Sandalwood oil has a soothing effect on the skin and mucus membranes. The oil is used in treating genito-urinatory disorders. It is also beneficial in the treatment of dysentery. Since time immemorial, women have been applying sandalwood paste on their skin, to tone it. It has a powerful healing action and is one of the best-known antiseptics and germicides. Sandalwood paste is a popular household remedy for prickly heat. It prevents excessive sweating and heals inflamed skin. It has a natural cooling effect and is especially beneficial during summer. Its antiseptic quality helps to treat rashes, spots, acne, blackheads, and other skin eruptions. Its germicidal quality inhibits the growth of bacteria. It has also been found to improve the skin's ability to moisturize itself. It is especially beneficial to oily skins, because it is astringent in nature.

Excellent masks can be used to make with different ingredients and sandalwood. Teenagers can use these masks to treat pimples. Its paste has a soothing effect and helps relieve itching Sandalwood oil is, in fact, used as a fixative in the manufacture of the world's best perfumes. Sandalwood powder along with rose water can be applied to parts of the body where there is profuse sweating. It also softens the skin and helps in the treatment of broken veins; it is said to ease abscesses and sores, and control fluid retention.

Sandalwood has a relaxing effect; its aroma is said to contain sedative and it soothes the nerves. In ancient times, it was used to relieve anxiety, depression, nervous tension and insomnia. In summer, regular application of sandalwood paste on the body, especially children, has a refreshing effect, which heals any tiny infected spots. Sandalwood has been used from time immemorial and is known to be safe. It has shown lack of harmful side-effect or irritation. No wonder it is valuable as a beauty aid and health care product. Sandalwood and its extracts are used in haircare, including treatment of dandruff, for allergies and for treating sore throat, hiccups, nausea, colic etc. The gentle action of sandalwood in the skin, coupled with its antiseptic and germicidal properties, makes it an ideal ingredient for baby care products too.

Thus, sandalwood has a unique aura of magic, mystique and charm, interwoven through centuries of fragrant usage. It is indeed a versatile and valuable tree and part and parcel of our rich medicinal culture and tradition.

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VATICAN CITY - The Vatican weighed in Monday on feng shui, crystals and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius in a new document designed to address whether you can still be a good Christian while taking yoga class.

"A Christian Reflection on the "New Age' " doesn't give many absolute answers. But while saying some positive things about the New Age movement, it warns that New Agers' quest for spirituality and inner peace can't take the place of Christian religion.

And it highlights some core differences between New Age and Christian thought, particularly regarding the concepts of God, Jesus Christ and sin.

While New Agers are waiting for an era when they are "totally in command of the cosmic laws of nature . . . Christians are in a constant state of vigilance, ready for the last days when Christ will come again; their New Age began 2,000 years ago, with Christ," the document said.

The Vatican said the preliminary document was the result of requests by bishops for guidance on determining whether practices embraced by New Agers, including yoga, meditation and healing by crystals, were compatible with Christianity.

The 90-page booklet, which includes a glossary defining terms like "channeling," "karma" and "reincarnation," urges caution.

Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told a news conference many aspects of the New Age movement were viewed positively by the church, such as the importance it places on protecting the environment.

"But if one is brought to this by ascribing "divineness' to the land, that's another thing," he said. "Music that relaxes you is good. But if this music empties prayer, and prayer turns into just listening to music and falling asleep, it's no longer prayer."

The document, which was six years in the making, traces the history of the New Age phenomenon and notes the importance of the 1969 Woodstock festival and the musical "Hair."

It defines "Age of Aquarius" as the astrological age that New Agers believe will usher in an era of harmony, justice and peace.

It lists feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of placing things to ensure a harmonious energy flow, as an "occult" New Age practice that emphasizes "being in tune with nature or the cosmos."

The Indigo Children are supposed to save the world--just like their Boomer parents set out to do.  Some call them "Emissaries from Heaven," others say the "New Kids" or even the "Children of the New Earth." They are best known as the Indigo Children, and I first heard about them last summer, while hanging around the Lily Dale Assembly. Lily Dale, a Spiritualist community founded in the mid-1800s still draws thousands of specter-seeking visitors to its Victorian cottages overlooking scenic Cassadaga Lake an hour's drive from Buffalo, N.Y., where each summer, more than two dozen resident mediums offer private readings, spirituality workshops and healing services. The television psychics James Van Praagh and John Edward, not to mention famous motivational speakers, like Dr. Wayne Dyer, make regular appearances. Edward and Van Praagh's recent popularity has only swelled the crowds.My second night at Lily Dale found me at a "Thought Exchange," an informal meeting held weekly in an octagonal, one-room building called the Medium's League. At the start of the meeting, questions submitted in writing by those gathered are read aloud and discussed by the group. The moderator that night, a thoughtful woman in her early 60s, unfolded a scrap of brown paper and read: "Is the balance towards a positive sustainable future for the human race favorable, or are we to suffer destruction?"

As I tried to unpack the question in my head (I finally settled on, "Is the world going to hell?"), the 15 or so other attendees, mostly middle-aged and elderly Lily Dale year-rounders, nodded. "I'd like to answer first," the moderator said. "Yes, the world is full of terrorism, war, famine, poverty and crime. But I'm very, very optimistic about the future." She paused and smiled. "Because of the Indigo Children."

I looked around to see if anyone else's brow was furrowed in incomprehension. "They're the children of New Age parents," the moderator continued, "and they're smarter, more gifted, and more confident than any previous generation. I know several Indigo Children and they're far more spiritually aware and eloquent than my generation was at their age. They will save the planet!"

To those who believe in them, Indigo Children are everywhere. They are our sons and daughters, children born in the past two decades who exhibit an uncanny transcendence. They are most present in the ranks of children who, according to educators, don't fit in: they are the discipline problems, the Ritalin takers. One expert on the Indigo phenomenon says perhaps the best example of an Indigo child comes from the 1999 horror movie "The Sixth Sense."

In Haley Joel Osment's character, says Doreen Virtue, director M. Night Shamalyan gave us a boy who sees the world as it really is--teeming with spirits and import that adults, jaded and trapped by the mundane mechanics of daily life, can't see. For Virtue, author of "The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children," Osment represents the "special breed of individuals who have come to our planet to bestow us with their gifts." Virtue, who has a doctorate in counseling psychology from California Coast University, told me on the phone recently, "In my opinion, Haley Joel Osment epitomizes what an Indigo Child is."

The concept of spiritually endowed children has attracted a lot of attention since the mid-1980s, when the notion first came up in parapsychologist Nancy Ann Tappe's book, "Understanding Your Life Through Colors." Tappe had developed a system for explaining people's personality profiles according to hue of their auras, the metaphysical glow that our bodies give off and that only gifted psychics can discern. Tappe soon discovered in young children a never-before seen, dark color that she said indicates the presence of a new and exceptional personality type. Virtue's book, as well as Lee Carroll and Jan Tober's two explorations, "An Indigo Celebration," and "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived," have expanded on the idea.

Named for the deep-blue aura they're said to radiate, Indigo Children make up more than 80 percent of the generation that began "appearing on Earth," in Virtue's phrase, in the 1970s. Virtue believes this special breed of young healers and teachers comes from a variety of "realms"--some are reincarnated priests and wizards, some come from far-off solar systems, while others are simply highly evolved humans. They represent a new form of consciousness that will bring about a leap in human evolution, taking us from thinking in three dimensions to four. Among other things, they can see spirits, levitate, bilocate, communicate telepathically, bend time, and "instantly manifest" any spiritual or material need.

They also enjoy the promise of longevity. "Many of them will live to be 300 and even 1,000 years old," Virtue told me. "It's in their spiritual contract." Their mission is "to help usher in the New Age of Peace," Virtue writes in her book. In short, the Indigo Children make Hogwarts look like Ridgemont High.

It's tempting to counter all this talk of transcendence with the observation that a generation deeply wowed by Christina Aguilera is unlikely to change the world. It doesn't take a metaphysicist to explain that the offspring of Baby Boomers, raised on the vocabulary of self-help and New Age thinking, might speak a spiritual language earlier generations didn't. A red flag is the insistence that many problem kids are just Indigos being held in check by pharmaceuticals. All the major news magazines, as well as parents, educators, and social observers, have grappled with the problems facing the Ritalin
generation. Credible thinkers argue that by medicating kids we diagnose as hyperactive we're imposing social norms that repress creativity and personality.

After the Thought Exchange at Lily Dale, I asked two women seated next to me about the Indigos. Many parents, they said, don't understand their children's warrior spirits, and so Indigos are often diagnosed with ADD and medicated with Ritalin. "Indigos are system busters," one of them said. "They don't like authority they can't trust. Unless they're properly nurtured, they may withdraw, or burst into violence." Boomers have always idealized what Rousseau called the "vigor of youth." In an essay in the Tobers' "Indigo Children," visionary and healer Robert Gerard writes, "Indigo Children bring subtle messages that are beyond all our knowing. Take a good look at the children, listen to their message, and go within. This is how they assist us in finding our truth, our purpose, and our peace…. They know exactly what they came to this planet to accomplish."

The Indigos themselves can be equally in thrall to their genius. Writes twenty-something Wunderkind Ryan Maluski, "I always knew I belonged here on Earth, and I always had a deep-seated universal knowledge of how things really work and who I really was. Yet, with grand humor, I chose to grow up with people in situations and places that reflected absolutely none of my sense of self. Can you begin to see the infinite possibilities for fun in this play I chose to come into? … I felt like a king working for a peasant, viewed as a slave."

Virtue's list of 17 Indigo characteristics--strong-willed, creative, bores easily, prone to insomnia--apply to countless people young and old. They are universal human traits documented through the ages in literature from Bible stories and Greek tragedy to Shakespeare's plays. But if 14 of 17 Indigo traits apply to a child, Virtue writes, "then they're most likely Indigos." I quizzed my mother about how as a child I stacked up against the Indigo criteria, and she said I had all but three of the Indigo traits, including "Born in 1978 or later." When I told this to Doreen Virtue, she said that I was probably a "scout"--"someone sent to check out Earth before the big Believers like Virtue have founded special schools for Indigos, as well as a network of summer camps across the country to cater to their heightened awareness. There are international conferences, seminars and online materials for the parents and teachers of Indigos. A line of crystals, Indigo Essences, is designed to help the "new children" stay balanced.

All these resources are there to make sure the Indigos create the New Age of Peace. "The Indigos will get rid of all systems that have no integrity," Virtue told me. "They will use their warrior spirits, combined with their internal truth detectors to banish our existing educational, government, legal, and health-care systems, which do not work. They know how to solve these problems intuitively, because they're working out of their third-eye chakras."

Virtue believes such changes are already afoot, as the Indigos enter adulthood. The real changes, Virtue says, will begin between 2011 and 2013, when the Indigos assume positions of national leadership. Virtue says we now live in the Age of Fear, but as the leader at the Thought Exchange in Lily Dale assured us, our current anxieties are groundless. "The angels tell me we don't need to worry about global warming," Virtue said. "It appears to be a crisis, but it's just part of the divine plane to return us to Eden. The angels show me a future world that is very lush and warm, full of organic tropical fruit." It occurred to me that once the Indigos have ushered in the New Age, there will be no fresh subject matter for authors like Doreen Virtue to tackle. Could there be a forthcoming generation more spiritually advanced than the Indigo Children?

"Oh yes, absolutely," Virtue said. "The Crystal Children are just starting to appear, and they're as pure, as close to being angels, as anything we have on earth. They're very, very happy kids, with none of the Indigos' warrior spirit. They give me even more reason to be optimistic about the future than anything I've researched."

India Tracy came to expect being sent to the principal's office even though she was a well-behaved, straight-A student.

But the Union County youngster knew she'd probably be the only student with "no" written on the permission slip to attend a tent revival during school hours. When she declined to portray Mary in a Christmas play, she also was sent to the principal's office.

India and her parents, Greg and Sarajane Tracy, allege other students taunted her, beat her and ridiculed her religion for years. Fed up with the treatment, her parents filed a federal lawsuit on her behalf Thursday.

The lawsuit claims the Union County school system violated India's civil rights by promoting and endorsing religious activities, denied her right to freely exercise her religion and failed to protect her from harassment and physical and verbal abuse.

The first time the Tracys declined to allow their daughter to attend the two-hour, fundamental Christian services held over three days was in 1999, when she was in the fourth grade. The family had bought 11 acres in Union County because they thought the area was beautiful.

"The principal had called me to the office because mine was the only slip that said no," said India, now 14. "He asked me why I didn't want to go. He asked my religion. I told him I didn't want to talk about it and for him to call my parents." Sarajane Tracy told the principal that she also did not want to discuss religion because she didn't think it belonged in school, she said. The family could be anything - Buddhist, Jewish or Islamic - and it shouldn't matter, she said. The family follows the ancient religious tradition of Paganism, which embraces kinship with nature, positive morality and acknowledges both the female and male side of Deity, according to the Pagan Federation.

India was the only student left in her class during the Area Wide Crusade in April 1999, so her classmates knew she hadn't gone. The crusade was begun in 1998 by a Union County Baptist pastor and is planned for this April as well.

While declining to comment on the lawsuit, school system Director James Pratt said the ministry rents school buses for transporting the students and some teachers act as chaperones but they must use a personal day to do so.

He referred other questions to Nashville attorney Charles Cagle. Cagle declined comment because he had not seen a copy of the lawsuit Thursday afternoon. The name-calling and rumor spreading began soon after the 1999 revival, India and her parents said. Between 1999 and February 2002 when her parents removed her from Horace Maynard Middle School, the lawsuit alleges:

That India was repeatedly called "Satan worshipper," "witch" and other derogatory names. She was accused of eating babies and of being a lesbian because she wasn't a Christian, the lawsuit said.

That India was forced to attend regular Bible study classes during the school day, and urged to lead the school and her class in prayer.

Romanian football chiefs might hire a witch to put a spell on the Danish national team before this week's key Euro 2004 clash. Mircea Sandu, president of the Romanian Football Federation, claims they successfully did the same to Peter Schmeichel in a similar match 14 years ago. Mr Sandu told the Libertatea daily he hired a witch to put a spell on Schmeichel before a game against Denmark in 1989. He said: "The communists threatened the entire federation, including me, with dismissal if we lost the game against Denmark. We hired a witch to put a spell on Schmeichel.

SEATTLE - For almost a century, totem poles stood as silent sentinels in many abandoned villages in the Pacific Northwest. They were a testimony to the art, culture and way of life that were prevalent in the region before smallpox decimated local tribal populations and missionaries ordered totem pole carving stopped because they thought it pagan. The late Haida artist Bill Reid called totem poles "treasures that only great traditions, talents, and sometimes genius, can create."
Today, totem poles have emerged from the silence with resurgence in totem pole carving. Totem poles and other art stolen from villages 100 years ago are being returned amid healing ceremonies and there is a new recognition of the enduring power of totem poles and what they mean. The totem pole’s resurrection is due partly to the work of Reid and photographer Adelaide de Menil, who in the 1960s explored the Pacific Northwest coast from Vancouver Island to Southeast Alaska. They found a silent landscape of ancient villages and decaying poles and started recording the art of cultures they feared were dying.

Their record was published as a book, "Out of the Silence," in 1971. An exhibit based on the book, "Out of the Silence: The Enduring Power of Totem Poles," will be featured at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, at the University of Washington in Seattle through Sept. 1. The exhibit is rich in mural-size photographs, video, personal stories, history and artifacts. It details the past, present and future of totem poles in the Coast Salish, Haida, Kitkatla, Kwakwaka’wakw, Makah, Nuu-chah-nulth, Tlingit and Tsimshian nations.
Significance of totem poles - "Out of the Silence" tells the story of a culturally significant art form that survived despite centuries of theft, population decline and attempts to eradicate it. Totem poles were carved to tell the stories of families, villages and people. Some poles were created to honor family members; some held the remains of chiefs. Other were carved and erected as signs of welcome. On Haida Gwaii (Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands), among the Haida people, thick cedar poles were carved to depict animals and figures that represented families and family history. Among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of coastal British Columbia, the thunderbird with outstretched wings was a prominent fixture on totem poles. The style was widely imitated and by the late 1800s had become the icon of Native peoples recognized around the world. Artists of Puget Sound, among the Coast Salish people carved images representing ancestors or personal spirit helpers. These figures stood outdoors as grave monuments or inside as interior house posts. Over the next century, very few survived.

From icons to objects of desire - In 1774, voyagers from the outside world first met Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest and were introduced to their art. At the time, Northwest arts and cultures were unknown to Europeans and European-Americans, according to Bill Holm, curator emeritus of Northwest Coast Indian Art. Totem poles and other carvings soon became objects of desire. In 1899, railroad magnate E.H. Harriman led a totem pole hunt in Alaska’s Cape Fox, near Ketchikan. Harriman left with grizzly bear house posts that were not purchased. In August that year, a group of Seattle businessmen went on a totem pole hunt in an abandoned Tlingit village in Tongass, near Ketchikan. A totem pole stolen from the village was erected with great fanfare in what is now Pioneer Square in Seattle. One display in the current exhibit is a carved sea lion that was stolen from the roof ridge of a village home during the August 1899 artifact hunt. The theft of the sea lion - but, curiously, not the pole - caused some public outrage in Seattle. As a result, the businessmen raised $500 but sent it to the wrong village - the Tsimshian village in Metlakatla. The Tongass people were never compensated.

Rebirth of an ancient art - In the early 1900s, a few Salish carvers began carving multiple figure poles with Salish stories, an expansion from their traditional single-figure carvings. It created a new tradition in Salish art. In 1933, Chief William Shelton of the Snohomish tribe was commissioned to carve a pole for the state capitol grounds in Olympia. The pole symbolizes the peace that existed between Native Americans and settlers since the 1854 treaties between the Washington Territory and Northwest tribal government. After the end of World War II, Tsimshian artist Casper Mather carved a pole depicting and honoring Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. The 1960s, however, marked the beginning of a surge in totem pole carving.In 1969, Haida artist Robert Davidson carved a new pole and raised it in Old Masett, one of two occupied villages in Haida Gwaii. Since 1969, seven poles have been raised in Masett.Decaying totem poles have been recently researched and replicated by Steve Brown of the Northwest Native Arts School and Tlingit carvers Will Burkhardt Jr., Nathan Jackson, Wayne Price and Israel Shotridge.In 1998, the David family (Nuu-chah-nulth) raised a traditional pole to honor their late parents, Hyacinth and Winifred, on Blake Island in Puget Sound.A year later, artist and dancer Joe David - son of Hyacinth and Winifred - carved a pole to honor the successful campaign to prevent clear-cutting of his native Meares Island, B.C .That same year, Jim Hart raised a pole in Masett, Haida Gwaii, when he took the place of his uncle, Morris White and became Chief 7IDansuu. In 2001, six new poles were erected near Skidegate at Qay ’llnagaay, site of a planned heritage center in Haida Gwaii. Each pole represents a village devastated by smallpox in 1860s. In August 2002, carvers from the Lummi Nation made a healing totem pole to help the U.S. share the burden of grief after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The carvers took the pole across the country with ceremonial stops along the way to seek healing prayers, blessings and songs of elders from at least 25 tribes. The pole was then given to the families of victims.

Healing and forgiveness - Several efforts have been or will be undertaken to heal wounds from the past. In July 2001, Smith College and Kitty Freedman - a great-great-granddaughter of E.H. Harriman - returned the grizzly bear house posts to the Tlingit people in Ketchikan. The event was followed by an emotional healing ceremony.At the end of the "Out of the Silence" exhibit, the Burke Museum will return the carved sea lion to the Tlingit people of Tongass - known as Taantakwaan, or sea lion people. The Museum had asked for permission to include it in the exhibit.

Johannesburg - The South African pagan community has hit back after reports earlier this week that a "witches Mecca" was operating on the Gauteng West Rand, with hundreds of school pupils involved in Satanism. The report quoted self-professed occult expert Dr Kobus Jonker, who said there were an estimated 62 000 Satanists in South Africa, 80% of whom were under 18.

South African Pagan Federation president the Rev Norman Geldenhuys responded: "The figure of 62 000 is ludicrous. "The Christian definition of Satanism is loaded, in that it classifies all other practicing religious groups (with the possible exception of Jews and Muslims) as Satanists. "There are about 50 000 practicing pagans in South Africa, which includes the Shaman, Druid, Asatru and Wiccan beliefs." The report quoted a local counselor, Hennie Brits, who said that the youngest "witch" he'd met was 12 years old.

Blood sacrifices are out Geldenhuys responded: "There is no doubt that occult practices are attractive to youngsters, but our groups do not take on members under 18.

"We do get requests from under-18s wanting to start covens, but this is largely due to the popularity of shows such as Charmed and Buffy." Geldenhuys said he was aware of a "satanic cell" operating in the Edenvale area, but this was a closed community not open to the public, and who "definitely don't take on children".

Responding to Dr Jonker's statement that about 14 people are killed in satanic sacrifices each year, Geldenhuys said: "None of the pagan religions practice blood sacrifices.

"This may have formed the basis of many early religions, including Christianity, but neo-pagans revere life, and sacrifice would be against our ethics.

"I'm willing to accept 14 satanic deaths a year as a possible worldwide figure, but I only know of one proven satanic murder in South Africa."

"As far as reports of sex orgies are concerned," added Geldenhuys, "I've been in the game for 28 years, and I'm not averse to being a little naughty, but I haven't found one (orgy) yet."