02/06/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EDd1BqjA3/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Meet The Whisperers: Disturbing things
The demise of whispering is something that quite a few people applaud. Especially those that see this craft as a ‘superstition’ or ‘mumbo-jumbo’ due to its having little or nothing to do with the science of medicine. Some even find it hard to believe that such peculiar practices as whispering take place in today’s Central Europe. Indeed, the story is quite extraordinary and if it were nothing more than that – a story – there wouldn’t be a problem. But the séances and rituals discussed here really do take place and therefore affect real people.
In the case of whispering, like with many alternative therapies, the line between providing help and causing harm is a thin one. Sure, receiving enchanted bread or being prayed over won’t cause you any problems, but things get a little disturbing when one finds out that there’s a special whisperer’s chant for cancer out there.
Should someone choose whispering as a primary treatment for such a condition they would be making a big mistake. Here’s what Bożena Winch, a psychotherapist and psycho-oncologist, says in an interview published by Puls, the bulletin of the Regional Medical Chamber in Warsaw:
A psychotherapist isn’t there to give advice. But when I hear that somewhere near the city of Białystok there’s this whisperer that treats cancer, I say: you’ll do as you please, but I’m against substituting chemotherapy with the doings of a healer, I ask where did an idea like that even come from.
There’s also the notorious story of an Orthodox priest that died in a car accident in the Podlasie countryside after trying to avoid a collision with a toilet standing on a crossroads. Yes, a toilet. In 2011, the police discontinued their investigation of this tragic event and nobody was convicted of causing it, but locals have always claimed that it was one of their own who had put the thing on the road.
The culprit is said to have done it following advice from a whisperer. If that’s the case, then the tragedy was probably the result of a superstition linked to feuds. Placing a thing that belongs to an antagonist of yours on a crossroads is considered a means of avoiding an evil charm cast by them.
more:
https://culture.pl/en/article/meet-the-whisperers-the-christian-folk-healers-of-eastern-poland
Anna Bondaruk in Rutka, 2007, photo: Andrzej Sidor / Forum
