More on the "Field" Effect

While a healer can heal someone far away, a sorcerer can create disease and even death from a distance with a hex. White or black magic has been known for millennia, but is only now slowly being validated by science. Although it sounds implausible to the Western mind, in South Africa, traditional healers deal with witchcraft every day. 

These malevolent effects can be local or non local.  

Non-local influences work through the Field without the knowledge of those who are affected. 

Local effects work directly with the knowledge and belief system of the victim through the placebo or the nocebo effect (opposite of placebo).  

Right side of diagram fear based = nocebo & hexing

Left side love based = placebo & healing

There are only two basic emotions; love and fear. Placebo is a love based response, nocebo is fear based. The key to nocebo and placebo is the belief system of the patient and the absence or presence of hope, belief, trust, and faith.  We are all aware of the doctor-patient relationship and how important it is for the "Inner Healer."  Just as some physicians create a feeling of calm, confidence, and reassurance in their patients, others can do the opposite.  Some doctors will engender the healing power of placebo, others, usually unknowingly and unintentionally, the noxiousness of nocebo e.g. delivering a bad prognosis unskillfully and without hope.  Sangomas are masters of the placebo effect; sorcerers and dark witches work with nocebo.  Distant healing or the polar opposite, distant hexing, work through the Field bypassing the belief system of the recipient and affecting the Inner Healer directly. 

The Field, like our Inner Healer, is not impervious to bad morals or evil motivation.

The depths to which these malevolent forces affect the African psyche is illustrated in this story about a black gardener in Johannesburg who thought he was going to die. A witch, he believed, had put a snake in his body that was eating him up. He got thinner and thinner and his employer was most concerned. She had taught him English, how to read, and the ways of the civilized West. She took him to her doctor who examined and tested him. No abnormalities could be found.  She showed him the X-rays. 

"See, Gideon, there is no snake," she said. However, Gideon continued to fade away and wanted to go home to have the spell removed by his own people. His employer arranged his transport, unable to console or convince him with her logic.  Months later she got word from his home that Gideon had died.

Distressed, she said to Agnes, her maid and confidante, "Agnes, I do not understand it. He was an intelligent man why couldn't he see that there was no snake?" 

Agnes replied, "Because, Ma'am, that was a very clever snake. It hid behind his bones where it could not be seen!"

         The combination of nocebo in the presence of a hex can be additive and even fatal. Gideon knew he had been hexed and he had been. If a guilty action on his behalf had warranted placement of the hex there would be further aggravation of this toxic dynamic.