Healing with Milk

             Earlier this summer a friend and fellow pagan contacted me via Facebook, asking me to send some “healing energy” to her father who had been admitted to the ICU.  I could have done as asked as I often do with a simple inclusion of an extra prayer for them in my morning ritual.  Instead though, I felt perhaps more was needed.  I asked for more specifics as to what was going on with her father.  She began to run the story of what was happening, and having been a nursing student in ICU for six weeks I quickly came to the conclusion that things were dire indeed. His cerebral spinal fluid was disappearing and the Doctors couldn’t figure out where. Then suddenly he suffered from in increase in cranial pressure and went into a coma and had to be put on a ventilator. Bed sores were present and several other co morbidities. My logical, clinical nursing trained mind told me that his chances of survival were the width of a thread…over a fire.  I of course did not share this with my friend, I learned long ago to be very careful about saying such things to those who love the one in such a condition.  I told her I would do what I could.  My magical mind told me that this was going to require a LOT more than just some “good vibes”.  I set to work to call upon a spirit of the court of Bridgit. 

                I scanned through Ian’s book and came up with the spirit Slainte Beir.  Though I had not worked with her before, she has, according to Ian agreed to work with the Druids of ADF, and I had done a number of workings to gain the authority of Bridgit to work with her spirits in the past.  I laid out my alter and supplies.  Cream it turns out is the spirits preferred offering, but as it turned out, I had none.  It was too late for me to go and get some, so I decided to make do with milk.  I gathered a number of other offering items for Bridgit herself as well as the Cuach Brid.  This working was to take place at my indoor shrine.  I performed the ritual using the Core order of ritual.  Once the gates were open I called upon my spirit guides for aid in this working.  I then called on Brig using the prayers in Ian’s book.  I offered to her and took an omen.  I no longer remember now what specifically I drew, but the question was if Brig had accepted the offerings and if I had her go ahead for the working.  I did.  I then got my center again, and called upon Slainte Beir.  Three times I called and gave offerings.  Unlike some lucky folk, I am not one who easily sees spirits or hears them either.  So after the calling the offerings, I sit and drum and go into a trance state, where I hope to find the spirits at the crossroads.  I was happy to say that I did.  I parlayed with her a bit and explained to her my need and the needs of the dying man.  She told me that it would require three separate sacrifices of milk, poured over a large rock, and that I would know the times when to do them.  With that the spirit left and I ended the working. 

                I wrote to my friend via Facebook, what the spirit had told me.  She agreed to do the offerings, and said it would be no trouble.  I then found out her father was to go into surgery the next morning.  I felt that would be the time for the first offering.  The surgery was to try and discover what was going on with the man’s cerebral spinal fluid.  How it want from not being enough, to be too much in a very short period of time.  They never found a good answer, but after the surgery and the offering, he began to improve.  I was a bit surprised to be honest, but pleasantly so.  From that time on he slowly began to recover and improve.  Two more surgeries and offerings of milk were given throughout his stay.  After thirty days in the ICU my friends father was discharged to a skilled nursing facility.  He had lost forty pounds of muscle and body weight and could no longer easily support himself to do activities of daily living.  I am happy to report that a few weeks after that he was discharged home.  He still is recovering his health, but is for the most part living a normal life. 

                So, what happened?  Was it the working?  Was it good health care?  As someone who has taken care of people in the ICU, some of whom died, you get a feel for how  things are going to go.  As a future nurse, hearing all that was stacked up against this middle aged man, I believe with all I am that it was the help of this spirit that brought this man back from the brink of death. 

                I have often seen how the study of different types of “hard science”; i.e. mathematics, biology, chemistry, engineering, ect., will cause people to stop believing in spirits, gods, and magic.  Yet for me it has had the opposite effect.  It seems to me to only be providing proof that all that “woowoo” magic and spirits are in fact real and interacting with us. As in this experience, my hard science mind told me that he would most likely not survive, and yet he did! So something must have intervened, and that something was most likely the spirit I called upon.  So long as the hard sciences cannot in some way measure magic they will not accept it.  Honestly, I am ok with that.  I hope they never can measure it.  I hope there will always be forces in this world that can’t be understood with measurement; forces that must be felt and experienced and always leaving us a bit lost as to how it worked.  This is the re-enchanting of the world.  This is how it is done; one magical working at a time.