Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.09.2009, Blaðsíða 14

14
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2009
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD MORNING
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Centerhotels_254x95_grapevine09.pdf 7/1/09 11:51:11 AM
“What stays inside you all your life, but
leaves only when you’re dead?”
‘What is this? A riddle?’ I ask the
elderly gentleman sitting before me
whose empty glass urgently needs a refill.
‘Bacteria?’
He smiles, very wryly, at the corners of
his lips.
‘The soul! Of course, the soul,’ I say.
The smile is still there. ‘Is this a—um,
trick question?’
“In a way,” he says. “Normally the soul
leaves the body after death, but it may not
leave this Earth. Hell, it may not even
leave the house; or, sometimes it finds a
new body to take possession of.”
Gústi, as we shall call him (he says he
prefers to remain anonymous: “There are
a lot of narrow-minded people out there”)
has been a soul-cleanser for near thirty
years. Now he’s retired, although he still
occasionally takes a serious case when no
one else is up to the deed. Those in the
know say he’s the best equipped to deal
with spirits of the dead in all of Iceland.
Looking at him, you’d assume that he’s a
retired auto-mechanic who lives down the
road and gingerly tends his roses in his
garden between cups of tea and afternoon
naps.
Far from it. Aside from the soul-
cleaning, he’s also a hell of a spiritual
healer, and maintains, along with
numerous people affiliated with the
Icelandic Parapsychological Society,
that he has cured cancer on umpteen
occasions.
He tells me the story of a teacher.
“Well this guy left a message with the
Society that he had terminal leukaemia.
He hadn’t told his wife and kids, and by
the look of things, unless he could find
some miracle soon, telltale signs would
be showing up any day. Every Monday
afternoon I dropped into the Society’s
offices and picked up the weekly five
names. I had this guy’s dossier under my
arm on the way home, ate dinner with my
wife, and then, set about healing the guy.
“Now this kind of healing doesn’t
usually happen overnight, and many
times I have to do two or three sessions if
it’s something very severe. But one thing
I can assure you, it absolutely works. The
key with all things spiritual is…” [here we
go again] “…energy: volume is important,
but more so, its purity. Now I can’t tell you
the philosophical ins-and-outs of how it
works, and to tell you the truth, I’ve never
really asked. I just act as the funnel for
Them to do their work.”
-Them?
“Spirits if you like—beings from
another realm; the dearly departed.
Anyway, this teacher goes on an outing
to the countryside with his class some
few days after I’ve done the first session.
Apparently, he wasn’t feeling well, so he
stayed in his hotel room while the class
was out. He felt the ground was collapsing
beneath him, and he saw all these
shimmering lights before his eyes. He
felt faint and lay down to have a rest. By
the evening he was better, and he joined
everyone for dinner. When he next went
to the doctor, the doctor found that there
wasn’t a trace of the cancer in his system.”
I’m stumped. I’m scribbling this stuff
down like nobody’s business. No wonder
this guy wants to keep a low profile.
‘So, Gústi,’ I ask him. ‘What about
the…soul-cleansing? Did that start after
the healing?’
“Yes. Healing is really what I trained
for—I worked with a number of mediums
to hone in on my skills; the soul-cleaning,
or exorcism, if you will, came later. It
all started when a woman contacted
the Society asking for help. There was
something in her house: paintings
were constantly falling off walls, glasses
moving by themselves and crashing to
the floor. She and her husband could
hardly sleep at night. They called in the
local vicar, had him do what he called “a
blessing.” I mean, don’t get me wrong,
blessing a home can only be a positive
thing, give the house a good vibe—
positive energy from the onset, you know.
But in the here and now, when a spirit has
decided to stay put for whatever reason,
and believe me there are many, a blessing
is not going to get him—or her—to leave.’
-So what made you feel you could deal
with this?
“I don’t rightly know. It was like the
old adage: ‘Your ears are ringing because
someone is talking or thinking about you.’
Well, my ears were ringing something
terrible. I told them I would give it a go.
And so, I approached it in much the same
manner as I approached the healing. I
meditated upon it, did my prayers quietly
at home—you know I never enter the
buildings I should cleanse. Wouldn’t
recognise the house owners if I saw them
on the street. Anyway, this time, another
set of beings came to me, not the same
group as with the healings. These were,
for lack of a better word, light beings.
They are really quite transcendental,
full of compassion and love. I have never
asked, but you can tell they come straight
from the heart of God.”
-And so, you say these haunting
spirits—poltergeists, are actually the, er,
‘Un-departed;’ souls who have not joined
with, what? The collective?
“There are two main types,” he says
with complete conviction: “Either way
they all have something unresolved: there
are those who are still waiting for some
kind of promise to be fulfilled; or, quite
common is that the people who lived in
the house before created a bad energy in
the house, and have attracted the dark
spirits. This creates a kind of magnetism
which draws the darkness or evil to it, just
like a fly to marmalade.”
-And these light spirits? What exactly
do they do?
“Simple,” he says. “The light spirits
just grab the offending soul under his
arms, explain the situation, and escort
him off. It looks a little like they are rising
away in a kind of light-elevator.”
-An elevator into the heavens?
“Precisely,” he says smiling.
-And what of human possession, The
Exorcist-style? Have you experienced that?
“Yes. Once. A father had died, and in
that instant he took over his son’s body. It
was quite mortifying for the mother.”
I’m bloody sure it was.
Radio To The Other Side
In search of the Real McCoy
Words
Marc Vincenz
Marc Vincenz keeps delving into Transcendental Iceland
Gústi tells me what happened to the spirit who took over his son’s body,
and I witness a bone-chilling, startling vision of the future.
Transcendental Iceland | Part 7: The Un-departed
Our first issue of our first winter season. Robert had departed and
Paul F. Nikolov had come on full time. His energy spilled into the
issue quite a bit. The cover was about the Beowulf film, then the
most expensive film made here. It flopped, but Gerard Butler went
on to be a star in 300. VG
We were all a bit worn out by this issue, and we weren’t quite happy
with it. I had just been to see a play about the Icelandic colony in
Canada, so I wanted to do something about Iceland’s relationship
with North America. Somehow we wound up with a wrestler on
the cover. Somebody had to go wrestle. Paul did the honours. VG
The God issue. We had been discussing it for quite some time, and
we wanted to make up for the last one. Everybody went all out. Paul
interviewed most of Iceland’s religious leaders, asking them which
side God was on in the teachers’ strike. Höddi went to town as a
graphic artist. My own contribution was above average. A nice way
to celebrate Christmas. VG
Grapevine 101
#15 - Issue 9 - 2004
#16 - Issue 10 - 2004
#17 - Issue 11 - 2004