Religion was a sticking point between my late mother and me. She felt she had given me a free-thinking and humanist upbringing as a Unitarian. She saw my baptism in the Episcopal Church and conversion to Catholicism as a repudiation of her and her ideas. I tried to find common ground, though I'm not sure she didn't see it as a subtle attempt to convert her. She and Dad had both been exposed to holy-rollerism as kids, and they saw "church" mostly as a racket in which a preacher terrified you with hellfire, and then dunned you for money the rest of your life for "fire insurance."
While Mom rejected conventional religion she was often fascinated with the paranormal--Bridey Murphy, Edgar Cayce, Bishop Pike, Shirley MacLean, Jeane Dixon. I saw this as a desire to believe in something, to find comfort in a Beyond. As I got older, I grew increasingly impatient with the woo woo. She wanted Paradise without the God she'd learned about in Sunday school. Like Hazel Motes's Church Without Jesus in Flannery O'Connor's "Wiseblood."
So perhaps in a last stab at understanding her, or maybe just out of rank curiosity after all that exposure in childhood, I recently found myself in a silvery tent at a local fair with a psychic who claimed to channel the Archangel Michael, having just shucked out twenty bucks for a 15 minute "reading."
Inside the booth there was a tiny table between the psychic and customer. Off to side, on another small table, was a rectangular hammered brass mask of a face with closed eyes dimly lit by an electronic candle. It was pretty, restful, and quiet.
The psychic was a pleasant middle aged woman I'll call Hope. She was shuffling a pack of purple-backed tarot cards, which didn't figure into my reading. She didn't wear robes or turbans. Just seemed like a nice lady. However, once Hope got started, it was a little like talking to a high-functioning schizophrenic. In fact, she had what looked like a plastic hospital ID bracelet on her wrist, though it could have simply been her two-day fair pass. She explained that she channeled Michael, and that sometimes he spoke directly through her, and sometimes she helped "translate" what he told her. There was no change in her voice or anything dramatic, but sometimes she spoke as herself, and sometimes she referred to Hope in third person. Sometimes she and "Michael" seemed to be talking to another person. It was a little confusing, but, oddly, not terribly creepy.
Hope began by asking if I had questions. I said no, never had seen a psychic, and just wanted to see what she had to tell me. She shuffled her cards a few times, laid them aside and said, "Oh, you're not here for fun and to ask about love and money like everybody else who's walked in here. You are grieving. You just lost your mother or your sister."
OK, so a woman who's clearly over 60 probably isn't interested in love and money, and it's a safe bet that anybody over 60 has lost a relative fairly recently. But, yes, my mother died in April. But I said nothing and showed no surprise.
Hope/Michael decided that dead person was my mother. She said there was grief and recrimination, things not said. Michael said my mother had "too much elixir, maybe a drinking or drug problem."
Again I said nothing, but so far Hope and Michael seemed to be batting a thousand.
Hope's antenna to the Beyond didn't always pull in a strong signal. Sometimes she said she only got impressions of things that were garbled. She laughed and asked Michael why he was showing her the Harry Potter elder wand (search me, Hope), there was something about social services (yes, SS helped me with my mother's drinking at some points in her battle with alcoholism, but that's an easy guess), I must believe that angels are real (I admit I'm a skeptic about how much they fiddle around in the earthly realm at the bidding of psychics in silvery tents), the psychic feels the grief I do not easily show (please have a Kleenex, Hope).
Anyhow, about halfway in, Hope asked if anything was making sense to me. Clearly she wasn't getting enough from my reactions to know where she was going to go for the remaining seven minutes, despite her purportedly celestial assistance from the Archangel Michael.
So I told her that what she had told me about my mother was true.
Once I'd verified that, yes, my mother had died and that she did indeed have "elixir" problems, Hope/Michael fell back on platitudes: Mom is with you on your journey, give yourself time to grieve, she always loved you, you will often feel that she is close, etc. I already heard all that at the funeral home from Mom's friends.
That was pretty much it.
Raber asked how it went. I said I had paid someone $20 to tell me what I already knew.
My guess is that those in the psychic racket share info on how to size up and profile customers. A few may also be very good at picking up little details that indicate their spiel is on the right track. Maybe my poker face isn't as good as I think. Or the fact that someone doesn't just laugh and leave the table could be an indication that the spiel is on the right track.
When I left, Hope didn't give me a brochure, tell me to visit her Web page, or encourage me to come back so that she and Michael could help me more. Some psychics get people hooked with these tactics. And some locales are cracking down on them and requiring those in the psychic trade to be registered and fingerprinted. So maybe that's why I got no hard sell.
But I don't think so. I have intuitions of my own (probably not heaven-sent like Hope's). And I left with two strong impressions: that Hope truly believed that she was channeling Archangel Michael, and that she really did want to help me. I will say that there is power in that sympathetic ear in dim light, as we may know from the confessional or the therapist's office, or a call to a crisis hotline in the night.
Was it a sin? The CCC prohibits consulting psychics. But I didn't see it that way. It was curiosity, nothing more. I did feel a bit ashamed about the $20 and plan to give another $20 to a good cause.
But if you're with me, Mom, as Michael said you are, I hope you got a little of that fascination with the paranormal out of your system. I trust you are where God wants you to be, that he loves you, and that you will heal and "move on."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that they consulted angels. I thought it was the dead or Isis and Osiris or some such. My observation is that the guild of proprietors of Christian private revelation usually operate differently than in tents at fairs with tarot cards.
How many $20 customers do you think she saw that day? Is it a rewarding racket?
I agree with you that what you did was not a sin.
Regarding her telling you what you already knew: I suppose there are people in the world who are happy to pay $20 for that kind of confirmation. I know I like to have my feelings validated as much as the next person.
I've heard that we are not as unique as we like to think: there are something like 15-20 types of persons in the world, and the psychic's game is to figure out which type we are.
In researching context for my reportage, I discovered that the angel biz is a whole big thing. My guess is that that the angel angle makes the whole thing seem less "demonic" to some potential customers, and in reading up on some of the "angel psychics," it seems that many of them still have connections to traditional Christianity.
DeleteI want to say it might be a little like sycnretic practices like santeria or vodou (voo doo), though without the deep cultural and ethnic roots. But I'm not an expert. All's I know is that there were several psychics with different gimmicks, but the angel tent seemed to be doing the best biz, and there were two of them in the silvery tent.
My guess is that their take was about $500 per day. They're not making a pile at psychic fairs if they hit one two-day fair a month (they have to pay travel). A lot of them do Internet business. Some sell various crystals and gem stones or other trinkets with "spiritual" associations. A few of them write books. I think they have to work pretty hard and hustle to make a living at it.
Nobody there casting runes. I idly suggested to Raber that this might be a nice little retirement job--Madame Rowena's Rune Readings--use that advanced degree in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture to develop a schtick. However, Raber said I would go to hell for sure, so I stopped torturing him.
Are there lessons for the Church here? I wouldn't presume to say. It does seem to me that there are a lot of unchurched people looking for personal connections and answers. That they are not seeking this in churches might mean that they're attention-seeking crackpots who want easy answers. Or it might mean that sometimes churches can be cold and remote places that fail to minister adequately to people who are really hurting.
In my twenties, I tried to help my mother fulfill her dream of setting up a homemade candy store. She knew how to make candy. I bought an end row house. The row homes had apartments on the top two stories and the bottom stories were storefronts. I renovated the bottom level into a candy store. Unfortunately, the whatever store next door was run by a dope seller and he had a gang of punklets. There were breakins, vandalism and theft. Turned out, the couple in the apartment were in cahoots as well. At one point, my mother consulted a psychic and told me the seer said there was a door between the store area and the stairway going up to the apartment. She said they were going to try to break in there. It seemed like a reasonable assumption so I screwed a strip of lumber into the door and the door jamb. Darned if there wasn't an attempt in one or two days to breach the door, unsuccessful due to my precautions. Maybe the psychic teased out the information about the door with extended natural skills. But the timing was spooky.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the psychic was reading the crime reports pretty close. But I'm sure the saints will bless you for trying to help your mother set up a candy store. Did she make a go of it?
DeleteNo. That attempt failed. And another one failed, too. And that was that. A shame. The candy was delicious. Maybe the problem was everyone was freaking out about calories and health at the time.
DeleteAs for the story, it's the just-in-time timing that gets me. But who knows. If it's what you say, a good skill, the psychic should have been a cop. Maybe then they'd be there when you need them.
Now that she's 94, part of me wishes we had tried a third and fourth time. But, I think, by that time, her hopes were gone. The finance situation was tighter then, too.
DeleteNot that I can channel angels, but my guess as a parent is that your mom feels you went above and beyond. If you had done it a third or fourth time, she probably would have "felt like a bother" and had regrets about it.
DeleteThanks for that. Well, we gave it the old college try. Since 75% of small businesses fail, no big shame.
DeleteYour welcome. Please remit $20 at your earliest etc. :-)
DeleteDollars, bitcoin or kwatloos (see Star Trek original)?
DeleteHarry Houdini and, later, James (the Amazing) Randi both devoted a good part of their careers to exposing the tricks of psychics and other practitioners of the paranormal. And I'm a fan of that sort of thing. That said, there are things, Horatio... I went to Mexico City to see the tilma last November.
ReplyDeleteAnd some people are more intuitive than others. I remember talking to a guy I had just met who asked me about the novel I had in my lower desk drawer. That's an obvious question to ask a journalist -- except that I had been in journalism for 30 years when I met him and had begun my first and only novel only a week before. The first chapter was in my lower desk drawer. What a coincidence? Yeah, probably. But no one else ever asked me about my novel when I wasn't writing one or after I finished it.
I'm a little surprised at a Unitarian dabbling in the paranormal. The ones I know -- who even have an "atheist wing" in their congregation (I spoke to it one Sunday) -- tend to find something good in all religions but accept only what makes sense to them.
All kinds of people find their way to Unitarianism--atheists, Wiccans, people with half-baked ideas about reincarnation supported with an undergraduate physics class. In congregations without a pastor, a few "personalities" can dominate the group and foster or quell certain interests. Congregations with pastors, like the one I grew up in, could keep a lid on that type of thing.
DeleteSadly, the last fellowship I attended had no pastor and had decided not to get one. It was dominated by a real hard-ass atheist rationalist who would flounce out if anybody started talking about anything that could not be scientifically proved. Bryce had a Ph.D. in biochemistry, so people deferred to him. When it was his turn to do the Sunday program, he took us all out in the snow and we had to notice its properties. Then he brought us back in and had us report on our findings. "Snow is certainly fascinating," he said, "AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GOD BECAUSE THERE IS NO GOD." The guy was as doctrinaire as some fundies I have known. He was a chief reason I looked for spiritual nourishment elsewhere.
Tom, what was the name of your novel?
DeleteKatherine, it was never published. I just wanted to see if I could do it. It was titled "Flight of the Falcon, Fall of a Dove" and was very loosely based on the proposition that a U.N. official like Dag Hammarskjold had been murdered in an airplane crash, like his, and that an American photographer like Abraham Zapruder (but a professional) had the proof, which he realized about a third of the way into the book. No worse than a lot of stuff I've read.
DeleteIt went out, along with my one and only play (which did have a semi-professional staged reading) in the great preparation for the old age home two years ago in which I divested myself of everything and my wife started a divesting process that is still in its early stages.
Sounds like it would be good. If you had it saved in an electronic file you could e-publish it on Amazon. My son did that.
DeleteYeah, the timing is spooky. In my example, that is probably the only time my mother consulted a psychic. It wasn't as if she was going to them every week until one prediction just happened to be right.
ReplyDeleteI have an aunt who is a little bit psychic. She knows when family members are pregnant, sometimes before they do. She also sometimes knows when someone has died, before any announcement has been made. And sometimes she knows stuff she'd rather not know.
ReplyDeleteI have had a couple of what I call clairvoyant experiences, that were seemingly out of the blue. I'm just as glad that hasn't been a common occurrence in my life.
I have read a couple of John Edwards' books and found them kind of fascinating. But I wouldn't trust myself to be discerning of spirits, not all of them mean us well.
Am I the only one who watches junk TV? We don't watch a lot of TV - my husband likes sports, we both like PBS, I watch some House and Garden TV. But now and then we get hooked on a network show. One we watched fairly regularly a few years ago was The Mentalist. It was streaming on Netflix, but don't think it is anymore. We watched it when it was still weekly network.
ReplyDelete"The Mentalist" is a "lighthearted" police procedural featuring a "consultant" to the police who had been a big-time professional psychic before his wife and daughter were murdered.
"Lighthearted" relatively speaking of course, in a TV genre overloaded with blood and gore and dark, dark themes. The title character "the mentalist" was a big-timer in the world of psychics - handsome and charming - before turning to detective work after his own wife and daughter were murdered by a serial killer. He had mastered his trade growing up in a carnival, and became a mini-celebrity - the type that would appear on Oprah maybe if he were a real person instead of a TV person.
The "mentalist" would often explain to others that he wasn't a real psychic, and as the series progressed, he would reveal the tricks of the psychic trade, including those that Jean mentioned - the secret being careful observation and putting together obvious clues (such as an older woman who has "lost" someone to death v a younger one who has lost her "true love".
I am most definitely not psychic. However,I believe that we have no real understanding yet of the powers of the mind. I have not had psychic experiences, nor clairvoyant, but I did have what I eventually came to believe were telepathic experiences.
After reading this thread, I wondered if there is a difference between psychic and clairvoyant - this is what I found:
A psychic is a person who is able to themselves see into the past or the future as well as draw information from another persons thoughts. They themselves possess them ability to gain this information through their own use of extrasensory perception.
As for the clairvoyant they are able to do the same but the access to this information is gained in a different manner. The clairvoyant will pick up information through another source such as an angel, spirit guide or someone who has passed on.
They are also able to draw out information from objects and even pictures based upon the energy that is stored within them such as a family picture or an old watch left to you by a great grandfather.
And telepathy
Telepathy (from the Greek τῆλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθος, pathos or -patheia meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience") is the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction.
A lifelong friend told me that her identical twin sisters had telepathic communications from the time they were very young. It is supposedly fairly common among twins.
My twin cousins seemed to have an unspoken connection through their teen years. They had the same imaginary friend, Douglas Coon, when they were three or four. They would tell you to be quiet because Douglas was talking. Then they would both agree about what Douglas had just said or done. Once they got married and moved to different towns, the connection dissipated.
DeleteI have read that conjoined twins often have a very difficult emotional time being separated. They need to be put in the same bed to recover, and will often hang on to each other physically for a long time after the surgery.
I think some married couples have similar bonds.
I doubt this is supernatural, just comes from long close physical contact.
Anne - I've watched a couple episodes of "The Mentalist", although on the whole the guy was a little too grinny for me. I accept that I wasn't the targeted audience for his charms.
DeleteI don't know if you ever caught any of the series "Psych", which I think originally ran on USA Network. The protagonist, Sean Spencer, was a sham psychic who hired himself out to the Santa Barbara police department to provide psychic services. He solved cases, not via paranormal abilities but through his extraordinary powers of observation. The whole thing was pretty light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek. And the scripts took one or two shots at "The Mentalist" (which ran on a mainstream network and presumably had a larger audience).
Based on the information Anne gave, what I had was a telepathic experience, rather than clairvoyance.
DeleteAnd I also have watched my share of junk tv. We enjoyed watching The Ghost Whisperer, before it jumped the shark in the last season. I liked the movie Sixth Sense, too. I asked a priest once what he thought about ghosts. He said maybe some people can't let go of earth, and we should pray for them.
I have never watched any of these shows, but "Psych" sounds like fun. I also liked "The Sixth Sense" because it was plotted so nicely.
DeleteI enjoyed "Medium" because I thought it was imaginitive, well written and funny. The husband was an engineer with a psychic wife and daughters. Real grist for comedy. Murder scenes were tough, though.
DeleteStanley, I enjoyed Medium, too. I thought Patricia Arquette was good. But the final two episodes were just really strange.
DeleteKatherine, the ending was sad until the final bailout according to the rules of the "Medium" universe. Still left me sad. "Medium" was a love story more than anything else. So was "Ghost Whisperer" which I binged. Got a little convoluted but still enjoyed it.
DeleteI had figured out the "key" to The Sixth Sense within the first 15 minutes (there had been an episode with the same plot twist on one of those old television shows - not The Twilight Zone, another one) but I still found it riveting.
DeleteJim, we don't get USA network, so I never saw Psych. I did hear it was a spoof on the Mentalist a bit. I've never heard of "Medium", nor "Ghost Whisperer".
DeleteI'll see if any of these nice escape shows are on Netflix or Hulu. We piggyback on our son's subscriptions since they allow multiple devices. I have only gotten one message about "too many" devices - maybe because we don't use the services often, and we are on one coast and they are on another, so our TV viewing hours don't overlap a lot. I too liked the Sixth Sense - one of the few movies I've seen over the years. We literally have not been in a movie theater for 30 years, but when our sons were home, they would rent DVDs and we would sometimes watch. No more DVD rentals now - it's all streaming.
You all may recall that there is at least one instance of a medium in the bible. This is 1 Samuel chapter 28.
ReplyDelete--------
1
In those days the Philistines mustered their military forces to fight against Israel. So Achish said to David, “You realize, of course, that you and your warriors* must march out for battle with me.”
2
David answered Achish, “Good! Now you shall learn what your servant can do.” Then Achish said to David, “I shall appoint you as my permanent bodyguard.”
3
Now, Samuel was dead. All Israel had mourned him and buried him in his city, Ramah. Meanwhile Saul had driven mediums and diviners out of the land.a
Saul in Despair.
4
The Philistines rallied and, coming to Shunem, they encamped. Saul, too, mustered all Israel; they camped on Gilboa.
5
When Saul saw the Philistine camp, he grew afraid and lost heart completely.
6
He consulted the LORD; but the LORD gave no answer, neither in dreams nor by Urim nor through prophets.b
7
Then Saul said to his servants, “Find me a medium* through whom I can seek counsel.” His servants answered him, “There is a woman in Endor who is a medium.”c
The Medium at Endor.
8
So he disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and set out with two companions. They came to the woman at night, and Saul said to her, “Divine for me; conjure up the spirit I tell you.”d
9
But the woman answered him, “You know what Saul has done, how he expelled the mediums and diviners from the land. Then why are you trying to entrap me and get me killed?”
10
But Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As the LORD lives, you shall incur no blame for this.”
11
“Whom do you want me to conjure up?” the woman asked him. “Conjure up Samuel for me,” he replied.
Samuel Appears.
12
When the woman saw Samuel, she shrieked at the top of her voice and said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!”
13
But the king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” “I see a god rising from the earth,” she replied.
14
“What does he look like?” asked Saul. “An old man is coming up wrapped in a robe,” she replied. Saul knew that it was Samuel, and so he bowed his face to the ground in homage.
Saul’s Doom.
15
* Samuel then said to Saul, “Why do you disturb me by conjuring me up?” Saul replied: “I am in great distress, for the Philistines are waging war against me and God has turned away from me. Since God no longer answers me through prophets or in dreams, I have called upon you to tell me what I should do.”e
16
To this Samuel said: “But why do you ask me, if the LORD has abandoned you for your neighbor?f
17
The LORD has done to you what he declared through me: he has torn the kingdom from your hand and has given it to your neighbor David.
18
“Because you disobeyed the LORD’s directive and would not carry out his fierce anger against Amalek, the LORD has done this to you today.g
19
Moreover, the LORD will deliver Israel, and you as well, into the hands of the Philistines. By tomorrow you and your sons will be with me, and the LORD will have delivered the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”h
20
Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, in great fear because of Samuel’s message. He had no strength left, since he had eaten nothing all that day and night.
21
Then the woman came to Saul and, seeing that he was quite terror-stricken, said to him: “Remember, your maidservant obeyed you: I took my life in my hands and carried out the request you made of me.
22
Now you, in turn, please listen to your maidservant. Let me set out a bit of food for you to eat, so that you are strong enough to go on your way.”
23
But he refused, saying, “I will not eat.” However, when his servants joined the woman in urging him, he listened to their entreaties, got up from the ground, and sat on a couch.
24
The woman had a stall-fed calf in the house, which she now quickly slaughtered. Then taking flour, she kneaded it and baked unleavened bread.
25
She set the meal before Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they got up and left the same night.
Interesting. There are all kinds of dreams, portents, and angelic interventions in the Bible. I have always taken them as metaphors--that the Josephs, Mary, Abraham, Peter, Moses, etc. were led by the Spirit to say "yes" to what they already knew in their hearts was the will of God. And we pray to dead people all the time in the Church, asking the saints to help us carry our burdens to God.
DeleteYeah, finding that passage in 1 Samuel prompted me to read a few more chapters - haven't looked at that stuff in quite a while. They consulted God by consulting the Ephod and the Urim and Thummim. The Ephod seems to have been some sort of sacred garment. It's not quite clear what the Urim and Thummim were. But on the whole, it may not have been too different from asking the Magic Eight Ball (except that the latter makes no claims for divine guidance). "If I ask her to prom, will she say 'yes'?" "Answer unclear".
DeleteThen there was Gideon asking for a sign; I think it was finding dew on a fleece.
DeleteOne thing that always struck me about the medium of Endor was that she seemed to be a kind person; she realized that Saul needed to eat and she fed him. I also thought it was sad that she was in fear of her life.
Does anyone remember the tv show "Bewitched"? Samantha's mother was named Endora. I suppose that was an allusion to the medium of Endor. Some translations called her a witch, which seems pretty negative.
The magic eight ball reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode where William Shatner starts believing that a penny fortune telling machine in a cafe has the answers to his work promotion.
Delete