Faith healing is the use of solely “spiritual” means in treating disease, with the refusal of modern medical techniques. There are groups of people that believe in faith healing as the sole intervention method in any health problem. The term is usually used by Christians who believe God heals people through the laying on of hands and prayer. Faith healing has not scientifically been proven effective, although its practitioners often cite much anecdotal evidence of cases where it has been successful. Doctors often ascribe any success to the placebo effect or to spontaneous remission. (A placebo is a “fake” pill or technique to test whether a cure works or not in a control test group, part of the group receives the placebo and the other part receives the “real” cure.) Some people will heal with or without treatment. It is natural to credit the most recent treatment for the cure (this form of reasoning is called post hoc ergo prompter hoc).

The majority of people who practice faith healing do so in cases of otherwise incurable disease. Faith healing can pose serious ethical problems for medical professionals when parents refuse traditional medical care for their children. In some countries, parents argue that they have a constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that gives them the right to refuse medical care and rely on faith healing, but many argue that because faith healing has not been proven effective, it would be unethical to rely on it. Doctors consider it their strict duty to do everything that they can in the interests of the patient. If they judge that modern scientific treatments are required to save the child’s life or health it is their duty to use them, in direct contradiction to the parent’s wishes. In the year 2000, in Britain, a government ruling mandated that a child, against much protest from parents who preferred faith healing, be treated by doctors.

The beauty of contacting the sacred order, which divination is supposed to put us in touch with, is that it allows for a changed relationship within ourselves. As we work with divinatory practices, how are we to do it in a way that is modern, a way to the future rather than back into the loop of the past? The mystical elements of this tradition were taken very seriously by the professional philosophers of the time. In the 3rd century B.C. Iamblichus promoted the practice of theurgic ritual to recover this experiential aspect of philosophy to profound transforming theurgic experiences. The theurgist works “like with like” at the material level, with physical symbols and “magic” at the higher level. Mental and spiritual practices are, “Correspondences of the divine in matter,” the theurgist then strives to reach the level where the soul’s inner divinity unites with God. This is when healing miracles are the product of a natural healing process.