The Sword of Michael - eARC (2 page)

Chapter 3

My healing room is a spare bedroom down the hall from where I sleep. It would have been the master bedroom; I use it for my healing room because there’s a bathroom in it for clients and a big walk-in closet for storage. I covered the wooden floor with a Persian wool rug with a teal blue motif, and on top of that I put a Peruvian prayer rug that was gifted to me from a Peruvian shaman friend. Two big pillows double as chairs if I sit on the floor. I keep a folding massage table in there so I can stand and work on my clients. A few low tables line the walls with crystals: lots of amethyst, several large geodes, a small statue of Mother Mary and directly to her right a small statue of Michael the Archangel.

There are two armchairs in there, and I moved them forward as most new clients liked to sit for their initial consultation. I lit a small bundle of sage in a blackened abalone shell and wafted the smoke with a harvested hawk feather into all the corners of the room, in all four directions, then above and below and all over me from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. I picked up my favorite rattle from the side table and stood in front of the second altar I maintained in the healing room. Two altars might seem like conspicuous consumption, but I want and need as much protection as Spirit might muster on my behalf, so keeping an altar where I slept and another one where I worked makes perfect sense.

Besides, both altars were beautiful works of art in their own right. This one was a plain table of polished oak, with an altar cloth of brilliantly colored Guatemalan fabric with all the colors of the rainbow and the colors of platinum, gold and silver woven through it. These are the ancient colors of protection, the colors of the flag flown in Atlantis over the Sons of Light when they marched out against the Sons of Belial.

The Sons of Light were the Good Guys. The Sons of Belial were the Not-Good Guys.

Both sides are still very much around.

That’s what keeps me in cigar and whiskey money.

I bowed my head and closed my eyes and began to chant the ancient Lakota power song given to me by First In Front, long ago…”Hey-ya, hey-ha-ho…”

I shook the rattle, a ball of dried leather, filled with corn and maize kernels, mounted on an antler handle. The steady rhythm of the rattle fired off deeply grooved synapses in my brain and put me into a light trance, the first step in crossing over into non-ordinary reality, as some modern shamans like to refer to the Spirit World, or the Other Realms.

The basic tool of the shamanic practitioner is the journey. That’s when I send my spirit into the Spirit World to negotiate with the spirits, to fight, to heal and, right now, to gather information. I always like to know something about the clients that are coming to see me. I once neglected to make a preliminary journey and that lapse nearly cost me my life in this incarnation. I’d opened my front door to a drug addict possessed by a demon I’d crossed swords with in the spirit realm; that demon sent a possessed human with a knife to finish me. One of the lessons you learn early in the Work is that you must protect yourself in this World as well as in the Next.

Which is why a Glock 19 lived under my bed and I cultivated certain other self-protection skills as well.

From behind closed eyes, I saw with my inner shamanic vision. My spirit rose up out of my body and flew through the air to my favorite portal into the Spirit World. It’s a beautiful old oak tree, with a small hollow in it, on the shores of Lake Harriet. It’s a tree that stands watch, over all those who pass by, on the shores of a lake sacred to the Lakota. I flew into the hollow and then went down, down, down…through the roots and then further down through a tunnel of earth that grew broader as I approached a pin prick of light that grew and grew and grew into a portal. I stepped out onto a grassy hillside overlooking a broad expanse of forest and mountains and lakes beneath a brilliant blue sky.

This was the Lower World, the world of Nature and spirit animals; home to the power animals that walk with all of us, whether we see them or not, from our birth till our passing into the Light.

An enormous white tiger sat on her haunches beside the portal.

“Hola, Tigre,” I said.

“Hola yourself,” the white tiger said. “What have you brought me?”

I pulled an ornate ivory comb out of my pocket. “For you, my beauty.”

She bared her gleaming white fangs. “Would you?”

“I would.”

I ran the comb through her immaculate and perfect fur, as only the fur of a white tiger in the Lower World can be. She’s a feminine spirit and she likes her beauty aids. I never argue with the Divine Feminine, especially a spirit that embodies all the power and the wisdom of a white tiger.

She purred a deep rumble in her throat.

“So,” she said, after savoring the pleasure of her combing. “What is your intention?”

“A client,” I said. “Coming to see me…”

A voice behind me that sounded like he’d spent a lifetime in the Bronx making book on the horses said, “Owen, Maryka, female human type, thirty two years old, divorced, a child, what else you wanna know?”

I turned and grinned up at the big black raven perched in the lower branches of the oak tree beside the portal. “Hey, Burt. How you doing?”

“Doing? How
you
doing, Marius?”

Tigre stretched her back. “He’s doing for me.”

Burt laughed a raven’s laugh. “You remind him of the wife he’ll never have.”

“Oh, don’t go there, man,” I said.

They both laughed.

“You have the makings of a good husband in you,” Tigre said. “It’s that which you resist the most that you should examine.”

“I’ll examine that another day if you don’t mind,” I said. “So Maryka?”

“Do you want to see or do you just want me to tell you?” Burt said.

“You know she’s possessed?” Tigre said.

“From her family,” Burt said. “There’s attack, past, present and future…someone close to her. There’s a cloud around it…professional. Karma and past life issues, too.”

“When isn’t there?” I said. “What travels with her?”

Tigre tilted her head. “It’s not with her now…one or two steps removed. This is the first step towards something hidden.”

“She’s looking for help,” Burt said. “She read that article in the paper.”

He cawed with amusement. “Not much for being down in the weeds are you, Marius? Better watch out for that self-aggrandizement…”

“It’s not self-aggrandizement if it helps educate those who need,” I said.

“Yes,” Tigre said. “And you’re getting more clients…”

“More people who need help,” I said.

“Don’t smoke so many cigars,” Tigre said. “You want to be more careful with that.”

“Sacred herb and all that,” Burt said.

“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing. “I thought I was supposed to be pure, but not too pure?”

They both said at exactly the same time in two different voices: “We never worry about you being too pure, Marius. It’s the other we watch for.”

“Thank you, my friends,” I said. “Is there anything else I should know right now?”

“Yes,” Tigre said. “This is more than it appears.”

“And…?” I said.

“Just remember that.”

Burt cawed and tilted his head. His eyes flared briefly with the white Light of the Spirit within him. “I’ll remind you if you forget.”

They always did.

“With love and gratitude, my allies,” I said.

“He’s always so formal, huh?” Burt said.

Tigre laughed. “See you on the Other Side, Marius…”

Yes. They would. I entered the tunnel and flew back to my body, settled into it and opened my eyes in my healing room.

This would be more than it appeared.

It always was.

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.