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The Caduceus: medical magic and healing

03:15 / 11.06.07

Zippy kindly gathered the older threads of interest.

So magic as a healing act. There's a huge range here from healing of the physical body to reshaping/tending to the spiritual self. Different traditions hold illness is a result of imbalance regardless of the location of the ailment in what we in the West break down into the Body vs. Mind. Others hold it is due to invasion from not-of-the-body even possession.

Acupuncture and chiropractics spring to mind as forms of healing straddling the line between mainstream and more esoteric approaches. What arts are you familiar with?

While I'm interested in a wide range of discussion regarding healing magic I'm also after concrete homegrown examples of what people use. I've got one eye on a clock for community reasons and I desire to add your suggestions to my mix.

Last year I got my physical and spiritual ass handed to me on a medical emergency plate. I've since learned an energetic healing art and received my First Aid certification. Most of my spiritworker kit focuses on healing via listening to a person's perception of their reality and assisting them to align it as they wish. Also I've learned how to suture, splint, and when required drain the tangible meaty bits we need to pursue our sometimes lofty endeavors.

For extra diagnostic tools beside the ones the Red Cross suggested I use straight up divination checking to see what the problem is and if it acceptable for me to roll up mah sleeves.

I'm approaching building a healing ceremony pretty much the same way I do any manifestation ritual. Raise the energy with informed group intent, shape it with collective desire while mindful of the limits of our powers of judgment, and aim it like one of the Fool's cow flower canons.
The energy is offered for the use of the ill person and their Guides to use as required. I'm not so down with forcing shapes and fates onto people. Working with Death Deities helps keep things in perspective in this regard.

I picked the Caduceus because it is a common symbol of medicine having a clear magical and ritual past. For me healing is part of the magician's foundation though I understand it isn't always the same kind of healing we think of as medicine (though obviously we could discuss the North American Indigenous people's use the term medicine.)

03:49 / 11.06.07

Here is another old thread on healing

Hmm, I have precious little to add to this at the moment, more when I am less witless. I'm doing a little work on myself at the moment to try and heal injuries induced from exercise. Will let you know how it goes after the event.

15:04 / 11.06.07

I would like to recommend for anyone who does laying of hands work to take an anatomy class. It definitely helped me to "see" beneath the skin in the case of physical ailments. What else has helped me is knowing my own body very intimately. Not in a sexual way, although that is useful too, but in an experiential way. A process where the study of meridians in acupuncture, for example, could become more of a working knowledge by simply touching one's own body and really feeling the connections. Play with your toes and your scalp, especially. This is also a great way to do some self-healing as well. I like to envision my fingertips as having eyeballs when I am poking around my body, or someone else's body. Getting to know my own body helps me to understand other bodies.

I KNOW, that when I have refrained from touching myself with love and compassion and intent to heal myself, my entire well-being goes wacko.

That's all I have ATM.

15:11 / 11.06.07

What do people think about the role of ritual with energy healing work?

I know of a few styles that are either very anti anything mystical trappings like reconnective healing, some that leave it up to the user like Celtic Reiki and some where it is very much based on calling in the Deity/ies.

16:25 / 11.06.07

Wow. Reconnective healing looks quite interesting! Thank you for that link, BIHB. It seems very close to my current healing practices. However...

The Reconnection: Originally, the meridian lines, sometimes called the acupuncture lines, on our bodies were connected to the grid lines that encircle the planet. These grid lines were designed to continue out to a vastly larger grid, tying us into the entire universe. Over time we became disconnected wit these lines.

Originally? Over time we became disconnected, how? I suppose I would have to pay to find out those answers.

I do have a similar theory about the body's relationship to the planet, but that site smacks of something I am not comfortable with. Statements like this one: Reconnective Healing is a form of healing that is here on the planet for the very first time. - Some marketing really gives authenticity a smack in the face.

17:37 / 11.06.07

What do people think about the role of ritual with energy healing work?

Not read your link yet, but I'm unsure. I've been meaning to do a post on this all day and the crux of what I wanted to say was that, for self-healing at least, I believe in keeping it really simple. Ritual may well be an unnecessary encumbrance (if your experience is different, let me know.) I referred above to doing some work to fix sporting injuries. The main practice I'm using to address these at the moment is to stand in a Qi Gong posture and imagine I'm breathing through the afflicted area - I might bring a colour into the mix, but that's about it. Jury is still out on the results but I like the simple and easy nature of this practice.

That's where I'm at presently. The only way I can see myself complexifying this currently is by preceding with some very basic trancework just to feel out my attitude to healing and trying to reinforce postive beliefs.

Note: Am reading your link now and first impressions are really negative: both a time in Earth history as well as an experience of human consciousness. Defined by the convergence of decreasing planetary magnetics and increasing planetary frequency upon a point in time, the Shift of the Ages, or simply, The Shift, represents a rare opportunity of collectively repatterning the expression of human consciousness. The Shift is the term applied to the process of Earth accelerating through a course of evolutionary change, with the human species linked, by choice, to the electromagnetic fields of Earth, following suit through a process of cellular change.

God, I hate this sort of stuff. It means nothing and it makes me want to hurl. Though I imagine this kind of rhetoric is fairly common in healing circles?

18:14 / 11.06.07

It means nothing and it makes me want to hurl.

Yes, well I am glad you said it that way!

I work with filaments and/or similar "string" theory for healing. It's nothing new at all, and I didn't really think it was some seekrit ov teh univyrz.

One of my favourite healing rituals is the Middle Pillar. I don't see the part I like the best, though, in that article. That would be using white or multi-coloured light and visualize it spiraling around oneself, or making a fountain from the top of one's head. Very effective practices.

18:41 / 11.06.07

Yeah I'm not down with the reconnective folks. To be honest they freak me out. My sister had a very intense light show experience with one of their healers but I remain dubious.

However I'm down with the tree foo people via Celtic Reiki which can sound New Age-y fluff. Here's an article on it full of fuffy terms by a person I sort of know.

I find groups that remove the ancient ritual techinques, call 'em stage and theater if you like, then fall back on modern hand wavey stuff.

Give me the old time religion with drums, chanting, and dancing to grab one body and soul over the serene pink waves of three easy payments of only $39.99.

That said I did just have an amazing phone call with a healer who specializes in using crystals to assist in healing.

In the end it's not the style so much as the user methinks.

18:59 / 11.06.07

I wish I had more to add, but I agree with Roy Medallion really. Keeping it simple, putting your hands on someone in the right way and being calm & positive is usually pretty effective IME.

Earth accelerating through a course of evolutionary change, with the human species linked, by choice, to the electromagnetic fields of Earth, following suit through a process of cellular change.

Jesus, we should have a thread on people using science words they don't understand to make their theory sound convincing, like 'electromagnetic' and 'cellular', it drives me batshit. You should see the 2012 Schumann resonance stuff, it's truly amazing.

12:35 / 12.06.07

We call it 'plasma' in my household, when someone uses a word because it sounds Scientific but they have no idea what the details of science ref by the word actually are.

I'm experimenting with a new kind of healing approach for myself. In the past I used the focus energy and release style but now I'm looking at it more inline with other kinds of manifestation ritual.

The use of sympathetic structures to manipulate (external to the illness) as a way of aligning one's reality. This is about sacred theater and has in my mind more connection with formal ritual.

12:59 / 12.06.07

What are people's thoughts on the necessity of belief in the recipient of the healing? Is it a vital part of the process?

Obviously, you all know I'm from the hardcore "pills and scalpels" side of things. But even there lack of faith in the skills of the Doctor can work against the patient. But does someone need to be "open" to the idea of being healed to...well...be healed?

13:21 / 12.06.07

With a detrimental attittude, not even "pills and scalpels" will save you, IMO. Even if a doctor could help heal or cure one disease, most likely it would come back, or disease would take on another form. Luckily, most people actually do want to heal, and they are open to healing, which, I believe is enough to work with.

13:35 / 12.06.07

What are people's thoughts on the necessity of belief in the recipient of the healing? Is it a vital part of the process?

To some extent I think it is vital in even the scalpel and pills approach. The whitecoats often work their best mojo to no avail if the patient just doesn't have the will to continue. With my older relatives I've see their faith in their whitecoats bolster their own will to live regardless of the crap treatment they have received one set. (specifically I've known one set of whitecoat experts to be horrified over the treatment a relative received at the hands of another institution and be amazed the patient wasn't dead)

With greencoats often we in the West think it is all the power of belief, but that seems to reflect a lack of knowldege about the mechanics of what's happening. Again I'd point to cross over treatment form like acupunture. I think it is quite reasonable to say it is working mechanically on the body in a scalpel/pill sort of way that Western Science has yet to really pin down. *ahem*

So for me I see mechanical actions with the physical body and actions of belief with the mind as vital for healing.

However that said can you plop a non believer on my couch and still get energetic healing results? Hellya! Because (from my POV) the mechanical adjustment is still happening.

14:17 / 12.06.07

What are people's thoughts on the necessity of belief in the recipient of the healing?

Well I think it's great to have their faith and it's definitely preferable (see the placebo effect, positive physical results from visualisation exercises etc) but it's not necessary. You can heal animals for example, and they don't have any faith in their doctor's magic powers.