History of Spiritual Healing

Spiritual Healing has been found in all the world's religions at some time in their past or currently, including some which have been most aggressively against spiritual healing. Primitive people required a shaman, or medicine man to cure their ills.

Some religions imply that you must have faith in their religion in order to be healed, but this is Faith Healing not Spiritual healing.

Faith healing has had some bad press in extreme cases (Evangelists and Christian Scientists have been quoted) but this is not to deny that Healing will work. However it is possible that patient will have a faith crisis if healing does not work as expected and this can cause more stress, not less. Though in Faith Healing this crisis ultimately is seen to reinforce faith.

10,000 BC	Spiritual Healing was the primary form of treatment for illness. Around 600bc - Phythagoras and his disciples started the theory that the spiritual healing energy the "pnuema" came from a fire at the core of the universe which gave humans their life and immortal souls. Healing could be seen as a "light" capable of curing illness and that all matter should be in balance. Hippocrates (460bc 377bc) - " the father of modern Medicine" felt that all illness mental and physical was caused by natural factors. He created the Medical ethics embodied in the oath all doctors must make before they can practice as doctors. He believed the body had self healing mechanisms, he described the laying on of hands, and the healing energy, as a sensation of tingling and/or warmth. Hippocrates began the downfall of "Healing" when he suggested that the mind and body are separate. Drugs and herbal remedies gradually became incorporated into spiritual healing until Christianity became influential. Greece in 300bc was influenced by the cult of Asclepius the greek God of healing, which ran side by side with medicine during this time.
The Birth of Christ to 300AD	At the fall of the Roman Empire an almost complete return to spiritual healing occured until the advent of Christianity. Christianity and Spiritual healing have had a chequered time together and apart since Christianity began.
1500 AD	Paracelsus (1493 - 1541) - was a great traveler and unorthodox healer, checking out many alternative therapies and making miraculous cures. He suggested we are an integral part of nature with healing energies in and around our bodies, which could cause illness and cure it. Mesmer who later practiced magnetism for healing took his root ideas from Paracelsus. Royalty and Healing - From the Anglo-Saxon times royalty in particular the reigning king has been thought to have healing powers. This was the "Royal Touch". Elaborate ceremony was associated with this in Tudor and Stuart times and involved the giving of a silver coin. By the time of Charles I the coin itself was thought to have healing powers.
1600 AD	Healing reached its height in 17th century. But because Healing was "miraculous" it became linked to witchcraft and increasingly Healers were persecuted and reviled.
Modern Healing	New Age Healing is based on taking past memories, confronting them and allowing healing. Modern Spiritual Healing appears to be increasing in popularity and results and in recent years there have been many incidences of spiritual healing being written about in the public press, Breshnev and Yeltsin in the USSR, Glen Hoddle, Princess Diana and the Duchess of York, just to mention a few.

Many healers have their own theories about how and why healing works or have developed new techniques which became alternative therapies.

Problems with these pages? contact System Support Services (Calne)

History of Spiritual Healing

Revised: 20 Oct 2000.