Responding to Tragedy With Paganism

I'm sorry, but I find this pretty laughable:

The minister and the spiritual counselor stepped carefully over the broken floor tiles at Salon Meritage on Wednesday.

Using a feather to spread the scent of burning sage, they sought to erase negative energies and bless what by this summer will be rebuilt as the new Salon Meritage.

"I banish any and all ancestor beings who are not in harmony with sacred law and are not dancing in the light," said Rachel Rosen, a practitioner in shamanic tradition. "Be gone from this space! I command that this be so!"

Only moments before, workers were drilling and hammering away at the walls, ceiling and floors, completely demolishing the interior of the site to Orange County's worst mass slaying.

The contractor in charge of the demolition, Josh Muller, is a member of the Center for Spiritual Living, a church that is across the street from the beauty salon. When he told his minister, the Rev. Peggy Price, about the work he would be starting this week, Price said she wanted to bless the salon.

Price and Rosen, also a counselor at the center, used a combination of practices from their church's affirmative prayers as well as Hawaiian spirituality and Native American shamanisms.

Outside one of the doors, Price poured a little coarse pink salt to purify the entrance. They burned sage in a large abalone shell with a piece of braided sweet grass, slowly walking around the indoor perimeter of the salon twice. Muller, a contractor and a Seal Beach resident, walked behind, lightly thumping a small drum.

When you believe in everything, you believe in nothing. This was one chicken sacrifice short of a Saturday Night Live sketch.