The Sickness

When it comes to the occult, one thing can have many different names depending on region or even the individual. In this case, I'm calling it the sickness. It is an ambiance released by some one who is seriously physically ill or on heavy drugs. Typically, it can only be detected within a five foot radius of the person and causes tension in the seer; it can even produce a visible clear screen around the person depending on the severity.

It is almost impossible to determine the source of "the sickness" because illness and drug use register the same. Most often one must use the process of elimination to reach a conclusion in regards to the cause. However, the cause is irrelevant; if taken as a warning The Sickness does its job either way.

Body Bits

I've decided at this point to explain the science behind body bits. The beauty of this method of work is that it is so concrete that it will be successful whether you know how it operates or not. However, just like a car, you'll get there faster if you know how to drive it.

Body bits are pieces you take from a person to aid in a spell directed at them for any reason; protection, malice, whatever. Bits include but are not limited to fingernail clippings, spit, hair, seamen, urine, scabs and anything else that can be excavated from a human or other animal. Because it is a part of the person's body, it is loaded with their essence and is still tethered to them energetically, providing a tunnel between them and the fingernail within which you can send energy or intent, whichever you like.

Healers

I was getting a spiritual cleansing from my friend Auntie Lisa (a very legit and highly powerful voodoo priestess) when she told me I was a healer and to research "hot hands". I had a problem with Google when all I got in terms of results was a bunch of ads for warm napkins sold for roughly 50 cents at random gas stations. Eventually, I came into a fair amount of information.

First off, let me note that the book "Hot Hands Healing" is a bunch of malarchy. Why do I say that? Because, you can't teach innate ability. Think of it like blindness; your eyes either work, or they don't. The book suggests that the ability to heal can be taught by buying the book (of course) and maybe participating in a few workshops. You'd save a fortune just by accepting your limitations. I'm not saying you can't, but I am saying that you can't "learn how" - it just happens. Know this, I will not apologize for these statements. Not everybody is a healer, not everybody can heal. Some people can heal to a certain degree but are not healers, I'm talking about a type of soul, not an isolated trait. But don't feel bad, there are many other innate abilities out there you may possess, and I will touch on them as time goes by. Besides, I never wanted to be a healer, I'd rather have necromancy any day of the week.

Moving on, "hot hands" is a term used loosely to describe warm energy that is output through someone's hands and can be used to heal the sick, stressed or mentally disturbed, depending on the healer. The nature of the warmth does not behave like typical body heat as it rises off of the palm of the hand and can be felt 7 inches away or more. For those of you who can see energy, a healer's hands may be orange or yellow, whereas the rest of their energy body will be a color on the other end of the spectrum, more often than not blue.

Healers are naturally drawn to comfort and it is for this reason that the share a lot of personality traits. They typically like cool colors, the night air, they dress comfortably, and have a ridiculous number of fluffy pillows (or some equivalent thereof). Seventy percent of healers sleep a lot, and when they're not sleeping their activity level is dependent entirely on their exposure to raw energy. Animals are drawn to them, especially dogs, the most empathic of the animal kingdom (minus the yippy ones, who share more traits with rodents than wolves).

All healers have empathy, which is the innate ability to sense emotion and disposition in others, human and animal alike. From an evolutionary standpoint, it's probably so they can sense sickness in order to heal it. Let me rephrase: all healers have empathy, but not all empathics are healers. However, if you are an empath, I strongly encourage you further look into healers, as you may very well be one. Empathy in healers is a very good thing because though overwhelming for them at times, they are extremely dangerous without it. Healers also have the ability to harm. They can give sickness just as easily as they can take it away, and the impact of feeling what the subject feels prevents malice from the healer.

Test Your Ability

Though healing is a natural ability, concentration can both focus and amplify the impact and end result of the effort. The next time you encounter a sick person (start small, like someone with a cold) stand near them and visualize red energy around them. This is the sickness. Now imagine the red energy slowly changing to green energy (or blue, everything is relative with energy work). When the red energy has completely dissipated, you're done. Yes, it is that simple. You're energy does the work for you, all you have to do is focus it.

All about the Damned

In today's society the strange are not very accepted, and often complain about it despite the fact that the worst they get are stares and maybe an otherwise avoidable traffic ticket or two. I personally find it ridiculous, because these people choose to be different unlike people with the misfortune of being born with deformities, just like I've chosen, but refuse to accept the consequences of their decision. It is for this reason that I've decided to post about people who chose to be different back in the old days, and sometimes were just accused of being different, and the price they had to pay in the end. Maybe this will shut those emo kids up for a while...

Accused witches

Witches and those like them have been around sense the dawn of time, though it was only during the introduction of Judo-Christianity that they were deemed evil and spawns of Satan. According to recorded history it became a common practice around the early 1400's. It is unfortunate that the gospel itself brought them no harm, but as it always goes when you present a complicated idea to a mass of stupid people something always goes horribly wrong.

The people targeted with the accusation of witchcraft were on occasion practitioners or unrelenting pagans, but far more often than not they were just the mentally ill, the misunderstood or the poor. What is currently known as schizophrenia was first viewed as prophetic ability, whereas the person could converse with spirits and the deceased. Upon the introduction of Christianity, they were believed to hold the power of Discernia, which is the ability to detect and communicate with angels or demons, and sometimes both. Over time, as often happens with oral tradition and old works of religious documentation, Discernia was somehow either forgotten or scewed into the belief that these people were possessed by demons. The sufferers were first taken to a holy man for exorcism either once or a few times, depending on the importance or wealth of the person, and when this yielded no results the individual was either run off from the village or killed.

The impoverished rarely followed the common etiquette of the towns people, and this was generally because they couldn't afford to. The women couldn't by the clothes to cover themselves, had little opportunity to properly wash, and in desperate times even engaged in prostitution in a last effort to feed themselves. It is for these reasons that when it came to the poor the women were almost always the ones accused. Methods for doing away with accused witches of all kinds include the following:

• Throwing them into the river: If they floated they were witches and were burned at the stake and if they sank they were dead anyway from drowning. The conviction in the case of witchcraft was almost always the death penalty as well.


• Burning: Either at the stake or thrown onto a pile, this was a popular method. Many believed destroying the body in this manner eliminated the possibility for them to return from the dead. Also, when burned on a pile the towns people would often throw their belongings into the pile with them, in a effort to rid themselves of potentially cursed items.


• Stoning: Back in the ancient days a stoning would involve throwing rocks at someone until someone made a fatal blow. However, by the time the witch hunts began the people would just assume dig a shallow hole in the ground and pile rocks on top of the unfortunate victim. This led to the crushing of the ribcage and eventual suffocation.

The Left-handed

According to statistics today, only 3 out of every 100 people are left-handed. Scientists believe it is not hereditary, but I am left-handed and so is my father so the odds are against them on that one. Once considered little more than an interesting trait, the left-handed were eventually considered children of the devil somewhere through the course of history, and were treated as such. The term left is actually Latin for sinister, which tells you for just how long the left side has been associated with the evil and just plain bad. In the early middle ages children were beaten and sometimes killed for using their left hand. Believe it or not, left-handed children were being encouraged and even forced to use their right hand as recently as fifty years ago. I personally knew an old woman who told me herself that as a child in school they would tie her left hand to her desk so she was forced to write with her right one. She was ambidextrous as a result.

The Deformed

In today's society those burdened with deformities suffer the incessant gawking of the public every time they have to go out on common endeavors that we participate in without incident every day. Believe it or not, it has been worse. Back in the fifties was around the time the government started to help the deformed rather than just hide them, by offering funded income and medical insurance to aid them in any complications they might face due to their illness. However, as recently as the early 1700s infants born deformed were severely neglected and often left to die. Further before that almost every culture would abandon them entirely and races like the Vikings would actually leave a sick infant naked in the snow over night. If the child survived it was allowed to live. If not, well, you get the idea.

To those lost to the ignorance and unsettling violence innate to human beings, I'd like say something you've been needing to hear for all of these years: We miss you, we love you, and on behalf of mankind - we are sorry. And for those of us both chastised and chastising, the moral of the story is stop complaining - It could always be worse.

How to Banish A Strigoi

Romania will probably be touched on a lot in this log, because even in present day extreme measures are taken to both deter and evoke demonic or otherwise evil aspects in the everyday life of the Romanian. This particular post is about the strigoi, the beings from whom I adopted my name, and a ritual often performed in an effort to banish them.

The strigoi are in encyclopedia terms the undead, both spirits and physical forms, that rise from the grave to seek vengeance or otherwise haunt the countryside, feasting on either the life force or actual flesh and blood of its victims. The Romanian engage in the following practice to rid the burdened of the strigoi:

There are a few variations on this ritual depending on region and oral tradition, but the basics remain the same: The suspected deceased is exhumed by the victimized with more often than not a holy man present, for protection I suppose, and more often than not without consent from the dead man's family. The victims then cut out the heart and burn it to a crisp, then grind it into a fine powder. The powder is then mixed with a few ingredients including water, maybe oil, and often alcohol. Finally the concoction is heated to a near boil to make sure the powder is soaked and evaporated into the other ingredients, and a cup is passed between the victims who proceed to drink the brew of powdered heart.

Today only rural areas of Romania practice this, and even then it isn't very often the dead rise. Even though modernized parts of Romania no longer practice acts of this nature, urban and rural alike still both believe and fear these beings and take superstitious measures to evade their attention.