We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture

by Patrick Jasper Lee

  The above account of a Romani gypsy ritual healing session is typical - I have drawn material from numerous accounts and experiences - but in the nineteenth century it was by no means common. Gypsy healers or wizards of this kind were scattered around, but were rare, usually practising in very small pockets and only practising certain aspects of the craft. In North Wales, where Romani gypsies were more secluded, the craft was probably more widespread, although still carried out in great secrecy. We can at least assume this, as Jack Lee was able to emerge from North Welsh Romani stock to pass these ancient traditions down to me, with the very clear message that they should always be practised with a degree of reserve and the utmost respect. It is ironic that while the British were busy ‘developing’ other continents in the Victorian era, the Romani gypsies were still practising their ancient magical rituals on their own doorstep, right under the nose of growing civilization!

  The magical healing ritual was always an important part of gypsy society. A gypsy healer was careful to conduct the healing in the strictest secrecy and, according to ancient tradition, might have taken any number of hours or even days to prepare for a healing session - providing there were adequate means of doing so. The length of time devoted to the ritual would also depend upon the severity of the condition the healer was being asked to cure, in the case of the above ritual, it might be considered an impossible problem to cure, with civilization bringing so much that opposes tribal ways of thinking. More and more, the social climate needed to be taken into consideration; thus, healing sessions became not only shorter by the Victorian era, but were soon severely desensitized, robbed of the earlier simple and vibrant energy that ordinarily accompanied such ancient practices.

  These practices served to bring people together in a way that is seldom experienced in our society today, but when they are used, there is a distinctive feeling of togetherness, which is undeniably strong. As I have seen it, healing practised in such a community, in the presence of Otherworld spirits, has a lasting effect, because it is all about ‘community’ and sharing problems on a more primitive, light-hearted, yet meaningful level. There is support from all corners of a very active universe and this helps people to feel that they are not quite so alone.

  I still believe that it is important to conduct healing within a supportive group environment, generally among people who are mostly familiar with each other, people who are not too troubled by feelings of self-consciousness and who may be willing to observe appropriate behaviour. This is really no different from using fitting manners at the dinner table or being generally polite in the street when you meet someone you know. Showing respect in many places in our society calls for a certain self-control, because it is simply what we have become accustomed to. We might say that it would be inappropriate to walk into the waiting-room of a doctor’s surgery shouting and singing and banging a drum. It is equally inappropriate, in a Romani healing ritual, to sit noiseless and motionless when the Chovihano begins his ritual. It could almost be described as extremely disrespectful if you did not acknowledge his somewhat eccentric behaviour, and applaud it, and sometimes even find it openly amusing! Yet although gypsies appear to be so relaxed during a healing ritual, there is no lack of attentiveness.

  An example of this is a memory I have of my grandmother and a female companion in discussion over the name of a particular brand of biscuit whilst Jack Lee was busy with a ritual. As the ritual progressed the two women volunteered various names which might well solve the mystery and this debate continued on and off throughout a large part of the session - but in no way did it detract from the energy created in the session, because they also talked openly about what they were sensing during the heat of the ritual, i.e. what they were seeing, hearing and feeling within and around the environment and within and around Jack Lee himself.

  In another instance, an old man who regularly joined me for my rituals had been talking about the price of tomatoes to another member of the group and half-way through the session, some 40 minutes or so later, he sat forward, summoning the attention of the other members of the group with the words, ‘What price did you say those tomatoes were?’

  This is quite typical behaviour in a gypsy ritual, and it causes a good deal of laughter. It may seem trivial, or irreverent even, in the presence of the Chovihano and his spirits, but we must always remember that any sombre ceremonious behaviour belongs not to gypsy ritual of old but to church! This relaxed and humorous attitude is all part of the process, and we Romani gypsies believe that if you are light-hearted it will actually contribute to results. I never once understood the sombre meditation practices of modern-day spiritual people. They can cause me to feel tense and uncomfortable as people grow introspective and far too serious about their spiritual lives. Members of the gypsy ritual group are just as likely to mention that they are able to see certain spirits collecting around the Chovihano as they are to talk openly about the price of tomatoes!

  My grandmother invariably brought her knitting or crochet work to a ritual healing session. A lady member who joined my group at a later date also followed this trend, with no lack of concentration; in fact, the employment of a craft, if executed in a relaxed manner, can sometimes increase concentration, for it encourages natural spontaneity. Much of the time in my own family a healing session would become completely riotous, with all of us laughing at ourselves and at each other because of some comment or other. Our humour often proved to be the best medicine for us all.

  Sadly, there are no direct relations with whom I can practise the old healing traditions now, so I doubt that this ancient craft will survive. Expressive, unselfconscious people are often my preferred assistants, as most gypsies are by nature fairly raucous and outgoing, and their energy is plentiful - which is just as well, as energy is needed from everyone to make a healing session work.

  We certainly need reminding that the restrained and solemn silences we may believe we need to adopt during ancient rituals have not only been an unnecessary modern creation resulting from religious influence, but these have also damaged the lighter tribal attitude. Indeed, I know of no indigenous tribal people who practise their ancient rituals without a light heart and a grin. In my own family, if you were ever to grow quiet or too serious for just the shortest period of time, you were likely to be asked if you were feeling ill! There are undoubtedly appropriate times to be serious, but the ancient tribal ritual isn’t one of them.

  Learning to relate to, and relax with, the more outgoing, untamed parts of ourselves in our somewhat passionless society has certainly been something I have needed to introduce into healing sessions because it is enormously beneficial to our health. Sometimes it is all you need to get well. The wild, exotic and romantic passion of the old gypsy spirit, which so many can relate to, is given more meaning once we realize that in our recent history we have all been ‘tamed’. On reaching that wild and natural spirit within, we reach who we truly are. To our surprise we usually find that this spirit doesn’t feel quite as ‘wild’ as we thought it would, at least not in the ‘running crazy’ and ‘uncontrolled’ sense of the word. We discover, instead, a powerful but gentle healing part of ourselves, which we hadn’t quite realized was there before. This part is simply waiting to be reawakened in the right way.

  I have often said that the gypsy is the greatest actor, able to remain upon the stage of life for an extraordinary length of time without becoming fooled by the role. The Chovihano, then, must be an Oscar winner! For his craft could be likened more to a good quality stage-play than anything else!

  This has to do with ritual and theatre being linked. ‘Performance’ skills are part of the magical healing craft the world over. I believe that magical ritual, which the Chovihano conducts with no lack of expression, must inevitably contain the true origins of drama, the most primitive form of theatre, where players renew their spiritual acquaintances with the natural world against the backdrop of an uncertain Middleworld where all creatures are vulnerable to weakness.


  By using performance and creativity, and particularly by expressing ourselves more openly, we can start to free up our receptive and sensitive inner powers, so that we do not block any new thoughts and feelings that need to come in to help us initiate change. I often attempt to get people to move about whenever I conduct a general training session, which will initiate a healing process. Music to dance to is a good aid to this; we at least need to immerse ourselves in some kind of good rhythm. My feeling is that people need to rock about, or move themselves in some way, so that they symbolise that they are not resisting change. Sitting rigidly, waiting for something miraculous to take place has never, in my experience, helped anyone. Jack Lee was quite dramatic when practising his healing craft. In fact, some kind of dramatic activity was usually expected of him.

  Gypsy healing sessions were rarely limited by time. Some of us might find it difficult to imagine a healing session lasting anything from two to six or even eight hours. In days when clans could remain relatively undisturbed, Chovihanos were able to go on working throughout the night; they had to, because the changing world meant meeting social and physical hardships that had never been met before. It is an undeniable fact that with times becoming much more civilized, tensions associated with civilized ways of thinking were giving birth to more mysterious sickness. In much earlier times people were not so in need of the drastic healing measures they needed in later times, so healing sessions would have been a good deal shorter - if they were needed at all.

  An end result when the Chovihano is at work is the personalization of a sickness. In today’s language the healer is saying, ‘This is what your sickness would be like if it were a person.’ It otherwise slumbers in the deadened void created for it by the patient, a thing without a soul, a ghostly embryo of some formless, timeless, shapeless power, which can steal life away. I believe there would be far less fear of sickness if we could only accommodate the idea of personalization, in an animistic way, with just about everything we do.

  The old Romani art of ‘offloading’ used slugs and spiders for more minor sicknesses. A slug would be given a person’s sickness and then pinned on to a thorn bush. As he died, so the sickness would die. Likewise a spider would be wrapped in silk and worn around the neck; once the spider had died, your sickness would have died with him. These healing methods are unacceptable today, but they perhaps demonstrate how powerful these smaller creatures were and how compassionate we might consider them to be if they die in order to carry away what we may consider to be our burdens, or sins. A primitive version of the role played by Christ perhaps!

  Having occasionally used an earthworm for a healing ritual, this simple ‘offloading’ process still sometimes invites those inevitable questions from those who have animals close to their hearts. Is it right to perform such a ritual? Should we be using any animal in this way?

  My great-grandfather used an earthworm, which he always maintained was an extraordinarily advanced creature, which in evolutionary terms he is, being millions of years unchanged and therefore - at least in Romani opinion - ahead of us in wisdom, knowledge and intelligence! Jack Lee would dig up this small creature and bring him into the healing circle or group. A ritual would be performed over him and by magic my great-grandfather would transfer the person’s sickness to the earthworm, helping the creature carry the sickness back down into the Earth and thus away into another world. He would spit three times upon the soil that the worm was contained in to help it all along.

  I have already explained that the old Romani gypsies related to animals very differently from the way we might relate to them today. Insects and smaller animals who live close to the soil or underground are considered to have access to the Lowerworld, just as birds who live close to the sky are considered to have access to the Upperworld, and these insects, smaller animals and birds are always considered to be greater beings simply for being able to live in the Lowerworld and Upperworld without being taken over by the darker forces there - something no human beings are able to do. Should a human aspect enter and expect to reside permanently in the Upperworld or Lowerworld, we might expect birds and earth-burrowing insects respectively to send that aspect back to the Middleworld, which is where human beings are supposed to reside. If we think about it, it all makes complete sense according to the mythological map of the world.

  It is difficult for us to comprehend such thinking these days when mythological concepts are given no credence. Our views of and relationship with the other creatures that share our Earth space has altered drastically over many thousands of years, meaning that animal welfare has become a huge concern with our modern belief that we should take care of them. Naturally, we should, but this also suggests that we are above them in intelligence. Are we?

  We should be questioning our own ideas on what constitutes the Upperworld, Lowerworld and Middleworld and the creatures who inhabit such places. Neo-shamanism falls short of giving us accurate answers because it is not actually nature-based, but man-based; that is, all creatures who are not man are brought in as assistants to the modern healer. The way I understand it, there is no healer who can heal a person without their using their own wherewithal to heal themselves. As my people say, ‘You can lead a horse to water but can never make it drink.’ In other words, you can show a person where healing is, but it is their thirst for it that will make them heal, because everyone heals themselves at the end of the day. The healer is a mere guide and adviser to help a sick person know which way to turn for help.

  I learnt when young that a worm or any other small creature was extremely pleased to be of service in any healing work. Certainly, the worms used in my own healing rituals have always performed their task with the utmost skill and also the greatest pride. As I understand it, this is a task worms have been performing with gypsies for thousands of years.

  Likewise for thousands of years animals were sacrificed for healing and good luck, and considering that human sacrificial victims were once highly prized and cherished - and knew they were, because to be sacrificed was the greatest honour - animals would have felt exactly the same, so long as the sacrifice was carried out with respect. Slaughtering animals in the abattoir is, I think, far more cruel and exploitative in many respects, as it is very impersonal - as sports like fox-hunting and shooting for pleasure are. The gypsies never performed any of their healing rituals with animals for pleasure. It was always with the animals’ permission. It saddened me once to hear a pig say, ‘Am I not good enough to be sacrificed for special purposes any more?’

  At the end of the day I think the question of animal sacrifice in ancient healing rituals will always raise objections - until, that is, people develop their own bonds and relationships with animals and the natural world, and understand what it means to be integral to the ancient aspects of nature rather than being disengaged from what was once part of our everyday lives.

  I have already mentioned that I was encouraged to talk to the spirits within ‘things’ at home, whether these took the form of tables, chairs, cups, food or even a single hair on a piece of clothing! Everything had the capacity to speak, should it desire to do so. Constant practice of this ancient craft, which has long been called ‘animism’, will safeguard you against the many spirits of sickness who roam around looking for trouble, shadow-spirits such as viruses, who will, if you don’t talk to them, invade your privacy or take you over without your knowing. This doesn’t mean that you have to talk to them all the time, but if you know colds and the flu are ‘doing the rounds’, just start talking to these ‘bugs’ in a childlike and light-hearted manner, even if you can’t see them or know where they might be located. By doing this you will be ‘charming’ them or, in straightforward modern terms, ‘personalizing’ the sickness, so that you are talking to something, rather than seeing it as a vague, empty space over which you have no control.

  If a malevolent spirit of sickness sees that you can already see through it, it will not bother to fight for the right to inhabit you; there will certai
nly be plenty more gullible people who will be fooled by a spirit’s formlessness and who will be only too pleased to accommodate it. This is particularly true of viruses.

  Viruses are strange creatures. If human, a virus would join you for a drink at the bar and then crack you over the head with the glass! Humouring these shadow-spirits is the best thing you can do to have them seek their ‘sustenance’ elsewhere. To some, this may all sound like sheer nonsense, but just try talking to them for a little while and you may surprise yourself, because they will suddenly leave you alone.

  Many find it extremely difficult to know exactly where the spirit of sickness resides. Perhaps the question is not so much how we talk to things but why we forget to talk to things. Young children talk to things spontaneously, not because they are children but because they have a natural instinct and ability to communicate, and when we reach adulthood we are encouraged to leave that instinct and ability behind, being told it is somewhat ‘immature’. Perhaps the gypsies never grew up, for they traditionally communicate in a very ‘childlike’ fashion.

  Healing, in my view, has always had a good deal to do with communication, whether that communication is between people, animals or indeed ‘things’. So it is good to begin practising with all the things you have around you, so that you can accustom yourself to talking openly to things which are considered to be inanimate. Some find this embarrassing and also quite ‘silly’ at first. It should indeed be fun, but the longer you keep practising it, the less awkward you will feel. Understand that you are not mad and that this craft has been practised for thousands of years by many Romani gypsies and other tribal peoples.