Medicine for the Soul: Shamanism, Soul Retrieval, and Healing

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What is Shamanic Healing & Soul Retrieval?

Howard playing an exquisite Sami drum.

Shamanic Healing consists of a varied body of practices performed by the shaman or practitioner to help or heal another person. This is a fundamental principle of shamanism wherever it is practiced.

The methods, tools, ‘symbology’, and medicines will vary from culture to culture and region to region but primarily the healing is a three-way connection between the client, shaman and the universe or spirit.

Soul Retrieval: A Personal Perspective

The recapitulation of life force is the body of work, which restores or recapitulates lost life force. Soul Retrieval is one of the most well-known and effective practices to this end.

To understand how recapitulation practices work, we need to look at the multidimensional nature of reality and move away from a linear sequential perspective. From this expanded perspective, ‘anything which has ever happened to anybody, anywhere; it is still happening somewhere’. If a traumatic event occurred for a person ten, twenty and so on years ago, for that person it is still happening, and I would venture to state that it is also in some way still influencing the person’s life.

Healing

Shamanism does not dwell on past events; there is only this vast awesome ever-moving great moment of now where there is no separate past, present, or future. It is possible for a practitioner to journey and move outside of linear time to go to the place where that energetic event is still occurring for that individual, find and bring back that person’s life force which is held in that energetic event, and when this has been carried out, then the therapeutic healing of the event and its consequences can truly begin.

The loss of life-force is known as soul-loss , and this can take place when we suffer a trauma, have an accident, experience strong emotional exchanges with a loved one, separation from a partner, death of a loved one, go through a pervasive period of difficult circumstances. When we undergo a severe trauma typically a part of our vital nature goes away, so that we can survive whatever is happening to us. It is a way for the body and consciousness to survive severe trauma. Problems develop when the soul part or fragment does not return. It may not want to come back, or may not be able to return due to the nature of the trauma

The Star Maiden Circle by Leo Rutherford

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Shamanism and Divination

The Multi-dimensional Cosmos of the shaman

In shamanism, there is another kind of time, not linear or sequential but a time which is one single moment. This vast ever moving moment has no boundaries which separate the past, present and future. This is a time in which anything which has ever happened to anybody anywhere, somewhere it is still happening. The shaman travels ‘outside’ of linear time into this vast unending ever-moving moment to seek the information at the place where this event is happening.

One of the main gateways to this vast moment of time or universal consciousness is our own powers of imagination coupled with the three fundamental principles of expanded perception;

1.Intention All actions begin with an intention, a desire for a specific outcome. The principle of intention operates on two levels, the obvious , ‘this is what I want to do’, and the subtle level , i.e. it is a signal or alert to energy to be prepared to move to a certain destination.

2.Trust Trust is an ineffable quality, it is experienced in the body, not the mind. Trust takes time, and to get trust we need feedback which either directly or indirectly validates our experience. With trust our experiences and confidence in our actions increase significantly.

3.Attention This is about the application and focus of energy and intention. Attention is not ‘hard-work’ yet it needs consistency, to place your awareness at the interface of events or places….. Energy flows where Attention goes.

Shamanism is not a system of belief or faith, it is a system of knowledge, and divination is one of the paths to gain direct knowledge. Direct knowledge can be defined as that which is experienced first hand by the senses. Divination is not ‘fortune telling’, it is a way to a deeper understanding of events and influences surrounding a situation or person. Divination has always been an integral part of shamanism. One of the most important roles of the shaman has been to seek revelatory knowledge from visionary sources, which may be for healing purposes, “why has this person become ill?” “what medicine does this person need?, or important communal needs “where are the herds of caribou?”, divination is also often used to get meaning from dreams and visions.

Divination is as old as humanity, but unfortunately in mainstream Western society it has been regarded as something primitive, irrational, and pandering to superstition. Divination is simply a way of revealing the truth. The diviner reveals or uncovers to their client hidden truths about themselves, or the circumstances surrounding them. In societies outside the West, divining continues to play an important role, revealing that which is hidden, easing anxiety, and helping in coming to terms with challenging circumstances that may demand the implementation of difficult decisions.

In divination, the role of the shaman is to act as a mediator or ‘middle-man’. The shaman by exploring and providing the initial reading and interpretation allows the seeker of this information to avoid projecting personal wants, desires, and wishes if the question or situation is emotionally charged.

Divinatory methods

The shamans used many diverse methods for divination, either ways seeking patterns in natural objects and events, or using techniques to directly obtain hidden knowledge. An example of the former could be the practice of divination with rocks.

Rock Divination To do this the traditional practice is for the seeker looks for a rock whilst holding the question in the mind, eventually there will be a rock which stands out or ‘metaphorically’ shouts out “me, me!”. Here is an opportunity to practice the principle of trust!. As a helpful tip the more faceted and inner forms the rock has the better as more facets and patterns mean more detail will be available to the reader. The seeker should then give the rock to the shaman or practitioner and state the question. The shaman (who knows as little as possible about the questioner or the circumstances regarding the question) will gently focus on the rock and allow patterns to form within the imagination. The shaman may ask the seeker to state the question a few times as this helps to deepen the trance state of awareness, to the place where the shapes and patterns in the rock become a ‘gateway’ directly into the universal field of energy, and images, pictures, words, feelings will start to form within the shaman’s being. Each rock face represents a different aspect of the question, and the initial response is generally “where the questioner is at this moment”, and this leads to other rock faces, each rock face exposing and presenting an expanded view of the answer. To me personally this work is awesome, mysterious and poetic, and I have found that is as if a person’s life story is contained in a rock.

Sunbeam Divination Journey An example of a specific technique to discover hidden knowledge is the Sunbeam divination journey of the Labrador Naskapi shamans. This journey has a single specific purpose to find out the physical location of a person, object, or place where an event will take place. In this practice no information will be given about the object, person etc only it’s location. One can see the usefulness and practicality of this technique, for example to help hunters locate game animals, or the to find out and rescue a lost member of the tribe and so on. I have used this practice many times often to locate lost keys or the wallet of a client!

An Exercise – Naskapi Sunbeam Divination Journey.

First meditate or reflect on what you want to locate or know the whereabouts of, remember the first principle of Intention. When ready, find a place where you will not be disturbed for half hour or so, darken the room, and lay down and relax. Note: It is best if you have tape for shamanic journeying drumming (which will smooth the transition into expanded states of awareness). In the imagination, the launch-pad into multi-dimensional perception, go to a place where you can visualise, perceive, or sense being in the open landscape. Sense being fully in this place, experience your feet on the ground and the ground pushing up against the soles of your feet, experience the air and the wind on your face, become fully present in this landscape, and when ready look up to the sky where the sun will be, with the question firmly in your mind, ask the sun to show you the location or whereabouts of what it is you are searching for. Typically a particular sunbeam will either shine brightly or capture your attention in one way or another, follow this beam of sunlight, you may even experience yourself flying over the landscape, and where this specific sunbeam touches the ground, that is where the location is. When you recognise the location, and can correlate it to an actual physical place, it is then time to return. So turn around and go back to the place where you started from, and when you have returned, gently feel yourself back in the physical world, and gently open your eyes.

Remembering the second principle of trust, check the information out, try and get verification of the validity of the journey, keep on doing this until you have developed trust and the confidence will then follow.

Shamanic Trance Postures.

Another form of specific techniques is the body of work known as Shamanic Trance Postures. They take the form of certain precise bodily postures. These postures are gateways to an altered state of consciousness, and visionary experiences. This body of knowledge originates from ancient civilisations and many indigenous cultures throughout the world. Rediscovered in the 1970’s by the renowned anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, these postures are a piece of living history from our heritage of spiritual tradition.

It involves holding non-strenuous, but precise physical positions together with an accompanying rhythmic sound eg. Shamanic drumming or rattling. There are a number of specific postures for divinatory purposes, for example the Nupe people in sub-Saharan Africa, use these ritual postures, and in the one that their divinatory shamans work with gives the experience of detachment and a dispassionate persepective of the question.

An Exercise – Nupe Divination Posture

Once again meditate or focus on your question, as with this work it really helps if the question is sharp, no ‘ifs’, ‘shoulds’ , ‘but’ and so on, get your question as razor honed as possible.

Sit on the floor, leaning toward your left and supported by your left arm. Hold your left arm rigid, with your hand at a right angle to your body. Place your left hand at a spot three to five inches to the left of your body and just behind a straight line drawn along the back of your buttocks. Bend both legs at the knees with both feet pointing to the right, positioned so that your left foot is resting just to the left of your right knee. Place your right hand on your lower left leg, where the muscle indents about halfway down your calf. Move your head slightly to the left, so you are looking over your left knee, and close your eyes.

If possible listen to a shamanic drumming or rattling tape, as this will enhance the visionary potential and makes the experience smoother, and more powerful. Allow the visionary imagery , or just simple ‘knowing’ to take place, when you have a sense of an answer (even if you do not understand it rationally) just gently release yourself from the posture, and come back fully into the present. If an answer is not immediately understood, incubate it, play with it, draw or paint it, this is important as the answer is not always addressed to the rational mind. Being with the imagery or vision will often lead to a deep and profound revelation.

To conclude there are many other ways of divination in shamanism many which underlie well known practices eg; divination with quartz crystals, casting of objects, Scrying.

As the Tungus shamans of Siberia say “we are all connected, we are all one”. So is it no wonder that we can discover ourselves through the natural world.

Howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA).
Visit our website

Soul Retrieval – Healing and Shamanism

Soul Retrieval – Shamanism and Healing.

The recapitulation of life force is the body of work, which restores or recapitulates lost life force. Soul Retrieval is one of the most well-known and effective practices to this end.

To understand how recapitulation practices work, we need to look at the multidimensional nature of reality and move away from a linear sequential perspective. From this expanded perspective, ‘anything which has ever happened to anybody, anywhere; it is still happening somewhere’. If a traumatic event occurred for a person ten, twenty and so on years ago, for that person it is still happening, and I would venture to state that it is also in some way still influencing the person’s life.

Shamanism does not dwell on past events; there is only this vast awesome ever-moving great moment of now where there is no separate past, present, or future. It is possible for a practitioner to journey and move outside of linear time to go to the place where that energetic event is still occurring for that individual, find and bring back that person’s life force which is held in that energetic event, and when this has been carried out, then the therapeutic healing of the event and it’s consequences can truly begin.

The loss of life-force is known as soul-loss, and this can take place when we suffer a trauma, have an accident, experience strong emotional exchanges with a loved one, separation from a partner, death of a loved one, go through a pervasive period of difficult circumstances. When we undergo a severe trauma typically a part of our vital nature goes away, so that we can survive what ever is happening to us. It is a way for the body and consciousness to survive severe trauma. Problems develop when the soul part or fragment does not return. It may not want to come back, or may not be able to return due to the nature of the trauma

Joseph Campbell writes in his classic work The Masks of God ‘…sickness according to shamanic theory, can be caused either by the entrance of an alien element into the body, or by the departure of the soul from the body and its imprisonment in one of the spirit regions: above, below, or beyond the rim of the world. The Shaman’s clairvoyant vision must discover its lurking place. Then riding “on the sound of his drum”, he must sail away on the wings of trance to whatever spiritual realm may harbour the soul in question, and work swiftly his deed of rescue.’

The concept of Soul-loss , and the ceremonial retrieval of souls is found in many cultures. For example in the Tibetan Bon Shamanistic tradition, One of the most important practices performed by Tibetan shamans of the Sichen path is Soul Retrieval – Lalu (literally redeeming, or buying back the soul), and chilu, (redeeming the life-energy). These practices are widespread in the Bon tradition and also in all Tibetan Buddhist schools.

Although the terminology is different, the concept of soul-loss is a phenomenon well known to psychology. Jung recounts in his memoirs a fantasy in which his soul flew away from him, that is, the libido withdrew into the unconscious and was carrying on a secret life there. The libido representing the life-force, and the unconscious typically representing ‘the land of the dead’ .

There are a number of symptoms of soul-loss, for example, when people feel that they are observing life as an outsider, rather than engaging and being fully involved. Other common symptoms are when people feel that they are being ‘spaced’ out a lot of the time, not really here. Other symptoms that indicate possible soul loss are life-themes such as a pervasive fear, inability to trust people. I have also found that a severe depression can also be a symptom of soul loss. Chronic illness may also be a symptom of soul loss. This directly relates to Power. In the shamanic worldview, power and maintaining health go hand in hand, if the body is power-full, there is no room for illness or disease, which are often regarded as an invasive force.

In my practice I have worked with many people who had done considerable work on the original trauma, but still were stuck in this. One of the differences between Soul Retrieval and some modern Western psychological systems is that Soul Retrieval focuses on the return and integration of the lost life-force, rather than focus on the original trauma itself. In my view Soul Retrieval and therapy work very well together, the best combination being first the recapitulation of the lost life-force, followed by a therapeutic approach to support the person through the process of working with released feelings and emotional energy which can be uncomfortable and even raw for the individual. This release and subsequent experiencing of the emotions is a fundamental part of the whole healing process, and I cannot stress this enough.

This healing process leads to what I call the union of the life force, when the person can then move forward in their life without being anchored to the past, and live a life of creativity and productivity.

<b>Life After Soul Retrieval</b>

When the soul-fragments are returned, the memories and emotions associated with the departure of the soul fragment may also return. Although this may not always be a comfortable experience, it is a sign that healing is taking place. The experiencing of the emotions and feelings although they may have not been felt prior to the Soul Retrieval , the effects are still working, but at a deeply unconscious level i.e. a place of the not known. The person may have been experiencing a chronic and pervasive depression, yet not able to come to grips with this. Soul Retrieval works very well with other therapies. A therapist can only work with the parts of the person which are there, it is an encouraging development that people are now coming to Soul Retrieval sessions accompanied by their therapist.

The most common immediate response after a Soul Retrieval , is that the recipient feels that they are more ‘full’, that there is more of them. They may even experience the density of the body to have changed.

It is important to recognise, that each person is different and everybody will react differently after a Soul Retrieval. Some may feel heavier, bigger, happier, angry, sad, laughing, or perhaps nothing for a few weeks. My observation is that most people will experience a change within a two week period, two weeks seems to be the magic number when the person really feels the effect. It is important to trust the persons psyche completely.

The only role that the recipient has is to receive the healing. It is important that they keep open, and concentrate on staying open to receive this energy – that is their only task.

After Soul Retrieval , recipients should allow themselves space to be with the returned life-force. For some it may be quiet reflection, others may want to be in nature, in the countryside , in the parks. Nature is a wonderful healer, being in nature, enjoying the beauty of the outdoors, of the Earth, will help the soul-parts to integrate with the recipient.

Howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA).

Visit our website for workshops and training in Soul Retrieval

Psychic Surgeons and Healers of the Philippines.

Over the years there has been much controversy about the so-called miracle healers of the Philippines. Their ability to open peoples bodies and perform operations without the use of any surgical equipment i.e their bare hands or with rusty hunting knives, in the absence of any anaesthetics and the skin of their patient re-seals without any noticeable marking or scars defies not only conventional medical knowledge but also flies in the face of what we consensually call reality. How can a human body open and close by touch? How can solid objects become permeable to allow a hand to move through it?

My encounter with Rogerilio in the Philippines demonstrated that reality is not so solid as we have been led to believe. My experience very much reminded me of Einstein’s quote “reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one!”

I met with Rogerilio at his place which was a simple street side café cum shop selling everything from shampoo sachets to the local boiled egg delicacy which children buy in their hundreds weekly. The waiting room is the café itself and his treatment room is a small curtained off room at the back.

I witnessed and was allowed to both video and photograph Rogerilio at work with his patients who are not only local people but also many who travel from Europe, and the USA come to see him with serious and some diagnosed as terminal illnesses.

Rogerilio works in simple even humble circumstances. There is no running water, no flushing toilet, or other modern facility. He struggles every month to make ends meet to feed and support his wife, 2 daughters, his adopted son, and other members of his family (10 in total). He does not charge patients any money but accepts their donations placed on his altar without any comment. A few times I saw sacks of rice being given in payment for operations which were normally well beyond the means of poor people to pay for as there is no ‘free’ health service either with doctors or hospitals. In fact in many of the outlying provinces and islands there are no doctors, and hospitals are only in the cities.

When I asked Rogerilio where does this healing ability come from, did he study with a maestro? Or where did he learn this? His response is very clear,” it is not me, I am only a tool like a hammer, the Holy Spirit does the work. Please do not consider that it is I doing the healing in anyway. I am not worthy, why me? I can not be enriched thru money by this work in any way, and I do not ask for money.” His wife Lourdes was nodding in acknowledgement to this and then she added, “ every time he stops this work the children get sick, and he becomes weak and ill”. Rogerilio said he has to walk a thin line and it’s not easy “of course” he says (with tongue slightly in cheek) “I would like to gamble, womanise, and drink alcohol, but I can not and do this work. In the absence of any other plausible hypothesis I had no choice but to accept Rogerilio’s explanation how the healing worked and the physical opening took place, after all not only had I seen this with my own eyes, I also had my hand inside people’s bodies.

I asked if there were any other healers in his family, he said no, and added that in fifteen generations he is the only one with this gift. I asked him how did he discover this gift. He said that as a young child he was often told that he would be ‘special’ as he was a breech delivery, but he never knew or was told exactly what this special attribute was. He discovered this ability when he was thirteen, a neighbouring boy of the same age had swallowed a fishbone and he became very ill, neck swollen, infected, unable to eat, after two weeks his condition was getting very serious and another neighbour brought Rogerilio to the boy and asked him to heal him. Rogerilio did not know what to do, so he just gently massaged the boy’s neck, when suddenly his fingers moved inside the boy’s throat and in shock he withdrew them and found that he was holding the fishbone in his hand. He was so shocked and frightened, he thought he had killed the boy so he run away and hid in the forest for three weeks.

A friend later found him and told him that the boy was well and had recovered from the illness. Rogerilio on returning to his village found that circumstances had become difficult as he was expelled from school for his absence and that many people had turned away from him including and very sadly his parents, so he had to leave home and travel for he had ‘become touched by the devil”, It was a lonely and difficult period in his life as he found himself denounced when people found out who he was so he had to move on. Rogerilio then lifted his shirt and showed me the whip scars on his back. He was hounded out and whipped with vines which had thorns attached. He indicated a vase in his room in which he still kept the very same vines as a reminder of these times.

He survived as young boy, grafting, selling cigarettes, cleaning shoes, and sleeping rough, living as an outcast. He earned enough money to go to High school, and started to work as a healer helping people in an ad-hoc manner in the community. He slowly and surely built up a reputation, and he was given an award by the Junior Chamber of Commerce as a ‘Model of Compassion’ working as a healer without asking for money.

Determined to understand the human body and what he was doing, he qualified for medical training and after 6 years of internship qualified as a medical analyst. This work meant studying tissue samples, assisting in surgical operations and so on. After 5 years of practice he left the profession greatly unhappy with what he witnessed in many of the surgical operational procedures. He focussed on his healing work developing an international reputation until the major 1990 earthquake in Baguio that devastated the city and where he lost everything. He moved to Manila and found work there and started to rebuild his life. About five years ago he returned to Baguio and resumed his healing practice in the local community.

To see a person’s body opening is one thing, but I felt enormous anxiety when Rogerilio instructed me to place my hand in the person’s body. As I placed my fingers inside a man’s groin, Rogerilio asked me if I could feel this lumpy tissue, I said yes, then “pull it out”, I withdrew my hand and was looking at a piece of dead nervous tissue which had come from his patient’s prostrate gland. The man lying down had felt no pain or discomfort, and the opening in the groin had sealed and there was no markings or scar to indicate that a few moments previously it was open.

Rogerilio said that the Spirit would protect both the patient and myself from any infection. He then demonstrated how it worked; grasping my hand he brought his hand above mine with his fingers extended above mine by a few inches. “See it is if my hand is the Spirit hand, the Spirit hand moves first making the opening, and my hand follows, the Spirit hand takes the diseased tissue and places it in my hand, and as I withdraw my hand the Spirit hand also withdraws and as this happens, the opening in the body closes”. “You see I told you that I am just the instrument and it is the Spirit which does all of the healing”.

During my visits to Rogerilio I have witnessed (photographed and videoed) the following;

• During trip in January 2001, Rogerilio cleared “growths” from around my prostate. He then left a Kleenex tissue inside my body overnight to prevent the seeping of blood back in the testicles (I could feel the tissue myself by pressing on the point where it was inserted).
• He removed a 12” long tumour (as thick as a sausage!) from a friend’s intestine. What was also extraordinary that half an hour later he was eating a normal meal. Under conventional surgical procedures he would have been on something akin to a ‘baby food’ diet for many months following the surgery.
• He removed cataracts from both eyes of another person
• He removed growths attached to the spine of one woman. This lady had had problems moving her head fully and suffered from chronic pains in her shoulders for many years. The instant improvement to the head was obvious and her shoulder pains have now completely disappeared. Months of physical therapy had previously had very little impact.
• He cleared the sinuses of 2 people
• He unblocked the descending colon of another person.
• Cleared a “goitre” from a man’s throat. This was full of thick yellow pus and clotted blood formed from many years of smoking.

One of the most difficult things I encountered (apart from the bashing of my safe and comfortable Newtonian reality) was his dealing with the victims of sorcery and black magic. What was clearly impressed on me was that whilst I had thought that Westerners had the advantage of not getting ‘caught’ up in sorcery being outside that culture they were less likely to be affected, however this assumption was certainly challenged by what I witnessed. Middle-aged Swiss German came to see Rogerilio. I was sitting with Rogerilio outside his café drinking water when Johan joined us and said that his whole left side of his body was becoming paralysed. He couldn’t move his left hand, his arm was weak and hanging loosely by his side, his left eye was closed, the mouth on the left hand side was also drooping looking similar to the after effects of a dentist’s numbing injection. He also said that his tongue again on the left hand side felt frozen, and he had difficulty in breathing and lacked any energy, was unable to concentrate or even carry out what were relatively simple tasks such as buttoning his trousers up. As I studied him, it truly appeared that the left hand side of his body was shrivelled, and the fingers of his left hand were visibly smaller than those on his right hand.

Rogerilio looked at him, and then started to tell him about an island in the Philippines archipelago called Sekihor (this island has a fearsome reputation amongst ordinary Filipinos as this was the place where the practitioners of sorcery and black magic lived). Rogerilio explained that these sorcerers were paid by people who had grudges and animosities against others. As he was saying this I was thinking what is going on here? Why is he talking about this? What is going on! Very soon it became clear as he started to describe the circumstances surrounding Johan and the nature of this problem and it’s cause. Rogerilio than told Johan that a woman who held a deep grudge against him and wanted to ‘destroy’ him had paid a sorcerer to place a curse on him which was the cause of his difficult circumstances.

We went to the treatment room at the back of the shop, and for the next four days Rogerilio started to operate on him. He removed obnoxious lumps of tissue that resembled a squashed octopus from various places on the left hand side of the body.

After the first day Rogerilio told us that it was important to identify the perpetrator so the dark force could be sent back to it’s source. He described the ritual and said that we would do this in five days time. In the interim Johan had to make a list of all the women he had met in the past 12 months. Rogerilio showed and explained to us the herbs and outlined the procedure that we would use. Rogerilio asked me to look after Johan, which was a pleasant task as he was a friendly and affable individual.

By Friday Johan had prepared the list of names 65 in total, and we went in the taxi to Rogerilio’s place. When we arrived Rogerilio asked Johan to buy an egg, which he did for 3 pesos from a local store and returned to the café. We entered Rogerilio’s treatment room, where a large metal tray had been set up on his healing altar. On the tray was an empty bottle, candle, plugs of tobacco and locally growing herbs. Rogerilio asked Johan to tear the list into individual strips, fold them and place them in the bottle. I helped Johan do this; Rogerilio was by the way standing at the other end of the room and could not see any of the written names. When this was completed Rogerilio came over to the altar and made his prayers and blessings, he then asked Johan to take the egg that he had just bought and hold it over the open necked bottle. Rogerilio than poured a bottle of gin (that was the only bottle of spirits that he had). Johan was then told to break open the egg in a bowl and look for the name. Johan did this and gently poked in the bowl and there inside the yolk was a small folded piece of paper!

Johan carefully teased the yolky piece of paper open, and there was a name in his own handwriting. Johan was really taken aback “so it’s her!” He then told us that he had genuinely written all the woman he had met in the past 12 months on the list, including those that loved him, and good friends. The person on the paper was the only one who had caused him worry. He had a brief relationship with her, but she had become unbalanced and very possessive during this period. He was frightened by her behaviour and when Johan said that he was ending it, she became very cold and told him “that if she couldn’t have him, no one would!” Johan was very angry, and sad that another person could do an act like this. For myself it certainly knocked out some of my naivety about this. This ritual caused the sorcery to be sent back to the instigator thereby releasing Johan from its effects. It gave me cause for reflection on instant karma, and Shakespeare’s verse, the one about ‘the evil that men do!” I also shivered with the thought that this would have been the perfect murder and speculated of how many other people became ill and died of ‘mysterious’ and unexplainable circumstances. The main thing that after this Johan was a new man, and his body had vastly improved since the beginning of the week thanks to Rogerilio (and the holy spirit’s) work.

Some of the conclusions I have drawn from observation and participation in Rogerilio’s work have had a profound effect on my worldview, the first is that many of the debilitating diseases and decline in physical health that we associate with old age are not inevitable. They are the cumulative effects of decades of eating the wrong food, typically too much animal fat, red meat, and lack of fibre in the food.

Another conclusion is that tumours have a consciousness of some description. It is if they possess some form of survival’ instinct. They grow in places that are the most difficult to detect and only when developed do they emerge and become detectable. This ‘survival’ intelligence is also aware if it is disturbed and may respond to this by accelerating their growth and expansion in the body.

Howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA). Visit Howard’s website for more information on our Spiritual and Healing Tours: Healers of the Philippines;Healers of the Philippines