Silence Is NOT Golden….

Sometimes, silence is golden. In those moments when you’re in the heat of creating; when you’re making something beautiful to offer to the world, sure, silence can be blissful.  But when it comes to keeping people interested and up-to-date on your business, silence certainly isn’t golden.  And when it comes to keeping silent concerning who you truly are, and what you can actually do–your God-given talents, no matter how “out there” they may seem–well, silence isn’t golden then, either. In fact, it can become a crippling cage.

I’ve been living in that cage for a very long time.  I’m more than ready to come out of it.

Some of you may come away from this thinking “wow, she’s even more nuts than I thought.”  Some of you may come away from reading this judging me; perhaps even judging me quite harshly.  But I’ve had a month of silence from this blog and pretty much everywhere else–thanks to my declining health–to really think this through, and when it all boils down to brass tacks, I’ve been judged before. In fact, I’ve been judged over and over again my entire life, and I’ve let my fear of further judgment lock me in this cage in the first place.  Guess what? I’m still here, and I’ll still be here after further judgment as well.  It is ultimately my choice whether I choose to let the fear of those judgments keep me locked in this cage or not.

Today, I choose freedom.

I choose that freedom in part because keeping myself a secret is part of why my health has taken this dive in the first place.  The cage has leeched forward onto my skin, and into my bones, in the form of the worst outbreak of debilitating psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis that I’ve experienced since I was sixteen years old.  I am now faced with the very real choice of continuing to hide my talents and abilities and slowly killing myself, or letting all these cats out of the bag.  Like the New Hampshire state motto, I can live free, or die.

That’s the big reason for my choice; the other smaller reason is that if I’m going to offer my services as a Tarot Reader, and as a Counselor, and as a Priestess, I should probably let you guys know exactly what you’re getting when you put your dollars into my PayPal account.  There is a huge difference between paying $25 to someone who has an “ability and years of experience with the cards”, and paying that same $25 to someone who is actually clairvoyant, clairaudient, claircognizant, and clairsentient.

What do all those “clairs” mean?  Most people have heard of clairvoyance, but few people actually know what it means. In common parlance, it has become synonymous with psychic, but it actually means something far more specific.  Clairvoyance is literally “the ability to see things that aren’t physically there”.  Most clairvoyants receive message through symbols, from both the Dead and the Universe at large.  Objective Clairvoyants  (the rarest type) actually see things that aren’t physically there with their actual physical eyes–like spirits, for example.  Clairaudience is the ability to hear things that aren’t physical sounds–like the voices of the Dead, for example (and most commonly).  Claircognizance is being able to know things or foretell things without knowing how one “just knows”–this is the one that most closely resembles the modern media’s definition of the word psychic. Clairsentience is “clear feeling” or “clear sensing”; picking up on emotions left behind by past events, or the ability to sense people’s direct emotions.

Newsflash, y’all: I have all of those.  I am an objective clairvoyant–I’ve been “seeing dead people” like the little kid from The Sixth Sense since I was three years old.  That is every bit as terrifying as it may sound, but it can also be quite rewarding.  I am clairaudient; I frequently get “astral phone calls” from the Dead, Angels, and often whatever else is hanging around at a given time, whether I want them or not. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a psychic “do not call” list!  I am claircognizant, although this is one of those things that comes and goes as the Spirit wills it; it’s not something over which I have direct control (which can often be quite annoying, because sometimes you genuinely don’t want to know the stuff you suddenly just know, while at other times you wish you knew something, and the Universe is behaving like a Magic 8 Ball set to “no answer at this time”).  And I am clairsentient: I am often entirely too aware of emotions left behind in places, especially when they are negative ones, and this wreaks total havoc when dealing with the living, especially when your home is populated by numerous teenagers at any given time.

So, when you buy your Tarot from me, you are actually buying them from a “real, live psychic”.  One cat down; one to go….

Ready for an even bigger cat to be released from the proverbial bag? We’re talking lion-sized?

I’m also a Medium.  I’ve been living my life in the proverbial closet–or, in this case, the coffin–for twenty-two years.  It’s slowly killing me, as well as damaging the people that I do this to help. Yes, by people I mean “dead people”…..

I am not a trance medium.  This throws most people off completely, as that’s the only kind of mediumship which the popular media seems to be willing to show folks.  I am a shamanic medium, which means I literally step out of the way, and let someone else take over completely, to the point of voice changes, mannerism changes, handwriting changes, and everything else.  The intangible becomes tangible again–through me.  This is not a service that I perform on cue for the living–no, I will not bring your dearly departed grandmother ’round for tea.  This is something that I do to help “them” (my set group who has been with me over the past twenty years), as much as they do it to help me. I am not the Mishy Psychic Friends Network, nor am I the Psychic On Demand Channel. This is not something I do as some weird sort of “psychic performance art”. This is for me, and for them. It’s perfectly symbiotic; in no way, shape or form as glamorous as it may sound to some people, and not dangerous to any of the parties involved, because I know what I’m doing. (Which is my way of saying, as they do on TV shows like Jackass: “don’t try this at home, kids!”)

So, why tell you this now, if I’ve managed to keep it a well-guarded secret for twenty-two years?  Two reasons, and one of them is far more important than the other.  The first and most important reason is that continuing to keep this a secret is damaging not only me, but also my charges (the folks I let in), who I have sworn that I will protect and assist.  The second reason is that some of them happen to be artists, and they deserve credit for what they’ve done for me over the years: credit which I’m finally ready to unveil in my new endeavors with One Pagan Place. (They’ve been doing this through me for a rather long time; it’s time they finally got credit for what they can do!)

Keeping this a well-guarded secret has locked not only me, but also them, in a cage in which none of us deserve to be locked.  And it has begun to take its toll on my health–which also not only affects me, but also them.  For example, at least one of these folks–The Professor–is British, which extremely limits when and with whom he can “come out to play”, curtailing his growth in the afterlife, and making it very hard for him to step in and allow me to take much-needed breaks.  I often find myself cursing the times when I have to interact with “muggles” (for the Harry Potter-impaired, that means “non-magickally minded people”), and I feel profoundly guilty about the times when I feel that way.  That guilt is manifesting on my skin and in my bones.  It’s time for it to stop.

As I move towards a time in my life where I am contemplating doing more live readings, I feel it is important for my clients to realize that we might not be the only two people in the room, so to speak.  To do otherwise, in my opinion, would be unethical.

So, there you have it: my cage doors have been thrown wide open, and now you know the full truth of me.  If you’re going to judge me, go ahead, but please don’t feel the need to let me know you are. I’ve had plenty of that over the course of my life; I don’t need to hear more of it right now, and for the sake of my health, I beg your mercy (that particular silence is also golden!).  If this causes any of you to worry about me, please rest assured, there is no need to do so. I am absolutely certain that none of the parties with whom I time-share are demonic, or otherwise nefariously inclined. I’ve been dealing with them for twenty-two years, and I’m quite aware of precisely who and what they are. I am also very adept at shielding myself from anything that is out to do me harm.  The folks that I have sworn to protect and gift with my abilities (and who’ve likewise sworn to do the same things right back, when it comes to me) are purely gifts to me from God (as is this ability), and I honestly would not have made it to this point in my life without them.  And please don’t take this as an opportunity to throw “prove its” at me: I am not a trained pony, and this is not a dog and pony show.  Believe or disbelieve; that is your choice. My own personal path to freedom is mine. For all of you who have supported me in that freedom–living and dead–and who are coming now to continue or even just begin to support me in that freedom, there are not enough words to express my gratitude.

Thank you for allowing me to live in a much larger world….