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A Witch's Guide to Psychic Healing

Weiser Books

Chapter One

Examples of psychic healers come to us down through the ages from time immemorial. Many of the earliest healers were so highly regarded that they were actually deified. Typical among early healer deities was Isis, whose specialty was healing eye diseases. Another of the famous ancient deity-healers was Serapis. Serapis came to his patients as a healer in their dreams, and often required them to take certain actions for his benefit before he would grant healing. The papyrus record shows that Serapis ordered the king of Egypt to establish a temple to him in Alexandria, and haunted his dreams until the royal patient complied with his injunction-whereupon he cured the king.

Historically, psychic healing extends around the world. Japanese records show that their psychic healing too required obedience to the supernatural healer before the healing would be granted. Usually this meant that a shrine or temple had to be built to the god-ess.

In the face of a tremendous body of (mainly anecdotal) evidence, scientists have been forced to investigate the truth behind "miraculous" cures. Increasingly they find that the cures are real and that age-old approaches, such as Indian ayurvedic medicine and Chinese acupuncture, work. When movable type made books inexpensive, the world saw a literal explosion of information about psychic healing. Now the Internet has made knowledge of these "miracles" available to all. The temples of the healer god-esses may be regarded as the equivalent of today's hospitals. People went there and stayed until they were cured. The earliest recorded cures were carved on stone at the temples of Asclepius and his daughter Hygeia (~1,200 B.C.E.) at Epidaurus, overlooking the sea of Crete in southern Greece. According to the inscriptions everyone who came was cured and no deaths occurred. As late as the second century C.E., travelers copied cures from those inscriptions and took them home. These two deities can be considered the founders of all homeopathic and psychic medicine.

In contrast, as medicine progressed, the use of various ever-more-powerful drugs began, and modern allopathic (mainstream) medicine was born. The allopathic school believes that disease must be cured by intervention, either of a powerful medication or through surgery. To allopaths, the death of any patient is an insult, a tragedy, and a defeat. The homeopathic school believes, as did Asclepius and Hygeia, that good health is a natural state of being and that to gain good health the body must be put into balance and the root cause of the disease removed.

These two conflicting approaches to healing have shaped the medical arts in different ways for centuries. To clarify the differences, think what happens if you go to a conventional doctor with a bad cough. You get a cough suppressant that stops the cough and impedes your body's ability to get rid of the phlegm; then you take an expectorant to clear your chest. The psychic/homeopathic school says, on the other hand, that your body knows what it's doing; that your cough manifested for a reason traceable to your lifestyle. Don't cover it up, the homeopaths say; let it run its course. And in the meantime, resolve your lifestyle issues.

This classic conflict persists in medicine today. For many years, since the discovery of such things as penicillin and antibiotics, the allopathic school has reigned supreme. Only now are we beginning to realize how well pathogens can learn to resist such invasions, resulting in a need for increasing quantities of still more-powerful and still more-expensive medications. Many of these medications have far-reaching side effects.

Psychic healers have a more gentle and less invasive approach. Sometimes they achieve an instant cure; often, though, their healing takes longer than conventional allopathic remedies. The question is always: Did the "regular" doctor's treatment cure the disease, or was it just a Band-Aid covering up an underlying lifestyle problem?

Patients in search of an instant miracle cure often elect to use a wonder drug. It is our contention that patients should do much more than that: they should find the complete cure, going to a psychic healer as well as a conventional doctor. Fortunately researchers have realized that the body has its own healing cells and produces its own natural healing substances. Recent work with extra white blood cells grown in the laboratory from a patient's own cells has shown that these cells can rid the body of melanoma tumors.

We know full well that if you don't believe in psychic healing you will be skeptical-that no words of ours will convince you. We urge you to apply that same attitude to the drugs offered to you by multi-billion-dollar-a-year commercial enterprises. Stay skeptical! Skeptics live longer. And once you have experienced your first psychic healing, you will need no further proof from us.

The remainder of this chapter is for the fence-sitters, those who haven't yet made up their minds. Maybe you have read about documented healings and healers. Maybe that information will get you to try an alternative approach, at least as an adjunct to conventional medicine.

JESUS, PAUL, AND BIBLICAL HEALING

The Christian Bible is full of examples of psychic healing. Undoubtedly, Jesus was a great healer, able to heal both by the laying on of hands and from a distance. Two examples suffice to illustrate our claim.

1. The laying on of hands:

... a leper approached [Jesus], bowed low, and said, "Sir, if only you will, you can cleanse me." Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, "Indeed I will; be clean again." And his leprosy was cured immediately. Then Jesus said to him, "Be sure you tell nobody; but go and show the priest, and make the offering laid down by Moses for your cleansing; that will certify the cure." (Matthew VIII:2-4)

Jesus touched and cured him. The touch itself and the fact that Jesus did not get leprosy were both considered miracles. At that time, popular wisdom held that touching a leper would give you leprosy; hence such a touch was an illegal, absolutely forbidden act.

Jesus' healing work often flouted the law. An excellent example of this is his healing on the Sabbath of a man with a withered arm. As a result of this, the Bible tells us, the Pharisees "laid a plot to do away with him" (Matthew XII:14). Many surgeons and physicians would like to be able to do what Jesus did when he told a man paralyzed for 38 years, "Rise to your feet, take up your bed and walk" (John V:8-9). That day, too, was a Sabbath. Thus, when Jesus told the man to rise up and carry his bed, he had again violated the law.

2. Distant healing:

Once again he visited Cana-in-Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. An officer in the royal service was there, whose son was lying ill at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he came to him and begged him to go down and cure his son, who was at the point of death. Jesus said to him, "Will none of you ever believe without seeing signs and portents?" The officer pleaded with him, "Sir, come down before my boy dies." Then Jesus said, "Return home; your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said and started for home. When he was on his way down his servants met him with the news, "Your boy is going to live." So he asked them what time it was when he began to recover. They said, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." The father noted that this was the exact time when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live," and he and all his household became believers. (John IV:46-53)

The apostle Paul continued Jesus' healing ministry. Moreover, he added practical advice to his psychic healing. From that day to this we cannot really separate the practical from the purely psychic. Two quotes suffice to show Paul's power: "Paul visited him and, after prayer, laid his hands upon him and healed him; whereupon the other sick people on the island came also and were cured" (Acts XXVIII:8). Paul's beloved co-worker and fellow believer, Timothy, fell ill and asked Paul to heal him. Paul's response was: "Stop drinking nothing but water; take a little wine for your digestion, for your frequent ailments" (I Timothy V:23). He advocated a simple realworld approach instead of using a healing touch or waving a wand.

In 1858 in a small cave near Lourdes in the French Pyrenees, Mary the mother of Jesus appeared on eighteen occasions to a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous. She asked Bernadette to build a chapel in the cave at the spot where she had appeared to her. (The cave was not very deep; in fact it was more of a shallow recess in the hillside.) Mary told the girl to drink water from the spring in the grotto. No spring was visible to Bernadette, so she asked the vision what to do. The vision indicated where she should scrape with her hands in the floor and the wall of the cave. Bernadette did as she was instructed, and a spring began to flow. The spring has flowed from that day to this, and has shown many healing properties. Today it is surrounded by cast-off crutches and wheelchairs, and is thronged with supplicants.

The healing miracles caused the Catholic hierarchy to investigate the claims; two commissions were established to carry out this order. Their reports are still available for study. The commissions were well aware of the problems of false visions and possible flights of fancy of young girls; nonetheless they investigated for four years and in January 1862 issued the following statement:

We judge that Mary, the immaculate mother of God, did really appear to Bernadette Soubirous on 11 February 1858 and on certain subsequent days, eighteen times in all, in the grotto of Massabieille near the town of Lourdes ...

The next miracle related to Bernadette was discovered only on 22 September 1909, when the Church wanted to identify her relics as part of the canonization procedure. On opening her coffin, they found that the body appeared exactly as it had on the day of her death, even though the rosary was rusty and verdigris covered the crucifix. A Dr. Jourdan was present; he reported, "We notice no smell. The body was clothed in the habit of Bernadette's order. The habit was slightly damp. The body was perfectly preserved. The veins on the forearms still stood out." On 18 April 1925 Bernadette was again exhumed and placed on view in a crystal coffin. Now, over 100 years after her death, her body remains totally uncorrupted. On 14 June 1925 Pope Pius XII declared Bernadette blessed, and the still-uncorrupted body of the beatified was clothed in a new habit and transferred to a new reliquary coffin.

If you've ever had any doubt about the curative power of holy water, a visit to Lourdes should put your doubt firmly to rest. While you are there, you may see someone come up in a wheelchair and watch their legs suddenly straighten. Then they stand from the chair and walk. This is not uncommon at Lourdes. Thousands of discarded crutches, braces, and wheelchairs surround the shrine. Even though they are cleared away annually, thousands more are discarded there each year.

We saw Fernando being wheeled to the grotto at Lourdes by his wife. A team of six men carrying a huge candle on their shoulders followed the couple. We did not witness what happened inside the grotto. What we did see was that with his wife's aid Fernando walked out of the grotto fully healed. By coincidence (perhaps) we found him and his party in the dining room of our hotel when we went in to have lunch. He was kind enough to share his story with us.

Three years earlier his legs had been paralyzed in a traffic accident; he had not walked since that day. After consulting many physicians in Spain, England, and the United States, all of whom told him he would never walk again, Fernando decided he would try for a miracle at Lourdes. He told his priest what he was determined to do, and added that he wanted to offer a candle to the shrine. When the priest announced all this from the pulpit, people began to donate wax and candles so that Fernando could take a grand candle to be lit at the shrine. Fernando melted down all the wax and carved an intricate design on the candle, essentially alone but with a little help from his wife. For a man in a wheelchair it was quite an undertaking. Fernando's friends put the candle into a truck, Fernando got into his SUV, and the whole group traveled to Lourdes. When the men had set up the candle Fernando wanted to light it himself. Two of them lifted him so he could do it. After he had lit the candle and they all joined in a prayer to the Lady, they started to put him back into his wheelchair-but he found he could stand by himself.

People assure us that Fernando's story is not unique. If you are lucky, when you visit Lourdes you will witness a similar healing. We should add that for more than a century now pilgrims have steadily collected water from the Lourdes spring and have taken it home, regarding it as manifestly full of healing power.

EDGAR CAYCE, THE SLEEPING PROPHET

When you investigate psychic healing you will almost immediately encounter the work of Edgar Cayce and the ARE (Association for Research and Enlightenment) in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The ARE has sub-clinics in several American cities. They and the headquarters are inundated by people seeking healing through its personnel who carry on the work inaugurated by Cayce himself. When you visit the clinic, the impression you get is not radically different from the feeling you get when you visit a "regular" doctor's offices; that is, until you hear the proposed therapies, such as high colonics, castor oil packs, and acupuncture. These are the therapies that Edgar Cayce received from his control or entity: the intelligence that spoke through his body.

Cayce's technique was simply to lie down on a bed and go into a trance state. His wife, Gertrude, asked patients to describe their problems, and a stenographer recorded what the entity said through Cayce. Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about this whole procedure was that the patients did not have to be present. Provided the workers had the address of the patient, Cayce "went out" and diagnosed astrally. He conducted a very detailed examination of the patient's body, determining, for instance, whether bones were broken or if there were ulcers, cuts, or bruises present. Then he prescribed what was needed (in his words) to get the body back into balance.

Continues...

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Excerpted from A Witch's Guide to Psychic Healing by GAVIN FROST AND YVONNE FROST Copyright © 2003 by Gavin and Yvonne Frost. Excerpted by permission.
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