Magical Healing: Folk Healing Techniques from the Old World - Hexe Claire 2018

The Source of Healing Energy
Healing and Healers

Not long ago I had to smile when I saw a woman indignantly complaining about a traditional healing spell book that had only Christian spells in it.

Well, what else did she expect? The vast majority of our European ancestors were Christian—at least in the time these spells were written, and of course this form of Christianity often differed a lot from what we understand by the term Christian faith today.

It was not without reason that up through the sixteenth century and even afterward, church decrees ordered clergymen to not perform magic and fortunetelling.

But we don’t have to go that far in history. A while ago a woman told me the story of a pastor who was a friend of hers. One of his congregants had asked him to banish a negative energy from his home. The pastor was—to put it mildly—astonished at this request. But instead of explanations he was told by the congregants (who were clearly disappointed with the pastor’s lacking abilities) that his predecessor had done this with the help of a black dog that lied down at the spot of disturbance. In this way, the negative energy was identified and thereafter banished.

This is pure folk magic, and the black dog exemplifies that the previous pastor knew what he was doing.

This shows how much magic is still there, just beneath the surface of modern rationalism even today. Of course, this applies not only to folk magic. Half of the country does “cosmic ordering” (author Bärbel Mohr’s method has been very popular for some years here in Germany, and numerous books on it have been published in English as well), reads their horoscopes, speaks to angels in moments of despair, or lights a candle for a loved one in need—but absolutely no one believes in arcane things like magic!

How Does Healing Power Work?

We live in a time enamored with intellectualism, always trying to make things demonstrable and repeatable. This is difficult when it comes to magic. The true reason for this attitude is nothing less than a huge uncertainty. Plus we are trained to think this way from early childhood on, so it becomes our second nature.

The risk of this way of thinking is to lose the connection to the source that supplies us with power, not only for healing but also for life itself. A traditional healer who was also the head of a big Romany family analyzed this problem in words that can’t be put better:

Why do you try to understand everything? Leave the discoveries to those whose job it is to discover. Be content with what you are able to achieve, and embrace it.

If you don’t do this, all joy will escape from your heart through the hole of boredom and your hands will never again be suns for those with hearts and souls full of coldness. ⁶

Or let’s take Galsan Tschinag, a Mongolian shaman who studied in my hometown, Leipzig, during the German Democratic Repubic era. He knows both sides well, traditional and western, and said this about the westerners:

They are afraid. And critical, they doubt everything. I always call this the worms of doubt; the stuffed, brazen-unholy worms of mistrust. Many people consider this to be their strength. Doubt and mistrust are a culture, they think.

They always have a dark thought with them as their eternal shadow, which in the end always stands between them and the universe.⁷

Every spiritual healer who is true to himself and others knows that he does not know much at all. You have your spiritual path and your own thoughts about how healing works, but at the end of the day you don’t know it for sure. The matter here is this: is this a question of knowing?

The first quote of this chapter hinted that discoveries are for discoverers, scientists, and scholars. This does not apply to intuition, feelings, and spiritual strength. While the rational approach suits many areas of life perfectly, we would be mistaken to think it would suit every area of life or that it’s the only approach that is legitimate.

By the way, it’s also true in science that the wrong approach won’t lead anywhere, and a few scientists say that some of their major discoveries came to them in a dream or an intuitive moment.

Our rational mind is a wonderful tool to discover, classify, and rate things. But only the heart possesses the power that must flow for spiritual healing. This is also true for doctors, not only in alternative medicine. The classical doctor also has to reach the heart of his patient to make changes possible. For example, a doctor can tell a diabetes patient a lot of good reasons to engage in more exercise and eat a healthier diet, but if he does not get through to his patient on an emotional level, it won’t click.

Of course, there can be many reasons for “clicks.” It happens to smokers who quit from one day to the next. And not every patient wants to be reached emotionally and open up to the process of healing with all of its sometimes unsettling moments. Many just want a prescription for pills to fix it.

What is often overlooked is that an illness can become very familiar, like second nature to the person that has it. If this is the case, being liberated from that illness is like a shock to the system for the patient. Illnesses become like trusted friends for some and the liberation from it can feel very odd for someone used to this “friend”—a nasty friend, but a familiar one that often serves an (un)conscious purpose such as getting more attention, avoiding arduous things that otherwise would have to be done, etc.

You see, this topic is as complex as humans are. Healers, doctors, and non-medical practitioners can do whatever they can, but if the patient won’t even give it a try, they can’t accomplish anything aside from just grabbing the prescription pad to provide some pills.

Of course, the not-wanting-to-change of many patients has deeper roots that grow from not-being-able. More than a few people are convinced they do not deserve healing. This brings us back to the topic of guilt that was already mentioned. Many people have a deeply archaic vision of illnesses being linked to guilt of some sort. The illness seems to be the penance for this guilt or wrong-doing.

These inner patterns often originate in childhood experiences (“This is because you were a no-good child!”) and can be very deeply and firmly rooted. Most of these people are not even aware of it, so before anything else is done they have to be sensitized to think of themselves as being worthy of healing and that they don’t have to “serve the sentence” beforehand.

But let’s get back to the source of healing again. This topic is especially important for traditional healers. For the prayer-healers of the past, this was a non-issue; they worked (and sometimes still work) with the Holy Trinity, Mother Mary, and the populous world of folk saints with their broad competences for almost anything (including even magic!). If you follow Christian traditions, you can find many books and websites dedicated to this topic. I won’t be covering these saints in this book; not because of small-mindedness but because others simply know more about that area than I do.

For all those who would like to work with the old gods—I’ve listed them for you coming up! But please keep in mind that a personal connection to a divinity or entity comes above any list or description. If you can’t warm toward an entity, any further effort will be useless. You have to be in tune with each other, otherwise there will be no true reply from the other side and it will be only superficial but not profound work.

If you find out that your favorite divinity is not credited for healing powers in ancient or traditional lore, don’t give up too easily; simply give it a try. You can also cast and read oracles to find out more. Listen to your inner voice if there is a response from your divinity, or if there are signs in everyday life or in dreams.

What gods and goddesses are credited for in books and texts is just a small portion of what they really are. In the end all that matters is what happens between you and your spiritual team.

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6. Derlon: Heiler und Hexer, 63

7. Tschinag, 198