Harry Edwards - Healer of the
superlatives
There
is probably no spiritual healer who treated a higher number of people
than Harry Edwards. Initially a printer with political ambitions, he
visited a spiritualist meeting and came across a medium who said he was
an excellent instrument for spiritual healing. Subsequently, he made
his first attempts, which were so successful and attracted such a host
of visitors that he fully dedicated his life to healing. Thousands of
healing stories are reported, and even in hopeless cases, healing or
improvements were due to his help, although he did not even meet the
majority of his patients personally. An incredible number of letters
asking for remote help were sent to him from all over the world. In
more than 40 years of his activity, up to two thousand help-seekers per
month visited him at his secluded sanctuary in Shere, South England. He
also became famous by his public healing demonstrations, which, like
the one at Royal Albert Hall in London, were attended by up to five
thousand visitors. His declared task was to propagate and popularize
the knowledge about spiritual healing. For instance, he also
recommended the cooperation between classical medicine and spiritual
healing, with the effect that there is successful cooperation of the
two disciplines in England today. He set spiritual healing into a
spiritualist context, talked about spirit doctors who are a
prerequisite for making success possible and considered healing as a
medial act. Shaped by the Christian culture, he also referred to
religious subjects, which brought him rather an unpleasant contact with
the Anglican church and a tendentious investigation report by the
archbishop. Edwards wrote various books about his findings. Only his
main work was translated into German. He published the following books:
" The Power of Spiritual Healing"
- "Spirit Healing" - "A guide to the understanding
and practise of Spiritual Healing" (German title:
Geistheilung, Bauer Verlag) - "Thirty Years as a Spiritual Healer" -
"Life in Spirit" - "The Mediumship of Jack Weber"
Harry
Edwards healing a curved spine. Please click the image to see Harry Edwards demonstrating
Spiritual Healing on Trafalgar Square 1964. This film is a powerfull
legacy to all spiritualy seeking people.
Frederick Joseph Jones – a man of
deep devotion
Jones
was the first English spiritual healer with a large clientele. He took
up to healing after having visited a spiritual training group, where he
heard a voice asking him to agree to being a healing medium.
Subsequently, he started first attempts in a group of six patients in
Wimbledon. When he had seen he was successful, he dedicated his full
life to healing. One day, a physician sent him 12 patients asking for
diagnosis, an ability granted to him by spiritual assistance, 10 of his
diagnoses were correct. The physician was disconcerted and, when he
examined the two faulty diagnoses, he found out that it was him who
made the fault.
Billy Parish – a changed sceptic
Parish,
originally a supporter of the opinion that spiritual healing was an
occupation for intellectually restricted women and men who are unable
to think, changed into a successful spiritual healer who treated more
than 500000 help-seeking patients either by contact or by absent
healing. He too was told about his abilities as a healer by a medium,
when his wife was suffering from cancer. After he had been able to help
his wife, which was confirmed clearly by physicians, he dedicated his
whole life to healing.
During
his best times, Jones treated up to 28 000 patients a year, most of
them by contact. In 1933, he died at the age of 48 after eleven years
of successful healing. Contemporaries say he died so young
because he was so devoted and humble that he worked without
consideration of his own constitution. Unlike Edwards and Parish, Jones
was a trance medium and spent several hours a day in trance during
healing.
Francis Schlatter – shrouded in
mystery
One
evening in 1895, when Alderman E.L. Fox, one of the town fathers of
Denver, Colorado, opened the local evening newspaper, he saw a headline
saying "Miraculous healings by the remarkable French-American Francis
Schlatter". He was thrilled and decided to visit Schlatter and to ask
him for help for his starting deafness and a painful chronic renal
disease. The next day he traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and found
the healer in a small house in the old town. He was so besieged by
visitors that there seemed to be a lack of air for breathing. "From the
very first moment when I saw the healer I felt that I would be healed
and my hopes were confirmed. I stayed there for a week and saw how
powerful a healer this man was", Fox later said.
He
invited Schlatter to come to Denver and sent him a ticket for the
train. Schlatter arrived in Denver in the night of August 23. He
started his healing sessions and treated between 700 and 2000 persons a
day. His method mainly was to take the help-seeking people’s hands into
his and to hold them for a short while. When he did that, the patients
felt a slight electric shock and a tickle, followed by heat in one hand
and cold in the other one. He gave healings for all sorts of illnesses.
The news about his successes were spread all over the country, the
newspapers published lots of articles and help-seekers came in crowds
from everywhere in the US. Schlatter held non-stop healing sessions
during six hours every day.
This
went on till the evening of November 13. He went to bed that night as
usual after having read in the bible for a little while. At six o’clock
next morning, the time when he used to rise, his room was completely
quiet. Fox opened the door of Schlatter’s room. His bed was empty and
on his cushion he found a letter with the following text: “Mr Fox, my
mission is finished and Father takes me away. Good bye, Francis
Schlatter, Nov. 13.“
Schlatter
was never seen again.
Bruno Gröning – subject of high
esteem and pursuit
Bruno
Gröning, born in 1906 in Danzig, who emigrated to West Germany as an
expellee from former East German territories after World War 2, worked
as a carpenter, factory worker and docker, telegram messenger and
low-voltage electrician before he came into the focus of public
interest. The climax of his activity was in the fifties. In 1949, the
name of Bruno Gröning became famous overnight. Press, radio and
newsreel reported about his healings. Never before, a healer had
attracted so much attention in the German-speaking area. He became
target of pilgrimage for thousands of people seeking healing. In all
classes of population, there were violent discussions and a lot of
dispute about the case of Bruno Gröning. Emotional waves rose very
high. Clerical people, physicians, journalists, the legal and political
world as well as psychologists, everybody was talking about Bruno
Gröning: some considered his miraculous healings a gift of mercy from a
superior power, others said he was a charlatan. But his healings were
fact and confirmed by medical examinations.
A film was made, scientific commissions were charged with
investigations and the authorities examined the case. As already
mentioned, there is particular resistance against spiritual healing
methods in Germany and so there were legal proceedings and prohibitions
for healing. Bruno Gröning died in Paris in January 1959, where he
lived in exile.
