'The Cure'

On rituals, belief and family folklore

Chloe is on my bed telling me about a cousin in Ireland whose warts disappeared because her aunt’s friend knew a guy. This guy had the cure. They’d tried everything; creams, pills, freezing, private treatments but nothing worked. But then this man, the seventh son of a seventh son, drew some crosses on her with his finger and three weeks later the warts were gone. Not a trace.

This hasn’t left my mind since. I’ve spent hours poring over accounts written by people who have received ‘the cure’ and even by those who say they are indeed the sixth daughter or seventh son and have the cure. The one I read didn’t even sound like she had a Jesus complex either. Her tone was that of a normie who just happened to know she could help you out if you ever found yourself with a blood clot.

I’m not sure I’d say I’m superstitious. Although saying that, I now remember that as a child I had a phase where I would never be found walking over any cracks or under any scaffolding (I still hate doing this) and I had a few years of what was most likely OCD; light switch flipping, certain numbers of taps or steps before I could leave or enter a room, go to bed, get up, et cetera.

When my dad was living his previous life, aka the life he had before I was born, he lived for a time with my half siblings and his ex-wife in Lord Lucan’s house. Yes, that Lord Lucan who murdered his children’s nanny and was never seen again. My dad’s sister Pam, who lived in Hollywood with her composer husband Jock, would visit when in London. I do not have the fondest memories of auntie Pam (she was very much from the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard generation) but I have a distinct memory that she’d said the house had been haunted. Pam was the absolute opposite of someone you might find telling ghost stories with a torch under her chin which is why it stuck with me so much. But there she was, recounting her stays in the guest room, when the heavy door would swing open night upon night, no matter how many heavier things she lent against it.

The spare room was the nannies room. The nanny who had been killed by Lord Lucan, supposedly mistaken for his wife. I won’t tell you the ins and outs of the tragic story, there is Wikipedia for that (and a documentary that I’m yet to watch) but these are the stories that pervaded my childhood, that I grew up slightly haunted by myself. The blood on the walls. The vicar who came to bless the house before they moved in (and who coincidentally came to marry my parents many years later). My own family folklore.

I look up and find that there is a whole reddit thread about people in Ireland who have visited those purported to have the cure. They recount stories of a wet coin placed on a boil and kept under a pillow, slices of potato being put on the body which then have to be buried in the garden, even hilariously, a small calf being brought in to walk on a patients back. A few cite still living with the ailments they went to have healed but the vast majority say, although they were / still are skeptical, the cure really was their cure.

At the weekend I stood on a beach in Margate, on the night of Samhain, opposite Charlotte Church as she led us in a sonic meditation while a death doula summoned the elements and we all looked to a veil flapping in the wind that represented the door between our world and the next where our ancestors are. I thought of my dad. I thought of my grandma and my brother J too. I could hear some of the onlookers tittering behind their pagan masks as a voice travelled over the sounds of the waves calling in the wind and the rain.

I felt a hint of British awkwardness but as a friend made conversation I really was focused on bringing my father, brother and grandmother to mind, to speak to them while the veil was at its thinnest, to ask them for guidance, to say hey, I miss you, what is it like up / down / over there. I can’t tell you that I felt them speaking back, but that might have more to do with the couple of glasses of Prosecco I’d had on arrival to the seaside town and less to do with whether or not I believe they could in fact communicate with me, send signs or be listening over the din of waves and distant fireworks.

The ritual in Margate stirred something in me. As did Chloe sitting on my bed recounting the story of her cousin. As has for many years, the image of a vicar moving through the rooms of my dads newly purchased house whispering blessings (or incantations) to ward off any ghosts. I also now have a deep, deep desire to book a trip to Ireland and visit a seventh son of a seventh son or a sixth daughter of a sixth daughter and see if one of them might have a cure for rheumatological diseases. I will bury an inordinate amount of potato slices in my garden and sleep with enough coins under my pillow as to call it a small fortune, if in three weeks time I could no longer feel pain and inflammation in my right wrist, and know that no matter how cold and wet this winter gets, I won’t be on the verge of a debilitating flare.

Do you pray to your ancestors? Talk to them at least? I recently got to making a small altar to my dad. Just a few pictures, small trinkets I’ve kept. Whenever I’m out and a robin comes close I always think dad is near. He’s visiting. Letting me know I’m not alone. I’m not even saying that in a sentimental way. I truly believe it.

In the Reddit comments about the cure, some say they’re dubious despite it having worked for them. That they’re sure it was a placebo. That they were also taking traditional medicine so maybe it was just a timing thing. But I sense a hint of belief in there too. A sort of: I have to say this otherwise I sound crazy but my shingles really did go away after burying that peel.

There’s a kind of surrender in that. To try so hard for so long and for nothing to have worked that you find yourself driving hours into rural Ireland to visit a friend of a friends uncle who then spits on you ceremoniously. And actually that is the moment everything begins to turn and you’re finally better. Healed. Cured.

Are rituals then a kind of surrendering? Surrendering to the inevitability of death. To the elements and all they bring with them. To the passing of time. To the ancestors who have passed, knowing eventually we’ll be joining them. Is it actually spitting or is it just hope?

I have friends who would say I’m woo-woo. And other friends who would say I’m not woo-woo enough. Like I can tell you I’m a triple Aries (I know) but have no idea what that means (so I actually don’t know). And I’m pretty sure I’m right with that but my mum doesn’t remember the exact time I was born. It is more a ball park figure situation. A few years back I dated a guy who I later came to realise deeply believed in conspiracy theories. He genuinely once stopped me in the road on a Saturday morning when I was singing Beyonce at the top of my lungs and said, stop! she’s actually a lizard you know. The relationship didn’t last the weekend. But tying string onto a piece of rope and visualising my dead family? That I can get on board with.

Isn’t it so human to want to hand over our pain for a while, even if it involves a calf walking on your back or a licked coin pressed onto your cheek? To believe someone has the key (or in this case the cure) when we have run out of doors and solutions. Isn’t it the magic of life to stand on a beach with masked strangers, a raging bonfire licking a star-full sky. Singing together, remembering our loves, our griefs, then all running at the sea just to scream in unison?

Skepticism, longing, doubt, hope and belief I’ve realised, can all co-exist, as they do within me. As long as it doesn’t involve calling people lizards. I can make altars to ancestors but hesitate over my rising sign and have secretly not identified with any Aries qualities for 30 years until one day I thought, okay then - maybe I am a natural born leader. I have long left my pavement-crack skipping behind but I’m more sure than ever that I need to plan a visit to Ireland. Even if the cure is largely about belief.

In the best Christmas Movie of all time that I used to watch with my dad; ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ Kris Kringle says “If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.” And as we move into winter, a season whose folklore centres on miracles and magic, maybe it’s the perfect time to surrender.