The information is presented as it appears in each source. As the compiler of this information, I am not making any definitive claims about the effectiveness of any technique, or making any recommendations for medical treatment. The definition at the beginning of each section may be quoted from the source, as cited, or may be my own summary.

I have routinely referred to the person who is actively using the healing technique as the “practitioner” and the person who will receive healing as the “client.” Certain techniques use different terms, but I standardized these all to the above terms.

Because the majority of my sources are “instruction manuals” on various techniques, the descriptions of how to do a healing session are generally presented in the second person. This is not meant to imply that you can learn how to perform the healing technique merely by reading this short summary. If you are interested in learning to be a practitioner of a technique, I encourage you to obtain the primary source for each technique, attend workshops, or pursue other sources of information.

In the source listings, I have differentiated between “manuals” and “descriptions” of healing. Manuals contain detailed instructions designed to help the reader learn how to practice the technique (although, again, most writers state that additional training or in-person workshops are the recommended ways to learn healing.) Descriptions include information about how the healing is done, but the author’s goal is to describe the healing technique, not to teach it.

Energy Healing

Background: Where does this technique come from?

Definition: A modern spiritual healing technique in which the practitioner places his hands on or near paired polarity points, allowing the energy to flow between them. Goal is to release long-held energetic wounds, and help ‘nudge’ the patient’s system to begin a process of healing and growth.

Source: Energy Healing: A Pathway to Inner Growth by Jim Gilkeson. New York: Marlowe & Company, 2000. Manual.

Origin of Method / History: Not specifically addressed. Perhaps developed by author with a strong basis in polarity therapy, Rosalyn Bruyere’s chakra theory and other sources.

Theory: What is energy? What is energy healing?

What energy is being worked with? Human energy field. Field has these qualities: surrounds and permeates the physical body, can be experienced with our physical senses; some aspects can be measured with scientific instruments; changes in the field precipitate changes in mind, body, emotions, and spirituality; we can consciously influence field with attention, thoughts, feelings, and action. (Gilkeson, 19) Field is in “constant flux and change… a semi-permeable membrane, where our external or environmental influences meet with our internal life… Etheric conducts energy and consciousness.” (Gilkeson, 98)

Energy centers/pathways: 7 chakras. Meridians.

What is illness? Energy cysts: “Many events, from sudden impact and pain, loud sound, threat of danger…  trigger the ‘fight or flight’ arousal of the sympathetic nervous system.” “Traumatized body parts or emotions become desensitized or numb…” whether this lasts “for an hour or an instant, we still sustain a wound and the energetic component of that wound is held in the etheric.” (Gilkeson, 101)

What is the mechanism for healing? “Awareness and attention nudge a process into action that leads to opening, balance, communication with the whole person and healing.”  (Gilkeson, 140)

Role of practitioner: Create for client “a means of shifting out of the… traumatized state, clearing a space for consciousness and healing energy to enter areas that were injured, either physically or emotionally.” (Gilkeson, 77)

Role of person receiving healing: The natural tendency of repressed materials is “to try to move towards release… the instant the minimum requirements are in place – balance, safety, relaxation, openness – the process of transformation and healing starts.” (Gilkeson, 174)

Who can heal? Training? Book includes a number of exercises for learning to sense energy, and to begin doing healing work. Exercises are presented as laboratories for experiential learning.

Practice: How does a healing session work for this technique?

Beginning a session: Before starting, practitioner takes a moment to disconnect from client’s energy and orient himself by taking a “snapshot” of his own energy system, noting any areas of pain or discomfort, noting what is happening emotionally, and what attitudes and intentions he’s holding. Doing this helps ensure that the practitioner can recognize what impressions are internal and which are coming from the patient. (Gilkeson, 69)

Then he attunes to a higher consciousness or intelligence… may pray for a blessing or guidance.

Assessment: “In energy-based healing work, very often ‘sensing’ and ‘treatment’ are indistinguishable… awareness and attention, of themselves, nudge a process into action that leads to opening, balance, communication with the whole person, and healing.” (Gilkeson, 140)

Process: Healing involves placing hands on prescribed pairs of polarity points (e.g. medulla and forehead, or left foot chakra and left knee, etc.) and wait a few minutes to feel the natural exchange of energy, then move hands to the next pair of points.

Can be done with physical contact or just off body.

Uses: When is this Technique useful?

What do practitioners say it is useful for: Not addressed directly.

Contraindications: On one particular treatment, which activates energy processes, he notes that it should not be used on cancer patients with rapidly metastasizing tumors or on persons with severe schizophrenia, because part of their system has split off and is operating independently. It is appropriate to do techniques with these clients that calm and harmonize their energy.

Spiritual Component: States that healing the energy field is “inherently spiritual in nature” and “we need to think of energywork as essentially a spiritual practice.” (Gilkeson, 10) “Current interest in bodywork has fortunately, or unfortunately, been centered around its therapeutic aspects… for example, physical therapy and stress reduction. There is nothing wrong with using them for such purposes, but we should never overlook the fact that energywork comes from spiritual tradition… energywork, by its nature, brings us face to face with the spiritual, and by limiting its use to therapy, we overlook the vast wisdom that is offers.” (Gilkeson, 3)

“When energy healing is employed with multi-dimensional goals it is really in its own element. Such goals might range from self-exploration and a search for understanding of what might be behind our illness, to a quest for insight, growth, and wisdom about the totality of our lives. Likewise, energy healing can set in motion a change in consciousness that can transport us from a strictly self-centered, personal focus to a perspective of compassion and a felt sense of interconnection with all of humanity, the natural world, and the cosmos. The sacred healing arts and sciences have always dealt with what links the body with the soul, and the soul with God.” (Gilkeson, 13)

Healing Touch

Background: Where does this technique come from?

Definition: Modern technique. “Healing touch is a nonintrusive, complementary energy-based program developed through the nursing profession to clear, align, and balance the human energy system through touch. Through this realignment, the client’s energy system is restored to higher levels of functioning and healing of the physical body is promoted and accelerated.” (Batie, 56)

Source: Awakening the Healer Within: An Introduction to Energy-Based Techniques. Howard F. Batie, D.M. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2000. Description. [See note below]

Origin of Method / History: Janet Mentgen, RN, BSN, noticed in her nursing practice the “beneficial effects many clients exhibited after having their energy field ‘manipulated’ in various intuitively guided fashions. She began correlating certain hand movements within the patient’s energy field and the results that energy manipulation produced… these positive effects were discernable and repeatable… she [developed] a more formal, structured program of instruction for others.” (Batie, 57-58) Healing Touch is now taught in universities and many major hospitals.

Theory: What is energy? What is energy healing?

What energy is worked with? Batie has an extensive discussion of his theory of energy and energy medicine, but it isn’t clear how much of this is in line with Healing Touch theory and how much comes from other sources. (Healing Touch is only one of multiple techniques covered in this book.)

Practice: How does a healing session work for this technique?

Treatment techniques: Healing Touch teaches 30 or so core techniques, including therapeutic touch, “ultrasound”, magnetic unruffled, hopi technique, pain drain, pain ridge, lymphatic drain, and spiritual surgery.

Ultrasound. A basic HT technique. Good for pain management, stopping bleeding, accelerating wound healing, accelerating healing of broken bones. Practitioner places “the tips of the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger of one hand together and imagining or visualizing the unseen energy spike, which projects out the end of each digit for 6-8 inches, being focused into a single, strong beam of energy. Now, without bending the wrist, move your whole forearm back and forth in a random motion so that your fingertips are about an inch or two above the injured area… the energy beam from your moving hand is penetrating deeply within the etheric body… this focused energy beam breaks up disturbed or blocked vibrational patterns caused by the energy. If this technique is begun immediately after traumatic injury and continued for several minutes, the trauma to the energy pattern of the physical body will not be reflected up into the energy pattern of the etheric body.” (Batie, 61-2)

Spiritual Surgery: An advanced intervention whose goal is to repattern the etheric body to a vibrational state of greater health. The healer “simply opens himself as an instrument of healing from the higher dimensions… the energies are recognized as the energies of specific higher-dimensional beings and spiritual surgeons who are working through the healer for the greatest good of the client.” (Batie, 70) In Batie’s example, he laid his hands on the client’s abdomen, then felt his etheric hands slip inside her abdomen. During the 15 minutes of healing, he “saw” and “heard” a “medical operation being performed inside her abdomen with several instruments including scalpels, hemostats, and needle and thread.” (Batie, 72)

Studies done: Multiple studies are cited in Benor.

[Please note: This article was written in 2001, and the information is based on Batie. In 2007 and 2008, 2 healing touch practitioners wrote to me that they felt the information presented here does not fully represent the technique, and they recommend that those who wish to learn more about Healing Touch go to www.healingtouch.net]

Ju|’hoansi Community Healing Dance

Background: Where does this technique come from?

Definition: Ancient technique. Following hours of community dancing and singing, healers enter an altered state, where the energy boils up within them, and they heal by laying-on hands. “Healing has three main aspects, ‘seeing properly’, pulling out the sickness, and arguing with the gods.” (Katz, 23)

Source: Healing Makes our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformation among the Kalahari Ju|’hoansi by Richard Katz, Megan Biesele, and Verna St. Denis. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1997. Description of healing.

Origin of Method / History: The healing technique of the Ju|’hoansi, a group of Bushmen of the western Kalahari desert of southern Africa; one of the last surviving hunter/gather societies. The healing dance is believed to be a very ancient tradition, which appears to be depicted in rock paintings believed to be several thousand years old. (Katz, 52-54)

Notes on pronunciation: “The dental click (“|”) sounds like ‘tsk, tsk’, the English expression of irritation. It is made by putting the tongue just behind the front teeth.” You can substitute a ‘t’ sound. “The alveolo-palatal click (“!”) is a sharp pop made by drawing the tongue down quickly from the roof of the mouth.” You can substitute a ‘g’ sound. (Katz, xxii)

Theory: What is energy? What is energy healing?

What energy is being worked with? “N|om, a spiritual substance or energy residing in the bellies of the men and women who have been taught to activate it.” (Katz, xiii) “N|om is ‘invisible’, though it can be seen and picked up by experienced healers during a state of enhanced awareness. Otherwise, n|om is known only by its action and effects.” (Katz, 18) “Traditionally, n|om is not in limited supply. Individuals need not compete for its healing power. The activation of n|om in one person stimulates the activation in others. The total healing effect of n|om at a dance far exceeds the individual contributions toward activating that n|om.” (Katz, 137)

Energy centers/pathways: “It resides in the dance fire, in the healing songs, and most of all, in the healers, concentrated in the pit of their stomachs and the base of their spines.” (Katz, 18) “N|om is said to ‘boil’ when [healers] dance  strenuously, or sing the healing songs strongly; it leaves their stomachs and travels up their spines and out to their fingers, where it may be used to heal by the laying on of hands.” (Katz, xii) “As n|om reaches the base of the healer’s skull, they enter a state of transcendence called !aia.” (Katz, 19)

 What is illness? “Sickness is a process in which the spirits try to carry a person off into their realm. In !aia, the healer expresses the wishes of the living to keep the sick person with them. The healer is the community’s emissary. If a healer’s n|om is strong and the Great God wishes the spirit will retreat and the sick one will live.” (Katz, 1)

What is the mechanism for healing? When n|om boils, it brings on !aia, an enhanced state of consciousness which enables them to heal.

Who can heal: “Healers’ vocation is open to all, and most of the young men and many of the women seek to become healers. About half the men and a third of the women succeed… “ (Katz, 25) The Ju|’hoansi say that a healer’s most vital quality is an open heart. “To have an open heart is to have… courage to face the raging pain of boiling n|om, trust in the community’s support for the healing journey, dedication to serving the people, and passion to sustain the healer’s journey.” (Katz, 142)

Training of healers: “The training is difficult. Not everyone can stand the excruciating pain on the boiling n|om, which is said to be ‘hot and painful, just like fire.’” (Katz, 25) “When healers are overwhelmed with the searing pain of boiling n|om, their bodies often writhe in a rigid, convulsing agony.” (Katz, 6) Healers describe the experience of !aia as a death from which they return to heal. “When Ju|’hoansi healers face the fact of death and willingly die, they can overcome their fear of n|om and break through to !aia.” (Katz, 111)

“To heal depends upon developing a desire to ‘drink n|om’, not on learning specific techniques. The healer's education stresses… the importance of dancing so one’s ‘heart is open to the boiling n|om’… and singing so that one’s ‘voice reaches up to the heavens.’” (Katz, 60)

Practice: How does a healing session work for this technique?

The Dance: “The central event in the healing tradition is an all-night dance. It occurs on average four or five times in a month. The women sit around the fire, singing and rhythmically clapping as night falls… the men, sometimes joined by the women, dance around the singers. As the dance intensifies, n|om is activated in those who are the healers and they experience !aia.” (Katz, 1) Both the dancers and the female singers can reach !aia, and both contribute to raising n|om. The songs call the spirits to the dance, so that healers may bargain with them for the health of the people.

Assessment: During !aia, healers can see inside of others’ bodies, which allows them to locate and diagnose the illness, and begin healing.

Treatment: The healer who is in !aia goes to each person at the dance, whether showing symptoms of illness or not… Healers plead and argue with the gods to save the person from illness. They lay their hands on each person, and as they ‘pull out the sickness’ (≠hoe) they usually utter their cries of healing, earth-shattering screams and howls that show the pain and difficulty of the healing work.” (Katz, 21)

Healers may work “standing up, kneeling down, lying down, back and forth, wherever their boiling n|om leads them.”(Katz, 172) Healers “place their fluttering hands on either side of the person’s chest or wherever the sickness is located. They touch the person lightly, or more often vibrate their hands close to the skin’s surface. At times healers wrap their bodies around the person being healed, rubbing their sweat – believed to carry healing properties – on the person. The sickness is drawn into the healers, who then expel the sickness from their own bodies, shaking it from their hands out into space, their bodies shuddering with pain.” (Katz, 24)

Uses: When is this Technique useful?

What do practitioners say it is useful for: This is the primary technique for treating all illness within the traditional culture. In addition to the healing of specific illnesses, all who participate in the dance experience “a sense of joy, renewed social commitment, and spiritual connectedness.” (Katz, xiii)

Spiritual / Emotional Component: “Ju|’hoansi healing involves health and growth on physical, psychological, social, and spiritual levels; it affects the individual, the group, the surrounding environment, and the cosmos. Healing is an integrating and enhancing force, touching far more levels and forces than simply curing an individual’s ‘illness.’” (Katz, 1)

REKI

Source:Wikipedia  

In a typical whole-body Reiki treatment, the practitioner asks the recipient to lie down, usually on a massage table, and relax. Loose, comfortable clothing is usually worn during the treatment. The practitioner might take a few moments to enter a calm or meditative state of mind and mentally prepare for the treatment, that is usually carried out without any unnecessary talking.

The treatment proceeds with the practitioner placing his hands on the recipient in various positions. However, practitioners may use a non-touching technique, where the hands are held a few centimetres away from the recipient's body, for some or all of the positions. The hands are usually kept still for 3 to 5 minutes before moving to the next position. Overall, the hand positions usually give a general coverage of the head, the front and back of the torso, the knees and feet. Between 12 and 20 positions are used, with the whole treatment lasting 45 to 90 minutes.

Some practitioners use a fixed set of hand positions. Others use their intuition to guide them as to where treatment is needed, sometimes starting the treatment with a "scan" of the recipient to find such areas. The intuitive approach might also lead to individual positions being treated for much shorter or longer periods of time.

It is reported that the recipient often feels warmth or tingling in the area being treated, even when a non-touching approach is being used. A state of deep relaxation, combined with a general feeling of well-being, is usually the most noticeable immediate effect of the treatment, although emotional releases can also occur. As the Reiki treatment is said to be stimulating natural healing processes, instantaneous "cures" of specific health problems are not usually observed. A series of three or more treatments, typically at intervals of 1 to 7 days, is usually recommended if a chronic condition is being addressed. Regular treatments, on an on-going basis, can be used with the aim of maintaining well-being. The interval between such treatments is typically in the range of 1 to 4 weeks, except in the case of self-treatment when a daily practice is common

 Following are more Healing Modalties that you may want to research.

Ø      Hands of Light

Ø      Hands-on Healing

Ø      Healing in the Way of God

Ø      Hucha Mikhuy

Ø      Jin Shin Jyutsu

Ø      Joy’s Way

Ø      Ju|’hoansi Community Healing Dance

Ø      Kahuna Healing

Ø      Native American Medicine

Ø      Pranic Healing

Ø      Qi Gong

Ø      Quantum Touch

Ø      SHEN

Ø      Therapeutic Touch

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 5:22 AM EST

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LEGEND - The Story of Echo who loved Narcissus

In Greek mythology Echo was a wood nymph who loved a youth by the name of Narcissus. He was a beautiful creature loved by many but Narcissus loved no one. He enjoyed attention, praise and envy. In Narcissus' eyes nobody matched him and as such he considered none were worthy of him.

Echo's passion for Narcissus was equaled only by her passion for talking as she always had to have the last word. One day she enabled the escape of the goddess Juno's adulterous husband by engaging Juno in conversation. On finding out Echo's treachery Juno cursed Echo by removing her voice with the exception that she could only speak that which was spoken to her.

Echo often waited in the woods to see Narcissus hoping for a chance to be noticed. One day as she lingered in the bushes he heard her footsteps and called out “Who's here?” Echo replied “Here!” Narcissus called again "Come", Echo replied "Come!". Narcissus called once more “Why do you shun me?... Let us join one another.” Echo was overjoyed that Narcissus had asked her to join him.

She longed to tell him who she was and of all the love she had for him in her heart but she could not speak. She ran towards him and threw herself upon him.
Narcissus became angry “Hands off! I would rather die than you should have me!” and threw Echo to the ground.

Echo left the woods a ruin, her heart broken. Ashamed she ran away to live in the mountains yearning for a love that would never be returned. The grief killed her. Her body became one with the mountain stone. All that remained was her voice which replied in kind when others spoke.

Narcissus continued to attract many nymphs all of whom he briefly entertained before scorning and refusing them. The gods grew tired of his behaviour and cursed Narcissus. They wanted him to know what it felt like to love and never be loved. They made it so there was only one whom he would love, someone who was not real and could never love him back.

One day whilst out enjoying the sunshine Narcissus came upon a pool of water. As he gazed into it he caught a glimpse of what he thought was a beautiful water spirit. He did not recognise his own reflection and was immediately enamoured.

Narcissus bent down his head to kiss the vision. As he did so the reflection mimicked his actions. Taking this as a sign of reciprocation Narcissus reached into the pool to draw the water spirit to him.

The water displaced and the vision was gone. He panicked, where had his love gone? When the water became calm the water spirit returned. “Why, beautiful being, do you shun me? Surely my face is not one to repel you.

The nymphs love me, and you yourself look not indifferent upon me. When I stretch forth my arms you do the same; and you smile upon me and answer my beckonings with the like.” Again he reached out and again his love disappeared. Frightened to touch the water Narcissus lay still by the pool gazing in to the eyes of his vision.

He cried in frustration. As he did so Echo also cried. He did not move, he did not eat or drink, he only suffered. As he pined he became gaunt loosing his beauty. The nymphs that loved him pleaded with him to come away from the pool. As they did so Echo also pleaded with him.

He was transfixed; he wanted to stay there forever. Narcissus like Echo died with grief. His body disappeared and where his body once lay a flower grew in it's place. The nymphs mourned his death and as they mourned Echo also mourned.

* * * * * * * *

Legend of Narcissus

The story of Echo and Narcissus is used as a warning to those who love someone that can not love them back and is often used as a basis for understanding the implications of a condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is also used in reference to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 5:45 AM EST

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Malignant Self Love 

 THE SOUL OF A NARCISSIST

We all love ourselves. That seems to be such an instinctively true statement that we do not bother to examine it more thoroughly. In our daily affairs – in love, in business, in other areas of life – we act on this premise. Yet, upon closer inspection, it looks shakier.

Some people explicitly state that they do not love themselves at all (they are ego-dystonic). Others confine their lack of self-love to certain of their traits, to their personal history, or to some of their behaviour patterns. Yet others feel content with who they are and with what they are doing (ego-syntonic).

But one group of people seems distinct in its mental constitution – narcissists.

According to the legend of Narcissus, this Greek boy fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. In a way, this amply sums up the nature of his namesakes: narcissists. The mythological Narcissus rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by Nemesis. Consigned to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection – exactly as Echo had pined away for him. How apt. Narcissists are punished by echoes and reflections of their problematic personalities up to this very day.

Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves.

But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his reflection.

There is a major difference between one's True Self and reflected-self.

Loving your True Self is healthy, adaptive, and functional.

Loving a reflection has two major drawbacks:

1. One depends on the existence and availability of the reflection to produce the emotion of self-love.

1. The absence of a "compass", an "objective and realistic yardstick", by which to judge the authenticity of the reflection. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether the reflection is true to reality – and, if so, to what extent.

The popular misconception is that narcissists love themselves. In reality, they direct their love to other people's impressions of them. He who loves only impressions is incapable of loving people, himself included.

But the narcissist does possess the in-bred desire to love and to be loved. If he cannot love himself – he must love his reflection. But to love his reflection – it must be loveable. Thus, driven by the insatiable urge to love (which we all possess), the narcissist is preoccupied with projecting a loveable image, albeit compatible with his self-image (the way he "sees" himself).

The narcissist maintains this projected image and invests resources and energy in it, sometimes depleting him to the point of rendering him vulnerable to external threats.

But the most important characteristic of the narcissist's projected image is its lovability.

The family is the mainspring of support of every kind. It mobilises psychological resources and alleviates emotional burdens. It allows for the sharing of tasks, provides material supplies coupled with cognitive training. It is the prime socialisation agent and encourages the absorption of information, most of it useful and adaptive.

This division of labour between parents and children is vital both to personal growth and to proper adaptation. The child must feel, as he does in a functional family, that he can share his experiences without being defensive and that the feedback that he is getting is open and unbiased. The only "bias" acceptable (often because it is consonant with feedback from the outside) is the family's set of beliefs, values and goals that are finally internalised by the child by way of imitation and unconscious identification.

So, the family is the first and the most important source of identity and emotional support. It is a greenhouse, where the child feels loved, cared for, accepted, and secure – the prerequisites for the development of personal resources. On the material level, the family should provide the basic necessities (and, preferably, beyond), physical care and protection, and refuge and shelter during crises.

The role of the mother (the Primary Object) has been often discussed. The father's part is mostly neglected, even in professional literature. However, recent research demonstrates his importance to the orderly and healthy development of the child.

The father participates in the day-to-day care, is an intellectual catalyst, who encourages the child to develop his interests and to satisfy his curiosity through the manipulation of various instruments and games. He is a source of authority and discipline, a boundary setter, enforcing and encouraging positive behaviours and eliminating negative ones.

The father also provides emotional support and economic security, thus stabilising the family unit. Finally, he is the prime source of masculine orientation and identification to the male child – and gives warmth and love as a male to his daughter, without exceeding the socially permissible limits.

We can safely say that the narcissist's family is as severely disordered as he is. Pathological narcissism is largely a reflection of this dysfunction. Such an environment breeds self-deception. The narcissist's internal dialogue is "I do have a relationship with my parents. It is my fault – the fault of my emotions, sensations, aggressions and passions – that this relationship is not working. It is, therefore, my responsibility to make amends. I will construct a narrative in which I am both loved and punished. In this script, I will allocate roles to myself and to my parents. This way, everything will be fine and we will all be happy."

Thus starts the cycle of over-valuation (idealisation) and devaluation. The dual roles of sadist and punished masochist (Superego and Ego), parent and child, permeate all the narcissist's interactions with other people.

The narcissist experiences a reversal of roles as his relationships progress. At the beginning of a relationship he is the child in need of attention, approval and admiration. He becomes dependent. Then, at the first sign of disapproval (real or imaginary), he is transformed into an avowed sadist, punishing and inflicting pain.

It is commonly agreed that a loss (real or perceived) at a critical junction in the psychological development of the child forces him to refer to himself for nurturing and for gratification. The child ceases to trust others and his ability to develop object love, or to idealise is hampered. He is constantly haunted by the feeling that only he can satisfy his emotional needs.

He exploits people, sometimes unintentionally, but always ruthlessly and mercilessly. He uses them to obtain confirmation of the accuracy of his grandiose self-portrait.

The narcissist is usually above treatment. He knows best. He feels superior to his  therapist in particular and to the science of psychology in general. He seeks treatment only following a major life crisis, which directly threatens his projected and perceived image. Even then he only wishes to restore the previous balance.

Therapy sessions with the narcissist resemble a battlefield. He is aloof and distanced, demonstrates his superiority in a myriad ways, resents what he perceives to be an intrusion on his innermost sanctum. He is offended by any hint regarding defects or dysfunctions in his personality or in his behaviour. A narcissist is a narcissist is a narcissist – even when he asks for help with his world and worldview shattered.

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The author's name and a link to this Website must be incorporated in any reproduction of the material for any use and by any means.

Email questions or comments on this article to:  palma@unet.com.mk

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 5:07 AM EST

Updated: Thursday, 29 January 2009 6:27 AM EST

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MEDIUMS AND CHANNELERS

SPIRIT MEDIUMSHIP

A spirit medium is a person who has become qualified in some special way to form a link between the living and the dead. Through the physical agency of the medium, the spirits of the deceased may speak to their family and friends and relay messages of comfort, support, and personal information. While some mediums gain impressions from the spirit world in a fully conscious state, others place themselves into a trance, which is often accompanied by manifestations that appear to defy known physical laws, such as moving objects without touching them, levitating the mediums' own body, and materializing spirit forms of the deceased.

The essential attribute that qualifies one to be a medium is an extreme or abnormal sensitivity which seemingly allows the spirits more easily to control the individual's psyche. For this reason, mediums are often referred to as "sensitives."

During seances, spirit mediums, often working in a trance state, claim to be under the direction of a spirit control or spirit guide that serves as an intermediary between themselves and the spirits of deceased men and women. Once contact has been made with particular spirits in the other world, the guide speaks through the medium and relays messages to the sitters, those men and women who have assembled in the seance room for the opportunity of hearing words of comfort or guidance from their departed loved ones.

Spirit mediums argue that while Christianity, Judaism, and Islam promise their followers a life eternal whose reality must be taken on faith alone, for thousands of years those who visit mediums have been able to base their hope for a life beyond the grave on the tangible evidence provided by the phenomena provided in the seance room. Although they have been condemned as cultists, scorned as satanists, and reprimanded for communing with evil spirits by most of the major religions, mediums have remained thick-skinned toward their critics among the various clergy.

In addition to any religious objections one might have toward the kind of evidence that spirit mediums present as proof of life after death, an important factor that has long contributed to the layperson's skepticism toward mediums is the fact that few areas of human relationships are so open to cruel deceptions. It has taken neither scientific training nor orthodox religious views to expose many spirit mediums as charlatans preying upon such human emotions as grief and sorrow over the loss of a loved one.

Beginning in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Spiritualists and spirit mediums began to contend with an increasingly materialistic and mechanistic science that did a great deal to obliterate the idea of a soul and the duality of mind and body. The concept of an eternal soul was being steadily eroded by an emphasis on brain cells, conditioned responses, and memory patterns that could exist only while the body remained alive.

When the British Society for Psychical Research (BSPR) was established in 1882 and the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) was formed in 1885, leading spirit mediums such as Florence Cook (1856–1904), Mina "Margery" Crandon (1888–1941), Leonora E. Piper (1857–1950), and DanielDunglas Home (1833–1886) allowed themselves to be subjected to extensive tests conducted by psychical researchers, most of whom at least believed that man and mind were something more than physical things. However, as the experiments progressed year after year with spirit guides, materialized beings, and levitated objects, the researchers came more to believe in the enormous reach and abilities of the human psyche. They began to see the medium's spirit control as evidence that the human mind was capable of projecting a segment of itself unhampered by time and space, that one level of mind might be able to give "birth" to new personalities, that one level of the subconscious might telepathically gain knowledge of a departed individual from a sitter's memories while yet another level dramatized that knowledge into an imitation of the deceased's voice. In other words, the more the psychical researchers learned about the range and power of the human mind, the less credence they tended to grant to the spirit medium's "proof" of survival.

Spirit mediums have never felt that the phenomena of the seance room can be properly or fairly transferred to the sterile environment of the laboratory with any degree of success. In answering the criticism that spiritistic phenomena cannot be repeated again under individually controlled conditions as demanded of a scientific experiment, Maurice Barbanell (1902–1981) wrote in This Is Spiritualism (1966) that such was not possible "because mediumship involves the use of human beings. Whenever you deal with human beings, the human factor can be wayward and liable to upset the most intricate calculations."

Sometime in the 1940s, Dr. J. B. Rhine (1895–1980) summarized the research on survival evidence provided by spirit mediums in the laboratory to be a draw. While hardly anyone would claim that all the investigations conducted by psychical researchers since the 1880s could disprove the claim that "if a man shall die he shall in some manner or other be capable of living again," Rhine stated, "On the other hand, no serious scientific student of the field of investigation could say that a clear, defensible, scientific confrontation has been reached."

However, in March of 2001, scientists involved in a unique study of spirit mediums at the University of Arizona announced that their findings were so extraordinary that they raised fundamental questions about the survival of human consciousness after death. Professor Gary Schwartz, who led the team of researchers, concluded that highly skilled spirit mediums were able to deal directly with the dead, rather than merely with the minds of the sitters. In the opinion of the scientists, all the data they gathered was "consistently in accord with survival of consciousness after death." Based on all their data to date, Schwartz said, "The most parsimonious explanation is that the mediums are in direct communication with the deceased."

Ouija boards were created in the 1890s and used by spirit mediums to contact people in the afterlife. It was used in seances and as a parlor game. 

 

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The idea that humans survive physical death, that some part of the human being is immortal, profoundly affects the lives of those who harbor such a belief. While Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and many other religions promise their followers some form of a life after death, many thousands of men and women feel that they have proof of a life beyond the grave based on the evidence of survival that manifests through spirit mediums.

Some psychical researchers maintain that the principal difference between a psychic-sensitive and a trance medium is that the psychic attributes his or her talents to some manifestations of extrasensory ability, such as clairvoyance, precognition, or telepathy, whereas the medium credits his or her abilities to the interaction with spirits.

Mediums most often relay messages from the other side through the agency of a spirit control or spirit guide, an entity who claims to have lived on Earth and acquired certain skills, knowledge, and wisdom before its own physical death. The concept of a spirit guide dates back to antiquity, and serious scholars and researchers have been asking the same question for hundreds of years: Is this alleged entity, who claims to speak through the medium, really a spirit, or is it the voice of the medium's subconscious?

Some mediums would probably concede that the action of the subjective mind is not entirely eliminated during trance and the arrival of the spirit control, but from their viewpoint their subconscious is taken over by the guide. An aspect of mediumistic phenomena on which both psychical researchers and mediums will be likely to agree is that there is an intelligence that directs and controls them. Another area of agreement would probably be that this intelligence is a human intelligence. Once again, the area of dispute would be whether that human intelligence issues from the living or from the dead. Interestingly, spirit communication still requires both a soul and a body—the soul of an alleged deceased human personality and the physical body of the medium.

In the 1970s, after the publication of Jane Roberts's (1929–1984) books The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, "channeling" became a more popular name for mediumship, and it remains so to the present day. Jane Roberts received contact with an entity named Seth after undergoing a trance state while Robert Butts, her husband, recorded the thought, ideas, and concepts communicated by the spirit in notebooks. The material dictated by Seth was literate and provocative, and especially well-suited to a generation of maturing sixties' flower children and baby boomers. It wasn't long before Seth discussion groups around the United States were celebrating such concepts as the following: 1) We all create our own reality; 2) Our point of power lies in the present; and 3) We are all gods couched in "creaturehood." Nor was it long before "channelers" were emerging in large numbers throughout the country, and individuals such as Jach Pursel, Kevin Ryerson (1953– ), and J. Z. Knight (1946– ) had attained national and international celebrity status.

Perhaps in the mind of the channelers, the designation of "mediums" conjured up images of the traditional darkened seance parlors and ectoplasmic spirit guides, imagery that had become unacceptable to the modern spirit communicator, who more often relays messages from guides and master teachers in the full light of a platform setting or a television studio and seldom claims to materialize anything other than an engaging performance for the assembled audience. Then, too, just as in the 1930s when mediums were often compared to radio receiving sets for transmissions from the spirit world, it likely occurred to someone that the contemporary medium might be thought of as being similar to a human television channel, receiving thoughts and images from beyond. Whichever title is preferred by those who claim to relay messages from the spirits, the process of communication remains the same: Spirit entities occupy the physical body of the channelers or the mediums and speak through them.

Although the very idea of establishing contact with great spirit teachers from the beyond or from other dimensions of reality seemed new and exciting to the great masses of men and women in the 1970s, from the viewpoint of those individuals who research such matters it seemed only as though another cycle had once again reached its season and general public interest in spirit contact had returned. It was time again to recognize those sensitive men and women—modern-day shamans, so to speak— who were carrying on the tradition of spirit communication first set in motion in the nineteenth century by such great mediums as Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886), Mina "Margery" Crandon (1889–1941), Leonora E. Piper (1857–1950), and Eileen Garrett (1892–1970)—all of whom were quite likely to be completely unknown to the general public and even, perhaps, to the contemporary crop of channelers themselves. In addition to the pioneer work accomplished by such long-forgotten spirit mediums as those named above, the entire New Age Movement of the late twentieth century owes a great debt to the controversial Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), who was the first to popularize "channeling" wisdom from ancient teachers and masters, as well as the mystique of past lives and lost worlds.

In 1987, the ABC television network presented a miniseries based on actress Shirley MacLaine's (1934– ) book Out on a Limb (1987), which dealt with many subjects exciting to New Age enthusiasts, such as reincarnation, extraterrestrial visitation, ancient mysteries, and spirit communication. Perhaps the most captivating segments of the miniseries depicted MacLaine receiving spirit communication through channeler Kevin Ryerson. The actress and the channeler played themselves in the five-hour dramatization on prime-time television, and an international audience of millions were able to see for themselves how Tom McPherson, the 400-year-old spirit of an Irishman, spoke through Ryerson to advise MacLaine. Due to the popularity of Out on a Limb as a book and as a miniseries, channeling became a kind of craze throughout North America. The actress herself conducted a series of seminars in which she openly discussed her beliefs in past lives, UFOs, and spirit communication. Channeling and the claimed accessibility of the world beyond death achieved a peak of popularity which led to an outpouring of television programs, motion pictures, books, New Age expos, psychic fairs, and the "birth" of new channelers in a virtual cosmic population explosion. The interest in channelers and after-death communication continues to find its expression in such individuals as Sylvia Browne (1936– ), James Van Praagh (ca. 1960– ), and John Edward.

Even in this day of mass communication, Skylabs, the Internet, and increasingly sophisticated technology people are still fascinated by mediumship, channeling, and contacting the spirit world. According to J. Z. Knight (1946– ), another of Shirley MacLaine's favorite channelers, through her guide, Ramtha, believes the reason for their continued popularity is that there really aren't any mysteries left in humankind's material journey. Millions of people have reached a kind of peak in their evolution. Knight explained: "This has nothing to do with class distinction. Rich and poor, superstars and mediocrity alike feel that there must be more to life than this. The rich ask if there isn't more to life than material things. They also ask, 'Who am I?' 'Why am I doing this?' The poor ask if there isn't more to life than strife and suffering."

Knight says that Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old warrior from Lemuria who speaks through her, calls this point in people's lives the "time of fantastic realism." Ramtha also said that the human journey has reached a point when the self seeks to turn inward to self-examination. "In this age of communication and travel and the media, we have all been brought so close together," Knight said. "There really isn't much left to discover about our binary-thinking world. The next step will have to be that the analogical mind takes things into a different perspective, and we find ourselves in an 'unknown mind,' discovering what the ultimate journey is all about."

 

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 11:12 AM EST

Updated: Saturday, 24 January 2009 11:21 AM EST

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Rolling Thunder/A practicing Shaman

A Native American Indian medicine man, spiritual leader, philosopher, and acknowledged spokesman and intertribal shaman for the Cherokee and Shoshone tribes, Rolling Thunder, served as a consultant to the popular films Billy Jack (1971), and its sequel, Billy Jack II (1972). His way of life as a powerful healer, teacher, and activist gave him widespread fame following the films. Internationally known, Rolling Thunder's spiritual counsel and tribal skills were sought on a regular basis by many in the entertainment industry.

Rolling Thunder was among the first ever to be studied by mainstream institutions and undergo many laboratory tests to determine the authenticity of his shamanic skills. It had been said that his powers over the elements of nature surpassed any seen in recent times. Reports of Rolling Thunder's ability to "make rain" on a clear day, to heal disease and wounds, to transport or teleport objects through the air, and his telepathic skills were legendary until he agreed to submit himself to testing. His abilities have been investigated and documented by such organizations as the Menninger Foundation.

An advocate for Native American rights, as well as for ecological harmony, Rolling Thunder traveled widely and was in great demand worldwide for his insight and teachings. He himself joked that he had to make it rain and thunder "in order to clean the polluted air" before he spoke in a new city. Speaking before spiritual, ecological, psychological, and healing gatherings, Rolling Thunder participated in conferences sponsored by the Association for Research and Enlightenment (Edgar Cayce's Foundation), the Menninger Foundation, the East West Academy of the Healing Arts, the Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Environment, the World Conference of Spiritual Leaders of the United Nations, and the World Humanity Conference in Vancouver, B.C., among others.

Often controversial, and regarded even militant at times, Rolling Thunder was known for being outspoken and "telling it like it is." "The Great Spirit guides me to tell people what they need to know, not what they want to know," he often said. Never making claims for his special powers, he reminded those who called him a medicine man, or who spoke of his healing abilities, that "All power belongs to the Great Spirit." Then he would add, "You call him God." In response to the charges of being militant, Rolling Thunder said, "Yes, I'm a militant. So was your great healer they call Jesus Christ."

A shaman's headdress (depicted upside down) 

A shaman is one who serves his people by acting as an intermediary to the spirit world. The claimed ability to communicate with the world beyond death is at least as old as the time when early humans first conceived the idea that some part of them somehow survived physical death and existed in some other place in spirit form.

The grief that came with the sorrowful thought of losing all contact with a loved one was lessened by the assertion of a fellow tribesperson that he or she could still communicate with the spirit of the one who lay in the grave. Among early humans, those individuals who claimed to be able to visit the place of the dead were known as shamans, and the messages that they relayed from the spirit world were sought by the elders regarding every major tribal decision.

Originally, the term "shaman" was applied to the spirit doctors and exorcists of the Tungus of Siberia, but in recent years the title has been applied as well to the medicine men and women of the various North American tribes who also serve as mediums, healers, and visionaries for their people. Many tribal traditionalists still revere the wisdom that is shared by those men and women who maintain the shamanic traditions and who travel to the other side in the company of their spirit helper.

In the introduction to his book The Way of the Shaman (1982) anthropologist Michael Harner writes that shamans "…whom we in the 'civilized' world have called 'medicine men' and 'witchdoctors' are the keepers of a remarkable body of ancient techniques that they use to achieve and maintain well-being and healing for themselves and members of their communities." Harner states that shamanic methods are remarkably similar throughout the world, "even for those peoples whose cultures are quite different in other respects, and who have been separated by oceans and continents for tens of thousands of years."

The anthropologist Ivar Lissner, who spent a great deal of time among the Tungus of Siberia, as well as native peoples in North America, defines a shaman as one "…who knows how to deal with spirits and influence them.…The essential characteristic of the shaman is his excitement, his ecstasy and trancelike condition.…The elements which constitute this ecstasy are a form of self-severance from mundane existence, a state of heightened sensibility, and spiritual awareness.

The shaman loses outward consciousness and becomes inspired or enraptured. While in this state of enthusiasm, he sees dreamlike apparitions, hears voices, and receives visions of truth. More than that, his soul sometimes leaves his body to go wandering."

It is believed that during those times when the souls of shamans go wandering, they project their consciousness to faraway places on Earth as well as to the shadow world of spirits.

These soul journeys may inform those who seek their shaman's counsel of everything from where to find the choicest herds of game to how to banish a troublesome spirit from their home. Those men and women who aspire to learning such techniques for themselves may pay a shamanic practitioner for the privilege of undergoing an arduous course of training that would include periods of fasting, going on vision quests, and encounters with the world of spirits—a regimen that may take the student many years to accomplish.

In 1865, the great warrior Roman Nose, who had studied under the tutelage of White Bull, an elderly Cheyenne medicine man, lay on a raft for four days in the midst of a sacred lake. Roman Nose partook of no food or water, and he suffered a relentless sun by day and a pouring rain by night. But he felt none of these distractions, for Roman Nose was in a trance so deep that he appeared to be dead.

When he returned from the Land of the Grandparents, the place of spirits, Roman Nose had obtained the necessary vision teachings to attack the white man's cavalry who were invading the Powder River country.

On the day of battle, Roman Nose mounted his white pony and told the assembled warriors not to accompany his charge until the Blue Coat soldiers had emptied their rifles at him. The power that he had received from the spirits during his "little death" had rendered him impervious to their bullets.

Roman Nose broke away from the rest of the war party and urged his pony into a run toward the ranks of white soldiers standing behind their wagons. When he was so near that he could see their faces, Roman Nose wheeled his mount and rode parallel to their ranks and their rifles.

He made three or four passes before volley after volley from the soldiers' Springfield rifles. He remained untouched, unscratched. Finally a musket ball knocked his pony out from under him, but Roman Nose rose untouched and signaled his warriors to attack. They believed that magic he had received from the spirits kept him safe that day from all the bullets.

While one can pursue the path of becoming a medicine man or woman by undergoing a vision quest, receiving a spirit guide, and serving an apprenticeship under the direction of an established medicine person, traditionally, it seems, the greatest shamans are created by spiritual intervention in the shape of a sudden and severe illness, spells of fever, epileptic seizures, or possession by tutelary spirits.

It would appear that those who become the most effective intermediaries between the worlds of flesh and spirit must have their physical bodies purged and nearly destroyed before they can establish contact with spirits.

Twylzh selecting medicine Stones 

Black Elk (1863–1950), the respected medicine practitioner/shaman of the Oglala Sioux, became a "hole," a port of entry for spirits to enter the physical world, when he fell terribly ill as a boy of nine. He heard voices telling him that it was time for him to receive his first great vision, and he was taken out of his body by two spirit guides who informed him that they were to take him to the land of his grandfathers. Here, in the land of the spirits, Black Elk received the great vision that was to sustain him all of his life. When he was returned to his body, his parents greeted the first flutterings of his eyelids with great joy. The boy had been lying as if dead for 12 days.

As he grew to maturity and learned to focus his healing and clairvoyant energies, Black Elk never failed to credit the other world for his accomplishments and to explain that he was but a "hole" through which the spirits entered this world. Rather than the

Shamans Kilt

In many tribal societies, the pseudo-death, or near-death experience, appears to be nearly a precondition that must be met by those who aspire to the role of the most prestigious of shamans.

In 1890, Jack Wilson, a Paiute who worked as a hired hand for a white rancher, came down with a terrible fever. His sickness became so bad that for three days he lay as if dead. When he returned to consciousness, he told the Paiutes who had assembled around his "corpse" that his spirit had walked with God, the Old Man, for those three days; and the Old Man had given him a powerful vision to share with the Paiute people.

His vision proclaimed that the dead of many tribes were all alive, waiting to be reborn. If the native peoples wished the buffalo to return, the grasses to grow tall, and the rivers to run clean, they must not injure anyone; they must not do harm to any living thing. They must not make war. They must lead lives of purity, cease gambling, put away strong drink, and guard themselves against all lusts of the flesh.

Jack Wilson's grandfather had been the esteemed prophet Wodziwob. His father had been the respected holy man Tavibo. Among his own people, Wilson was known as Wovoka; and now he, too, had spent his time of initiation in death and had emerged as a holy man and a prophet.

The most important part of the vision that the Great Spirit had given to Wovoka was the Ghost Dance. The Paiute prophet told his people that the dance had never been performed anywhere on Earth. It was the dance of the spirit people of the Other World. To perform this dance was to insure that the Great Mystery's blessings would be bestowed upon the tribe. Wovoka said that the Old Man had spoken to him as if he were his son and assured him that many miracles would be worked through him. The native people had received their shamanic messiah.

A crucial element in shamanism is the ability to rise above the constrictions and restraints of linear time. In his text for American Indian Ceremonial Dances (1972), John Collier comments upon the shaman's and the traditional native people's possession of a time sense that is different from the present societal understanding of the passages of minutes, hours, and days. At one time everyone possessed such freedom, Collier says, but the mechanized world took it away. If humans could exist, as the native people in their whole lives affirmed, "in a dimension of time, a reality of time—not linear, not clock-measured, clock-controlled, and clock-ended," Collier suggests that they should gladly enter it, for individuals would expand their consciousness by being there. "In solitary, mystical experience many of ourselves do enter another time dimension," he continues. But the "frown of clockwork time" demands a return to chronological time. The shaman, however, recognizes that this other time dimension originated "within the germ plasm and the organic rhythms…of moveless eternity. It is life's instinct and environment and human society's instinct and environment. To realize it or not realize it makes an enormous difference."

Achieving a deep trance state appears to be the most effective way that shamans regularly abandon linear time restrictions in order to gain entrance to that other dimension of time. By singing their special songs received in vision quests or dreams, shamans put themselves into trances that permit them to travel with their spirit helpers to the Land of the Grandparents, a place free of "clockwork time," where they gain the knowledge to predict the future, to heal, and to relay messages of wisdom from the spirit people. 

 Shaman's Mask

Spirit guides

When spirit mediums speak of their control or guide, they are referring to the entity from the world beyond physical death who assists them in establishing contact with deceased humans. The spirit guides of mediums usually claim to have lived as humans on Earth before the time of their death and their graduation to higher realms of being.

In the shamanic tradition, the spirit guide or spirit helper is usually received by those who choose to participate in a vision quest. Before initiates embark upon this ordeal, tribal elders and shamans tutor them for many weeks on what to expect and what is expected of them. In many shamanic traditions, the

Shaman's necklace 

 spirit helper serves as an ambassador from the world of spirits to the world of humans an often manifests in animal form to serve as a kind of chaperone during visits to other dimensions of reality.

For the more contemporary spirit mediums, who often prefer to call themselves "channels," the guide may represent itself as a being who once lived as a human on Earth or as a Light Being, an extraterrestrial, or even an angel. Regardless of the semantics involved, today's mediums and channels follow the basic procedures of ancient shamanic traditions.

Totem animal

Among the shamanic or medicine teachings of the traditional Native Americans, the totem animal represents the physical form of one's spirit helper, the guide, who will lead the shaman into the spirit world and return him or her safely to the physical world. Contrary to the misinterpretations of early missionaries, the native people did not worship these animal representations of their guides as gods.

Latvian ethnologist Ivar Lissner stated in his Man, God, and Magic (1961) that his 17 years of expeditions among the shamans and people of the Tungus, Polynesians, Malaysians, Australian Aborigines, Ainus, Chinese, Mongols, and North American tribes demonstrated to him quite clearly that totemism is not religion. While all these diverse people lived in a world filled with animate beings, they all believed in a single supreme deity.

Aside from a few Venus-type mother-goddess statuettes, there remains a rather strange collection of ghostly creatures and a great variety of two-legged beings with the heads of animals and birds. Why, so many anthropologists have wondered, did these cave painters, despite their remarkable artistic gifts, never pass on an accurate idea of their features? Why did they confine themselves to portraying beings that were half-human, half-animal?

And then Lissner has an inspiration. It is quite possible that the Stone-Age artists really were portraying themselves, but in something more than in human shape. Perhaps they were depicting themselves "…in the guise of intermediary beings who were stronger than common men and able to penetrate more deeply into the mysteries of fate, that unfathomable interrelationship between animals, men, and gods." Lissner suggests that what the ancient cave painters may have been relaying is that the "road to supernatural powers is easier to follow in animal shape and that spirits can only be reached with an animal's assistance." The ancient artists may have been portraying themselves after all, but in animal guise, shamanistically.

The spirit guides, appearing as totemic animals, guide the shamans to the mysterious, transcendent reality beyond the material world and lead them into another dimension of time and space wherein dwell the inhabitants of the spirit world. It is through such a portal that mediumistic shamans must pass to gain their contact with the grandfathers and grandmothers who reside there. With their spirit guide at their side in the form of a totem animal, they can communicate with the spirits and derive wisdom and knowledge which will serve their tribe or those who have come to seek specific information from the world beyond death.

Vision quest

The personal revelatory experience and the contact with the spirit world received during the vision quest becomes the fundamental guiding force in the shaman's power (medicine). In addition to those who would be shamans, all traditional young men and women may partake of the vision quest, setting out alone in the wilderness to fast, to exhaust the physical body, to pray, to establish their own contact with the dimension of spirit, and to receive their individual "medicine" power. The dogma of tribal rituals and the religious expressions of others become secondary to the guidance that one receives from his or her own personal visions.

"The seeker goes forth solitary," writes Hartley Burr Alexander in The World's Rim (1967) "carrying his pipe and with an offering of tobacco. There in the wilderness alone, he chants his song and utters his prayers while he waits, fasting, such revelation as the Powers may grant."

The vision quest is basic to all traditional Native American religious experience, but one may certainly see similarities between the youthful tribal members presenting themselves to the Great Mystery as helpless, shelterless, and humble supplicants and the initiates of other religious traditions who fast, flagellate, and prostrate themselves before their concept of a Supreme Being.

In Christianity, the questing devotees kneel before a personal deity and beseech insight from the Son of God, whom they hope to please with their example of piety and self-sacrifice. 

In the Native American tribal traditions, the power granted by the vision quest comes from a vast and impersonal repository of spiritual energy; and those who partake of the quest receive their personal guardian spirit and a great vision that will grant them insight into the spiritual dimensions beyond physical reality. 

For the traditional Native American, the vision quest may be likened to the first Communion in Christianity. Far from being a goal achieved, the vision quest marks the beginning of the traditionalist's lifelong search for knowledge and wisdom.

Nor are the spiritual mechanics of the vision quest ignored once the youths have established contact with their guardian spirit and with the forces that are to aid them in the shaping of their destiny. At any stressful period of their life, the traditionalists may go into the wilderness to fast and to seek insight into the particular problems that beset them.

Hartley Burr Alexander saw the continued quest for wisdom of body and mind—the search for the single essential force at the core of every thought and deed—as the perpetually accumulating elements in medicine power.

The reason the term "medicine" became applied to this life-career function is simply because those attaining stature as men and women who had acquired this special kind of wisdom were so often also great healers. The true meaning of "medicine" extends beyond the arts of healing to clairvoyance, precognition, and the control of weather elements.

The power received in the vision quest enables the practitioner to obtain personal contact with the invisible world of spirits and to pierce the sensory world of illusion which veils the Great Mystery.

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 10:13 AM EST

Updated: Saturday, 24 January 2009 10:56 AM EST

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Spiritualism is a religion founded in part on the writings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). It is theistic, postulating a belief in God, but the distinguishing feature is belief that spirits of the dead can be contacted, either by individuals or by gifted or trained "mediums", who can provide information about the afterlife.

Spiritualism developed in the United States and reached its peak growth in membership from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-language countries.  By 1897, it was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes.

The religion flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion by periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent Spiritualists were women. Most followers supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. By the late 1880s, credibility of the informal movement weakened, due to accusations of fraud among mediums, and formal Spiritualist organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational Spiritualist Churches in the United States and United Kingdom.

Beliefs

The beliefs of Spiritualism vary among groups though they share certain beliefs.

Theism

Most Spiritualists believe in a monotheistic, omnibenevolent God, akin to Christianity. The Spiritualists' National Union's first principle is "the fatherhood of God".

Mediumship and Spirits

Spiritualists believe in communicating with the spirits of discarnate humans. They believe that spirit mediums are humans gifted to do this. They believe that spirits are capable of growth and perfection, progressing through higher spheres or planes. The afterlife is not a static place, but one in which spirits evolve. The two beliefs - that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits may lie on a higher plane - lead to a third belief, that spirits can provide knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about God and the afterlife. Thus many members speak of spirit guides — specific spirits, often contacted, relied upon for worldly and spiritual guidance.

Spiritualism was equated by some Christians with witchcraft. This United States 1865 broadsheet also condemned spiritualism's links to abolitionism and blamed it for causing the Civil War.

Compared with other religions

Christianity

As spiritualism emerged in a Christian environment, it has features in common with Christianity, ranging from an essentially Christian moral system to liturgical practices such as Sunday services and the singing of hymns. Nevertheless, on significant points Christianity and Spiritualism are different. Spiritualists do not believe that the works or faith of a mortal during a brief lifetime can serve as a basis for assigning a soul to an eternity of Heaven or Hell; they view the afterlife as containing hierarchical "spheres", through which each spirit can progress. This concept is related to the Catholic idea of Purgatory. Spiritualists differ from Protestant Christians in that the Judeo-Christian Bible is not the primary source from which they derive knowledge of God and the afterlife: for them, their personal contacts with spirits provide that.

Indigenous religions

Animist faiths, with a tradition of shamanism and spirit contact, are similar to Spiritualism. In the first decades of the movement, many mediums claimed contact with Native American spirit guides, in apparent acknowledgment of these similarities. Unlike animists, however, spiritualists speak of the spirits of dead humans and do not espouse a belief in spirits of trees, springs, or other natural features.

Islam

Within Islam, certain traditions, notably Sufism, consider communication with spirits possible. Additionally, the concept of Tawassul recognises the existence of good spirits on a higher plane of existence closer to God, and thus able to intercede on behalf of humanity.

Hinduism

Hinduism, though heterogeneous, shares with spiritualism a belief in the existence of the soul after death. But Hindus differ in that they believe in reincarnation and hold that all features of a person's personality are extinguished at death. Spiritualists maintain that the spirit retains the personality it possessed during human existence.

Spiritism

Spiritism, the branch of Spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and found in mostly Latin countries, has emphasised reincarnation. According to Arthur Conan Doyle, most British Spiritualists of the early 20th century were indifferent to the doctrine of reincarnation, few supported it, while a significant minority were opposed, since it had never been mentioned by spirits contacted in séances. Thus, according to Doyle, it is the empirical bent of Anglophone Spiritualism — its effort to develop religious views from observation of phenomena — that kept spiritualists of this period from embracing reincarnation.

Occult

Spiritualism also differs from occult movements, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or the contemporary Wiccan covens, in that spirits are not contacted to obtain magical powers (with the exception of power for healing). For example, Madame Blavatsky (1831–91) of the Theosophical Society only practiced mediumship to contact powerful spirits capable of conferring esoteric knowledge. Blavatsky did not believe these spirits were deceased humans, and held beliefs in reincarnation different from the views of most spiritualists.

Origins

Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the "Burned-over District" of upstate New York, where earlier religious movements such as Millerism, Seventh-Day Adventism, and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening.

This region of New York State was an environment in which many thought direct communication with God or angels was possible, and that God would not behave harshly — for example, that God would not condemn unbaptised infants to an eternity in Hell.

Swedenborg and Mesmer

The onlookers' excitement is palpable as the Mesmerist induces a trance. Painting by Swedish artist Richard Bergh, 1887.

Emanuel Swedenborg.

Franz Mesmer.

In this environment, the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) provided an example for those seeking direct personal knowledge of the afterlife. Swedenborg, who claimed to communicate with spirits while awake, described the structure of the spirit world. Two features of his view particularly resonated with the early spiritualists: first, that there is not a single hell and a single heaven, but rather a series of higher and lower heavens and hells; second, that spirits are intermediates between God and humans, so that the Divine sometimes uses them as a means of communication. Although Swedenborg warned against seeking out spirit contact, his works seem to have inspired in others the desire to do so.

Mesmer did not contribute religious beliefs, but he brought a technique, later known as hypnotism, that it was claimed could induce trances and cause subjects to report contact with supernatural beings. There was a great deal of professional showmanship inherent to demonstrations of Mesmerism, and the practitioners who lectured in mid-19th-century North America sought to entertain their audiences as well as to demonstrate methods for personal contact with the Divine.

Andrew Jackson Davis, about 1860

Perhaps the best known of those who combined Swedenborg and Mesmer in a peculiarly North American synthesis was Andrew Jackson Davis, who called his system the Harmonial Philosophy. Davis was a practicing Mesmerist, faith healer and clairvoyant from Poughkeepsie, New York. His 1847 book, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, dictated to a friend while in a trance state, eventually became the nearest thing to a canonical work in a Spiritualist movement whose extreme individualism precluded the development of a single coherent worldview.

Reform-movement links

The Fox sisters.

Spiritualists often set March 31, 1848, as the beginning of their movement. On that date, Kate and Margaret Fox, of Hydesville, New York, reported that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered peddler. What made this an extraordinary event was that the spirit communicated through rapping noises, audible to onlookers. The evidence of the senses appealed to practically minded Americans, and the Fox sisters became a sensation.

Amy and Isaac Post, Hicksite Quakers from Rochester, New York, had long been acquainted with the Fox family, and took the two girls into their home in the late spring of 1848. Immediately convinced of the genuineness of the sisters' communications, they became early converts and introduced the young mediums to their circle of radical Quaker friends.

It therefore came about that many of the early participants in Spiritualism were radical Quakers and others involved in the reforming movement of the mid-nineteenth century. These reformers were uncomfortable with established churches, because they did little to fight slavery and even less to advance the cause of women's rights.

Women were particularly attracted to the movement, because it gave them important roles as mediums and trance lecturers. In fact, Spiritualism provided one of the first forums in which U.S. women could address mixed public audiences.

Cora L. V. Scott.

The most popular trance lecturer prior to the U.S. Civil War was Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923). Young and beautiful, her appearance on stage fascinated men. Her audiences were struck by the contrast between her physical girlishness and the eloquence with which she spoke of spiritual matters, and found in that contrast support for the notion that spirits were speaking through her. Cora married four times, and on each occasion adopted her husband's last name. During her period of greatest activity, she was known as Cora Hatch.

Paschal Beverly Randolph.

Another famous woman spiritualist was Achsa W. Sprague, who was born November 17, 1827, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. At the age of 20, she became ill with rheumatic fever and credited her eventual recovery to intercession by spirits. An extremely popular trance lecturer, she traveled about the United States until her death in 1861. Sprague was an abolitionist and an advocate of women's rights.

Yet another prominent spiritualist and trance medium prior to the Civil War was Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–75), an African-American "Free Man of Color," who also played a part in the Abolition movement. Nevertheless, many abolitionists and reformers held themselves aloof from the movement; among the skeptics was the eloquent ex-slave, Frederick Douglass.

Believers and skeptics

Frank Podmore, ca. 1895.

In the years following the sensation that greeted the Fox sisters, demonstrations of mediumship (séances and automatic writing, for example) proved to be a profitable venture, and soon became popular forms of entertainment and spiritual catharsis. The Foxes were to earn a living this way and others would follow their lead. Showmanship became an increasingly important part of Spiritualism, and the visible, audible, and tangible evidence of spirits escalated as mediums competed for paying audiences. Fraud was certainly widespread, as independent investigating commissions repeatedly established, most notably the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission. In a few cases, fraud practiced under the guise of Spiritualism was prosecuted in the courts.

Harry Price, 1922.

Prominent investigators who exposed cases of fraud came from a variety of backgrounds, including professional researchers such as Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research or Harry Price of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, and professional conjurers such as John Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne exposed the Davenport Brothers by appearing in the audience during their shows and explaining how the trick was done. During the 1920s, professional magician Harry Houdini undertook a well-publicised campaign to expose fraudulent mediums. He was adamant that "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains."

William Crookes. Photo published 1904.

Despite widespread fraud, the appeal of Spiritualism was strong. Prominent in the ranks of its adherents were those grieving the death of a loved one. One well known case is that of Mary Todd Lincoln who, grieving the loss of her son, organized séances in the White House which were attended by her husband, President Abraham Lincoln. The surge of interest in Spiritualism during and after the American Civil War and World War I was a direct response to the massive casualties.

In addition, the movement appealed to reformers, who fortuitously found that the spirits favored such causes du jour as equal rights. It also appealed to some who had a materialist orientation and rejected organized religion. The influential socialist and atheist Robert Owen embraced religion following his experiences in Spiritualist circles.

Many scientists who investigated the phenomenon also became converts. They included chemist and physicist William Crookes (1832–1919), evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and Nobel-laureate physiologist Charles Richet. Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849-1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Pioneering American psychologist William James studied spiritualism, publishing supportive conclusions. The séances of Eusapia Palladino were attended by investigators including Pierre and Marie Curie.

Unorganized movement

The movement quickly spread throughout the world; though only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States. In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included table-turning, a type of séance in which spirits would communicate with people seated around a table by tilting and rotating the table. A particularly important convert was the French pedagogist Allan Kardec (1804-1869), who made the first attempt to systematise the movement's practices and ideas into a consistent philosophical system. Kardec's books, written in the last 15 years of his life, became the textual basis of Spiritism, which became widespread in Latin countries. In Brazil, Kardec's ideas are embraced by many followers today.   In Puerto Rico, Kardec's books were widely read by the upper classes, and eventually gave birth to a movement known as Mesa Blanca (White Table).

Middle-class Chicago women discuss Spiritualism (1906).

Spiritualism was mainly a middle- and upper-class movement, and especially popular with women. U.S. spiritualists would meet in private homes for séances, at lecture halls for trance lectures, at state or national conventions, and at summer camps attended by thousands. Among the most significant of the camp meetings were Camp Etna, in Etna, Maine; Onset Bay Grove, in Onset, Massachusetts; Lily Dale, in western New York State; Camp Chesterfield, in Indiana; the Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp, in Wonewoc, Wisconsin; and Lake Pleasant, in Montague, Massachusetts. In founding camp meetings, the spiritualists appropriated a form developed by U.S. Protestant denominations in the early nineteenth century. Spiritualist camp meetings were located most densely in New England and California, but were also established across the upper Midwest. Cassadaga, Florida, is the most notable spiritualist camp meeting in the southern states.

A number of spiritualist periodicals appeared in the nineteenth century, and these did much to hold the movement together. Among the most important were the weeklies The Banner of Light (Boston), The Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago), Mind and Matter (Philadelphia), The Spiritualist (London), and The Medium (London). Other influential periodicals were the Revue Spirite (France), Le Messager (Belgium), Annali dello Spiritismo (Italy), El Criterio Espiritista (Spain), and The Harbinger of Light (Australia). By 1880, there were about three dozen monthly spiritualist periodicals published around the world  

These periodicals differed a great deal from each other, reflecting the great differences among Spiritualists. Some, such as the British Spiritual Magazine were Christian and conservative, openly rejecting the reform currents so strong within Spiritualism. Others, such as Human Nature, were pointedly non-Christian and supportive of socialism and reform efforts. Still others, such as The Spiritualist, attempted to view spiritualist phenomena from a scientific perspective, eschewing discussion on both theological and reform issues.

The movement was extremely individualistic, with each person relying on her own experiences and reading to discern the nature of the afterlife. Organisation was therefore slow to appear, and when it did it was resisted by mediums and trance lecturers. Most members were content to attend Christian churches, and particularly Universalist churches harbored many Spiritualists.

As the movement began to fade, partly through the bad publicity of fraud accusations and partly through the appeal of religious movements such as Christian Science, the Spiritualist Church was organised. This church can claim to be the main vestige of the movement left today in the United States.

Other mediums

Eusapia Palladino, Warsaw, 1893

William Stainton Moses (1839–92) was an Anglican clergyman who, in the period from 1872 to 1883, filled 24 notebooks with automatic writing, much of which was said to describe conditions in the spirit world.

London-born Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–99) moved to the United States in 1855 and was active in spiritualist circles as a trance lecturer and organiser. She is best known as a chronicler of the movement's spread, especially in her 1884 Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and their Work in Every Country of the Earth.

Julian Ochorowicz.

Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918) was an Italian Spiritualist medium from the slums of Naples who made a career touring Italy, France, Germany, Britain, the United States, Russia and Poland. Her stratagems were unmasked on several occasions, though some investigators, including Nobel laureate scientists, credited her mediumistic abilities.

One believer was the Polish psychologist Julian Ochorowicz, who in 1893 brought her from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Warsaw, Poland. He introduced her to the novelist Boles??aw Prus, who participated in her séances and incorporated Spiritualist elements into his historical novel Pharaoh. Ochorowicz studied as well, 15 years later, a home-grown Polish medium, Stanis??awa Tomczyk.

Adelma Vay (1840-1925), Hungarian (by origin) spiritistic medium, homeopath and clairvoyant was author of many books about spiritism, written in German and translated into English.

After the 1920s

Main articles: Spiritualist Church, Spiritualists' National Union, Survivalism (life after death), and Spiritualist Association of Great Britain

After the 1920s, Spiritualism evolved in three different directions, all of which exist today.

Syncreticism

The first of these continued the tradition of individual practitioners, organised in circles centered on a medium and clients, without any hierarchy or dogma. Already by the late 19th century spiritualism had become increasingly syncretic, a natural development in a movement without central authority or dogma. Today, among these unorganised circles, spiritualism is not readily distinguishable from the similarly syncretic New Age movement. These spiritualists are quite heterogeneous in their beliefs regarding issues such as reincarnation or the existence of God. Some appropriate New Age and Neo-Pagan beliefs, whilst others call themselves 'Christian Spiritualists', continuing with the tradition of cautiously incorporating spiritualist experiences into their Christian faith.

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Spiritualist Church

The second direction taken has been to adopt formal organisation, patterned after Christian denominations, with established creeds and liturgies, and training requirements for mediums. In the United States the Spiritualist churches are primarily affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, and in the U.K. with the Spiritualists' National Union, founded in 1901. Formal education in spiritualist practice emerged in 1920, continuing today with the Arthur Findlay College at Stansted Hall. Diversity of belief among organised spiritualists has led to a few schisms, the most notable occurring in the U.K. in 1957 between those who held the movement to be a religion sui generis (of its own with unique characteristics), and a minority who held it to be a denomination within Christianity.

The practice of organised Spiritualism today resembles that of any other religion, having discarded most showmanship, particularly those elements resembling the conjurer's art. There is thus a much greater emphasis on "mental" mediumship and an almost complete avoidance of the miraculous "materializing" mediumship that so fascinated early believers such as Arthur Conan Doyle.

Survivalism

(life after death)

The third direction taken has been a continuation of its empirical orientation to religious phenomena. Already as early as 1882, with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, secular organisations emerged to investigate spiritualist claims. Today many persons with this empirical approach avoid the label of "spiritualism," preferring the term "survivalism." Survivalists eschew religion, and base their belief in the afterlife on phenomena susceptible to at least rudimentary scientific investigation, such as mediumship, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, electronic voice phenomena, and reincarnation research. Many Survivalists see themselves as the intellectual heirs of the spiritualist movement

References

• Alvarado, C.S., M. Biondi, and W. Kramer. 2006. “Historical Notes on Psychic Phenomena in Specialised Journals.” European Journal of Parapsychology 21:58.
• Brandon, Ruth (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 
• Braude, Ann (2001). Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21502-1. 
• Britten, Emma Hardinge (1884). Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and their Work in Every Country of the Earth. New York: William Britten. ISBN 0766162907. 
• Brown, Slater (1970). The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books. 
• Buescher, John B. (2003). The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience. Boston: Skinner House Books. ISBN 1-55896-448-7. 
• Carroll, Bret E. (1997). Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33315-6. 
• Davenport, Reuben Briggs (1888). The Death-Blow to Spiritualism. New York: G.W. Dillingham. 
• Deveney, John Patrick; Franklin Rosemont (1996). Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3120-7. 
• Doyle, Arthur Conan (1926). The History of Spiritualism, volume 1. New York: G.H. Doran. ISBN 1-4101-0243-2. http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/scottish-authors/arthur-conan-doyle/the-history-of-spiritualism-vol-i. 
• Doyle, Arthur Conan (1926). The History of Spiritualism, volume 2. New York: G.H. Doran. ISBN 1-4101-0243-2. http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/scottish-authors/arthur-conan-doyle/the-history-of-spiritualism-vol-ii. 
• Fodor, Nandor (1934). An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science. 
• Guthrie, John J. Jr.; Phillip Charles Lucas; Gary Monroe (2000). Cassadaga: the South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1743-2. 
• Harrison, W.H. 1880. Psychic Facts, a Selection from Various Authors. London: Ballantyne Press.
• Hess, David. "Spiritism and Science in Brazil". Ph.D thesis, Dept. of Anthropology, Cornell University.
• Lindgren, Carl Edwin (January 1994). "Spiritualism: Innocent Beliefs to Scientific Curiosity". Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 17 (1): 8–15. ISSN 1731:2148. http://users.panola.com/lindgren/spirit-1.html. 
• Lindgren, Carl Edwin (March 1994). "Scientific investigation and Religious Uncertainty 1880-1900". Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 17 (2): 83–91. ISSN 1731:2148. http://users.panola.com/lindgren/spirit-2.html. 
• Moore, William D. (1997). "'To Hold Communion with Nature and the Spirit-World:' New England's Spiritualist Camp Meetings, 1865-1910". in Annmarie Adams and Sally MacMurray (editors). Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, VII. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 0-8704-9983-1. 
• Podmore, Frank, Mediums of the 19th Century, 2 vols., University Books, 1963.
• Salter, William H., Zoar; or the Evidence of Psychical Research Concerning Survival, Sidgwick, 1961.
• Telegrams from the Dead (a PBS television documentary in the "American Experience" series, first aired October 19, 1994).
• Tokarzówna, Krystyna; Stanis??aw Fita (1969). Boles??aw Prus, 1847-1912: Kalendarz ??ycia i twórczo??ci (Boles??aw Prus, 1847-1912: a Calendar of [His] Life and Work). Warsaw: Pa??stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. 
• Weisberg, Barbara (2004). Talking to the Dead. San Francisco: Harper. 
• Wicker, Christine (2004). Lily Dale: the True Story of the Town that talks to the Dead. San Francisco: Harper. 

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 7:32 AM EST

Updated: Saturday, 24 January 2009 7:43 AM EST

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Native American mythology

 http://en.wikipedia.org

 Like other religions, Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, sky and fire. The idea of an all powerful Great Spirit, a connection to the Earth, diverse creation narratives and collective memories of ancient ancestors are common. Traditional worship practices are often a part of tribal gatherings with dance, rhythm, songs and trance. Actual practices vary. Vist the site to review each tribes custom.  

• Abenaki Native American tribe located in the falang northeastern United States. Religious ceremonies are led by shamans, called Medeoulin (Mdawinno).
• Anishinaabe located primarily in the Great Lakes
• Aztec. Myths and legends of Mesoamerican culture, recognized many gods and supernatural creatures such as the Aztec.
• Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans who currently live in Montana. They lived west of the Great Lakes and lived in Montana and Alberta and participated in Plains Indian culture.
• Cherokee. Native American culture who mainly live in the southeastern United States and in Oklahoma.
• Creek tribe of Native Americans from the southeastern United States. The shaman was called an Alektca.
• Crow Native Americans live in the Great Plains area of the United States. The shaman of the tribe was known as an Akbaalia ("healer").
• Guarani people of the south-central part of South America, especially the native peoples of Paraguay and parts of the surrounding areas of Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia.
• Ho-Chunk and Winnebago are tribes of Native Americans, which were once a single tribe living in Wisconsin.
• Hopi tribe of Native Americans located in the southwestern United States.
• Incan South American culture, with myths and legends which survived amongst the native peoples.
• Inuit similarities to the religions of other polar regions. Inuit traditional religious practices could be very briefly summarised as a form of shamanism based on animist principles.
• Lakota Native American tribe, also known as the Sioux.
• Lenape Native American tribe from the Delaware area
• Mapuche, South American culture of native peoples of Chile and some regions of Argentina.
• Maya, Mesoamerican culture with extensive polytheistic beliefs.
• Miwok mythology, a Native American people in Northern California.
• Navajo tribe of Native Americans who live in the southwestern United States.
• Ohlone mythology, a Native American people in Northern California.
• Pawnee tribe of Native Americans originally located in Nebraska, United States.
• Pomo mythology, a Native American people in Northern California.
• Seneca tribe was one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy from the northeastern United States.
• Wyandot (sometimes formerly referred to as the Huron) are a First Nations/Native American people originally from Ontario, Canada, and surrounding areas.

Tribal Spiritual Practices

Cherokee mythology

This article concerns itself with the mythology of the Cherokee, Native Americans indigenous to the southeastern United States and to Oklahoma 

For information on other Native American tribe belief systems vist  

Yowa

The Cherokee revered the Great Spirit, called the Yowa (a name so sacred that only a priest could say it), who presided over all things and created Mother Earth.

Signs, visions, dreams

They held that signs, visions, dreams, and powers were all gifts of the spirits, and that their world was intertwined with and presided over by the spirit world.

Other venerated spirits

The Cherokee believed that every aspect and thing had a spirit presiding over it, but did not hold a belief in multiple gods. All figures identified as 'gods' were simply greater beings in the Cherokee belief whose names were so great there were no English words for them, and thus they were recognized as 'gods' by Englishmen. However, the Cherokee paid direct respect to and worshipped only Yowa.

• Sint Holo: A horned serpent
• Tsul 'Kalu: Spirit of the Hunt
• Oonawieh Unggi ("the oldest wind"): Spirit of the Wind
• Kana'ti ("The Lucky Hunter"): The Great Hunter
• Selu ("maize"): The Corn Woman
• Nûñnë'hï: The Spirit People

The thunder beings

The Cherokee held that there were two classes of the thunder beings, those who lived close to the Earth, and the holiest and most powerful of the thunder beings who lived in the land of the west beyond the Mississippi River, and visited the people to bring the rains and blessings from the South.

• Ani Yuntikwalaski: Spirits of thunder and lightning (the thunder beings)
• Asgaya Gigagei (Thunder Beings of the West): Spirit of thunderstorms, also called Asagaya Gigaei

It was believed that the thunder beings who lived close to the Earth's surface could and did harm the people at times. There were three Thunder Beings from the West in the ancient legends, a greater spirit and his two sons.

Green corn ceremony

The thunder beings were viewed as the most powerful of the servants of the Apportioner (Creator Spirit), and were revered in the first dance of the Green Corn Ceremony held each year, as they were directly believed to have brought the rains for a successful corn crop.

Evil

The Cherokee assigned a feminine personality to the concept of the personification of spiritual evil, and named her "wi-na-go" in the ancient language, and believe that mosquitos were created when she was destroyed in ancient legends. There is also Nun'Yunu'Wi, an evil spirit monster who preys on humans, and Raven Mocker, the evil spirit of a witch who steals the souls of the dead.

Animals, plants, and disease

It was also believed that all human disease and suffering originated with the killing of animals for improper purposes, and that for each animal killed for pleasure or without proper ceremonies, it allowed a new disease to enter the physical world from the spirit world. It was also believed that the plants, in response to witnessing the suffering in the world, made a medicine to cure each sickness that entered the world in order to restore the balance of forces between the two worlds, the physical world and the spirit world.

Posted by Susan@Healing Journeys at 9:26 AM EST

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