Caïd Hassan, Tripolitan healer, or the blessing of blood The following fact, published in Le Tour du Monde, pages 74 and after, is taken from Promenades of the Tripolitan, by Baron de Krafft.
I often have as a guide, and a companion when I am out of town, the cavas-bachi (head of the janissaries) of the French consulate, whom the consul general kindly places at my services. He is a magnificent six feet tall black man, from the Ouadaï, that despite his graying beard, has retained all the activity and all the energy of his youth. Caïd Hassan is not a common man: he ruled for eighteen years, in the time of the Caramanlys, the tribe of Ouerchéfâna, and no one knew better than him to keep this restless people in check. Brave to the point of fear, he has always defended the interests of his citizens against neighboring tribes, and if needed be, against the government itself; but, at the same time, his people could not indulge their whims either, and one did not joke with the severity of the Caïd Hassan. For him, the life of a man was hardly more precious than that of a sheep, and one would certainly be embarrassed to ask him the exact number of heads that he had taken down with his own hand, so much that his conscience is appeased in this regard. An excellent man, moreover, and completely devoted to the consulate he has served for ten years.
In one of our first outings, I saw a group of five or six women approaching him pleadingly. Two of them had poor little breastfeeding children in their arms, whose face, head and neck were covered in scaly patches and purulent scabs. It was awful and disgusting to see.
Our father, said the sorry mothers to Caïd Hassan, it is the prophet of God who brings you to our house, because we wanted to go to the city to find you and we have been waiting for it for ten days. The djardoun (a very harmless little white lizard) passed over our breast, and poisoned our milk; see the condition of your children, and heal them that God will bless you.
Are you a doctor then? I asked my companion.
No, he replied, but I have the blessing of blood on my hands, and anyone who has it can, like me, cure this disease. It is a natural gift to any man whose arm has cut off a few heads. Come on, women, give what it takes. And immediately one of the mothers presented the doctor with a white hen, seven eggs and three pieces of twenty paras; then she crouched down at his feet, raising the little patient above her head. Hassan gravely pulls his lighter and flint from his belt, as if he wanted to light a pipe. Bismillah! (in the name of God!) he says, and he starts to shoot out of the flint many sparks on the sick child, while reciting the Surah Al-Fatiha, the first chapter of the Koran. The operation finished, the other child had his turn, with the help of the same offering, and the women left joyfully after having respectfully kissed the hand that had just restored their sons health.
It seems that my face clearly revealed my incredulity, for the Caïd Hassan, while collecting, to take away, the fees of his marvelous cure, screamed to his clients:Do not fail to come in seven days to present your children to me at the skifa of the Consulate. (The skifa is the outer foyer, the waiting room in large houses).
Indeed, a week later, the little creatures were presented to me again; one was completely healed, the other had only a few scars that looked very promising, indicating an imminent healing. I was stunned, but not convinced; however, over twenty similar experiences after that have forced me to believe in the incredible virtue of blood-blessed hands.”
There are people whom even the most obvious facts cannot convince; it must, however, be admitted that, in this one it is logically allowed not to believe in the effectiveness of the blessing of the blood, especially obtained in such conditions, no more than that of the sparks of the lighter. However, the material fact of healing does not exist any less; if it does not have this cause, it must have another; if twenty such experiences, to the narrator's knowledge, have come to confirm it, this cause cannot be fortuitous, and must proceed from a law; however, this law is none other than the healing faculty with which this man was endowed. In his ignorance of the principle, he attributed this faculty to what he called the blessing of blood, a belief in relation to the customs of the country where a man's life is worth nothing. The lighter and the other formulas are accessories that only have value in his imagination, and that undoubtedly serve, by the importance that he attaches to it, to give him more confidence in himself, and by subsequently increase his fluidic power.
This fact naturally raises a question of principle, concerning the gift of the healing faculty, and that is answered by the following communication given on this subject.
Parisian Society, February 23rd, 1867, medium Mr. Desliens
“One is sometimes astonished, with an apparent reason, to find, in unworthy individuals, faculties remarkably developed, and that would seem to be preferably the appanage of virtuous men, devoid of prejudices; and yet the history of past centuries presents, almost on every page, examples of remarkable mediumships possessed by inferior and impure Spirits, by unthoughtful fanatics! What could be the reason for such an anomaly?
However, there is nothing surprising in this, and a somewhat serious and thoughtful study of the problem will give the key to that.
When exceptional phenomena, belonging to the extracorporeal order, are produced, what actually happens? It is that embodied individualities serve as organs of transmission to the manifestation. They are instruments driven by an external will. Now, will it be asked of a simple instrument what would be required from the artist that vibrates it? ... If it is obvious that a good piano is preferable to one that would be defective, it is not less certain that one will distinguish, in one as in the other, the touch of the artist from that of a schoolboy. If, therefore, the Spirit who intervenes in the healing encounters a good instrument, he will use it willingly; otherwise, he will employ whatever is offered to him, however defective it may be.
It is also necessary to consider that, in the exercise of the mediumistic faculty, and in particular in the exercise of the healing mediumship, there can be two quite distinct cases: either the medium can be a healer on his own, or he can only be the more or less passive agent of an extracorporeal driver. In the first case, he will be able to act only if his virtues and his moral power allow it. He will be an example in his private or public conduct, a model, a missionary who has come to serve as a guide or a rallying sign for men of good will. Christ is the supreme personification of the healer.
As for the one that is only a medium, being an instrument, he can be more or less defective, and the acts that take place through him, in no way prevent him from being imperfect, selfish, proud or fanatic. A member of the great human family, like the public in general, he shares all its weaknesses.
Remember these words of Jesus: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor.” We must therefore see a sign of the goodness of the Providence in these faculties that develop in imperfect circles and people; it is a means of giving them the faith that will sooner or later lead them to good; if not today, it will be tomorrow; these are seeds that are not lost, for you Spiritists, know that nothing is lost to the Spirit.
If it is not rare to find transcendent faculties in the roughest natures, morally and physically, this is also due to the fact that these individualities, having little or no personal will, limit themselves to letting the driving force act. One could say that they operate instinctively, while a more developed intelligence, wanting to realize the cause that sets it in motion, would sometimes put oneself in conditions that would not allow such an easy accomplishment of the providential designs.
However bizarre and inexplicable the effects that occur before your eyes, study them carefully, before considering a single one as a violation of the eternal laws of the Supreme Teacher! There isn’t a single one that does not affirm his existence, his justice and his eternal wisdom, and if the appearance says otherwise, believe well that it is only an appearance that will disappear to make room for the reality, with a more in-depth study of the known laws and knowledge of those whose discovery is reserved for the future.
Clélie Duplantier.”
