Shamanism is the oldest form of religion. The belief is that there is one Supreme Being and that all is derived from this and is interrelated. In Europe, Shamanic practitioners were persecuted as witches in the name of orthodox religion.
As with all religions, there is the upside and there is the downside. The downside of the Judeo-Christian tradition is Satanism, which corrupts this tradition as well as Western European Shamanism, also called Witchcraft, Paganism and Wicca. The downside of PowWow is a corruption by practitioners, Hexmeisters, who would cast hexes on anyone for a price. Even the police feared them. These German immigrants came to Pennsylvania during the late 1800s. Unlike the PowWows, who were mainly of the peasant class and came here for religious freedom, these newcomers were of the middle and upper classes. There was, at the time, a revival of occultism in Europe, some of which was Satanic. It was this influence they brought with them. This wave of immigrants is the Pennsylvania Germans. The first wave is the Pennsylvania Dutch.
In the 1920s, the Dutch Country of Pennsylvania was an eclectic mix of those who practiced the Witcherie, wannabes, never weres and never would be's who know little of the Dutch and Germanic practices and made up their own practices as they went along, and the Gypsies who lived with mainstream society.
John Blymire was born in York County, 1895, into this world of witchcraft, magick and superstition. His father and grandfather were PowWows. He inherited their healing abilities, but, not the strength of their skills.
When Blymire was five, he suffered from the opnema, a wasting away of the body that was believed to be caused by hexes, but was usually caused by malnutrition. Neither his grandfather nor father could cure him, so they took him to a powerful PowWow, a taciturn giant of a man, Nelson Rehmeyer who cured him. When the boy was ten, Blymire worked for Rehmeyer, digging up potatoes.
At age seven, Blymire "tried for" his first cure and was successful. He was of limited intelligence, homely and only modestly successful as a PowWow. People avoided him, except when they needed his PowWowing. He was lonely.
