Theresa Cheung - The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World - The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal

It is thought that blocked energy which is not cleared can lead to serious consequences, affecting your mental, physical and spiritual health, and impeding your spiritual and psychicdevelopment.

See Energy balancing.

In Buddhism, the bodhisattva is an enlightened being who instead of going straight to nirvana- and not being reborn -decides to delay eternal bliss in order to help others on the path.

The concept of a bodhisattva can be used to describe anyone who is dedicated to compassion and the greater good. In many ways it could be said there is a bodhisattva nature in every one of us.

The ability to look psychically into and around a human body in order to determine the person’s heath and state of mind. Body scanning can be experienced through any of the five senses.

A medical intuitivecan psychically read a body and come up with a diagnosis in actual medical terms. Each intuitive works differently, for example, some read auraswhile others read energetically the insides (organs, blood, glands) of our insides. Intuited information can then be provided to the client’s medical doctor and/or health care professional for further evaluation and discussion of possible treatments. Many medical intuitives work with, or are, medical doctors themselves.

Alternative medicinetherapies that take into account the role of the mind and emotions in physical health and look especially at how the body interacts with the environment and universal life energies.

There are many types of bodywork therapies, involving manipulation, massage, movement, breathing, energy balancingand energy transfer. All these therapies assume the existence of a universal life forceand the ability of the body to self-heal when therapy stimulates that life force.

See: Acupuncture, Acupressure, Bioener-getics, Energy balancing, Massage, Reflexology, Reiki, Shiatsu, Therapeutic touch.

Also referred to as the bogeyman in British folklore, this is said to be an evil spiritwho loves to cause trouble. The bogey is believed to travel alone or in groups, and in some instances they are synonymous with the devil. Usually the bogey is described as big and nasty and for years the threat of calling upon the bogeyman was used by parents to frighten children into good behaviour.

The precise origins of the bogeyman legend are unknown but it is possible that it came from the old Central European gods. The Slavic for god is ‘bog’ and after Christianity came to Central Europe and made its way to the British Isles, many of the deities in the old religions became transformed into evil spirits. It is possible that the gods of pre-Christian Britain became known as these horrible, frightening beings - bogs, bogeys, boggles or boggarts.

The boggart is a type of bogey hobgoblin in British folklore with poltergeistcharacteristics. A boggart is said to be helpful, but most of the time it is devious and frightening, never appearing but playing tricks on people, such as knocking books off shelves or tripping people up. It is also thought to punch, scratch and kick. In parts of Yorkshire the threat of being thrown into the ‘baggart hole’ is still used today by parents if their children aren’t behaving.

Anne Boleyn was the second wife of Henry VIII, and their marriage changed the course of English history. Her larger-than-life story is matched by the many sightings of her ghostsince her death.

Besotted with the beautiful Anne, Henry asked the Catholic Church for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The Church refused, so in order to marry Anne, Henry created a reformed version of the church, making himself the head - a direct challenge to the authority of the Pope. Having obtained his divorce and married Anne, Henry was determined to have a son, but Anne gave birth to a girl, Elizabeth, in 1533, and from then on the relationship between Anne and Henry deteriorated. Henry found a new love interest in Jane Seymour. Anne became pregnant again, but the child was stillborn. Henry, determined to rid himself of Anne, fabricated a charge of treason and confined her to the Tower of London. Her execution took place on 19 May 1536.

Anne Boleyn is reputed to haunt Hampton Court- along with many of Henry’s other five wives - and the Tower of Londonwhere she was executed. Predictably, she has been seen there as a headless female figure near the Queen’s House, where she was confined prior to her execution. At Blickling Hall in Norfolk, Anne’s family home, there have been sightings of a headless young woman riding a horse and carrying a severed head on her lap, typically on the anniversary of her death. Anne has also been sighted in the Hall’s corridors. An administrator reported seeing a woman walking down towards the lake wearing an old grey gown with a white lace collar and cap. He thought she was either lost or trespassing and went out to ask if she was looking for someone. The woman replied, ‘That for which I seek has long since gone.’ Then, in a moment, she disappeared.

Born in Wiltshire, England, in 1864, Frederick Bligh Bond became a well-known author, editor, architect and archaeologist. Considered to be the pioneer of ‘psychic questing’, he was regarded as exceptionally talented but ‘irascible, eccentric, difficult to work with, moody and confrontational’ by his colleagues. He had a deep interest in all things psychic, occultand esoteric, and his work involved analysing medieval woodwork and construction techniques.

In 1908 Bond was commissioned to excavate the ruins of GlastonburyAbbey, burial place of three kings of England and reputed to have connections to the legendary King Arthur and the Holy Grail. It was while working on this project that Bond claimed to have been in communication with spirit monks, called the Watchers, who once had lived at Glastonbury. The Watchers established regular communications with Bond and allegedly penned messages to Bond in a curious mixture of Old English and rudimentary Latin, giving clues to the hidden history of Glastonbury Abbey and insights into the building’s original design and architecture. In all, these communications gave a startling insight into everyday life within the abbey and a glimpse back into the medieval world.

Bond’s claim to have psychic guidance from spiritsdrew sharp criticism from his conventional colleagues in both the fields of archaeology and architecture. But his communications with the ghostly monks won him the support of members of the British Society for Psychical Research. In 1918 he published The Gate of Remembrance, a collection of transcripts and reports from his automatic writingsessions, and it sealed his fate by firmly undermining his reputation as a professional once and for all. However, Bond’s enthusiasm for his interaction with the ghosts of Glastonbury Abbey prompted him to follow up his book with The Hill of Vision, in which he revealed allegedly prophetic warnings given to him by the spectral monks, including a prediction of World War I.

Despite great success in locating unknown and little-known structures, Bond was gradually pushed out of his work at Glastonbury. It would be easy to say that this was due to his psychic work, but it may simply have had to do with the fact that he was vain and arrogant and made a lot of enemies along the way. He was an amateur archaeologist at a time when the field was professionalized, and his refusal to follow a systematic plan of excavations laid down by professionals was bound to create tension. By 1921 he was reduced to cleaning the artefacts he had found, and by 1922 he was asked to leave Glastonbury.