Month: January 2014

On Yeats’s Psychic Wife

 

I became enamored of the poems of WB Yeats when I was nineteen and still love to read them. I can recite some by heart (The Fascination of What’s Difficult, which I learned while I was working as a theater choreographer, includes the line “My curse on plays …”) A college boyfriend won me by being able to recite Lapis Lazuli (in a little Greek bar that inspired the one in Snake Face.) I created a dance cycle for the Crazy Jane poems, and also a solo dance for When You are Old. While I was reading the poet’s autobiography, I discussed his interests in mysticism and Irish mythology with a friend who was an English professor. She was quite sure Yeats’s wife George (yes, a woman named George) faked being psychic because it was the only way to win his heart away from Maude Gonne. His other passions, Irish patriotism and theater, lived in her, and she was beautiful, so the only way to compete was to communicate with a spirit world that announced itself by the smell of roses. I don’t know if it’s true or not but her hypothesis would make a good story.

Energy Healing: A Personal Story

 

After I read Afterwards You’re a Genius I was curious about the work described there, and looked for a graduate of the Barbara Brennan school.  The healing was unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. My mind stayed clear the whole time. I didn’t have to work to focus it. No drifting, worrying or fantasizing, no urge to sleep. I had complex visual imagery along the lines of what I later read in descriptions of the early stages of an ayahuasca journey—geometric lines and vivid colors. It was all abstract, but vivid and intense. I’m not an artist, and the visual creativity amazed me. The other strange thing was the flood of laughter. The healer touched my left arm or hand, I can’t remember, and tapped some deep well of humor.  My earliest memory is laughter. It was like finding my true self. She who laughs. The next day I had no more tolerance for the man in my life. He was long overdue for the break-up, and I did it. I told him exactly what I thought and felt, and confronted all his lies. At first I was swamped with the anger I hadn’t let myself feel, and then dancing with the utter joy of being free of him. I felt that the energy healing freed me from an unhealthy niceness. The healer said she saw suitcases around me. I wasn’t living with him to move out, but I did end up moving across the country a few months later.

Psychic Science

Nadia's_Psychic_Readings_01After I taught a stress management workshop as part of one of my college courses, a young man came up and asked me if I knew anything about being psychic. (He must have been psychic to think to ask me.) He had recently started having precognitive dreams and wanted to learn more. These are some resources I recommended to him. If you read my books, you may also be curious.

I list references in the back of The Calling, including some of the articles and web sites used in the course Bernadette and Charlie teach. In the scene where Mae and Hubert read the about PEAR lab studies, I tried to give readers a sense of the solid scientific support there is for remote viewing and also remote influencing of what should be random events. (PEAR stands for Princeton Engineering Anomalies research.) The articles from the PEAR lab, and the ones on affecting the output of random event generators (REG) are a little dry, as scholarly articles can be, but the site can give you a summary of the work done there.

For more accessible reading on the subject, I suggest Rupert Sheldrake’s book The Sense of Being Stared At. The title refers to one of the topics he has studied in depth. Yes, we do feel it when we are being stared at.

A fun yet solid book exploring energy healing and the power of the mind to influence events is Afterwards You’re a Genius by Chip Brown. (Published in 1998, it’s now out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon.)Brown enrolls in an energy healing course, and fills in the science around the story through research and interviews. The title is a quote from Dean Radin, a scientist who studies such things as the ability of human intentions to influence REG machines and robots. When you start studying wacky stuff, you’re a wacko, but afterwards, you’re a genius.

I found a trove of fascinating stories on the web site The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences. Scientists may not like to admit that a mystical or psychic event happened to them. This site served as a safe community for those who had such a story to share. It is currently inactive—no new posts—but readable.

The journal Explore is wonderful. I recommend subscribing if you are seriously interested in healing studies. I encourage you to sample the brilliant editorials of its editor Larry Dossey.

When he was editor at Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, the peer-reviewed journal I cite often in The Calling, I used to look forward to his editorials as the highlight of the journal. He unites science, poetry, and wit with a unique voice. He can integrate the most unlikely images into a coherent, thought-provoking essay.

I also recommend Dossey’s book the Power of Premonition.

 

Image from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Bohemian Baltimore

Breaking the Genre Barrier

I’ve claimed genres because Amazon and Goodreads and other web sites require it, but I am a genre-blender. I once described my genre as “platypus.” The platypus looks like a mammal, a bird, and a reptile, blended into one animal. I write with elements of general fiction, mystery, romance, suspense and paranormal, but I don’t fit in any genre. I use the “paranormal” category, so readers who are interested in a mystical element to their mysteries can find me. I use the mystery category because my protagonist, a psychic, looks into the whereabouts of a missing people or animals, or why strange spiritual phenomena have occurred, or what secrets people are hiding. The mystery in my books is not always related to crime or death, though sometimes it is.  So far, none of the books are about murder. I simply wasn’t drawn to writing about murder.

Many years ago I read a mystery in which the central puzzle to be solved related to an art heist. It was non-violent. I loved it, and never forgot the concept of the murder-less mystery, even though I have long since forgotten the author and the title. Another murder-less example is the Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Precious Ramotswe is a private detective investigating such things as workplace thefts, infidelities, missing heirs, etc. There are plenty of mysteries in real life that do not involve killing someone. People are very strange, and often dishonest. I knew a man who kept it secret from his “wife” that they were not legally married, so he could honestly tell his mistress that he wasn’t married, since she would have broken off with him if he was. (I will not tell you how he did it. I may yet use it in a book.)

When it comes to paranormal fiction, I don’t care for anything with vampires or werewolves or other such creatures. I like books where the mystical kind of mysterious steps into the ordinary. Linda Hogan’s Power and Mean Spirit are two of the best books I’ve ever read. She crosses the bridge into the spiritual realm through ordinary reality in a way that makes the extraordinary somehow more believable. Her books are general fiction, or literary fiction, although they have a strong supernatural element. I don’t claim to write like Hogan, but this is the kind of “paranormal” that appeals to me as reader. I’ve had a number of psychic experiences, and have researched various elements of the mystical experience, and alternative healing, and found that this is an area full of mystery in its other sense—the inexplicable.

My characters, not the genre, seem to be the element that draws readers in. I may have to make that my brand.

                             READ OUTSIDE THE BOX WITH AMBER FOXX

The Mae Martin Psychic Mysteries

Paranormal fiction for people who don’t like paranormal fiction.

And for those who do.

No murder, just mystery.

Love is a mystery. Every person is a mystery.

Somewhere in every life there is a secret.