No resting on laurels for a stone healer who keeps looking on the bright side, observes Gamal Nkrumah "One can put a price on gold, but jade is priceless" -- Chinese proverb If you ever find yourself sitting next to Virgiliya Erfan at the bar in Deals in Zamalek, there is one question you might ask with a whisper and an inquiring smile that will either ignite her into a fulminating rage or stifle her into a smoking depression. A stone, an amethyst says, can arrest your cell repair system from packing up in late middle age. An amethyst can multiply a healthy lifespan as much as fivefold, and can stop a diabetic bleeding to death if injured. Virgiliya can come across as a clear-sighted scientific hard-nut with a tight focus on curative stones. At other times she exudes the charms of a dreamy voyeur or a diviner deciphering the hieroglyphs of her crystal ball. She speaks incessantly about the healing properties of the various stones. Take the power of amethyst, for instance. She has a spell-binding method, a procedure, of drawing it out pure and glistening deep from within her discernment, her very consciousness. You may not know her name, but Virgiliya has been plying the Nile aboard the luxurious cruiser Alexander the Great for over two decades. She was a dancer and now, finally she is standing to be counted. Not as a performing artist, but as a healer. A basic rule of a diviner�'s survival is the more extreme the healer�'s image, the better their medicine has to be. She grew up in Communist-era Bulgaria where queues for food and basic commodities were a dreary facet of everyday life. Religious beliefs of any kind were discouraged. Miracle healers and clairvoyants were dismissed as charlatans. Yet she was attracted to people, particularly women, whom she sensed had psychic powers. Certain of those clairvoyants inspired Virgiliya but she never quite learned the tricks of their trade. Picking up the mystical trail wasn�'t easy. Virgiliya has put a daring spin on stones. She could never be a dutiful stay-at-home wife. She abandoned her Egyptian husband and her son Sherif whom she adores and sees regularly. "My son is quite dark, you know, and once during a trip to Bulgaria I took him along. A friend of mine had a restaurant and I decided to drop in. She didn�'t realise that Sherif was my son and so she wouldn�'t permit him to enter the toilet. She thought he was a gypsy. It was then that I understood that Egypt was my home and that I could never go back to my native Bulgaria." Virgiliya is not quite crazed in that rough-textured 1960s sense. Even though her first husband, now deceased, was several years her senior and she suspects was a KGB agent, she reckons that he was a decent chap who taught her a great deal. He died a long time ago and was, off the face of it, a harmless chap. "Actually, he approved of my second marriage. He told me �ê�Virgiliya, this is a good man, marry him.�'" There are many more startling links in her life, and even though her career moved off across the globe as a dancer, a nightclub performer and finally tourism, she describes herself as a devoted hobbyist who amasses a great number of stones. "Sapphire stimulates concentration and bestows an indescribable peace of mind," she livens up. As an Archer, Sagittarius is her Sun sign, sapphires are especially potent. "Sapphires are effective for Virgoans and Librans, too." The ardent amasser works her stones into indescribably attractive appurtenances and accessories -- broaches, bracelets, ear-rings, necklaces and much more. What remains of her artefacts is no less important for being intangible -- it is the curative force of her curios. "The key point here is communication for it is not power, per se. Carnelian combats mood swings and emotional negativity that Cancerians, Leos and Virgoans are particularly prone to. Carnelian also stimulates sexuality and boosts fertility and fights arthritis and rheumatism." The detoxifying properties of emeralds are proverbial. "Emeralds are known to cure diabetes and ease muscular tensions and cramps as well as neuralgia." So, to the big question: semi-precious stones -- relevant in today�'s world or a relic of a mystical past? To the ancient Egyptians and the earliest civilised peoples of Mesopotamia -- the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians, Lapis Lazuli was a sacred stone. According to Virgiliya, Lapis Lazuli lowers blood pressure, purifies the blood, improves the circulatory system and boosts the immune system, too. It acts as an anti-inflammatory tonic and helps people overcome depression, and it alleviates insomnia and vertigo. "Lapis Lazuli is also important for the proper functioning of the nervous and respiratory systems. Singers swear that it strengthens their vocal chords," Virgiliya assures me. It is the highest compliment a patient can pay to his or her healer. Ruby imparts potency and vigour, especially sexual prowess and overcomes exhaustion and lethargy. Rubies detoxify and stimulate the spleen and reproductive organs. I reflect how well Virgiliya fits in Zamalek, the Cairene island suburb inhabited by expatriates and eccentric Egyptian artists who turned to art and created magical traditions in the course of a sentence or phrase. Virgiliya�'s mind wanders, roaming aimlessly when away from the comforts of her healing stones. When younger she had this irrepressible desire for moving on, she suffered from having wanderlust. "That was then, a long time ago. Now I am at home, at ease with myself," she muses. Funnily enough, she does not impart all the secrets of her success. "I cannot explain it all," she smiles mischievously. Everything is slightly skewed. Some customers are partial to the glassy, shiny, trashy trinkets. "I like the fact that my most loyal customers are the opposite of that." She takes her vocation seriously. It is not remotely trivial. It is dead serious. At first it was fiendishly tricky to design and assemble stones like agate, amethyst, jade, jasper and carnelian. Amber is appreciated in this part of the world. The Arabs as well as the ancient Germanic tribes of Eurasia and the Baltic rim countries, Celts and Goths treasured amber. "Amber is a fossilised resin; it is not really a stone. It treats throat and bladder infections, soothes teething babies and draws pain and disease out of the body -- especially liver ailments, kidney complaints and stomach ulcers." Inlaid precious gems are considered some of the most powerful and mystical materials used in medicine in a number of traditional cultures. The sheen, luminescence and durability of certain stones have long been associated with their healing properties. The Spanish Conquistadors noticed that Native Americans wore waist bands made of jade because they believed that the stone healed kidney disorders. Piedra de los ri��ones, stone of the kidneys, or piedra de ijada, stone of the loins, from which the English word jade is derived, is believed to cure renal ailments. Stones, precious and semi-precious, have been worked since time immemorial and at least since Neolithic times. Such stones were never merely valued for their aesthetic appeal, but were also appreciated for their presumed medical properties. Amulets and sacred objects conveying religious imagery, necklaces, earrings and bracelets are magical feats of technical virtuosity. Virgiliya exhibits her own unique artistic expressions and draws inspiration from her training as a geologist. Geology has provided humanity with a rich variety of semi-precious stones and generations of medical practitioners and traditional diviners discovered the healing properties of the different stones. Virgiliya has been calling the shots from the start. She quickly disposes of most of the touted remedies. She claims she has magical medicaments for tired males. Her remedies are not herbs, useless infusions or ointments but stones, and not necessarily precious ones. "It is by touching the stones, rubbing or stroking them as they release their unique chemical properties that the healing process takes place." Turquoise, Virgiliya assures us, is a sure cure for asthma. It is a healing elixir for respiratory disorders. It also helps with headaches and ear infections. What is most intriguing about Virgiliya�'s healing powers, her transfixing impersonation of the Vachita, the witch of ancient Slavic and Bulgarian legends, is that she has a kind of parallel knowledge of nature. Stones have been used and valued highly in the world for much of humanity�'s recorded history. Semi-precious stones have been an important part of personal adornment and identity in most cultures for millennia. Virgiliya danced in Australia and she pranced in Japan, and she adores the outback as much as she does the Kabuki. India, she didn�'t like. She searched in vain for spirituality there and she only went because a close friend needed her support and she had to accompany her to an ashram. When Virgiliya takes an age responding to a question and that on the rarest of occasions, it�'s because she is trying to say something she hasn�'t said before. As a public performer, she is always conscious of her dramatic impact on her patients, on people she comes across in general. Not that she particularly cares what they think about her. Evidence of this prevarication is everywhere in her life and her conversation. No wonder Virgiliya polices so carefully the parameters of her conversation. She takes herself to the edge of privacy and then gestures to me to switch off the tape before she divulges anything further. Off the record, she discloses some of the secrets of how stones heal. There is a serious point, too. "You know, at different stages in our lives we are attracted to different colours and different textures. Accordingly, we need different stones at different stages in our lives." She particularly takes offence at the suggestion that she is some sort of charlatan. "I regret nothing. I had a full life and now I am content as an artist and a healer." Energy is a word she uses a lot. "For me, life has been very educational as well as enjoyable. I dwell on positive energy." A sorceress she doesn�'t in the least mind.
