impact on the soul. Even this simple action can have a profound healing effect since it unburdens the soul of its guilt, hence its enduring practice in Catholic confessionals, as well as its modern incarnation in counselling and psychotherapy (“the talking cure”).
Having heard his client, the Sin Eater might then offer advice from ‘the land of the dead’ (the spiritual world) for how these sins could be recompensed. The advice itself was often of a practical nature, the belief being that sins need to be reversed in this lifetime and with action in the world, rather than simple prayer, for example.
The penitent might therefore be advised to make an offering, not to the spirits, but to the person he had harmed. This is a quite different dynamic from the notion of ‘karma’, for example, where our good and bad deeds are weighed in the balance at judgement day and, perhaps, we must return in a new life to atone for our sins. In sin eating practice it is understood that ‘karma’ must be dealt with immediately in the here-and-now since any sin has the power to erode the soul, leading to ill-health and further corruption.
A potion of flowers or plants, as per above, might then be administered to the client in order to balance and soothe the soul. In this way, sin eating – a practice perhaps more than 1000 years old – recognises a mind-body-spirit connection that modern science is only now starting to acknowledge, for the plant medicine itself would work on the troubled body and mind as well as healing the wounds of the soul.
THE ALONENESS OF THE SIN EATER
The most paradoxical aspect of the Sin Eater’s life was his role of being central to the well-being