by Greg Rowe August 31, 2021
People sometimes ask how “I” do what “I” do. I am amused when people ask this. I don’t mean t be rude to them when I tell patients that it is not I who have helped them. What I am is only a priest, a Goði (priestess: Gyðja). I ask the Powers to help people and They do!
Sometimes, when I am facing, with the patient(s), a health crisis that I have not encountered previously, I do the simplest thing: I pray. I knew, when the lady who brought her two month old granddaughter to me with the often serious respiratory condition, RSV, Their pulmonary specialist had told them and they told me that the lungs and their lining had already separated from excessive coughing- bronchiolitis. I was told that this was the last stop before going to hospital the next Monday. One of the insidious effects of the virus was that Amanda could not sleep laying down, so she had been sitting up for most of the past six weeks and sleeping with difficulty due to obstructed breathing.
This was on a Thursday. They also related that additional breathing treatmetns are known to be ineffective until a child is six months or older, so I prayed to Frigga, our Mother Goddess, Patroness of Children, and to Freyja, Goddess of Healing and Magic. She downloaded to me a procedure which I had never done previously. I felt that someone had taken over my body and was directing me as I told the adults present what we were doing.
The Goddesses showed a procedure for “recording” the immunity of the most virus-resistant person present and transferring it into the child. I asked and it turned out everyone had been sick with RSV, adults included, for past 6 weeks. I was told to ask who had been sick with it the shortest time. It turned out that this was the grandmother, Alba, so her immunity was transferred to Amanda.
By that Sunday, Amanda was sleeping normally again, able to recline. She was no longer coughing herself awake. When the admitting pediatrician examined her that coming Monday, he said the child no longer needed to be admitted. By the end of that week, a week after the prior Thursday’s healing, Amanda was back to normal and has grown quite well in the three years since this intervention.
While we do receive many years of training to become Tietajar or Vitkar, this case reminded me to always be humble, that my power is only a small circuit which can work best to conduct Their immense Power, the Power of Asgard and Vanaheim to help the sick and broken of us here in Middle Earth. I was reminded at that point that in our particular shamanic path, we are always here as priests or priestesses. We are never working alone.