ole jotenkin luonnollista, ettei jumala ole valloittanut maailmaa
ei tassa byrokratiassa ole tilaa
But the sustenance that God needs isn’t just spiritual but material also, and it consists of human lives, and the souls that are intertwined with those lives, or bodies.
God is vampiric in a sense. He (or It) feeds off humankind, draining away lives and ultimately the souls that animate those lives.
The program includes a background check, a scan of electrical activity in the brain and a committee review of the results. The agency charges applicants 10,000 rubles ($428) for the tests.
How the mind works for the holydays
Andrei Karpeev, director of the Federal Scientific Clinical Center for Traditional Methods of Diagnostics and Healing, which administers the tests, insists that folk medicine, including psychic healing, is backed by scientific studies. While he acknowledges some of the criteria for determining who has healing powers are subjective, he claims the tests are able to wean out "charlatans." According to Karpeev, there are perhaps 100,000 people in Russia offering to use magic, psychic or other extra-sensory methods to cure illnesses, read minds or cast spells.
Faith in magic and the occult lingered for centuries in Russia, long after the Renaissance, with its emphasis on rationalism and empiricism, weakened similar beliefs in Western Europe.
Russia is among a small number of nations where traditional healers are licensed at any level.
