Casting smells seems to be more effective than casting smells. Reiki? Open minded about it. Do have some remedial massage every now and then the practitioner does use some Reiki. She is excellent but think it's the massage that does the trick. Perhaps the Reiki may make her feel good. Can't stand the hokus pokus associated with it but thankfully she utters not a word about it.

I don't know what Reiki is but they just opened up a Reiki studio here in Vegas with a Reiko master is said you can learn Magic healing

I practice both Reiki and magic yet I dabble with a lot of things that some magic user's say you shouldn't unless you have a lot of experience. Just because someone calls them self something doesn't really mean that's what they really are and most magic user's don't believe in God or God's and goddesses let alone deities yet they do believe in supernatural powers that we as living being can poses and use as long as we give back what we take from the plants or universe. Healing to be honest is something that can be done no matter what as long as you are using health and nontoxic product. I understand where you are coming from and why you probably have doubt in magic or Reiki yet to truthfully understand them is to except the unknown and allow you mind to be free of all nonsense that we all have been taught that makes us skeptical about anything and then only then can we see the true powers of them both. Yes some magic user's pray just like Reiki practitioners and many other people of different religion's not all do though.

more crap

I don't know. To me, this isn't really any sort of point of contention. My Ex-Wife used to be what she called a "spiritualist", she would cast white magic spells, burn herbs, etc. I never really bought into any of that, she even told stories of putting her hands on a glass table and cold, blue fire appearing around her palms. I never bought into that. She later became a Christian and denounced all of that which was the beginning of the end of us, among other things of course. I have to agree that all of that magic serves no other purpose than to provide some kind of comfort and provides no more of a chance of working than random chance. Just the same as prayer (which actually has less of a chance of working for anyone).

I actually believe in reiki..it is a natural meditation type of medicine....
And although I am self taught I am a natural master of it...we all have the energy to heal

It's all the appeal to superstition or the supernatural and so not proven to be true. The law of large numbers proves that I can say, today, that I pray/cast a spell so that an earthquake will occur and disrupt the life of my enemy, and there will be, so long as I wait for the event and then connect some dots.

Belief is powerful though, there are people who actually had heart attacks because they believed there was a voodoo spell put on them and they were going to die. So true enough that what we believe affects us. Reiki is supposed to be about energy I think right? There's some belief in psychic forces. I don't know I believe there is stuff we don't know for sure. I think that focusing on images that relax you or are beautiful to you can affect you too. At least it was just asking a question and not insisting that you believe in something.

I had to Google Reiki and it came back with no fewer than a dozen places in my immediate area that pull that scam.

Reiki can "work" in the sense that it's very nice to have someone touching your body in a non-sexual way (not to say I don't enjoy being touched in a sexual way if that's the context) but as for it healing anything, nup, don't believe it.

There's also a lot of crap associated with it: I did part of a 2 1/2 day course many years back with some female guru from the usa and should've walked out & demanded a refund when the first thing we were told (not asked, TOLD) to do was to hug the person next to you. I love hugs but not with total strangers. Then there was a whole lot of rubbish from Louise L Hay (the "You can heal your life rip off merchant). This was the Friday night intro session: next morning we were asked to comment on anything which had "come up" overnight: I said I had some doubts about Reiki but still wanted to continue and the guru commented pontifically that Reiki often brings out the witchiness in some people. I had to ask three times what she meant before one of her disciples explained she meant "bitchy" - apparently because I'd asked a question? or because I'd expressed doubts?

Anyway, after the end of that day I didn't go back, especially after I found that initiation consisted of going into a darkened room and being licked on the forehead by the guru ..... something very nearly "came up" then, I can tell you!

I had another go a few years later at a Reiki weekend set up by a Melbourne woman specifically for women who'd survived child sexual assuault refused to go into the darkened room when I discovered it was some bloke doing the forehead licking ...... I confronted her about how totally insenstiive this was and she took it on and gave a public commitment to the gathering not do do that in the futuree.

I've had one more reiki session, a freebie from a lovely local woman, shortly after I'd been raped and I did find it helpful because it allowed me to cry in a safe environment. Other than that, I think it's rubbish.

Oh, just remembered I also had issues with the concept years ago that the process could only be passed on by a "master" for lots of $ and couldn't be written down, but that rule has obviously either gone by the board or is now disobeyed because I've seen books on the subject.

As for spells, no of course they don't work!

I would say that its works only in that self serving bias, placebo effect, and confirmation bias are things. The religious may not even realize that there are sociological and psychological phenomena that are affecting their recovery. Interdisciplinary treatment is actually taking advantage of this interaction in a more scientific manner.

Magic isn't real.