So let’s for a moment look at folk ailments for those of you who aren’t familiar with them.
Folk ailments, such as Susto (in medical terms, it would be Shock, PTSD or even regular old anxiety), Amok (flipping out one day and going on a killing spree and being back to normal again afterward), Ghost Sickness (heavy duty grief and mourning), or Taijin kyofusho (social anxiety) are of course, actual ailments…symptomatic illnesses which are attributed to mystical causes.
Let me give you an example…because I have a personal one to give.
I had gone to the emergency room a number of years ago for a kidney stone. I was sitting there…if one can call it sitting…I was actually fidgeting, trying to get comfortable, when a family of about fifteen very dolled up Hispanic teens and adults came in. They had come from a fifteenth birthday party, where the young woman who was needing to see the doctor, had witnessed her boyfriend making out with the birthday girl. The young woman now sat in the emergency room, nearly catatonic, her face pale, her eyes glazed over, her respiration was nearly non existent and her parents were frantically trying to get the triage nurse to understand what they considered to be wrong with their lovely daughter. The nurse, fluent in Spanish, understood what they were saying, but not understanding what Susto was, and no one in the family could explain it to her. So I turned to the nurse and behaved like a nosy body, explaining that the girl would probably need to be treated for shock, but that Susto causes the soul to leave the body and that was what the family was especially concerned with, getting that pesky runaway soul back into their daughter’s flesh. The nurse was sweet, thanked me and told the family that the doctor wouldn’t be able to treat the Susto but that he would treat the shock. The parents were sobbing, voices were raised and the nurse went back to find out what she could do. So still being the nosy body, I told the parents that I’d love to try to put the soul back into her body if they’d let me but that she’d still need to be seen for the shock, since shock can cause all sorts of awful symptoms. So the parents let me do a pretty simple ritual, right there in the waiting room, and by the time I was taken back to see the doc, the young girl was back to her lovely color, crying like a baby about what an ass her boyfriend is, and breathing normally.
Now…was she suffering from shock, Susto, or just totally pissed off about the infidelity? Who knows, there’s really no way to prove that her soul left her body. There’s no way to tell if she just needed a placebo treatment because our culture as a whole has taught about folk ailments, mystical healing, curses and hexes and the evil eye…for…well forever. There isn’t a way to scientifically guarantee that it wasn’t something mystical. It didn’t hurt anything to perform the short ritual of cleansing, of shoving her spirit back into her skin. She still saw a doctor, who probably diagnosed it as a panic or anxiety attack, or perhaps shock. She was probably prescribed an anxiety medication which probably was taken for a few weeks before she started feeling back to her old self…ready to take on a new relationship.
Folk ailments are very real, to those who believe that they are. However, by attributing real symptoms to a mystical disorder, could lead to an error in treatment. Although I am a big supporter of holistic or naturopathic treatments for disorders, I also know that these practitioners are still trained in medicine. They are authorized to make diagnoses. When a curandero or faith healer, shaman or priest are the ones making the diagnoses, they are rarely trained in diagnostic medicine.
Those of us who practice mystical healing are still obligated by morality, if nothing more, to insist that a medical specialist be the one to diagnose and even to work on treatment from their end, while we do the treatment of the mystical variety.
Working together, we eliminate the possibility that we might not be doing everything possible for the client/patient, in order to heal them.
Educating the public is another responsibility of mystical healers. Telling the client that although we might believe that folk ailments are real, the fact is that what if it’s not, what if what the client or patient needs has nothing to do with their soul, or a curse, or anything of that nature. We have an obligation to our fellow man to let them know that no, having sex with a virgin will not cure you of H.I.V., that it is more likely that you are suffering from P.T.S.D. than Susto, that grief and guilt after someone dies is a completely normal part of the grieving process and it’s not likely that the spirit of that person is trying to take your client to the afterlife.
It is important to educate people that they can impeded their health if they automatically assume that their ailment is of a mystical nature, that no doctor is needed as long as they have a spiritual healer step in and take care of things.
Recently in the news, parents are being charged with a crime due to losing not one, but two children to physical ailments that they decided to let prayer heal. This is ignorance above common sense, it is ignorance to believe that whatever god that they might worship, seriously wants to be bothered with something that would have been so easily treated by doctors.
Holism means treating the entity as a whole, so treating the body as well as the spirit, the mind as well as the body and so forth. Although I am in support of treating the spiritual aspect of ailments, I am also in support of referring clients to those who are trained and educated in the fields which I am not.
A well known psychic once told a client that she or he should have an MRI done because a surgical tool had been left inside them. Well, if she had been a doctor or even an x-ray technician, she would know that MRIs are magnetic, powerful magnets that can indeed pull metal from the body…she should not have recommended a medical procedure, because she is not a medical practitioner. When I know that a client needs medical attention, I tell them to see a doctor, I even tell them where I believe their ailment may reside, but I certainly don’t go beyond that, I am not a diagnostician.
Folk ailments can feel real, hell, they can even be real, but what is also real is the symptoms, which do need to be treated by medical professionals.
Hellish Behavior 