Dead Doctors: The Healing Spirits who Guide and Regenerate the Living

This is a 120-minute intermediate level lecture, located in The Pickman Room (second floor)

Those who have led heroic lives dedicated to the afflicted join the ranks of the Mighty Dead where they continue their healing vocation via the advice, treatment and mentoring given to individuals who reach out to them. We will review basic methods to nourish these spirit relationships; these spirits are by their nature extremely approachable and welcoming. Using examples of powerful healers from antiquity to the current era, we will consider the following luminaries:

• Imhotep - the first named physician and his Greco-Egyptian temples

• Asclepius and Hygieia/Salus - with healing shrines that endured for more than 800 years, their cures centered on the practice of dream incubation

• Cosmas and Damian - the first doctor saints, famed for providing free medical care for all, popular from the Byzantine era and into today and their notable forms of…