Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

The Christian Folk Healers of Poland

 

Help Wanted Szeptucha

Will Train

(Pronounced: Shep-too-hah)

 

Jan’s friend waited in the cold outside  with no idea what was going on inside. He had helped Jan to the door, step by step. Jan could barely walk.

The two men had driven through the long winter darkness to a woman’s hut  in Podlasie near the Belarussian border. One was a driver, the other – Jan - a man suffering from debilitating sciatica, and desperate for relief. No doctors  nor pain killers could help Jan. The szeptucha was his last hope.

Forty-five minutes later, Jan came out, pale  - almost ghost white -but walking effortlessly. All he said upon getting back into the car was, “Expletive, let’s go.”

Riding back, Jan tried to process what had occurred and to explain the inexplicable. Inside the house was a woman who was blind, and bed bound. She told him to sit in a chair next to her  bed. She did not ask any questions but suddenly  he felt as if an invisible hand was rummaging inside of his head. He lost all sense of time. Then it was over, and the woman said he should leave.

 

Stories like this are often told in northeast Poland. Szeptucha in Polish means one who whispers, a whisperer. Szeptucha  are occasionally featured in local, national, and even broader European media. You see, these tales are not folklore from the “old days,” most are placed in the 21st century.

Considered folk healers by some and charlatans by others, whisperers are often both respected and sometimes feared by local communities. They believe to have a gift from God, which they channel through prayer and various rituals. Whisperers are usually older Orthodox women, although some are male and even Roman Catholics  have been known to join their ranks.

Due to the peculiar healing rituals the whisperers perform, they are sometimes compared to shamans or witches. But it ought to be said that the ‘magic’ they allegedly use is meant to be ‘white’ not ‘black,’ aimed to do good, not wrong. Most importantly, and this is how the healers got their name, they pray for the health of their patients, whispering and otherwise uttering various Orthodox Christian prayers. These are delivered in a peculiar mix of Polish, Belarusian and Old Church Slavonic, which makes it hard for someone not privy to this composite dialect to understand them. Here is an example of a whisperer’s healing prayer :

 

Evil ghost! Do not wake the man up, do not crush his bones, do not dry up his blood, do not touch the veins... From veins, from body, bones, and eyes, from legs and hands and from urinary tracts take off herpes, psoriasis, stains, and growths...

 

Historically, Podlasie has been a melting pot of cultures and religions. It is where Catholic Christians blend with the Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslim Tatars who have assimilated themselves in the region. Additionally, Christianity took a long time to take root. There are reasons to think that even as late as the beginning of the 20th century, some villages of Podlasie kept to their pre-Christian beliefs and rituals.

 

Today, many Poles see the region as irrelevant and ancient history especially compared to the remainder of the country when it comes to economic and technological development. Learned locals would respond by acknowledging the region’s technological deficiencies. But neither are they  as advanced in destroying the natural environment and Polish traditions which may be one reason the tradition of whisperers is still  alive here. Many people rely on them, particularly for solving ailments their doctors cannot and here sometimes doctors even refer patients to a whisperer when they are at a loss for how to proceed.

 

Whisperers  address health problems that demonstrate medically unexplained symptoms: folk illnesses -   maladies some people experience. These include anxiety, muscle pain, skin conditions, headaches,  and the old “Evil Eye” or curse. You do not visit a whisperer, for instance, with a twisted ankle – even if you did, she would just tell you to go to a regular doctor. When a whisperer sees she cannot be of help, she does not hesitate to say so.

The consolation a whisperer provides is mostly of a humanist character. The healer devotes their full attention to the visitor, treats them like a person. Where there is little hope left, they conjure it up, giving an incentive to keep on fighting. Unfortunately, this kind of approach is not always exhibited by official medical workers, who are often too overworked or numbed by their job to be concerned with their patients’ emotions.

 

A woman with a persistent headache visits the 99-year-old Ms. Olichwier in the village of Siemianówka in Podlasie. She heals the patient by offering  magical incantation and prayers while shaking a glass, half filled with ash and wrapped in a foil bag. The whisperers believe that the disease moves from the person into the ash and fills the glass. The ash is then thrown out, along with the disease.

While whisperers are still present in the cultural landscape of Podlasie, there are not as many of them as a decade or two ago. Many respected whisperers just died and did not leave successors.

Traditionally, before a whisperer passes away, they need to transmit their gift. It is said that if they do not, they will not be able to die peacefully. There is a well-known story circulating the region about an old whisperer who could not leave this world because she did not share her gift with anyone. In painful agony, she asked for a hole in the roof of her house to be made so that her soul could finally leave her body. Once her wish was granted, she died calmly.

 

We are Hiring signs appear everywhere today and there are whisperer openings as well, but few takers. There is no money in it. The whisperer’s intention is to bring good into the world. They believe their gift is an obligation – since they have received it  from up above, they should share it with others here on Earth free of charge too. They have not invented all of this as a scam to obtain money. In fact, a whisperer would feel offended if you offered her payment for her services. Customarily, people leave something sweet on the table in the visiting room, a candy bar, or a little cherry vodka, maybe a  coin, which will without doubt be spent at the local Orthodox Church to purchase a candle.

 

God Bless America – before it’s too late.