A "New History" for a "New World Order"
 
"New Age" healing modalities have long been labeled bunk by the establishment, because they represent the single greatest threat to its monopoly on health and wellness. Can we expect any less in an age when scientists and medical studies are funded by corporations with a vested interest in obtaining specific outcomes (i.e. the greatest profit with the least expenditure)? When the government officials who are supposed to represent average citizens are themselves so heavily invested in corporate healthcare that they stand to lose vast sums should the current system be reformed or (heavens forbid!) evolve? We have been lead to see alternative healing modalities as the last resort of the eccentric or the desperate, and conventional, allopathic medicine as the refuge of reason. This couldn't be further from the truth...
 
In fact, most of the healing modalities associated with the "New Age" have their roots in ancient folk medicine practices that have been time-tested not over weeks or months by biased government agencies or corporate interests, but over millennia by average people just like you -- people with nothing to gain by hiding or distorting the truth. "Folk medicine" was not abandoned because it didn't work; it was abandoned because it worked too well. Traditional healing modalities work with Nature, not against it. They see the least invasive, restorative intervention as the remedy of choice. The object of ancestral healing or "folk medicine" is not to cure symptoms and ignore the disease, but to arm the body against invaders -- now and in future.
 
The folk ethic teaches Healers not to charge for what they receive freely from Spirit (i.e. "talent"); we may charge only for the cost of materials. However, since healers do not earn a salary for their indispensable services, communities traditionally shared the expense of maintaining them (building/repairing their homes and healing sanctuaries, providing food, clothing, firewood, etc.) if healers were too busy serving the community to work in the fields. While the ancient Healers did not live opulently, they did live decently. Just a few households could easily support their basic needs -- how much easier, then, for a small community? Compare this with the profits enjoyed by today's medical industrial complex and it will soon be apparent why "folk healing" is still considered such a threat that it  demands eradication.
 
Of course, this was easier in the days  before income and property taxes condemned people to work for  corporations until they died. Still, such an arrangement remains  possible, as so many modern healers continue to demonstrate in communities around the world, the Irish being among the best examples. What the corporations don't want you to see is that unlike conventional allopathic medicine, which empowers businesses, traditional healing primarily empowers the sufferer. Instead of passive "patients," the Folk Healer's clients are active participants in their own healing. It is their decisions and actions which determine the efficacy of the cure. The job of the Folk Healer is thus to educate -- to teach the sufferer the secrets to curing themselves. This may sound like more work than most of us care to undertake, but consider this: If someone else commands the power to heal you, you will be forever at their mercy. You can only be free by reclaiming that role for yourself.*
 
There is, of course, a place for allopathic medicine and, in our view, it is in surgery and emergency or critical care, where heroic interventions are most justified. No one calls an herbalist to an accident scene! But likewise, colds, flus, and other mundane complaints do not require poisons or surgery. They require common sense and some basic knowledge of how the body works in relation to the living world around (and within) us -- and this is where the traditional Healer can be most useful; in educating us about our own wellness and teaching us how to address the many minor afflictions of everyday life in ways that support the body's innate ability to maintain its own health.
 
Our Purpose
 
Avalon Sanctuary was founded as a resource for those with an interest in learning how to regain and maintain their own health and wellness, and as a source of training for those with an interest in perpetuating this knowledge as Healers. Within these pages we hope to provide an overview of what Traditional Healing means to us, the healing modalities on offer here, and links to related resources that may be of interest to visitors. You will also find a variety of courses on offer, both through the Sanctuary and through groups and organisations with whom we are associated.
 
Our purpose is not to "convert you" to our way of thinking, but to make our world more familiar to you, so that you are better able to make an informed choice. We do not ask you to choose between different healing modalities (we do not believe that any one way has all the answers). We believe that many Ways are needed; that all have a role to play in an integrated, holistic, care-centred healing system that has yet to be fully conceived or manifest for our time -- a system in which the sufferer holds the primary power, where treatment is affordable for all, and where methodologies work with Nature instead of against it. We hope you will join us in exploring these possibilities.
 
The Road to Recovery
 
A number of key elements are involved in maintaining good health that merit review here:
  • Pure water
  • Clean air
  • Heritage, organic locally grown whole foods
  • Varied diet
  • Regular exercise
  • A full night's sleep
  • Regular relaxation
  • Family time
  • Individual pursuits
  • Higher Awareness (e.g. Spirituality)
We can hardly expect to be well if the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat have been poisoned; yet our society teaches us to believe in "acceptable levels of poisoning." These "acceptable levels" do not measure the amounts you can imbibe and still be well; they measure how much you may be poisoned without detrimentally impacting your employer. By keeping you unwell (but well enough to work), big business realises far greater profits than it ever could from your good health. GMO seed companies, specialised treatment centres, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, health clubs -- even the health insurers that refuse to cover you -- all have a powerful financial incentive to treat symptoms, rather than cure causes: the moment you are 'cured', their profits end... Clearly, the days of simply believing what we are told and assuming that others are acting in our best interests are long past. One of the ways we can defend ourselves is to demand and ensure that our food, water, and air are fit to consume.
 
Next, we can arm ourselves with the skills and tools we will need to maintain our own health once a proper environment has been established in which to regain it. These skills need not be costly to attain, but they will require of us time, attention, and continuing practice. They will also require of us vigilance, for there are many lobbyists working to pass laws preventing people from growing, buying, and using herbal supplements. How we each attain our healing knowledge will depend upon our individual personalities and predispositions. Some will choose holistic medicine or naturopathy as their main healing discipline, while others may prefer homeopathy. We have chosen a combination of traditional vibrational (or 'resonance') healing, spiritual centring practices, and herbalism. Only you can choose which is right for you. It is our hope to help you to inform and arm yourself to regain and maintain your physiological balance (health) at every level of your being. These pages provide a glimpse into how we have chosen to accomplish this task for ourselves. If it speaks to you, then perhaps it is also the path for you. We welcome your questions, comments, and observations at any time. Write to us using the "email us" link located in the links list to the right on every page.
 
We look forward to hearing from you.







* It also implies a very different relationship between Healer and Sufferer. There are risks involved in all types of healing, both known and unforeseeable. When we ask for medical care, we agree to accept these risks. Most traditional communities acknowledge this and provide guidelines for fair compensation, which comes not from insurance companies, but from the Healer and their relatives. Since compensation may not exceed the Healer's ability to pay or the sufferer's actual loss (e.g. income/labour, and medical costs), the profit motive that drives many lawsuits is eliminated (as are the lawyers) and both parties are made responsible for their own choices. While this is not the system used in most Western societies, perhaps it should be. Our health costs would be considerably lower and both parties would likely to behave more ethically and responsibly.
Healing's Hidden History
 
Our Western European ancestors created the first 'hospitals' as healing sanctuaries in which sufferers sought the blessing of their Gods and worked with resident Healers to effect cures; a rich and largely untapped heritage which, surviving in the guise of folk (or "Faery") medicine, was passed down to succeeding generations through familial and teaching lineages. The power of this healing tradition was such that the New Religions sweeping through Europe and the Isles found it impossible to displace the native religions without first eliminating the spiritual Healers that worked through them. Christian clerics were charged with learning and then usurping the role of native "Faery Doctors," which they accomplished with infamous efficiency under Church-sanctioned witchcraft laws in a paranoid, murderous frenzy remembered today as "the Inquisition" or "Burning Times." The modern survival of folk medicine traditions attests the ultimate failure of such brutality. Nonetheless, the effort to eradicate traditional Healers continues today, though it is dressed in more reasonable terms and innocuous seeming garb.
 
The War on Wellness
 
The Roman Church and State were perhaps the earliest corporations to exert their influence on our ancestors. To be a "citizen" was to belong to Rome; "pagans" were country folk, people too rough to be considered for citizenry. The role of citizens was to pay for Rome's extravagance and ambition: to rule the world by forcing everyone in it to become a citizen or be an enemy of the State. Citizens had a thin veneer of rights that noncitizens lacked, and as culture after culture fell before the Roman onslaught, Roman citizenship became a coveted attainment. Our modern concepts of citizens, stock markets, and corporations are all vestiges of Roman occupation and rule, and all continue to strip the public of the power to direct their own lives... However wild these assertions may sound they are not radical theories, but simple observations of historical fact, whose truth is borne out by recent and far distant events. One must acknowledge the facts in order to discover the truth, for truth is the basis of healing.
 
Today, every aspect of mainstream religion and healthcare is defined and regulated by corporations whose sole motive and interest is profit. A corporation has no other purpose. It cannot feel compassion, it has no soul or ethics of its own; if its executives become corrupted by the wealth and power of their positions, the whole system devolves to the base, ruthless satisfaction of greed. This cycle is evident in recent events (e.g. Wall Street and big business bailouts without reformed ethics or behaviour).
 
The unwillingness of government and the private sector (i.e. business) to meet the people's needs is evident to all; incompetence, corruption, and negligence are rife, yet we are asked to believe that corporations know better than we do what is good for us. The same 'leaders' and enterprises that indiscriminately poison our air, water, and land, and deprive us of access to (and control of) our  healthcare would have us believe that they know better than we do how to manage our health and well-being. The system, they tell us, is for our own safety, because we are not clever enough to decide for ourselves what is good for us, not 'adult' enough to be responsible for our own actions. Yet, like abused children, many of us love the very system that oppresses us.
 
Many of us believe the studies commissioned by pharmaceuticals when they claim that the plants from which they derive medicine should be controlled substances, even when they have grown as weeds in our yards for generations without causing anyone any harm. We believe them when they say that traditional Healers are scam artists, despite that many doctors themselves are studying with them  and offering the same services at vastly inflated rates in their own practices. Mostly, we believe them because we have forgotten the truth. Like "the Good Book" itself, our pasts have been 'revisioned' for us; all the inconvenient bits have been removed and anyone who might remember has been killed or vilified.
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"Healing is the act of  regaining balance. Health is the act of walking a tightrope without falling." ~ Myrddin
 
"Healers offer clients (sufferers) the means to heal themselves. It is for the client to receive this knowledge and act upon it. Therefore, healing is an act of self-empowerment."
~ Morgaine
"Wellness arises from a state of inner balance; illness  from imbalance. Balance is difficult to upset, but once lost, imbalance spreads to each system that tries to compensate, eventually affecting the whole organism.
Healing is the act of restoring balance to key organs or systems whose influence is sufficient to draw others along with them until overall balance is restored."
 ~Traditional
"Healing does not come from people; it is the gift of Spirit, whatever name you choose to give it; thus a Healer is not a saviour, but a conduit."
~Morgaine
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