Abstract
Communities have diverse sensitivities regarding the cause of diseases and these impersonations took years to develop and still prevail in the region. People believe that evil spirits are the root cause of large number of human sufferings which often appear in the form of diseases and these beliefs still prevails in society irrespective of caste and class. Curing through spiritual means, states that ailment can be cured by holy trust together with appeal and/or sacraments that inflame a divine having the power to remedying illness. Viewed as extremely sanctified, with height as a persistent commemoration to the eminence of human soul and its vastness, Himalayas exemplify universality of human realization. Communities living in Himalayas call mystic healers not only for seeking opinion for social problems but for getting refuge from illness caused by supernatural entities. Mystic healers act as priests, social workers, friends and advisors, psychologists, psychiatrists and philanthropist to traditional Himalayan communities and they seek refuge in the transcendent realm of supernatural world.
…When someone gets healed, the Kingdom of God is revealed, for His Kingdom is a Kingdom or wholeness, of well-being, and of life…
Billy Joe Daugherty
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Notes
- 1.
Kajal is the kohl used as a cosmetic by women.
- 2.
Yajnavalkya Smriti is the “well written” and “most homogeneous” text of the Dharmaśāstra tradition. It reflects a level of complexity in comparison to many of other texts of its time. It was written by Sage Yajnavalkya during the Gupta dynasty.
- 3.
Kautilya’s Arthashastra is a book concerning economics written by the great scholar Kautilya.
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Gupta, P., Sharma, V.K., Sharma, S. (2014). Mystic Healers. In: Healing Traditions of the Northwestern Himalayas. SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1925-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1925-5_4
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