The Blessing of the Lion A Tale of Traditional Healing in a Rural Village

The incident I am about to tell happened many years ago when I was still a young child. It was a time when people in our village still believed in the supernatural and the power of traditional customs.

Growing up in the countryside, I was no stranger to getting sick. Fortunately, my grandfather used to be a doctor, so he was always able to take care of me whenever I fell ill.

One winter’s night, a pregnant woman in our village was staying at her mother’s house when she suddenly felt intense pain in her stomach. It was clear to her that she was about to give birth. However, in our hometown, there was a traditional custom that married women should not give birth in their mother’s house as it was believed to bring bad luck to the rest of the family.

Her husband had no choice but to take her back to their own home, which was located in our village, about five or six kilometers away. Since they did not have a car, he borrowed a wooden cart and pushed it while his wife sat on it. As they approached the entrance to our village, the woman suddenly cried out in pain, and her husband realized that she could not wait any longer.

In a state of panic, the man ran towards our house because my grandfather was the only doctor in our village at the time. I still remember how loudly he knocked on our door, waking us up in the middle of the night. Grandpa quickly got dressed, and together with the man, they rushed to the pregnant woman’s side.

As they arrived, they saw that the woman’s amniotic fluid had broken, and she was bleeding heavily. Grandpa knew that he needed to act fast, so he delivered the baby right there and then.

The next morning, I woke up with a terrible headache and a high fever. My family thought that I had caught a cold, so they gave me some medicine to help me feel better. However, my condition only worsened, and my grandfather began to suspect that something was not right.

He decided to consult a psychic in our village who told him that I had been possessed by something that he had brought back with him from the outside. The psychic came over to our house and performed an exorcism, but it did not seem to have any effect on me.

It was getting closer to the Chinese New Year, and in our village, there was a tradition of bringing back ‘the Lion’ from the Mountain God temple and holding a lion dance to bless the villagers with happiness and safety in the coming year.

My grandfather came up with the idea of having ‘the Lion’ bless me as a last resort. He believed that if something was placed next to the Gods for a long time, it would absorb some of their good magic.

On the day of the lion dance, a group of people with ‘the Lion’ came to our house. I was lying in bed with my eyes closed, feeling the wind blowing by in front of my forehead. I sensed ‘the Lion’ being lifted and moved before my body from left to right and up and down, and then it went away after the rite.

To everyone’s surprise, I was completely healed the next day. My family believed that it was ‘the Lion’s blessing’ that had cured me. From that day on, they made sure to always have ‘the Lion’ bless our family during the Chinese New Year.

Looking back on that experience, I still wonder what exactly had happened to me that night. Was it really a possession? Or was it something else entirely? I may never know for sure, but one thing is certain – the power of belief is a force to be reckoned with.