Healing has been a central part of witches’ activities from time immemorial, and it remains so today. It used to be an accepted function of priesthood, from the healer-priests of Ancient Egypt to the Druids1 and the first Christians. The Church soon forgot Jesus’s command: ‘Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils’ — at least as far as psychic or spiritual healing goes, though many monks and nuns became gifted herbalists, and no one doubts the dedication of medical missionaries. But the psychic-healing vacuum was filled by the village wise-woman or cunning-man; and it was no accident that many of these were followers of the Old Religion, because such people understood psychic power and were uninhibited by the dogma of a church which regarded it with active suspicion.
Today’s witch has (or at least is striving to develop) the same understanding and naturally inherits the same healing tradition. Many witches, as we have pointed out, are professional doctors or nurses, combining psychic understanding with modern medical knowledge; a combination which can be remarkably powerful — and which can also avoid a lot of the blunders of which well-meant but tunnel-vision technology is often guilty.
However, most witches are not professionally trained in medicine or psychiatry. How can they, safely and effectively, exercise their healing function?
A single Section (or even a whole library) cannot teach you to be a healer. But we hope it can point to the ways in which you can learn to be a healer.
Healing in the Craft can be divided roughly into four headings, though these overlap, and two or more of them can be (and usually will be) combined. These headings are: herbalism, spells, direct work on the aura, and straight psychology.
As we pointed out, witches are naturally drawn to herbalism because the Craft is a Nature-based religion, and the study of herbs is a very fruitful way of sharpening their attunement to Gaia, the Earth-organism, on all the levels.
To use herbs for healing, you must (1) know where to find them, (2) be able to identify them infallibly and (3) be very well-informed on the effect and properties of any herb you are using. All that may sound obvious; but there are people around who combine a mystical enthusiasm for ‘natural’ cures with a slapdash approach to their use, and this is simply not good enough.
Fortunately, one can learn and practise herbalism one herb at a time, and this (short of taking a professional course on the subject) is really the best way to go about it, by extending your repertoire gradually. You can start by choosing herbs which are well-known cures for straightforward ailments and which are unlikely to clash with any treatment a doctor is giving (though you should always check up on this too).
Let us take two examples. An elderflower infusion is a very soothing treatment for sunburn. The elder tree, helpfully, is in flower just at the time when sunburn is likely to arise, and is very easy to identify. You can safely use this infusion on the sunburn of yourself or a friend, and you will gain confidence (and enhance your reputation) when it is seen to work. Anyone who can make a pot of tea can make an infusion; the next stage is to learn the rather less easy technique of making an ointment; then you will be prepared to treat sunburn later in the season when the flower has gone. (Or you can infuse the dried flowers.)
The second example is the lesser celandine, or pilewort, (Ranunculus ficaria), an early spring flower; it is, as its popular name indicates, an excellent treatment for piles. The whole herb is collected while it is in flower, and dried. This, too, can be used either as an infusion or as an ointment. It is less easy to identify (you must not confuse it with the greater celandine, Chelidonium majus, for instance, which has quite different uses) but once it has been pointed out to you you will never forget it. It certainly works and, in view of the distressing nature of the complaint it treats, may land you with some embarrassingly grateful patients.
The point about these two is that you cannot do any harm with either of them through faulty diagnosis; and you will almost certainly do good.
Next, in your herb-by-herb progress, you might turn your attention to eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) for inflamed eyes — again making sure that the patient sees a doctor if the inflammation persists and may be a symptom of something more serious; or the common marigold (Calendula officinalis) which is a stimulant useful for local treatment of various kinds — but avoid the marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), which is strongly irritant and can produce serious side-effects when used without exact knowledge.
The principle to follow is, not to run before you can walk. Build up your repertoire with safe herbs, one by one, and never outstrip your own knowledge.
If you can do this under the guidance of an experienced herbalist, so much the better. Otherwise you must study, and constantly refer back to, reliable books.
The classic is Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, written by the seventeenth-century astrologer-physician Nicholas Culpeper, reprinted continuously since, and still in publication. His soundness is shown by the fact that modern books on the subject repeatedly quote him.
Of the modern herbals, Potter’s New Cyclopaedia by R.C. Wren is very clear and concise; but the most useful work we have found is Mrs M. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal, first published in 1931. Short of professional training, a would-be herbalist could not do better than to rely entirely on Mrs Grieve.
For the identification of herbs, again the ideal thing is to be shown them, in their natural habitat, by somebody who really knows them. But even that (since you cannot take such a friend round on a lead wherever you go) will have to be supplemented by book knowledge. For Britain and Ireland, the most comprehensive and practical work is W. Keble Martin’s The Concise British Flora in Colour, with accurate drawings of 1,486 species and descriptions of many more; it has become our botanical Bible wherever we go. As a complement to this, we much appreciate Roger Phillips’ Wild Flowers of Britain, which is entirely illustrated by colour photographs.
Learn all you can from local lore, particularly if you live in the country; but remember that there may be some chaff among the wheat, so it will do no harm to cross-check it with Culpeper, Potter or Mrs Grieve (discreetly, or your source may take offence and dry up).
Talking of local lore, and slightly off the subject of herbs — it was in Co. Mayo that we realized the origin of the phrase ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’. It meant literally that. We saw a neighbour who had been bitten (more or less unintentionally) by a dog, take a hair from the culprit’s coat and bandage it in place over the graze. Coincidence or not, it had healed completely by the next day.
The principles and techniques of spell-working are discussed fully in the next Section. All the methods described (image spells, candle spells, cord magic, linked-hand magic, the creation of thought-forms) can be used for healing purposes; and all the reinforcements suggested (such as the use of appropriate colours and the appropriate God- and Goddess-names) are helpful for healing spells too.
Each method has its advantages. With the image spell, it is easier to concentrate the willpower and imagination on a particular area of the body. Cord or linked-hand magic fits well into the pattern of a normal coven esbat. A candle spell, we have found, is very suitable for a solo witch or a partnership who are asked for immediate healing help but cannot entirely escape from their everyday chores; it is also appropriate when help is particularly needed over a specified few hours, such as the time of an operation, childbirth or the critical phase of an illness.
Thought-form working is very effective when a major effort is required from a group or a partnership, and especially when several factors are involved in the situation; for example, if the behaviour of the patient’s family, the weather or the risk of infectious contact with children has to be taken into consideration. The thought-form can be ‘tailor-made’ to keep watch on all these factors more easily, for instance, than would be possible with an image spell.
One form of spell is exclusive to healing work: the use of a stand-in. A member of the coven, of the same sex as the patient and as far as possible of similar age and bodily characteristics, is chosen as the stand-in — for example, a man in his middle thirties, with dark hair, of sturdy build and medium height. The coven envisage him as a temporary replica of the patient, a kind of two-way TV monitor; and the stand-in so envisages himself, concentrating on forming a strong astral link with the physically absent patient. The healing work is then performed, using the stand-in as a channel. Some covens find this very effective, but it has its dangers — that of psychic infection of the stand-in by the patient being the most obvious. Great care must be taken to protect him, and the coven must be confident of their capacity to do this. It is advisable to have one person, of known healing power and psychic sensitivity, very much in charge of the operation. On the whole, this method is better used only by very experienced covens.
(On the problem of psychic or etheric infection of the healer.)
When the patient is a member of the coven, and present to be worked on, one method of channelling power into him or her can be dramatically successful. We learned it (as one so often does) the hard way, through a magical accident. We were still in the Sanders’ coven, and Alex was staging rituals for a visiting German film unit. For one sequence we were demonstrating cord magic, with a radiating wheel of cords having a man and a woman at each end of each cord. With his unerring eye for visual effect, Alex had one of our women witches, Wendy, lying face upwards under the centre of the wheel ‘as a focus for the power’, while we cord-holders moved deosil faster and faster. The cameramen were delighted with the image of the circling figures and the spinning wheel of cords; and as we all entered into the spirit of the thing, we could feel that tremendous power was being built up. After a while the director called ‘Cut!’ and we set up for the next sequence.
We drove home that night in the same car as Wendy — and the poor girl was in agonies from a blinding headache. Unfortunately nobody had thought of choosing a useful objective for the power which had been almost inadvertently raised, or of ‘earthing’ Wendy immediately afterwards.2 So Wendy remained bursting with undischarged power, for which she should have been a channel and not a cul-de-sac. And although we realized what had happened, neither we nor Wendy were then experienced enough to put things right.
But we did learn from Wendy’s headache that the technique could be usefully and safely applied. We also learned a lesson which every coven involved with the media should remember — that even a staged ritual raises power, and that indeed in the keyed-up atmosphere of a film location or a TV studio it may raise a great deal; so one should always provide it with a constructive outlet, even if it is only to cure a continuity-girl’s cold. A useful objective can always be found.
On that subject — performers who stage evocations of sinister entities as a dramatic gimmick are asking for trouble. We recall a well-known rock group in London, some years ago, who put on a stage act in which a magician used such evocations to bring his dead lady-love back to life. A mere dramatic performance on the face of it, and suitably spectacular; but one girl performer had a fit, another was painfully burned and nearly suffered a sword-cut, and several other things went dangerously wrong.
Some performers are admittedly more careful. We were once asked to advise an amateur company on psychic self-defence for the actors and actresses involved in the witch scenes of their production of Macbeth. We took the request seriously and made some interesting friends.
These incidents were part of the wave of interest in the occult of the early 1970s — which on the professional showbiz side tended to be mere ‘cashing-in’, resulting in some casualties. One famous pop personality, now dead, was believed by many to have died as a result of a black-magic attack from someone he had offended; but Janet, who knew him well, believes that it was because he had been dabbling musically with the Enochian Calls, with insufficient knowledge, and ‘trying to work the Abramelin on stage’. He got disastrously out of his depth.
Such ill-informed dabbling is dynamite — and there are signs that a new wave of showbiz ‘cashing-in’ may be on the way. Serious occultists and witches who have friends in the profession should be ready with first aid — and also with advice; and the advice should be that, if these performers really want to be in tune with the spirit of the times, they should look towards ‘clean’ paganism and mankind’s relationship with Gaia, rather than to a superficial toying with the more convoluted and awesome symbols of an occultism torn out of context. There are many excellent performers who are genuine witches or pagans; but they mean, feel and understand what they are putting across. They are not dabblers cashing in.
This may seem a digression from the subject of healing; but it is a field in which much healing work may be called for.
The important part of the human aura, from the healing point of view, is the inner band which immediately surrounds (and of course also permeates) the physical body. It is, in fact, the etheric body, the energy-network which links the physical with the astral, mental and spiritual bodies and thus maintains it in being. Its substance is more tenuous than matter (and will contain molecules of matter at least in the form of pheromones) but less tenuous than the astral; and at least some frequencies of its energy are discernible by physical instruments, as the achievements of Kirlian photography show.
Like the astral body, though in different ways because of its close links with the physical, it can be strongly affected by emotion, willpower and psychic influences; hence its importance in psychic healing, both diagnostically and therapeutically.
The effect of emotion on the aura has also been recorded by Kirlian photography. In The Body Electric (pp. 164-9) Thelma Moss of UCLA describes experiments in which Kirlian photographs were taken of adjacent fingers of people who felt antipathy or attraction towards each other. The antipathy photographs showed a ‘haircut effect’ with the two auras rejecting each other; the attraction photographs showed the auras reaching out to each other and merging (ibid. Figure 5-1). Dr Moss was startled to find that similar ‘electric photographs’, showing the same effect, had been taken in the nineteenth century by a Polish doctor, Iodko-Narkovitz (ibid, Figure 4-1), long before the Soviet inventor Semyon Kirlian gave his name to the process. The Body Electric gives fascinating information on the healing implications of the phenomena which Dr Moss and her colleagues were investigating.
The first doctor to study the human aura as a natural phenomenon useful in diagnosis was Walter J. Kilner of St Thomas’s Hospital, London, at the beginning of this century. His approach was deliberately non-occult, though he accepted that clairvoyants could see the aura; taking this fact as a stimulus, he set out to discover if it could be seen ‘normally’. He found that it could — and made the breakthrough discovery that one’s sensitivity to the frequencies involved could be improved by the use of optical filters treated with the dye dicyanin. These filters became known as ‘Kilner screens’. Experimenting further, he found that different characteristics of the aura could be examined by the use of other filters of various colours. (Kilner goggles and sets of colour filters can be obtained from Occultique, 73 Kettering Road, Northampton NN1 4AW.) Kilner published his findings, and many case-histories describing auric diagnosis, in his book The Human Atmosphere in 1911; it was republished as a paperback in 1973 under the more appropriate title The Aura.
Kilner distinguished three parts to the aura. First, a narrow band next to the skin, not more than a quarter of an inch wide, transparent and appearing as a dark space, which he named ‘the Etheric Double’ — confusingly, in view of the general occult use of the term to mean the whole etheric body. His eyesight, whether wholly ‘natural’ or (as some suspect) partly and unknowingly psychic, must have been unusually sharp, because many sensitives admit they cannot make out such a band. Kilner’s second band he called ‘the Inner Aura’, the densest and most easily visible portion, an inch to three or more wide and following the contours of the body. His third band he called ‘the Outer Aura’, extending beyond the Inner Aura and with a smoother outline. Round the head in particular, the Outer Aura is normally a lot wider than the Inner Aura. Most sensitives seem to agree with him on the Inner and Outer Auras, and also on his finding that the Inner Aura is generally the most useful one to concentrate on for the diagnosis of ailments.
Beyond diagnosis, Kilner found two significant things: first, that rays were often visible between a nearby hand and the aura of the patient; and second, that willpower could affect the aura. The relevance to psychic healing is plain, though Kilner does not pursue it in his book — understandably perhaps, in view of its non-occult approach and his obvious hope that his orthodox colleagues would view his discoveries favourably — a hope that was not fulfilled.
A useful modern (1970) book which follows up and adds to Kilner’s findings is The Origin and Properties of the Human Aura by Oscar Bagnall.
As to the colour of the aura, both Kilner and Bagnall find that it ranges from blue to grey. Both writers are agreed that highly intelligent subjects have noticeably bluer auras, while mentally dull subjects have noticeably greyer ones.
Many sensitives see more colours than this — everything from gold to red to violet to brown; but this would seem to be a clairvoyant perception rather than an optical one. The sensitive is psychically aware of character qualities, or emotional or spiritual states, in the subject, and this awareness presents itself to him or her as visual phenomena; in other words, there is a scrying element in the sensitive’s observation of the aura. This is perfectly valid, of course, and indeed a gift to be worked for and developed; but as with all scrying, in order that one may fully understand and control the gift, it is as well to keep clearly in mind the distinction between clairvoyant and strictly optical vision.
How to develop the ability to see auras?
For most of us, the best approach is to start with the purely optical ability; and once this is established, to strive to build the clairvoyant ability on this foundation.
Conditions for optical viewing of the aura must be right. As we have said, the subject should be skyclad; apart from any effect clothes may have on the characteristics of the aura, their very thickness will obscure at least part of the Inner Aura. Dim daylight or candlelight is needed, as even moderately bright light swamps those cells in the retina which pick up the auric frequencies. The subject should stand against a very dark background; most experimenters prefer black or red. (As Bagnall points out — one advantage of a red background is that it gives a guide to the amount of light required; if you can see that it is red, the light is too bright and must be dimmed, because it is the red end of the spectrum which is the ‘swamping’ one.) Only trial and error will find the ideal conditions for you.
Kilner goggles are by no means essential, but most people find that they do help. But read the instructions carefully; remember that their main function is to adjust the sensitivity of the eyes before attempting to see the aura, and that any advantage from looking at the aura through the goggles is only secondary to this. Bagnall, gives detailed advice on their use.
Your first view of the aura will be of the Inner Aura, as a faint greyish or bluish mist surrounding the body. As your sensitivity to it develops, you should begin to discern structure in it. The Inner Aura is normally striated — i.e., it is made up of fine lines or rays very close together, at right angles to the surface of the body. Sometimes brighter rays extend in places beyond the Inner Aura; these will be particularly observed if one part of the body is near another — for example, if a hand is held near the head, when the rays will be seen bridging the gap.
As soon as you have reached this stage, you can start using your auric vision diagnostically. Two phenomena in particular indicate a malfunction and its location; a coarsening of the aura, with the striations becoming markedly granular, and actual gaps in the aura.
Another phenomenon is asymmetry — where the Inner Aura is a different width in corresponding places on the left and right of the body. This is only a significant clue when the subject is viewed from the front or the back, because then the healthy aura should be symmetrical. If the subject is viewed from the side, asymmetry tells you nothing, because the front and back auras differ naturally just as the front and back of the physical body do.
Anyone learning to read the aura diagnostically should study Kilner’s book from cover to cover. His case-histories are a goldmine of information. Starting from scratch, and investigating hundreds of patients (and healthy people too), he discovered many useful auric symptoms which he admitted he could not explain but whose diagnostic meanings were confirmed again and again. For example, he found that hysterical patients always had an abnormal bulge in the aura behind the small of the back; and that epileptics always had an asymmetrical head aura, being much wider on the right of the head than on the left. (Why always that way round, Kilner wondered? Possibly because of an imbalance between the left-brain and right-brain functions, which only became understood long after his day.)3 He also had consistent success in the prediction of early or delayed menstruation, and in the diagnosis of pregnancy.
Janet has found that subjects who have been subjected to ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) have obvious gaps in the aura of the head — often persisting for many years after the treatment. Meeting one of our friends for the first time, she told her at once that she had had ECT, though her medical history had not even been mentioned. Our friend confirmed that she had had it ten years earlier. Auric symptoms often fade slowly after a physical cure, but such a long persistence cannot be healthy — further support for the growing number of doctors and psychiatrists who have serious doubt about the wisdom of ECT.
So far we have discussed the aura as seen, whether optically or clairvoyantly. But the aura (or, at the very least, the inner aura) is a visible manifestation of the etheric body; and for healing work, one will prefer to know more about the structure of the etheric body itself than one’s eyes reveal. This brings us on to such concepts as the chakras and their functions, which are beyond the scope of summary such as this. The classic book on the subject is The Etheric Double by Arthur E. Powell. It was published in 1925, and, as the Foreword to the 1969 reprint points out, there are aspects of it which might be updated ‘in the light of understanding accumulated during the intervening forty-odd years’; but it remains an excellent basis for study, and since much of its contents (to quote the 1969 Foreword again) ‘is derived from the exercise of clairsentience’, it is a useful complement to Kilner (whom Powell also cites). ‘Clairsentience’ here is used to mean extra-sensory perception in general, not the stricter definition we gave.
Auric healing is based on the manipulation of what the Hindus call prâna — A Sanskrit word which (like karma) has come to be used by Western occultists because it has no exact equivalent in any Western language.4 ‘Prâna, or Vitality, is a vital force, the existence of which is not yet formally recognised by Western scientists, though probably a few of them suspect it.’ (Powell) It is the vital force of the Cosmos as it operates on the etheric level; it permeates our solar system (and certainly all others), and every living organism is charged with a concentration of it; without it we would not be living organisms. Each of us can be supercharged with it or suffer from an insufficiency of it — or, through vampirism, steal it from each other. The successful healer learns to draw on the surrounding ‘free’ prâna and to recharge the patient with it. This is the opposite process to vampirism, and at the end of it, if it has been done properly, the healer is not depleted, because he or she has drawn in at least as much prâna as has been passed on to the patient.
Before doing this, the healer draws off any negative or harmful charge from the patient and disperses it harmlessly.
This is the essence of what has long been known as ‘the laying on of hands’. And note that it is not the physical body on which the hands need to be laid; the influence is from the aura of the healer’s hands to the aura of the patient’s body — an influence which can be seen optically in the form of rays once one’s eyes are sensitized to the aura, and which can be recorded by Kirlian photography. Most experienced auric healers will not normally touch the patient’s body during the ‘laying on of hands’; they will hold them an inch or two away, in contact with the inner aura.
Normally, one of the two hands will be found to be the dominant ‘healing hand’. Which of the two hands it is can be detected in any one person by getting him or her to hold them both palm upwards; you then hold your own hand palm downwards an inch or two above each of them in turn, without touching them, several times alternately. Almost certainly one of them will give you a stronger sensation of heat or tingling; that is the healing hand. In healing work, the other hand should be used for drawing away negative influences, and then the healing hand for recharging with prâna.
The basis of auric healing is clairvoyance and willpower.
Optical and clairvoyant vision of the aura (in that order) can be built up gradually, but willpower should be at your command from the start, and there is no reason why you should not begin to try auric healing on that basis alone. Say a friend has a headache, and you want to help even though you are not yet at the stage where you can see the aura. Knowing (from Kilner and Kirlian if from no one else!) that influence passes between your hand and your friend’s head if they are close together, you hold your less dominant hand an inch or two away from the place where your friend is feeling the pain and, by concentrated willpower, draw out the tension and strain. Every five or ten seconds, withdraw your hand and shake it to one side as though you were shaking off drops of water — at the same time vividly envisaging the negative influences falling away from your hand, and willing them to disperse harmlessly. Be careful, of course, that you do not shake your hand towards any other person or living creature. (You may find that even this first part of the process will bring about a marked easing of the headache.)
Now sit back and relax, breathing steadily and slowly — say six seconds in, two seconds hold, six seconds out and two seconds hold, breathing always with your diaphragm (i.e., by pushing your stomach in and out) and not by expanding and contracting your rib cage. As you breathe in, envisage not only your lungs but every pore of your body, drawing in prâna from the surrounding atmosphere. As you hold your full breath, envisage your body (both physical and etheric) absorbing the prâna you have drawn in. As you breathe out, envisage any negative influence in yourself (including any residue of what you have drawn off the patient) leaving your body and dispersing. As you hold your lungs empty, prepare your mind for the next drawing-in of prâna.
When you feel you are sufficiently charged, will the newly accumulated prâna into the arm of your healing hand till you feel that it is tingling with it. Then hold your healing hand an inch or two from your friend’s head and will the accumulated prâna into his or her aura, to do its healing work and restore normality.
You may find it helps if you visualize prâna as a mist of tiny golden specks permeating the atmosphere; and as you draw it into concentration, visualize the concentration area as glowing because of the denser population of these golden specks. (Some sensitives say that, if you look into the clear blue sky of a sunlit day, you can actually see prâna in this form; but we think that this is clairvoyant, a retinal effect, or psychological projection, and not optical, since prâna is surely a homogeneous force rather than separate particles. The ‘golden specks’ trick is merely a visualization aid, though very useful as such.)
Such non-clairvoyant healing work helps to give you confidence, and in practice it speeds up the development of clairvoyance. As optical vision of the aura, and then clairvoyant vision of it, grows clearer, your diagnostic ability will increase accordingly, because you will have more exact information to go on.
The process we have described emphasizes a vital point — the need for protection of the healer. When our young coven first tried healing work, we were encouraged by some success — but puzzled by the fact that we often felt the very effects of which we had relieved the patient. We would cure Charlie’s backache right enough — and end up with backache ourselves.
As we began to realize what was happening, we paid attention to our own psychic protection whenever we undertook healing work. And in particular, with auric healing, we never skipped the hand-shaking drill and its accompanying visualization and willpower. From then on, we stopped collecting Charlie’s backache, or whatever.
Remember, also, that when you pass prâna into the patient, you must be sure that you draw a corresponding amount (or more) into yourself from your surroundings, or you will leave yourself depleted. Thelma Moss and her team investigated several healers, including ones who worked by the laying on of hands, by Kirlian photography; and she tells in The Body Electric how time and again they found the photographs showed that the patient’s Kirlian corona had brightened, while the healer’s had become less bright. Some of these healers had discovered their gift by accident and admitted that they did not understand it; one hopes that, with improved understanding, they also acquired the gift of recharging themselves.
A final tip on auric vision: we find its development is greatly helped by studying the auras of animals. Some of them are particularly vivid and easy to see. They are also very sensitive; many animals react positively to the usual two-inches-away handling of their auras. (But with a long-haired animal such as a Persian cat, try to distinguish between genuine auric influence and the coat’s reaction to the static electricity of your hand.) We often think that vets could usefully study auric diagnosis. Maybe some of them do so instinctively.
A good witch has to be a psychologist, both to enable him or her to understand the reasons underlying Wiccan practices and the ways in which these practices work, and also for the understanding and effective handling of other people. This is especially true where healing is concerned. Unless one is awake to the psychology of the patient, one may miss the key to the case altogether — or, even if one has correctly guessed it, fail to encourage the required attitude of mind in the patient.
Few witches are, or can become, trained psychiatrists; but a certain amount of selected reading can give any sensible witch a helpful grounding in the subject. We firmly believe that the works of Jung and his followers are the very best means to this. Freud opened vast new horizons in human understanding, but his shortcomings are perhaps best summed up in Shuttle and Redgrove’s shrewd remark (The Wise Wound): ‘Freud was a great man. He was a great man, however.’ Jung first learned from Freud and then in due course clashed with him over those very shortcomings and went his own way. It is a way which we find remarkably in tune with Wiccan philosophy. He was singularly unhampered by patriarchal stereotypes, which had remained a millstone around Freud’s neck; and any small gaps in his awareness which his own maleness may have caused were rapidly compensated for by women Jungians such as Esther Harding, Jolande Jacobi and Aniela Jaffé.
Freud and Jung gave mankind a whole new insight into the structure of its own psyche. It is not too much to say that Jung above all gave Wicca a new understanding of itself — if only by making fully conscious (and providing language for) a range of concepts which most witches had hitherto only grasped intuitively.
We gave some of the books which may be read as a short course on the basics of Jung’s thinking; and we strongly recommend them. Even if witches find aspects to disagree with, the study should greatly clarify their own ideas.
Our own book is certainly no place to give a basic course in psychology; but we would like to add a thought or two on the psychological aspects of Wiccan healing.
A musician friend of ours once sang: ‘The road to her door is washed out with tears.’ The road to the healer’s door is all too often so washed — by the tears of loss of hope, of guilt, of family brainwashing or of unconscious fears. The witch must be a mental healer as well as a physical one, otherwise the symptom may be dealt with instead of the cause. And as every good doctor knows, you must not allow yourself to become emotionally involved in the patient’s suffering. This does not mean that you should remain unmoved or uncompassionate; but if you allow yourself to weep for the patient’s pain, you soon lose your own psychic strength — without which, remember, you cannot help the patient.
We once knew a very beautiful and psychically dynamic young witch who had a great compassion for the animal kingdom, but little or none for the human. One night Janet had to point out some of the facts she was refusing to acknowledge, and the resulting show of temper was exhausting for all concerned. One effect was that her psychic healing powers, which had been very vibrant, waned considerably for a while, until she had come to terms with herself. She had, in effect, brought her frustrations to the surface in the same way as a skin throws up a boil. Janet had sensed that her apparent callousness was in fact a fear that, if she opened the floodgates, she would be swamped. Until she faced up to this, she had no way of achieving a balanced compassion — which is essential to the successful healer.
Professional psychiatry knows this, which is why every school of training provides for the psychiatrist himself or herself to be analysed. A psychiatric healer who is not as clear of personal hang-ups as is humanly possible will project those hang-ups onto the patient. Amateur psychologists such as witches must, for this reason apart from any other, eliminate their own hang-ups as honestly as they can. So a basic understanding of their own psychology is just as important as understanding the psychology of the patient.
A word about the ‘placebo effect’. A placebo is a treatment (whether it is a medicine, a pill or a course of action) which a doctor knows has no effect in itself (the pill may be chalk, for example) but which he prescribes because the patient believes it will do him good. This is not necessarily cheating; a patient who is almost superstitiously convinced that ‘a pill from the doctor’ is essential to his recovery will not respond to the real treatment unless he gets it; so the doctor wisely provides it, alongside the real treatment.
Witches, as we pointed out, soon become familiar with the placebo effect — the patient who gets better just because he has asked the witches for help, before the witches have even had time to work on his request; or the patient who is greatly encouraged by the mere physical evidence of a spell being worked on his behalf. Like good doctors, wise witches should be aware of the placebo effect, allow their patients to benefit from it — but never cheat; in other words, never rely on it alone, never neglect the real treatment as well, and never put on a show to keep the applicant quiet.
The psychological aspect of Wiccan healing is another proof of the benefits of coven working. The use of psychology demands so much honesty and self-awareness that the mutual observation and openness characteristic of a well-integrated coven are an excellent guarantee against losing your way or deceiving yourself.
Two tailpieces to this Section. Everyone interested in psychic healing should read Dion Fortune’s The Secrets of Dr Taverner. In fictional form, it gives fascinating case-histories of a high adept who ran an occult nursing home. But ‘Dr Taverner’ and his nursing home actually existed, and, as Dion Fortune says in her Introduction, all the book’s stories are ‘founded on fact, and there is not a single incident herein contained which is pure imagination’. We know the daughter of one of the characters described in the book, and a High Priestess friend of ours knows another of the characters; and in both cases, the truthfulness of Dion Fortune’s account was confirmed.
Her non-fiction book Psychic Self-Defence, as we pointed out in Section IX, should be obligatory reading for every witch; we mention it again here because the principles of psychic defence and psychic healing are inseparable.
And the second tailpiece, highly relevant to the importance of imagination and willpower in healing, comes from the late Pablo Picasso: ‘When art is properly understood, we will be able to paint pictures to cure toothache.’