Olivia Robertson - The Call of Isis Nine
llustration by Olivia Robertson, Chapter Nine
"A Greek influence on the Egyptian mysteries"
The Call of Isis
by
Olivia Robertson
9. Creative Healing.
Healing means making whole. Yet the word holiness too often conveys the idea of a half person, a floating head, divested by a clerical collar from the rest of the body - a divided person, the lower part cut off from the higher by a knotted cord at the waist. So humanity sees itself as half angel, half beast, and is anxious to exorcise the beast.
When I began using solar power for contact healing, for a long time I did not attempt to diagnose the cause of a sickness, accepting the medical verdict. I gave healing as best I could through the palms of my hands, using 'Vril' power. I attended healing classes at the Spiritualist Association headquarters. Also, to supplement this, I attended classes on mind healing - a form of New Thought.
The method I began with was the one usually practiced by contact healers. There would be a preliminary prayer, either spoken aloud or in the mind, a request for the aid of healing Helpers from the other world, and I would feel the power come. When it reached my hands, in the form of tingling, I would lay them gently on the patient's head. I had been instructed by a Guide to give healing through the patient's psychic centres. So I would place my stronger hand, the left, near the appropriate centre, the right hand facing the left one. A current of power was then channelled from palm to palm through the patient's body. Spiritual healers claim that their hands are automatically guided by Spirit: that they themselves are used only as channels. In my case I knew that I was operating consciously and had to use my mind as well. For instance through experiment, I found that I could use my gift for palmistry! It seemed more effective in many cases not to touch the diseased area of a patient but rather to run my fingers over the corresponding lines on the patient's palm. I would ask to be told when healing was felt. And sure enough, when I pressed some particular spot on the palm, the patient would report feeling a strong glowing in the sick area.
I noticed that 'Power' was felt by the patient as hot or cold. I found through experiment that by pressing certain areas of the body, for instance, the ankles, I could channel healing through to an affected area. So I guessed that in the mesh of power channels forming the etheric framework of the body, there were certain important pressure points. I had seen these in my vision of the gold mesh about the Indian deities. These points, acting as minor stations of the larger centres of head and spine, themselves controlled particular bodily areas.
Healing then came about through the Healer allowing 'Vril' from the universal web to flow through his own etheric body. To help another he could, either through mental concentration, or bodily contact, re-activate the sluggish, blocked channels of the patient, allowing the life-force to flow through. One could call silver Power the Water of Life that must run pure and free: the golden Power the sacred fire that burns away that which is unhealthy and irrelevant and then brings new vitality.
However, I accepted the need for doctors on the physical level, for I felt that Spiritual Healing was in a sense for the future. It seemed too uncertain to rely on entirely. I know of few mental healers who refrain from going to the dentist ...
However, though I did not seek to diagnose, leaving that to those with medical degrees, sometimes diagnosis was given to me through my psychic faculty. And this was of a casual sort, pointing out the root cause of the complaint that lay in the soul.
Such an instance came to me when I was giving healing to an Anglican priest: and this case came to typify for me the very root cause of much of our psycho-somatic illnesses. This man typified everything the respectable regard as best in our civilization. He had been an army officer: was intelligent, pleasant, and energetic. He had liked his ministry connected with social work in a poor area, until he had on marriage settled into a middle-class parish. He was the sort of cheerful kindly clergyman you hear on B.B.C. channels, giving forth Christianity to the masses. He had led, I was told, an exemplary life.- So why was he suddenly afflicted with an illness that was slowly but inevitably paralyzing him from his feet up, and inevitably led to death?
His fellow priests, he told me, had the habit of sitting round him in a circle wondering what he had done wrong, like Job's comforters. And, as he believed in Positive Thinking and the healthy mind healing the body, he could not make this out himself It must have been extremely irritating to be an object lesson of sickness, when you yourself could not see any cause. Unlike the Victorians, modem Christians do not seem to regard suffering as being sent to try us. It is more of a challenge to faith.
Anyway, with medical permission, I tried contact healing: but could not channel it through. It was then that I began my first experiments in trance inducing. This worked more easily than getting 'Vril' through. This man understood the technique, and co-operated. At this time I had not imagined that the percipient might leave the Temple I described. This imaginary Temple was circular and white, with a radiating lamp above. This lamp, I said, sent forth rays of healing. It did not occur to me to allow the patient any choice. I went through the usual colour therapy technique: Rose gave forth feelings of love; Blue, of mental peace; together they produced the Violet of Spirituality. The priest could visualize these rays and feel the accompanying ideas, and they helped at the time. But he said the Temple was too like a bandbox! One could not get out.
When on my own, I often asked the mental question: 'Why is this man ill?' At last my question was answered! This was the first time that I was given psychic diagnosis. I had a vivid psychic experience one night, more vivid than an ordinary dream. I saw a man's head. He was either Greek or Roman. He was one of the handsomest men I have seen; but I did not like him. His auburn hair was not very long and he had a beautifully kept beard. It was quite different from beards you see now. It had none of the artist or the sailor about it; it looked sophisticated. It was very well groomed. However, I had not much time to admire the gentleman's hair style, for I suddenly became aware of his eyes. They were slanting and grey beneath upturned eyebrows, and were looking straight at me. And I knew all about him from those eyes! They were the eyes of a pagan soldier, a hero of the past. None could look like that now. They are too suppressed.
However, fortunately for me, the gentleman was inactive for a very simple reason. He had been decapitated.
Next morning I was still much disturbed by this vision, and wondered could this classical looking man be my modem priest? I decided that if this were so, then the soldier was more attractive than the modem vicar. I consulted an occult friend who knew the man. At once she laughed and said: 'Of course: I have seen his face like that. The mask dropped. You watch. Once you see it you will never forget it.'
I was still doubtful. When I visualized the priest, I could only remember a kindly clergyman with greying hair. However, on my usual day I went off to give healing. And the moment I looked at the priest's eyes I recognised my handsome pagan! For a second his face was transformed. Then he was the nice rather obvious man I had always known.
When one of these revelations come to me in healing, it is followed by an explanation. This came to me later after the priest's death, through a medium who knew nothing about me or this man. This was the story he told me:
'You are interested in a man who has recently died;' he said, 'despite your healing. This had been brought about by something that happened a long time ago. There was a young priestess working in a Greek temple; and she fell foul of the authorities there because she felt that they were ignoring the intuitional side of their calling. So she was cast out of the temple. This was a terrible thing in those days, for as an excommunicated Priestess none could give her food or shelter.
Finally she was abducted by a Captain of the Guards, a Roman, and stayed with him. The Pharaoh of the day heard of this and ordered that the girl should be married to the Captain. Then the married couple were separated. The girl was brought to the Pharaoh, who wished to incorporate some Greek practice in the Egyptian rites. This is why from then on there was a Greek influence in the Egyptian Mysteries.'
It was only after the sitting that it came to me that the Captain of the past had reincarnated as the present-day priest! But why the paralysis? The doctors said that medically this came from atrophy of the nerves at the neck ... I had a sudden flash of intuition. The marriage had indeed been short-lived. The Pharaoh, expressing his piety in no uncertain manner, had had the Captain's head cut off. It made me feel distinctly peculiar, having seen the head so recently.
Accepting the proposition that everything that exists is connected with everything else; that the greater reflects itself in the lesser; we can understand the law of affinities. Many psycho-therapists notice the correspondence of mental characters with physical ones. One can relate a virtue or a fault with physical health or lack of health. In my own experience working with trance therapy, these correspondences appeared to span many earth existences. This proved itself to me by the fact that percipients in trance, often uninterested in reincarnation, would yet live through episodes of a previous existence that would shed light upon a present problem. Admittedly full knowledge of many lives may only be unveiled by touching the greater sphere of Spirit, which includes all previous incarnations. But it is possible, through the use of psychic faculty, to contact those who do know the Helpers. They can give us needful information from their own wider knowledge.
In my own work I ask that any episode shown to the percipient should be of use. This applies to dreams, psychic experience, and indeed to life itself First, one learns to master one's dreams. Later, in psychic consciousness, one learns to cope with the experiences of past lives. Only then can one hope to have true free will - the will to choose what one really desires. Up to then, so-called free choice can be a mockery - a limited control, continually eroded by outside influences.
Although control of the psychic sphere can to an extent be obtained without awakening Solar Power, any contact with the more powerful occult forces brought through from the greater level of Causal Mind requires some use of 'Vril.'
After all what is the point of the patient - the psychic - forever being at the passive, receiving end of Power? Frequently misunderstanding arises because psychic passivity is held to be the rôle of femininity: the use of occult force, the dominating part of men. As far as my own experience goes, the use of Power in an active or passive sense is an individual attribute, not restricted to one sex.
During my studies of 'Vril' I worked with two other women, Fiona and Angela. I have learnt that three women form a very active combination. At first we specialized. I was the Operator and the Healer: Fiona, the clairvoyant; Angela, the Interpreter. Then we decided to change rôles, and so extend our area of usefulness. I increased my clairvoyance and interpretative faculty: the others learnt from me the induction of ‘Vril'.
A human being is a focus of both solar and lunar power. As far as I can see clairvoyantly, lunar power works through body and mind: solar through heart and plexus: and by developing the appropriate thought and feeling, all of one's centres become coordinated through the spinal channel.
I began to teach those in whom I induced trance to do the same thing for themselves. In any circles that I ran at the Castle I encouraged all-round development. Hence, there was no resentment at one person being the Operator, manipulator of Power, and the others being passive. After all, a human-being has both right and left arms and legs! We need balanced development.
Nonetheless, I was sure that every single one of us had our own original power structure; that the occult make-up of women was - thank goodness - different from that of men: and that when we tapped Universal Source of Power, yet we maintained our own true key-note, our particular wavelength. In harmony with ourselves we could still be in harmony with everything else. In this state we should be perfectly healthy.
Yet we were not. What was short circuiting our vital flow of health from mind to body? This was my next aim - to seek an answer.
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Text presented on this site as it appears in the 1975 edit