monk believed thoroughly, that if used properly, at the right places on the body and through the use of carrier oils and special heat treatments, that essential oils could enter the bloodstream and heal. John started to translate the many volumes from German, Greek and Latin.
From this he built a study group and the people who joined it paid only a fee covering the base oils, learned along with him as he prepared the lessons.
John became very exited when he learned the Russian Government had done many studies that proved his discoveries were on the right path and he was so very close to share all this with the aromatherapy community.
Personally, when writing to John, I could write in a mix of English and German that he understood perfectly and when he detected homesickness in me , he would send me fried , pickled herring and licorice from Holland. I have no idea how he sometimes got things through customs!
He also wrote several historical type novels, one in German that he shared with me over the years on the internet, one in particular had only two more chapters to be finished, I told him what a spectacular movie it could have made.
His humor, wit and generosity will be missed by many, he left too soon, too sudden.
C-M