By Elaine Guthrie


When the average person falls ill, he or she turns to legitimate medicine, and a legitimately licensed clinician or doctor. A few rungs on the ladder beneath this one finds the world of alternative medicine. Typically, alternative medicine is a therapy which originates outside of the US and Europe, such as acupuncture. The popularity of spiritual doctor healing is impressive, given that it is far less respected than alternative medicine.

Spiritual healing is the umbrella term for attempted treatments depending wholly in help from beings that don't register to human senses, beings whose very existence must be taken on faith. It is frequently the last stop for patients who are desperate, having tried everything sanctioned medicine can attempt. Often, the patient is also more interested in the touch of God than he or she is in getting healed as such. The malady might well be most important as a chance to witness the miraculous.

Supernatural assistance is often sought for the relief of pain, which even today is little understood by standard medicine. It can be sought out for acutely personal issues, such as sexual problems. Psychological problems and plain bad luck also drive the afflicted to the spirits.

Not everyone who turns to the supernatural is looking to cure what most would recognize as a health problem. Some seek to block what they perceive as malevolent influences. If that influence is in the home of the client, it can be banished. If it has entered and taken hold of the mind of the client, an exorcism might be felt to be in order.

Those who seek entirely supernatural sources of relief should understand clearly that their chosen method lacks official scientific explanation or sanction. It and they themselves often face public mockery, including dedicated debunkers. This mockery is often funded by mainstream medicine, which is motivated both by concern over public health and by a desire to monopolize the money prospective patients are willing to spend on their health.

It should not surprise anyone that this most alternative of alternative practices is often chosen by those with little education in the sciences. Many are openly suspicious of the medical establishment. Practitioners succeed based on a combination of word of mouth reputation and salesmanship that borders on hypnotic suggestion.

There are any number of ways to contact the higher powers. Typically, the faith healer transmits the power of the holy spirit through his hands, which are laid upon the afflicted area. All this requires a performer's skill set, and healing is performed before a live, adoring audience.

Long relegated to the shadows, witchcraft performs its magic through its practitioners' expertise with stones, herbs, and the most humble objects. Now it is not only largely freed from centuries of oppression, it is among the most rapidly growing religious paths in the Western world. Voudon has its roots in West Africa and Haiti, and carries the appeal of exotica. It draws upon assistance from a menagerie of gods, saints, and lesser entities, all called upon to defend against beings still lesser.




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