Healing, Death and Dying: Aug 31, 2009
Of all the types of "practical magick" (as opposed to "High Magick") that people practice the most useful and noble is probably healing.
There is an abundance of styles and "ways" of healing of greater and lesser benefit. I once had a medicine woman tell me that most of the healing work she had been asked to do was caused by other peoples botched healing works. So there is a caveat.
Regardless of what methods are used one thing any healer or would-be healer needs to recognize is that Death cannot be "fought" or defeated and a healer who thinks of themselves as "fighting death" is setting themselves up for trouble.
Death is a natural part and parcel of Life. So when people come to a healer for help with a life-threatening illness the healer must work to do what they can to "help." Sometimes miraculous things happen...I have seen this and know this but other times, despite the healers greatest efforts, one who seeks healing will die.
It is important for healers to know this from the outset. The use of their healing abilities can only be thought of as "helping" one towards healing. Healing, regardless of method, is a complex process as a ill person who seeks healing is a complex being. A person who receives healing work and later dies is not necessarily a "failed" case. Sometimes healing work follows the spirit journey of the one deceased and helps in breaking a "karma" which brought about the original illness. It is important to healers to realize that death is not an enemy and that their efforts of healing can only be thought of as an attempt to help. Sometimes this results in health restored...person healed and we give gratitude for its effect. Other times the magick is not enough to change the course of things...higher powers are at work within life-and-death.
So that is the way I have seen this...both the "miraculous" healing and the seemingly failed attempt to restore a person (or animal) to health.
Healers are human, though perhaps "gifted", and we and those who come to us are all within a Greater Power.
Death is not an end but a new birth into spirit.