Spirit Release Therapy as a Contemporary Healing Practice

Abstract The notion that spirits can attach themselves to people, causing them physical and mental distress, and that specialists are needed to heal both the spirits and their victims, is not generally part of Western cosmology. This study of spirit release therapists and their clients in the UK reveals practices for dealing with unwanted spirits and energy attachments in Western contexts. Rather than the individual apprenticeships often seen in shamanic societies, in the West, books, technology, and courses are central in acquiring the skills and knowledge to practice spirit release. While the methods differ, there are cross-cultural continuities in ideas of the self, the dead, and the operation of spirits, including spirits of the dead. The ways spirit release therapists practice, how patients/victims come to understand that they are being troubled by spirits, and the understanding of the self and of unseen worlds developed by therapists and clients are discussed using first-hand ethnographic experience, reports of people attending courses and workshops on spirit release, and published accounts.