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| Like most people with the gift of the cure, Rebecca takes no money Cr; BBC News |
In today's blog, you'll read about her, and find out what Reiki is all about.
WHAT IS REIKI? Reiki is a form of alternative medicine called energy healing. Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing or hands-on healing through which a "universal energy" is said to be transferred through the palms of the practitioner to the patient in order to encourage emotional or
physical healing.
THE BBC ARTICLE: What's it like to have the gift of 'the cure'?
On any given day, the phone calls start early and continue late into the night at Rebecca Hamilton's County Donegal home. From an initial hello, the caller quickly moves to ask is she "the woman who has the cure" .The question finishes depending on their ailment. The cure might be for shingles, ringworm or mouth ulcers. Rebecca is quick to ask those who ring what medical help they are getting - if they say none, she tells them they should. Once she was asked to cure a flock of sheep of the contagious ovine skin condition orf. "I never knew I had a cure for that," she told BBC News NI.
"But he rang back three days later to say it had gone," she said. She's had the gift of the cure for more than 40 years, after being given it by an Irish man she met on holiday.
Right across Ireland, there are people like Rebecca, said to be able to cure a host of common ailments. This is a land where local belief suggests water from certain wells or even soil from specific graveyards has healing properties. The cure - seemingly part folk tradition, part faith healing - predates Christianity. In a world of modern medicine, many people's belief in the cure persists. The secret prayers and set of actions involved have been passed discreetly from one healer to the next. In spite the cure's pre-Christian origin, Rebecca's methods are based in prayer and a belief in God.
At her home in St Johnston, her family joke that "she says more prayers than the Pope". How she came to have the cure is a "long story", she says. "We were on holiday in Austria, maybe about 40 years ago, and we fell in with an older couple. "She had fallen and broken her elbow and her husband Jack couldn't help her into toilets or things like that, so I did. "We got talking, started to spend meal times with them and they told us Jack had the cure for shingles and ringworm. "My own husband Tom would often take people to a lady close to where we lived to get the cure. "It was something we had a belief in and knew all about. "
Jack was in his 70s then and they had no family - I said to him that he would have to pass it on before his time came. "He came down to breakfast the next morning and said: 'Rebecca, I've been thinking over what you said and I want you to take it.'"
Over the 40-plus years since, Rebecca has seen and spoken to thousands of people seeking the cure. In days gone by, she would visit people in their homes or they would come to her.
For shingles, she circled the infected area with a pen knife.
For ringworm, a lit candle was used in the same way.
It was what Jack had instructed her to do. All the while, she recites two secret prayers passed to her by Jack - they have been kept secret to this day. The only thing she needs to know to administer the cure is the person's name. Working with a lit flame close to human skin scared Rebecca initially. "I was scared to burn someone but one day a man that lived close to us told my daughter about his wee girl who had ringworm and she said to bring her up. "I didn't want to use the candle but I did, I saw him a few days later and asked how she was - I asked if she had been taken to a doctor. "He said: 'There was no need Rebecca, sure didn't you cure her.'"
In the years soon after Jack passed on his knowledge, Rebecca's fame grew so much she "didn't have the time to get around everyone". "Mostly I do it over the phone now, it seems to work just as well," she said. But Rebecca insists the cure belongs to God. "You say the prayers, mention the person's name and then it is with God."
SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-47297831
