Healing Work – Provide and explain one example of healing magic from an Indo-European culture, and write an ADF-style healing working based on that example. (min. 150 words for example explanation)
I purposefully waited to work on this piece after we finished a beautiful healing write for a fellow priest at the Clergy retreat to make sure I was in the right frame of mind. The main source of magic work used during this ritual was through toning to place energy in some artifacts for someone in need of healing. Toning is a form of energy raising and direction through voice.
For this particular rite, we honored Brigid, patron of the person intent with the healing work. The goal was to send healing energy to the person in question, but also to charge a blanket that we all tied knots into, and a statue of Brigid as well. We did a round-robin style of ritual participation, where all of the Clergy took a role in the rite depending on where they were sitting at the time.
This particular healing work was not to fix an illness, since the situation was already beyond that. But it was to invoke healing in the recovery, both physical and mental. The type of injury was severe enough that body, mind, and soul would be affected a great deal, so our goal was to ask Brigid to help inspire these three parts of human nature to encourage growth and healing in this new life this person will experience.
We made many offerings to the well with silver and used that water to help bless the gifts. Additional gifts were butter, farm cheese, apples from the local garden, and olive oil for the fire.
A similar type of magic, using a well for healing, is during the second battle of Mag Tured. Dianchecht had a powerful healing spring called Slane, where any man mortally wounded could be dipped and healed unless “his head be cut off, or the membrane of his brain or his spinal marrow be severed”. The wounds were fully healed through an incantation over the well while they were placed into the water (Cross and Slover, 42). Once these warriors were brought back to life, they were more swift, but they could not speak.
So in a similar fashion, a singing incantation (toning, albeit this is not known from any particular culture as a magical working, it is sorta generalized) over a well to provide healing in a magical fashion, much like what we did this evening in ritual. A particular incantation appropriate for this working would be:
Lady Brigid, great healer of the forge
Open the ways for gentle healing and transformation
Inspire with fire in the mind that insights and inspires
Inspire with fire in the belly of the cauldron that heals and protects
Inspire the hands with motivation and movement
Lady Brigid, accept our sacrifice
The omen was taken by Carrion using the runes, and she pulled: Elhaz, Gebo, Hagalaz
Which was interpreted as protection through sacrifice in order to heal. The destruction of removing the illness in order to grow and transform and heal.
(Word Count: Plenty 😛)
