christianity – devizine.com

Spiritual doctor, El Souessi, a prominent speaker for the Bruno Groening Circle of Friends, is coming to Devizes’ Wyvern Club on the 10th May to lecture on the teachings of controversial faith healer Bruno Groening. Make of it what you will, but from my angle it sounds suspicious….

While we’re happy to promote local events here at Devizine, we’re wary of those unfitting basic morals, ones affiliating with extreme politics, for example. This one is borderline and I would advise caution. Faith healing is a pseudoscience many within the medical community and public consider unconventional.

Bruno Groening was an oddball, a German mystic who claimed to transmit a healing force he called Heilstrom, to cure incurable diseases. Using the desperation of common folk, often injured in war, in the economic downturn of post war Germany to practice his faith healing and encourage an almost cult following, Groening had a dark history of association with the Nazis, allegations of rape, and negligent homicide of a seventeen year old girl with lung disease.

Groening was anti-science, with a sparse education and a tragic backstory of family loss and being taken as a prisoner of war. Suddenly rising as spiritual healer of mystical abilities in the late 1940s, but moving around Germany because states banned him from practising, media attention sparked a devoted following. Such was its popularity, Groening took to casting magic into two tinfoil balls to project outward to those he was unable to “reach” physically, only in collecting donations.

Leaders of his own “inner circle” were reported to take measures to control his access to women to prevent scandal. His quote “there is no incurable” is now used to promote his teachings as a “path to health for body and soul” by Dr Karim El Souessi and his Bruno Groening Circle of Friends. But, reported as a heavy drinker and chain smoker, Gröning died in Paris, aged just 52, of stomach cancer; so much for “incurable,” it seems he couldn’t save himself.

While the social media comments on his Facebook event page hold miraculous curing claims, note none of those comments are from local people, and suspiciously look like bots. I’m one to hold faith there is a possibility in “mind of matter” for wellbeing, but claiming all diseases are curable by religious indoctrination is stepping way over the mark for me!

While a venue must consider its financial sustainability it should also have a responsibility to its attendees not to host suspiciously immoral events. The Wyvern Club should research event organisers before allowing itself to be hired.

Avoid this, and if you have a medical condition you should consult your GP. We live in an era of science, and, as Gröning’s death revealed, faith is an island in the setting sun, proof is the bottom line. Go on, do your worst, shrink my head, I double-dare you!!

This is why I love you, my readers, see?! At the beginning of the week I put out an article highlighting DOCA’s Winter Festival, and included everything else going on in town this coming weekend, as side attractions. It was as well received as ever and no one on its social media shares thought to question the event’s name. Today Gazette & Herald reporter Jason Hughes followed suit, but its shares received a barrel load of terribly misinformed and exasperating comments from keyboard warriors who wouldn’t know the true meaning of Christmas if it slapped them in the chilling wintery chops; which, maybe it should!

Bag of coal for those ranting that it should be called a “Christmas Festival.” Why not just go, enjoy it, make of it what you wish, call it whatever you wish, and not worry what other people want to call it?!

Foremost, I feel a smidgen sorry for Jason, if he reads the Facebook piffle on his articles, as the paper is slammed there for calling it “Winter Festival.” Someone plucked Americans from the sky and blamed them, one even ingeniously used an emoji of a bell and wrote “end” next to it; is there no limit to that guy’s wit?! Jason is working from a brief, you spanners! The organisers, DOCA, are calling it Winter Festival, as they have rightfully done for years, not the newspaper.

Maybe they choose to do so because it’s too early for Christmas. Perhaps to make it open and inviting to all. Which, I’m sorry to the keyboard warriors, but I thought that’s what the season was all about?! Or are you all more clued up about Christianity than the Gospel of Luke, who told of angels chanting “peace and goodwill to all men” at the birth of Jesus?

Father Christmas will be there, a Christmas tree, and lots of other representations of Christmas too; not that they have anything to actually do with the birth of Jesus, and more to do with what was there before it. There was a midwinter festival for hundreds of years before its Christianisation. No one really knows when Jesus was born, or if he was at all. Yuletide, or winter solstice was a convenient time for Christianity to adopt, and claim it as the birth of Christ, because folk celebrated around that time already. Nearly everything in traditional Christmas symbolism represents the ancient folk festival, from trees, mistletoe, even Father Christmas himself!

But the bottom line and most important point is, atheists and people of other religions have absolutely no gripe, issue or even the slightest complaint about Christmas! They embrace it, many celebrate it too, across the entire globe. The idea that someone is attempting to “take Christmas away,” or ban it, is only a rhetoric invented by those wanting to spread hate and prejudice; is that the Christmas message you wish to purvey to others? What happened to joy to the world?!

Bar Humbug, it’s all complete hogwash, but likely the reason for the bitingly bitter comments added to the Gazette’s social media shares; Facebook is a toxic playground for so-called adults. The organisers want to call it the Winter Festival, for whatever reason, and that is their prerogative. No one is stopping you, or are even suggesting stopping you from referring to it as a Christmas Festival, if that’s what you wish to do.

And lastly, no one is forcing you to attend! Probably best you don’t if you’re going to walk around it as grumpy as the Grinch; or this just your Facebook persona? If so, it doesn’t look good on you, nor is it in spirit of the season. Here’s hoping three ghosts will visit you on Christmas Eve!