Healing is of. course magic, but so important to many witches that we have given it its own category here at Berkano training coven. Healing can also be a ritual, or conducted within a ritual, which means that you also can find relevant information in the Rituals category.
I and all other witches I know, for example, have a principle that we never do healing on anyone unless they have requested it (except for our own children and children whose parents have requested it), and there are several reasons for this.
There are many ways to perceive illness. We are perhaps used to seeing illness as an absolute "evil", while being healthy is a "good", and most people will see healing as a form of white magic (but there are also those who see healing as black magic, because by healing a person, you are interfering with that person's karma, but I will come back to this). But sometimes we need to be sick for a while, perhaps to get a much-needed break from a stressful job and the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves a little. Or we need an extra dose of care, to be allowed to crawl under the duvet and let ourselves be warmed up and pampered for a few days.
An illness does not occur in a vacuum, and there are many factors that play a role in whether or not we are susceptible to an illness. Among other things, our mental state and the social conditions we live in are important factors. An illness can be a warning that we are moving in a direction that is not good for us, that the life we lead is too stressful or unsatisfactory in other ways. If we repress this and just carry on as before, preferably living a life that is not in line with our innermost true will, sooner or later the body will speak up, and the body is usually much more honest than the "head"!
Illness can also be a person's defence mechanism when they can't find other solutions to their problems (which they may not even be aware of), and if you take away their illness, everything falls apart for them. For some people, the disease is the only thing they have to hold on to! According to psychologist Wilhelm Reich's theories, we all build up muscle armour from babyhood onwards when we are hurt and do not receive the love and care we need. The psychological and the physical are closely linked (just think of how we tighten our stomach muscles when the dentist is about to drill our teeth!) and I believe that at least 90% of illnesses in our part of the world are psychologically related. But back to the muscle armour as an example. People who are experienced in giving other people massages will often find that when they have released muscle tension in the patient, it often brings up repressed emotions and conflicts that lay behind or underneath these muscle tensions. Then you also need to be able to cope with and process these things. This is one of the reasons why you should not give healing to people without them knowing about it or asking for it.
The disease can have its mission in a person's life in several ways - maybe one of the things I'm going to learn in this life is what it's like to be disabled, to better understand how other people feel? Or by being sidelined for a while, we might learn to appreciate more the life we live as healthy people - and that can help us to get an overview of what is really important and what is less important in our lives. And here we also come to what we might call the karmic side of things. As I see it, we live many lives (infinitely many), and what we do and experience has an impact on our next lives. And part of the point of all these lives is to learn as much as possible from all facets of human life and possible experiences, so that our understanding and insight grows, and so that we can equalise the balance of things we have done in previous lives.
I mentioned that some people see healing as black magic, because you are interfering with the person's karma.
I don't agree with this myself. If I see a person who is drowning, I reach out to help them - I don't think that it's this person's karma to drown and then move on. Rather, it is part of that person's karma that I passed by just then, and in the same way, it is part of a person's karma if he/she can utilise the healing I provide. However, it is important to have thought these things through!
When doing healing, it is important to look at the whole person and not just the symptoms. The symptoms are only an expression of a condition that applies to the whole person. One of the main criticisms of mainstream medicine is that it has so far been largely centred on treating symptoms. All forms of treatment within so-called alternative medicine take a holistic view of the human being and act and treat accordingly, and many of the concepts and theories used here are derived from Eastern philosophy and medical methods. This is also where the concept of chi - the life force, the life energy that resides in every living person - comes from. If a person's chi is weakened, they will also become ill. Therefore, going in and strengthening a person's chi can also make him or her healthy (anyone who has practised Eastern-inspired martial arts or chi-gong or tai-chi knows this power). Chi energy is also linked to the chakra system in the body.
There are an infinite number of ways to do healing. For example, it can be done by direct hand placement, or by holding your hands directly over the body at the spot in question. You can use herbs, or you can affect the chakras using stones and colours. You can make amulets or talismans, or a medicine bag with herbs and stones, etc. You can do a drumming journey and contact the person's power animal and send it to him/her with healing powers, or you can do a purely spiritual healing, also over long distances.
It goes without saying that it can actually be dangerous to send "spirits" or spiritual beings, power animals, etc. to someone who does not know about it and is not prepared to receive such a visit!)
Some people are able to see other people's aura, i.e. the etheric force field that every living being has around them. You can try it yourself, and it's easiest when looking at someone against a solid white or completely dark background. Start by adjusting your eyes as if you're looking at something a long way back - set them to distance vision. You will then (probably) see a luminous field around the person (or e.g. a plant) after a short while. Some people are also able to see different colours at the outer edge of this field or even further out. Then you will also see dark or "dirty" spots where the person is sick, and then you can do something about it. In any case, it can be a good idea to end any form of healing (where the person is physically present) with a cleansing of the person's aura. You can do this by letting the person stand on the floor, and then run your hands a short distance from the body over the entire body, from the buttocks down to the feet, several times so that you cover the entire body, and each time you come all the way down, you "throw away" what you have brushed off. (Standing like this and having your aura cleansed gives a pretty nice feeling, and you can feel that you are finally standing inside an egg of brilliant colours, preferably bright blue, and come out like a phoenix, born anew!)
One more important thing to remember when healing someone: By all means ask the person to see a doctor if it's something serious - say that you can't perform miracles, but can be a complement to the doctor's treatment. And anyway, it's important that the patient has a doctor's diagnosis - it also makes it much easier to do healing when you know what to attack.
For your own part as a healer, it's also important that you don't give the impression that you're Jesus and can raise the dead. And I also didn't want to go around advertising my healing abilities everywhere, so that I suddenly had all my colleagues and their sick relatives and half the neighbourhood outside the door with sky-high expectations. (After all, there are limits to what one person can do, witch or no witch!)
In terms of magic, I personally think that you shouldn't talk much about the magic you do, because then it loses some of its power. Don't brag about what you've done!
But if you want to do healing, you also have to be willing to do something and to work with yourself, which for most of us means working with several aspects of ourselves, e.g. meditation, visualisation, concentration, grounding, control over the opening and closing of the chakras (our own), and developing the ability to open up and become a channel for a cosmic life energy, so that you can transfer this to others. We also need to be sure that we are able to "defend" ourselves, so that we do not take on other people's illnesses or take on their problems.
It's also important to realise that we don't make people well, we just help them to heal themselves!
The Crone
This is a healing ritual designed specifically for those who are victims of diseases involving tumours, "lumps" or damaged tissue. We often do this before someone undergoes surgery. It is essentially cosmic/astral surgery. The energy that is built up, channelled and used in this healing ritual can be quite astounding to those who participate, but it is also a rite that can be done alone.