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Circle, Staff and Stone. Confessions of a Pagan Healer. (1) [1]
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Date: 2022-12-05
A pagan praying- Photo by Anja White
Foreword: I begin this project with much hesitation and even some trepidation. The idea has been in my head for many, many years to tell the tale of my journey as a healer, but I want to protect and respect all of the people I have touched on my path. I will use anonymity of time and specific places, along with name changes to achieve that. So, why write it at all? Well, if anything can be called my life’s work, it is this. And this is that story. Kelly.
I didn’t set out to be a healer. Trust me, that was the furthest thing from my mind when the journey started. Isn’t it often like that? I was born in nineteen sixty four, in May. I am a Taurus. I am a bull.
Being a voracious reader from a very young age, I read the normal westerns and adventure stories. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, of course, and anything else the library could offer me. But my love and passion was and remains fantasy and science fiction. The harder the science the better, as far as I’m concerned.
So, how on the cold plains of Hades can I believe in Astrology, read Tarot and speak with ghosts if I believe in the scientific method? how the heck can I have the sheer hubris to place my hands on someone, mumble a few prayers and think some special “Power” then flows from the Universe, through me, to them? A power that heals them at that.
Let’s get there first. The point of that up there is that as a young boy between ten and fourteen, the path was placed before me and somehow my feet were placed firmly on it. What opened the door to that path for me? I will say curiosity and an open mind. Open despite so many attempts to close it off to the wonders in our world. As far back as I can remember, people have come to me asking me to rub out their pains. “You’ve got magic hands Kelly, seriously, do you know that?” they would say. I always did it for them, I’ve always enjoyed helping people.
I promise you, I will exaggerate nothing in this telling. Trust me, there is no need. My childhood was miserable. When I think back on that time in my life, all I remember at first look is the anger and strife. Mother and father loved but didn’t like each other, we three brothers absolutely detested one another. I was the middle child and chubby, the fat, book wormy, glasses wearing kid with no friends save his books and loneliness.
That shaped me, it did, the violence shaped me, the senselessness of it. It doesn’t take long as the belt is landing on your backside for something you did not do, a thing that was known to your punisher, for you to determine that it’s all pretty senseless. In those years, I grew up within my head. In my head and in my books. I amassed a huge amount of knowledge- I have to admit, by the age of eight, I had read all of the Christian Bible, every bit of Greek and Norse mythology, the Vedas had been touched on (Not understood at all), some of Islam and aspects of Native American and African religious thought- all in the form of beautiful, captivating stories. I always bounced them off of one another. What if they were all valid, or what if one was valid among the plethora of beliefs and I missed it for all the noise? It was at the age of eight that I told Jesus Christ I could not be a part of his world. I asked him and his Dad to understand but it seemed like a rigged game to me.
I was told to read the bible, front to back, as people often are, so I did that. Please understand, at that same age, my teacher was having to use textbooks from the local university so she would have something I could study that wouldn’t bore me. What I had as an eight year old was an ability to comprehend what was written- but not to really understand it. I didn’t have enough life experiences to understand that. I agonized with David and Bathsheba, fully understood that what David did with Uriah was just wrong- I could not understand at that age why a man would even DO that to another man. I moved into the New Testament- the sermon on the mount was good, the Romans were bad, and Jesus was saying a lot of things I agree with. There was love and peace but it ended with betrayal and hate. But in the main, I got the idea that if you treat each other right, the God will reward you. Then came Revelations and after I read all of that, I had this epiphany. Wait a minute. You’re giving me one lifetime to, basically, achieve perfection. If I fail in that, heck, even if I choose not to go along with you, you promise to put me into your Hell and make me suffer for all of eternity! I mean, forever and ever. Everyone else will get to go with the angels to Heaven but me- becasue you threatened me and I never give in to threats. Ah, so, it’s just like life then. No thanks.
And you said FOREVER! Little kids understand forever and ever. It was a big deal for me. Now, I’m not disrespectful, I had been taught that when you wanted to talk to the big guy, well, you got down on your knees to do that. So I did, I knelt right beside my bed and I told him what I thought. “God- I can’t do what you want. I don’t even want to try. It seems to be an impossible task and I don’t want to waste my time trying to do the impossible.” Then I stood up and never looked back.
So, how does a young boy from the midwest in America come to be a pagan healer? How do you get turned on to the occult or paganism? Pagans just don’t proselytize. My onetime Catholic mother opened that door for me. It was the late seventies and mom was searching after her divorce from dad- for what I cannot say. I remember her talking to a girlfriend of hers over coffee about the tarot as a source of answers and a church they wanted to visit that evening. Mom made an offhand comment that I was welcome to tag along if I wanted to. I remember telling my mother that I had no need to go to a church but then her guest told me that it was actually very interesting. “This church believes that humans can do all the things that Christ did. The woman who runs the service is incredible. She’s a powerful psychic! Come with us and see for yourself, what do you have to lose?” Please remember, this would have been nineteen seventy eight or so- we only had three channels on the television and well, I always took a book with me, always. There really was nothing much to lose so I agreed to go.
It was summer and warm as we drove into downtown Rockford. Illinois was a green place and the sun starting to drop into night made it feel very strange to be walking into a church. I seriously didn’t know that some people went to church on weekdays and in the evenings too. Mom was Catholic, I think, but she never practiced to my knowledge. We three walked across the residential street to a small church that was everything you would expect a church to be. There were pews and a place for coats. The requisite cross was there and it was quiet. I waited beside my mom as we moved forward, part of a moderate line of various people. The, to my thirteen or fourteen year old eyes, incredibly ancient and small woman who took my hand in both of hers smiled as she craned her neck to look at me. “Kelly, how nice to meet you. And what beautiful hair you have!” This really took me aback because I’d been told that she was blind, there was a white cane over her arm- that and the fact that no one had ever told her my name or that I was attending made it a lot weird! This was the seventies, and much to my conservative father’s ire, my hair was down to mid back, brown with huge curls that I hated. I said thank you and everyone mingled. I don’t mingle, you don’t as the only teen in a room full of adults, so I stood in a corner and watched, as was my wont. There was a small amount of small talk, but soon enough the woman, I cannot for the life of me recall her name, spoke up and said “The service will be in the basement, please go down and take a chair, any chair you like.” We all shuffled through the door to the basement and into a very large room that held perhaps thirty chairs in a circle.
Okay, this was different to any Sunday school or sermon I’d been to- I was curious and took a seat between my mother and her girlfriend, the instigator of our visit. Those chairs that weren’t taken were folded up and stacked against a wall, the circle was made smaller until everyone was seated the way they wanted us. The Reverend was helped into the room and sat at what was, apparently, the head of the circle, off to my left. She smiled and started talking. I will tell you now that I don’t recall a lot of talk about religion nor did she read from the bible. As she introduced herself, all the lights in the room were extinguished, save one, by her assistant and she began talking about breathing. She asked us to all join hands, to form an unbroken circle and her talking slowed as did her breaths going in and out. I could hear her breathe, soon, it was so quiet that I could hear everyone breathing.
Once everyone had a hand in each of theirs, somone turned off all the lights. It went pitch black and a few people gasped. Mom squeezed my hand but I cannot tell you if it were to reassure me or herself. Okay- yes, this was not the Pentecostal church I’d been sent to with the cousins- this was definitely not that. Then someone turned a purple light on. That was the first time in my life that I heard about colors and their significance. Purple, we were told, was a color that aided in the search for and use of our psychic powers. See the light in our mind, she said, use it to light a pathway in our own brain and walk into that path. Purple was holy, almost as holy as the white light that is above it in order. For a long while, it’s so hard to tell how long, we breathed as we’d been instructed to do. In through the nose, all the way down into the stomach- Oh, be careful, don’t fill the lungs, fill the stomach then push that out through your mouth- control. Her voice, soft and high pitched, droned on softly. I held that light in my mind- it was easy enough to open my eyes and see it if I began to forget what the color looked like, it comforted me.
At some point she started talking about what we- what I, should visualize. Her voice was very slow, the words seemed to be coming to me through thick water as she told me to see myself at the top of a stair, to look, to SEE the steps with my inner eye- my third eye, see my foot landing on it. I’d never heard of a third eye, where? Ah, she said it’s in my forehead- that place where it always tingles! That warm woman’s voice told me to feel myself walking down into the darkness below. But it wasn’t a scary dark, I found, no, it was a warm dark- like the darkness behind your eyelids when you close them and point your nose to the sun. I walked down eagerly- feeling the way with my thoughts.
With no preamble, suddenly, she spoke to us in a deep, male voice with a heavy German accent. My eyes flew open! By the light of that one, purple lamp, I could see she was still there, still alone, she just had this inexplicable male voice coming out of her mouth. Now, do I know that this wasn’t chicanery? I do not. I do know that there was no entry fee, there was a voluntary offering, a plate sent around earlier- to help pay the rent, they said and I believe that was true. That and the fact that no one ever tried to convince me of it being a Truth- the spirit of a dead guide speaking through a living human. It was just a thing that happened, accepted.
I had no interest in the old man’s voice beyond the change and the accent that I did not, then, recognize. He began talking to people among the circle, addressing some of the people as though he knew them personally. He and they held real conversations and it was VERY strange. There was no message for me that night, but I didn’t care. I felt those stairs and I felt a warmth growing in my solar plexus. I felt my hands grow warm as I held my mother’s hand on the one side and her girlfriend’s on the other. I felt my forehead going crazy tingly and I felt good.
For the first time in my short life, I felt something spiritual that made some sort of sense to me. I had taken my first step into meditation and the occult, opening myself to things that would forever influence my journey and the path I was on in the future.
When the service was done we climbed out of that purple lit darkness only to be met by a table laden with coffee, tea- and light. The regular lighting was blinding and somehow harsh. I will tell you that some part of me was incredibly disappointed when that purple light was switched off. I will also tell you that the only thing that has ever come at all close to what I felt in my mind that night has been marijuana. But it is a sad, sad imitator of the reality.
“Will you come back, Kelly” The Reverend asked me as we shuffled through the door to the street, I said, yes ma’am, I would come back if my mom would bring me. She nodded and smiled. “You have great potential in you Kelly, I can feel it. I look forward to seeing you again.” That is a most disconcerting thing to hear from a blind woman who is looking you straight in the eyes. That other thing she said, about potential? Well, I was going into my freshman year in high school that autumn, older folks were always saying that sort of thing- In one ear and out the other. I will relate to you that later that summer my mother asked me to call the church and ask the Reverend about what cake to bring or something along those lines. I went to where the phone hung on the wall and dialed the number. it’s been forty four years ago now and I still remember that the phone rang but one time. When the line was picked up, her voice said “Hello Kelly- tell your mom that’s fine, she should bring what she’s got in her mind.” Such things are what give depth to words like flabbergasted. seriously. As an aside, caller ID just did not exist back then. That was first pioneered in New Jersey in 1987- a decade away.
We drove home and I was asked what I felt about the experience, but soon enough the two women, mom and her girlfriend, were deep into their own explorations of the evening. To be honest, I had no answers for them at that time. They stopped at a diner for a late coffee and I walked the two blocks home through quiet, suburban streets. My head was so full of thoughts and I needed to work through them. When I got home, I prepared for bed and yes, I walked down those stairs again. I didn’t know it, but when I put my foot on that stair in my mind, I stepped into a life that I could never have foreseen. I will discuss how I thread the needle between science and religion, technology and magic in the coming pages, I promise. I am a spiritual healer in a world that denies spiritual energies exist. That’s a huge part of it.
By winter of that year I had stopped going to the church. I could not feel comfortable with the idea of the Christ and his rules being in my life and was a rebellious teen anyway, very much a loner. I continued searching without knowing what I was looking for, not even knowing that I was looking, really, as I made my way across our world and through the years.
The coming chapters will tell the tales, respectfully, of the search, the power and how it has touched my path, It will tell the tales of those I’ve tried to help with it. I invite you to fix a cup of tea or roll a joint, grab whatever else you like to relax with, take a seat and let me tell you those tales. These are the confessions of a Pagan Healer.
Kell
[END]
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