Chapter 4
Maryka Owen was tall and willowy in a granola way. Long blond hair pulled into a ponytail, a muslin blouse over faded jeans and bright green Birkenstocks. Her big toes were each painted blue with a gold star in the middle of the nail. The other perfectly formed toes were tipped with standard red. I notice those kind of things. Small details are essential in my work. It had nothing to do with how attractive she was. Really. I serve the Divine Feminine, the Goddess in all Her incarnations, and there is a Goddess in every woman.
Really.
“C’mon upstairs,” I said.
She smiled and followed me upstairs to the healing room. I waved her to the armchair on the south side of the room. I sat in the chair facing east, where I wasn’t aimed directly at her. My senses work well both directly and indirectly. Having her in my peripheral vision helped me see her energy more clearly. She eased into the chair, graceful and tall, about five ten or so, the same as me.
She had nice energy around her. Her auric colors were full and fluid. Very open, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Most of the time it was a little of both. Being so open meant she was receptive, intuitive, maybe a little psychic; it also meant she was easily influenced and extremely sensitive to energy permutations around her, whether positive or negative.
I let her settle for a minute.
“So what can I help you with?” I said.
“I read that article about you in the Star-Tribune,” she said. “It seems…strange…that you’d be so open about what you do and what you believe. I mean, this is a big city that’s really a small town, you know? I’ve seen you around in Lyn-Lake and Uptown, even sat by you once in Gigi’s.”
“Gigi’s? I love that place.”
She tilted her head to look at me. She had cornflower blue eyes with long natural lashes. No make up at all, not that she needed any. Distracting to say the least.
“Me, too,” she said.
“Next time I’ll recognize you,” I said.
I felt rather than saw the shift in her energy as she studied me with a sudden intensity.
“Does it bother you that people know what you do?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I believe in what I do. I serve the community. The more people who know what I do and what I can do to help them, the better.”
She nodded. “I believe that. It just seems…strange…to be talking about demons and ghosts and lost souls like it’s just a regular thing.”
“It is a regular thing,” I said. “It’s part of the natural order of life.”
“That’s a good way to see it.”
“That’s just how it is,” I said. “So what about this part of life can I help you with?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s my father.”
“What about him?”
“He’s come back from the dead.”
“Oh,” I said. “How do you feel about that?”
A blank look. “How do I…feel about it?”
Asking the right questions is an essential part of learning on the shamanic path. Education is part of my job. It’s not all casting out Dark Forces or being the finder of lost children.
“Yes,” I said. “How do you feel about him coming back? Assuming it’s him. Is he invasive? Has he come back to tell you something he didn’t tell you before he passed? Is he unwanted? Do you have unfinished business with him? How do you feel when he’s there? Is it cold, or warm, or nothing at all? When does he come…”
She cut me off. “I get your point.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I sound testy, I don’t mean to be.”
I had to check in with myself about that. Was I being cranky? Was there something else leaking in around the edges of this conversation? I sent my senses out, whispered “Tigre” and felt my white tiger’s presence and the ghost of a whisper, “Gone…”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to rush you…I just felt something.”
She looked around. Her eyes were wide in alarm. “Is he here?”
“No,” I said. “You’re safe. There’s nothing here.”
“Now…” Tigre whispered. “Something brushed through here, past your protection…”
I have heavy duty protection on my house. Beyond heavy duty. Industrial grade. Something that brushed by my protection and then left with only a trace of a faint disturbance?
“This will be more than what it seems,” Burt whispered.
“Thanks, Burt,” I thought.
“Tell me about your father,” I said. “What’s it like when he comes to see you?”
Her face flushed. Anger. “I see him standing there. In my house. When I’m walking on the street. In my car, in the passenger seat when I drive…”
“So you see him?” I prompted.
“Yes,” she said. “But I feel him, too. The weight of his disapproval. His look.”
The weight of his disapproval.
“So it’s like a weight on you?” I said. “You can see him, you can feel him too? It feels heavy?”
“Yes. Like a big heavy black blanket thrown over my head…I get all fuzzy, can’t think straight, I’m confused…”
“Do you feel his thoughts, too? Hear them? In your head?”
She looked away and studied, too carefully, the Tibetan mandala hanging on the wall.
“Yes,” she said. “I hear him all the time. Sometimes faint, sometimes loud…sometimes he’s not there, but then just when I think he’s gone, he comes back.”
“You feel this sensation at the same time? The heavy blanket feeling?”
“Yes.”
“When did he pass?”
“Last year. In the fall.”
It was spring now, so it had been six or seven months. Most souls cross quickly. Some linger in the part of the Spirit World called the Bardo or Purgatory, especially those with unfinished business. They also may linger if they don’t realize they’re dead, and they’ll cling to people or places they knew when they were alive. Those lost souls become confused and if they don’t pass over into the Light, they wither away to wizened vestiges as their soul essence slips away. They’re then drawn to the living and attach themselves to an embodied soul in a body, and they sip that life essence to experience life secondhand. That’s always to the detriment of the possessed. They feel tired, fatigued, suffer sudden mood swings, thoughts that aren’t their own, hear voices, feel odd sensations, see and experience strange phenomenon…all that cluster of symptoms can mean possession.
But not always.
And if it was, it’s not necessarily human in origin. There’s an epidemic of nonhuman energies possessing humans that every credible practitioner knew about, but the overall presentation of this case indicated that the suffering being attached to Maryka was the lost soul of a human.
“What was your relationship like? When he was alive?” I said. I sensed the answer, but I needed to see the energy around her response.
A flush of anger. “I hated him. He…”
I nodded and looked away. It was important now to honor the wounded dignity she drew around herself.
A long silence between us. I stared into space and whispered softly, “Mother Mary…”
I’m not what most people would call a Christian. I know and honor the power of the Christ, but I have a special relationship—a deep and abiding love—for the powerful spirit who descended to earth as Mother Mary, Mother of the Christ. She is the greatest of all the compassionate healing spirits, the Queen of the Angels, and one of the greatest gifts in my life was her appearance to me in a vision. Since that time I’m honored to call on her. She brings the White Light of the Creator into the darkest corners of the universe and heals all who come in contact with her. Her special calling is to heal children and we’re all somebody’s child, right?
All of us Children of Men.
In answer to my prayer, She came.
A sudden brilliance as great doors were flung open and a Light beyond description poured out from behind a woman’s figure, arms spread wide, and that Light surrounded and illuminated Maryka. In that brilliance, like a camera flash going off, I saw in Maryka’s energy field a faint shape that shrunk into a black ball and disappeared deep into her pelvis.
Second chakra. The gate for sexual energy.
That told me about Maryka and her father.
The Light entered me at the same time; it was like water washing filthy sweat away, cooling and cleaning, and the information I needed was there, just like that. In some cases, I must journey repeatedly to gather all the information for a diagnosis. Then I need to check it out energetically in person. In other cases, like now, all the information comes in a sudden flash.
As Anton Chekhov said in The Lady With The Pet Dog, “And suddenly it all became clear.”
That’s one of my favorite lines from literature, and it surely applied to the world I Worked in.
“I felt something,” Maryka said. “Like someone touched my head…I feel light headed…”
“A little clearer?”
“Yes,” she said. “Did you do that?”
“No,” I said. “Someone good and clean and powerful did. We have more work to do, Maryka…are you ready? Do you have time today? Do you have anything else to do today? After the treatment you might feel a little…”
“Treatment?”
“Yes,” I said. “We have work to do. If you want to.”
“You make it sound like I have a choice.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “You always have a choice. You’re in control.”
I dug out my teacher face and put it on.
“You always have a choice,” I said. “My job, if you decide to go ahead, is to help you with your healing in partnership with the healing and compassionate spirits. It’s not me, it’s the Spirit of Creator God moving through me that works with you. That requires your permission and your cooperation. Even if you were in a coma or dying, I couldn’t work on you without your conscious and explicit permission, or the permission of your immediate family members, and then only if you were beyond the point of being able to say yes…or no.”
“Only with permission?” she said.
I knew what kind of boundary work she’d had to do. The aftermath of her father’s crime on her had a lifelong impact: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. She’d been betrayed by the one she was supposed to trust above all others and that left scars that were long and deep.
“Yes,” I said gently. “Only with permission.”
She considered that. “What do I have to do?”
I nodded at the massage table. “You’d lie down on that table. Fully clothed. I’d have you relax. And then we’d do the work together. I won’t touch you. It’s not necessary, but if it became necessary, I’d ask your permission first. I’ll ask you some questions, and ask you to tell me the first thing that pops into your head. I’d ask you to trust in the strength of the Spirit that brought you here today looking for help.”
She took her time thinking that through. That’s a good sign. A healthy skepticism is always good in anyone who works with Spirit. Adversaries walk among us, and the gullible and easily swayed are the first to fall to the seduction of the Dark Forces.
“I can do this…” she said softly.
“Of course you can,” I said. “Do I have your permission?”
She nodded yes.
I set up the massage table in the center of the room where the power converged. I smoothed the clean sheet and set a knee pillow in place.
Maryka stood. Her uneven posture read uncertain. Muscles rippled in her thigh. She was nervous. Some of that would be the entity within her that felt me coming.
Lost souls are like that. They’re often afraid. Fear is what traps them here. When they are caught, and confronted, it’s fear that makes them try to hide or cling to their host. They won’t fight, though.
It’s the nonhumans that fight.
She lay on the table. I tucked the pillow beneath her head and adjusted the knee support. I picked up my rattle and shook it as I hummed my power song to call in my helping spirits.
We’re here…
Yes. My faithful friends, my companions, and my allies in the Work. They honor me with their presence.
Mother Mary had told me what I needed to do. The possessing spirit had to go and pass over into the Light. Maryka, the unwilling host, needed to be illuminated from within with the Divine Light of the Creator to clear out the sludge and residue of the possession. Her energetic body and spirit needed to be healed and repaired; the pieces of her soul that had been taken away as a child needed to be found and returned to her. Depossession is rarely quick. While the possessing entity may leave quickly, the clearing and healing work afterwards always takes time. It’s like taking out a bag of ripe garbage. The odor lingers and it takes time to air out. If a client has been possessed for a long time the symptoms, though diminished, may linger. Occasionally a client gets repossessed. That’s most often the result of not dealing with the spiritual issue that led to an intrusion in the first place, or not receiving proper healing.
Some people don’t want to be depossessed.
Not the case here.
I shook the rattle and watched the rise and fall of her breathing deepen and slow as we both went into light trance. After doing the Work for as long as I have, my energy intermingles with my client’s (with their permission) and I help them relax and enter a shared trance so we can Work together.
Shamans don’t heal. Shamans are channels for the spirits to come through to do the healing and to assist the client in doing their own healing. I felt my spirits close to me, as tangible any being of flesh and blood in the room, their power in me and through me. I felt the presence of Maryka’s companion spirits as well, could see them in the lumen of my mind’s eye, the shamanic vision, the coterie of loving and protective spirits that accompany all of us on our journey through the physical world. They were there to support her. When we do our work, the veil between the spirit world and ours grows thin and those helping beings can more easily cross to help us.
I set my rattle down. With my eyes closed I held my hands in the energetic field over her body. My shamanic vision allows me to see in a different way. I felt the being lurking low in her belly. It was tightly furled up as they often are in my presence. These beings are full of fear. Sometimes they don’t know where they are or what they are. They know they’ve been caught doing something against the Universal Laws. Sometimes they don’t care.
It looked like a black ball with a knurled surface twisting tightly into itself in reaction to my vision.
“Maryka?” I said.
She spoke in a subdued whisper. “Yes?”
“I’m speaking to the True Maryka here, your True Self as you came into this flesh, the True Self never touched by the Darkness…Maryka, direct your attention to any feelings in your belly…do you feel something? A presence?”
“Yes,” she said. “Low. In my belly.”
“If it had a color, what color would it be?”
A long pause. “Black. With red all through it.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Hate. Anger. And…it’s afraid now. He’s afraid of you.”
“It’s a he?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to move your True Self to one side, Maryka. I want to speak to that male energy there. I want you to listen to him and to tell me what he says. Will you do that?”
Another long pause. “Yes. I’ll do it.”
“Just say the first thing you hear or feel. Don’t edit or elaborate.”
“I understand.”
The ball drew itself even tighter.
“My name is Marius Winter,” I said. “Do you have a name?”
Maryka twitched. “He doesn’t want to tell you.”
“Thank you, Maryka. Spirit, do you know where you are?”
“Yes,” she said. “He knows.”
“Do you understand that you’re not in your body? Your body is gone. Do you know that you’ve died?”
“He knows where he is.”
“What do you get from Maryka by staying in her body?”
She shuddered. “He gets to own me. Control me. Forever.”
“He doesn’t own you, Maryka. He doesn’t get to control you. Not now, not ever. He can’t do that. It’s time for him to go.”
“He’s afraid now,” she said. “He doesn’t want to go to Hell. He knows he was bad…”
“He won’t go to Hell,” I said. “He can choose to go into the forgiveness of the Light. He could have gone before. He can go now. It’s time to go.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been to Hell,” I said. “He doesn’t have to go there. He can choose to pass into the Light right now.”
My arm throbbed. I’d been injured there on an excursion to Hell. It wasn’t a trip I’d undertake lightly. I was glad it wasn’t called for today.
“He can go now,” I said. I silently called on the Angels of the Crossing, and with my shamanic vision, I saw the Great Gates of the Crossing swing wide, the brilliance of the Light behind it bursting free, and the Angels of the Crossing standing there, the mighty Warriors of Light who guard souls in transition from this world to the next.
“He sees them,” Maryka whispered. “Above him…he sees them…and the Gates…”
“Does he see someone there in the Gate waiting for him?”
I could see, but it’s important for the client to participate in the process. It’s a way of reclaiming power and soul-energy stolen by the possessing being, and it’s the most direct way to involve the client in their own healing.
Her voice shook with emotion. “He sees his mother…my granny…she’s there and she’s calling to him, telling him he’s forgiven…”
“He can go to her now…it’s time for him to go…”
I watched the Unfurling, when the tight capsule a frightened lost soul draws tight around itself begins to open as a flower unfurls in the light of the sun. The black ball unfurled into the gray shadow of a man, dim, the face twisted and thin lips pinched tight, rising like a smoke from water towards the Gates. The Angels of the Crossing drew close, both to guard him and to keep him going in the right direction. Now Maryka’s father sped towards the Light. I saw him illuminated with the Light of the Creator and the beginning of The Transformation, the burning away of his transgressions, and he turned just then, with sadness and regret across his face, mouthing the words “I’m sorry…” before the Light filled him and transformed him—
—and he crossed, into the arms of those waiting for him on The Other Side.
The Angels of the Crossing turned and looked at me, as they always did, and nodded. Then the great doors swung shut.
It was over.
For him.
Maryka shuddered and opened her eyes. I shook my rattle over her energy field and studied the aftermath written there. There was residue. She’d have a lingering sense of the presence for awhile. Deep tears in the energetic body around the second chakra, the seat of sex, that would need to heal before she could enter into healthy sexual relations again. This was the arena of Mother Mary, and I felt her Divine Presence swell in the room.
She’s always near when there’s healing to be done.
I saw Her in my shamanic vision with her choir of angelic helpers fill Maryka with Light. The deep tears in the second chakra closed together and it began to spin…as it spun the muddy color of it began to clear and deepen into the healthy colors of the chakra as it’s meant to look. The final step was her reconnection with the Divine Light we are meant to stay connected to.
I stepped back from the table and bowed my head. I am always humbled by this Work. I am grateful for the opportunity to be of Service, and I am richly rewarded in these moments when I stand in the presence of grace and divinity and the Holy Spirit. When the Gift first awakened in me, I remember the first channeling I had, a clear crystalline voice that spoke to me: Not me, God, but you through me…That was the prayer I was gifted with long before I understood what it meant.
Not me, God, but you through me.
Maryka lay there and came back slowly to full consciousness.
“Take your time,” I said. “Notice the sensation of the table against your back, the weight in your body on the table…bring your consciousness back into your body and feel yourself filled with Light…”
The shadow had left her face. Her eyes were different. Her face glowed with the Light.
“Welcome back,” I said.
I left the room and came back with a bottle of cold water for her. “Here you go.”
She emptied it in one long draught. “Thank you.”
“You’ll want to drink more,” I said. “I’ll give you another bottle downstairs. You should get a few more. Spring or filtered water. Lots of it. Stop at the drugstore and get a big box of Epson salts. Find one with lavender if you can. For the next seven days, every night, pour a full quart of Epson salts into your tub and soak in it as long as you can. While you soak, visualize any sludge in you being drawn out into the water. You’ll be thirsty so keep drinking lots of water.”
“What was that like?” she said. “Did you see…I felt like…”
I held my hand up and interrupted her. “Best not to think or talk about it now. Best to just let it go.”
She stood.
“You need to take some time to get grounded,” I said. “Do you know how to do that?”
“I do tai chi…”
“That’s great. It will work fine for that. Be grounded. Do you have far to drive?”
“No.”
“Best thing now is to go home and rest.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I feel different…”
I nodded. “You are. It gets better as it goes along.”
She went ahead of me. I reminded myself not to be distracted by the winking rivets of brass on her hip pockets, swaying gracefully as she walked down the halls and the stairs. She paused at the front door.
“What do I owe you?” she said.
I dislike this part.
“I don’t charge a fee,” I said. “If you want to make a donation or gift, you can leave it in the glass bowl there.”
I pointed at the conspicuously empty glass fish bowl on the old oak table beside the door.
“The article said you had a sliding scale…”
“I was misquoted,” I said. “I don’t charge fees. People make a donation or gift based on what they feel my services are worth to them. I’ve been paid nothing at all, and I’ve been paid thousands.”
I hoped I hadn’t emphasized that last part too much.
She nodded, two quick bobs of her head. She wrote a check and dropped it in the bowl.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thank you…” she said.
She stood there. I knew what this was about. There’s this moment at the end of a treatment, especially the kind I do, where the client feels the need to disconnect—or tries to stay connected. If the practitioner is an ethical one, he’ll have already let go of the session and disconnected from the outcome. It’s a test for a healer to let go of the rush that comes from being a channel for the Light, to let go of the ego and not allow your clients or the community to make you into something more than just a human with a special gift.
The temptation is always there. Especially if the client is a beautiful woman and looking to cling to the man who helped facilitate her healing.
I closed my eyes and did the visualization of Severing The Chords and saw the disentanglement of our energetic connection begin.
Oh Spirit…why do you tempt me so?
I laughed.
“What is it?” she said.
“Private joke,” I said. “Take care, Maryka. If you feel you need to call or come back, just call me. We can talk. You’re already feeling relief and it will get better. Like any other healing it’ll take a little bit of time.”
I watched her go. Then I gave into temptation and looked at her check. Two hundred fifty dollars. I could afford a box of cigars!
And more sage and sweet grass.