Skeptical Psychic @ MindSay 
Seems today is a day for me to write about my personal beliefs and debunk a few misconceptions floating around out there. After writing Indigo Children: soothing myth or hardcore fact? I realized I should explain a few things about how common sense, skeptical psychics operate and explore the subject of auras further.
Most friends know I have worked as a professional psychic and they know that doing that kind of work can lead you to meeting all sorts of charlatans and skeptics. The best so-called psychics are incredible show business people and they sell what they do very well. It is easy to fall into that trap, but it's not worth the stress of having to perform for each and every person who comes up to you for a reading. I tend to be more down-to-earth and make no supernatural claims to sell myself.
One of the biggest attractions for those seeking a psychic experience is getting your aura seen or photographed. This type of photography is based on Kirlian photography -- a type of photogram (an image made without a camera) named after Semyon Kirlian, who in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a source of high voltage, small corona discharges (created by the strong electric field at the edges of the object) create an image on the photographic plate. Krilian in his later studies made controversal claims that this method showed proof of supernatural auras evident around objects.
But, if you go to a psychic fair, you'll soon notice that no two psychics will percieve your aura the same, and if you get your aura "photographed" each time it will come out different. A so-called aura photograph is a picture of emanations of your body's temperature and can, like a mood ring, if you believe hard enough in it, say something about your emotional state at the time of the photograph. And because no two people are alike and are prone to percieve things differently, any psychic you come across will see you in a different light and will make judgements about you based on their own personal belief systems.
This is what sets getting a psychic reading in the realm of entertainment.
I remember once working at a psychic fair with a highly energetic friend of mine. Whenever the two of us girls got together, it was almost like we made the temperature go higher in the room because together we were like overly excited school girls. Sitting next to the Kirlian photograph booth, our nervous energy off set things. Our "auras" showed up as this thick and consistant red light bleeding into the edges of the photograms of other people. Once we sat in a different area away from the booth, the pictures came out with no more red invading the edges. To test what was going on, we each took different photos of each other at different times during the fair -- ones where we were together, ones without each other near, plus ones where we concentrated on projecting a different mood. Sure enough the ones where we were together were brilliant red, at other times we were blue, and even indigo. Goes to show it's not an exact science and we left the photographer scratching his head, but smiling at our antics.
Much of what is determined as psychic perception is more naturally based on a keen observation of human behavior which, teamed with a bit of imagination and visualization, can be described in colorful metaphor. So when some psychic sees your aura, they aren't really actually seeing your aura with their eyes, they are, in reality, interpreting how they percieve your mood or personality.
For instance, the "auras" I see surrounding people are kind of cartoon like -- like seeing a person in a bad mood having a "dark cloud" over them. Of course I'm not actually seeing that dark cloud, I'm just describing that person's bad mood as a dark cloud. At other times I have seen people with different colors around them, sort of at the edge of my peripheral vision, and often it doesn't mean anything because it's caused by eye fatigue. Yet there are times when I put my scientific perception to rest and let a message come through, then test it to see if it has any relevance in reality. Nine times out of ten, coupled with what I've observed from someone's body language, I'm usually right about what I percieved about that person.
I once had a friend who challenged my psychic perceptions a lot. He would claim to "flare up" his aura into different colors and ask me if I could see them. Perhaps it was more of an exercise with telepathic communication, but often I would pick up on what colors he was projecting without fail. At other times he attempted to project a color at me when I was faraway from him. It was like a game and it was fun. According to him, I never got anything wrong, and often whenever I'd send him a color, he could pick up on it. It grew from a guessing game to a game of perception.
I'm not saying that I don't believe in auras, but I take a more common sense point of view. Only you can see what you want to see. Some people won't believe in anything unless they see it with their own eyes. But still I question what I see and, in the end, try to make sense out of the impractical. If something works, don't break it. Use it. If you get something out of it, keep it. Just don't go over board with outrageous claims. I claim nothing. I just report things as I percieve them. If that makes sense to you and you got something out of it, then maybe there's something practical in this psychic stuff after all!
How to get a psychic reading from me
I'm often asked, since I started to do psychic readings, how it is I came to decide to take a psychic's path in life. Thing is, it was something I stumbled into and didn't realize would be such a big deal. In fact, it's still not a big deal to me. Laying out the cards, examining my dreams for clues about my destiny, even consulting other psychics for counseling is normal for me. For many, it's unusual to be pals with someone who can pick up on spiritual information. I sometimes forget it's a much bigger deal to others, so hence I shrugg such attention off. Thing is, I often feel like a performing monkey whenever anyone asks me to go into trance or draw a few cards for them. I often want people to do such things for their self. I don't know everything. I make mistakes. I'm as big fool as any other who has walked the earth, why should I tell you what's going in your life? After doing professional readings since 1994, I got burnt out and filled with self doubt. I don't believe in myself like I used to because I found out I was wrong about a very powerful dream I had fifteen years ago, a dream about who I was going to marry, and even though I met the guy I dreamt about, I was totally OFF about his feelings -- how can I trust myself to give sane advice to other hopeful dreamers when I was so wrong about my dream lover? So I've stopped doing so many readings and have concentrated on more practical things. If you want a reading from me, I'm open, but reserved, and warn you that if I was wrong about one of my own visions, chances are I could be wrong about yours!
Recently I've had more friends seeking readings from me and I've been reluctant to give. I'm afraid of dealing out disappointment over hope. I still am gifted at reading people, I pray and meditate regularly, and speak to spirits and animals, and I know how insane that must sound to people who don't know me, so now it's become much more of a private practice for myself and doesn't have much to do with getting out there to dress like a gypsy and entertain the masses. Mind you, I am good at what I do, and I won't hesitate to give someone messages from my intuition, but I thank the Gods daily that I don't have a psychic ability as strong as some famous ones are known to have. I don't want to wake up every middle of the night being bothered by the dead like Allison DuBois!
How to get a reading by me? Just be my friend, don't demand immediate answers, and don't expect the impossible. What I do is an everyday down-to-earth thing that could be very real or seem fake to you depending on your own unique perspective on life. I do readings in my sleep, I use cards, get vibes off photographs, feelings off people, and use all my senses to come up with information. Every now and then I experience something really wonderful, at other times comical, and I do enjoy talking about the spiritual side with others. If I give you a reading, don't expect me to put on an act, just a nice chat over some hot tea, coffee, or Pepsi. I don't want to mislead anyone. I consider myself to be a "skeptical psychic" and, as oxymoronic as that sounds, it really does explain who I am spiritually. Or you could say I'm a broken hearted spiritualist. Let me explain...
Psychics shouldn't be expected to know everything about you
The impression most people have about people famous for their intuitiveness is that such people are all-knowing, powerful individuals who can pick up on every little nuance about you. Thing is, this isn't true. We're not automaticly reading you, only some information leaks out, sometimes most of the information comes to us seemingly on accident and can be embarassing or trivial in nature. Like for instance, sometimes when I sleep over at a stranger's house I might pick up silly stuff like the last time they had sex was on the couch I'm actually sitting on or I might get a slight headache after the last person who slept in the bed I slept in had one, things like that. Other times, there's nothing to pick up on, thank the Gods, and yet if you first meet me as a psychic, you might get nervous because you think I'm going to be able to tell you everything on demand. There are other times in life where dumb folk get the damn idea in their heads that psychics should also be perfectly able to pick up on things they need to know for themselves. Psychic people are really normal people who live as mundane life as you do, with the only difference being that they have developed their intuition more than you have. Not every vision is meant to be clear and occasionally a psychic will have to do some detective work in order to link impressions together to form clues about a situation. Psychics are just as prone to make mistakes like everyone else, too. We are all human after all!
What it means to be Psychic
To be psychic is to be of psyche, a Greek term with several meanings that really do relate a lot to what being a psychic in the modern world means. First we should consider the Pagan origins of the name.... Named after the Greek legend of Psyche, a mortal woman so beautiful that it was determined she should only marry an immortal. Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche's beauty (which was said to be so great it offended the Goddess) and sent her son, Eros (also known as Cupid) to strike her with a rusty arrow that would make her fall in love with the worst man possible. Instead Eros fell in love with Psyche, but she wasn't allowed to see his face. When the oil from her night lamp accidentally fell on Eros after Psyche was talked into taking a peek at him while he slept, Eros fled Psyche's bed. Later Aphrodite made Psyche complete several impossible tasks in order to finally be with the god she loved. Once victorious, Psyche and Eros were united for all time. The tale of Psyche is one of union between the soul and love, psychology and passion, an all-encompassing relationship of what it is to be fully conscious, to embrace one's awareness of the world and to still look upon other beings with compassion. Psyche is also a word that represents the last breath before death and it is a word we also use as a root for "psychology" meaning soul, self, and mind combined to form the very consciousness of life. One's psyche or "soul" is responsible for their behavior -- it is at the root of consciousness and existence. A person of Psyche, most commonly known as a Psychic, is a human being who is "of the soul" -- someone who has strong knowledge of the character or personality (psychology) of others. It should not always imply that a psychic has supernatural knowledge, but since their knowledge is greater than an ordinary person's knowledge of human existence and nature, it only seems out-of-this-world. A Psychic actively uses all their talents and skills to determine the course of human behavior; they notice the things other people don't and can piece together, through mental means, the hidden stories of our lives.
What Psychic abilities are
The five normal senses are: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. These senses are all physical, easily explained abilities necessary for survival. They are the senses we take for granted. The six psychic or extra-sensory perceptions are: clairvoyance (the ability to see beyond physical perception), clairaudience (hearing things not present to the normal range of the ear but regarded as objective), clairalience (picking up on what is, to others, phantom smells), clairgustance (picking up on tastes without physically tasting them with one's mouth), clairsentience (the ability to sense the emotions and other information about people through feelings). and claircognizance (knowing something without knowing how or why you know it, you just know -- this one is the most legendary "sixth sense" of psychic abilities). It is said, and often proved, that all of the extra-sensory perceptions and psychic abilities can be learned, especially through intensive mental practices like meditation. Related to Clairsentience is the psychic practice of Psychometry -- a combination of psyche and metric -- the act of measuring things with your mind alone.
What Psychics do when they give you a "reading"
I liken to giving a psychic reading as similiar to the age-old act drag queens practice at "reading" people -- basically it is sizing other people up based on clues given to you by the way they dress, behave, smell, and feel, then based on the information you get from them, you tell messed up things about their selves they didn't suspect you'd know. Much of the actual "reading" a psychic does is very much that, believe it or not, and it always takes the querent (a person asking a question or someone with a need to know something about themselves, usually a complete stranger) to let a psychic read them acurately. The difference between a drag queen and a psychic is basically the drag queen uses their powers of observation to insult someone else, whereas the psychic uses their powers to come up with ways to inform someone else. The most practical psychics do what is known as "cold reading" also known as "profiling" or pre-qualifying someone by analyzing and drawing together information about someone based on body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, family, age, etc. The trick to reading someone has nothing to do with extra-sensory perception at all, just an ability to notice things so keenly that it seems like it's supernatural. Another thing about psychic readings is that the person being read (the querent) will ALWAYS (no matter how skeptical they are) react in a way that makes it easy for the psychic to determine that their educated guesses are right on. As soon as the psychic "hits a hot spot" (a subject the querent is most interested in knowing more about) they will continue to move into that direction and will verbally reinforce what they've already said to give the other person the impression that they know more about them then they possibly could.
Most professional psychics put cold reading into use first before getting deep into what I call "hot reading" in which the psychic will attempt to convince you that they are getting their information from a higher power. How can you tell who is a "real" psychic? More often then not the psychic will not ask questions of you and will not tell you things like "I'm getting a fuzzy image" or "this seems unclear" -- these are signs that the psychic is trying to get you to volunteer information. Also look out for people who tend to constantly repeat vague impressions that they connect to other things they've guessed about you that seem a bit far fetched. I can spot a fake a mile away, friends, because I have many experiences with such individuals. The sad thing is many fake readers have convinced themselves that they truly are doing the work of a psychic when in reality it's just parlor tricks long employed by stage magicians and street gypsies. Also be aware that much "hot reading" is performance and the psychic will focus mainly on the hits to minimize the misses. This is why professional psychic readings are often in the realm of entertainment!
When friends ask me what it is that I do that sets me outside of that entertainment realm, I tell them that I was first and foremost felt called to be a Priestess -- pagan clergy and with that comes spiritual responsibility that many other psychics don't have. I don't claim supernatural powers, often I claim it comes from a higher source, not myself, working through me that I cannot explain except in spiritual terms that lie outside the explanations of hard, cold science. It's my belief that people would rather talk and listen to someone who is accessible to them like a priest than a doctor or scientist. Maybe we'd believe the skeptical, scientific folk better if they weren't so cynical or prone to ridicule those who are different. Every time I watch a show or read an article where so-and-so's performance as a psychic was debunked, people scoff so wholeheartedly at it that you wonder if anyone has a heart out there. Even if someone is proved wrong, I try not to joke about it. And even when I don't believe in someone else's abilities, I won't take the rude route. Seeker or seer, we are all fools.
What a REAL Psychic's function in society should be
After talking about cold and hot reading, and telling you why psychic readings are for entertainment, you're probably thinking that I'm a big stuffy skeptic or that I'm betraying my own kind. Aren't you a Tarot reading Witch, Val? It's only practical to be a skeptical psychic. After seeing how other people do their readings and after many psychics have taught me their tricks, I've seen the other side of the coin. I've even done what they do, but notice I'm not on television claiming I have supernatural powers of perception and I'm no longer making money at readings. After studying the life of famous stage magician Houdini and his campaign to debunk spiritualists, I've realized that there is always the threat of emotional exploitation out there of people who have lost or are missing their loved ones. Turning to a psychic often times is easier than going to a counselor because a psychic is there to provide the hope that people can reach through the boundaries of space and time to speak with the dead. In the previous century many attempts were made to limit the freedom of spiritualists to prevent such exploitation of people who have dead loved ones. In the old days many people made a living on tricking others into believing that they had the power to call upon spirits. After Harry Houdini lost his beloved mother, Cecilia, he made it his mission to crash séances and expose frauds. The reason for this was simple -- to take advantage of people who have already lost someone they love is a crime as great as that of loosing a loved one before their time. Someone who is a "true" psychic is a person who doesn't claim supernatural gifts, but tries to use all their talents and abilities to intuitively collect clues that can bring, at the very least, a sense of closure to a mystery. I want to believe that the days of fake psychics are gone, but I can tell you that there will always be fakes as long as there are fools. The tricky thing is despite a Houdini's mission to bring psychic frauds to justice, to deny someone the right to practice something they believe in is in violation of religious freedom. We all have the freedom to believe what a psychic tells us or not. We also have the right to develop our abilities to the best capacity in the hope that we can contact spirits to bring about productive change -- notice I said "productive" and not positive? A productive change is one brought about after a spiritual vision that benefits someone in a way that can produce chances or alternatives. A real psychic is merely a "folk minister" or "street priestess" -- a dramatic yet down-to-earth person we are most interested in talking to about ourselves to help us make decisions and face situations we ordinarily are apprehensive to do when the information about ourselves is presented in fantasy fashion. We want to believe in the fantastic and sometimes we have to believe in an existence outside of this world to get through this one.
Today's psychics are becoming more and more practical, not as unusual or supernatural, and they are continually testing themselves in public to see if there is any way we can prove scientifically the realms of the spirit. You can still be skeptical and have faith -- it's the tightrope psychics walk nowadays -- achieving a balance between the worlds. And perhaps that's what dictates what a real psychic is -- a go-between -- and it's up to us to believe or not, as long as it's all about choice, thought, balance, and not all about the money. The ability to profile a stranger, living or dead, distant or close, is exactly what detectives do, hence why I am beginning to believe that more and more psychics are testing the criminal justice waters.
So, what a real psychic does these days, or should be, is a combination of four things: a priest, counselor, detective, and entertainer. This is what you should expect of a psychic and it's okay to pay them for the work they do.
Psychics and Mediums aren't just talking to the Dead
Another impression I get whenever I watch a show like Haunting Evidence or see Sylvia Browne on TV, I don't just "see" them talk to what most people would consider ghosts. I sense these psychics communicating with spirits and entities more Pagan in nature. Since we live in a culture that is predominantly mainstream Judeo-Christian, most people would consider that psychics are speaking to angels (and some dumbasses would think they are talking to demons, too). However, since I am Pagan, I notice things that psychics who grow up with the Christian world view don't. As I watch them out in the field talking to what they consider the spirit of someone who died, sometimes I sense the presence of much more ancient entities who are in outrage over the injustice of what was done on their home turf. These are spirits most people today would consider the stuff of mythology, but just because a living being isn't physically visible to the naked human eye doesn't mean it's not possible that they exist. Such spirits are alive in nature -- undines, gnomes, sprites, fairies, to name a few -- these beings are not the living embodiment of the cutesy pictures often depicted of them in fable and they are not pansies in demeanor. Pagans believe they are present in the sky, trees, streams, and earth and they can be, when you treat them right and are open minded enough to hear them, great allies. As psychics try to intutively see what happened at a crime scene or try to track the killer, they pick up impressions that aren't always clearly communicated to human beings because nature spirits do not speak languages like we do and they don't see us like we see ourselves. More often than not, it's not evidence presented to the psychic by a ghost but by a nature spirit haunted and hurt by the horrible thing that happened in their presence. My theory is that often these spirits are so disturbed, just like a human being would be after witnessing a violent crime, they are seeking help from the psychic to let other beings know what happened and in exchange the crime can be solved, justice done, and then not only does the ghost finally be put to rest, but so will the nature spirit. Places aren't always haunted by what we believe must be ghosts. When people wonder "if only these trees could talk" I always say out loud, sometimes with a snicker, "THEY CAN" but since we can't imagine it, we are closed off to other living beings. Human beings have a tendency to be very biased spiritually -- something other living beings don't have in common with us. I believe those people we deem gifted are just ordinary folks who just happen to be smarter and more open minded to the wavelengths of communication. Someday I foresee a time when technology will finally enable normal people to learn more about the invisible creatures around them and we won't need psychics to tune into things for us. And with that said, I also believe that like every other talent, psychic intutition and mediumship is something everyone has but not everyone is as skilled at it. It's like I know how to do addition and subtraction, but I'm definitely not a mathematician.
Why you shouldn't be afraid of seeing a Psychic
I've often found it ridiculous that people get hysterical over psychic premonitions. It's okay to doubt and fear as long as you realize that psychics are people, too. What is extraordinary to you is normal for them. So, relax, and no matter what you believe, going to a psychic should be fun. No one's going to tell you you're going to die (that's an obvious fortune, isn't it? because we all are going to die sometime) and it's not every day some ghost is going to speak through a stranger at you. Some people have asked me "why aren't you afraid of ghosts?" and I answer "because I fear the living more than the dead" and I'm not surprised when I've heard that sentiment echoed in the voices of other psychics.
I say believe what you will, practice what you preach, and always have a healthy dose of doubt when approaching someone who claims they can give you answers through spiritual means, trust in your own sense of right and wrong, but keep your mind open always to the truth and pray for the extraordinary perception to notice it when it shows up!