Here is the podcast episode going up on Wednesday, let me know what you think!
Comments
This was really, really good and hooked me immediately. The second story made a lot of sense; a friend of mine is a Hmong shaman, he took over when his dad passed away who trained him. A lot of what Mary said I have heard Ying say. And the need to feed the dead makes so much sense in regards to a long time haunting in the Hmong community here. There is a large Asian grocery store across the street from a very large cemetery that has a Hmong section. For almost 25 yrs every couple of yeas the butchers at the grocery store would find large chunks of flesh bitten out of the sides of whole pigs or sides of beef hanging in their meat locker. The bite marks are human. The owners are Vietnamese and a Buddhist monk told them that this was because of a vampire type spirit coming from a Hmong grave in the cemetery across the street. They contacted a Hmong shaman who did a ritual and said there was a woman whosʻ family moved out of state and left her here with no one to visit her grave or feed her spirit. So when she is hungry and angry she goes across the street and feeds on the raw meat in the storeʻs butcher department. This went on for years until some relatives of herʻs moved bay to my city. Through the community they heard about this haunting. They spoke to another shaman who took them to the womanʻs grave. They realized she was a distant relative and started bringing her incense and food. The haunting stopped and no new incidents for about 10 yrs now. The last story with Ara, (sp?) hit really close to home. My maternal grandmother was a bendezeira, a type healer who uses prayers to God and the saints in Portugal and Brazil. St Therese of Lisieux was her special saint and we have lots of family stories about her and St. Therese. As a curandeiro I work with her a lot, she is one of my favorite saints. I too no longer practice Catholicism or Christianity, but I still work with the saints. I have found like all spirits, once they die they too leave all the human divisions aside. Most of the saints did extraordinary things in life to better others and to repair the damage they saw in the world; their souls continue to want to do the same in the afterlife. At least that has been my experience.
2022-12-04 18:23:36 +0000 UTC
Wow. This podcast hit me! Makes me think of 1. oxytocin as both what we as humans label love AND fear, 2. the broaden and build model of positive psychology, 3. how ancestral ritual changes overtime and that’s ok! because impermanence, and 4. lead with curiosity and wonder.
