In the Indigenous Australian culture (ie. the Aboriginal culture), just as in most indigenous cultures, there exist powerful medicine men and women who are the healers and the spiritual “law enforcers” of the community. These Spiritual Masters are commonly referred to as Shamans, however the different tribes also have their own names for these people.
For example, the Western Desert shaman or “Clever Man” is known as Mapantjara (or Mapan for short). He is said to not only be able to cure illness through his mystical powers and his great knowledge of magic, he also can direct his powers to cause sickness and death.
The same is true for the Kurdaitcha, the Shamans of the Arrernte people of Central Australia. They go by many names, however “Feather Foot” is another name for them, referring to the shoes they wear made of woven feathers and human hair and treated with blood. When worn, their footsteps become invisible, allowing the Kurdaitcha to travel far and wide without being seen or tracked.
As with the Mapan, the Kurdaitcha may be brought in to punish a guilty person by death. In fact, I know of someone who lived in a remote indigenous community. He began boasting in some of his conversations that the Kurdaitcha were no match for him. Several days later, he died in a mysterious motorbike accident. Despite him being a very experienced rider, he appeared to have lost control of his motorbike on a remote stretch of road.
One of the ways that the Kurdaitcha cause sickness is through the ritual known as bone-pointing.
When I was in my late teens, I read a book by Arthur W. Upfield called The Bone is Pointed. It was book six in a fiction series involving Aboriginal detective “Bony”, as he solved a murder case.
This was my first exposure to the concept of “bone pointing”. It’s the Indigenous Australian equivalent to voodoo, where a Kurdaitcha points a sharpened bone at the victim and utters a curse. Over the subsequent days or weeks, that person withers away and dies, whilst the doctors are perplexed because they can find no physical reason for that person’s death.
Could this be psychosomatic, where the death happens purely from the belief that they are going to die?
This is definitely within our capacity as superhumans in an earthly body.
In fact, in my snake training I’ve heard of people who were bitten with a “dry” bite from a venomous snake (meaning that the snake bit them but didn’t inject any venom into the wound), yet they’ve still died - not from the venom, because there was none injected, but due to their mind’s conviction that they were going to die, simply because they’d been bitten by a venomous snake.
The following story is mentioned in Wikipedia, regarding the role of the Kurdaitcha in the pointing of the bone:
“In 1953, a dying Aborigine name Kinjika was flown from Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory to a hospital in Darwin. Tests revealed he had not been poisoned, injured, nor was he suffering from any sort of injury. Yet, the man was most definitely dying. After four days of agony spent in the hospital, Kinjika died on the fifth. It was said he died of bone pointing.“
"‘Bone pointing’ is a method of execution used by the Aborigines. It is said to leave no trace, and never fails to kill its victim. The bone used in this curse is made of human, kangaroo, emu or even wood. The shape of the killing-bone, or kundela, varies from tribe to tribe. The lengths can be from six to nine inches. They look like a long needle. At the rounded end, a piece of hair is attached through the hole, and glued into place with a gummy resin. Before it can be used, the kundela is charged with a powerful psychic energy in a ritual that is kept secret from women and those who are not tribe members. To be effective, the ritual must be performed faultlessly. The bone is then given to the kurdaitcha, who are the tribe’s ritual killers.
“These killers then go and hunt (if the person has fled) the condemned. The name, kurdaitcha, comes from the slippers they wear while on the hunt. The slippers are made of cockatoo (or emu) feathers and human hair – they virtually leave no footprints. Also, they wear kangaroo hair, which is stuck to their bodies after they coat themselves in human blood and they also don masks of emu feathers. They hunt in pairs or threes and will pursue their quarry for years if necessary, never giving up until the person has been cursed.
Once the man is caught, one of the kurdaitcha goes down onto one knee and points the kundela.
"The victim is said to be frozen with fear and stays to hear the curse, a brief piercing chant that the kurdaitcha chants. Then, he and his fellow hunters return to the village and the kundela is ritually burned.
“The condemned man may live for several days or even weeks. But he believes so strongly in the curse that has been uttered, that he will surely die. It is said that the ritual loading of the kundela creates a “spear of thought” which pierces the victim when the bone is pointed at him. It is as if an actual spear has been thrust at him and his death is certain.
“Kinjika had been accused of an incestuous relationship…Instead of going to his trial, he fled the village. The hunters found him and cursed him. It is said that is why he died.”
The power of our mind and intention
It’s vitally important to our spiritual path that we understand the immense power that our mind and intention has over our body.
The Kurdaitcha (and indeed many other Shamans from around the world) are masters of this art. They have learned to focus their mind so strongly and so intentionally that it can heal or harm another person.
This same concept is the principle behind any type of remote healing work. Our thoughts and our intentions have the capacity to influence another person’s mind, body and Soul.
Would you like to know how that happens, so that you can use these principles to help and heal, rather than to hurt it?
I’ll be sharing about this topic in next week’s blog. Stay tuned!
