Painting sacred buffalo skulls for ceremony

Ya know, when your title is professional psychic, there's never any end to the variety of people you meet, or the places it leads you, or to the unusual things you get to do. This week was one of those weeks that had me doing creative stuff I would have never dreamed I would do 20 years ago!

Sun Dance is fast approaching and Tra and I have been working together, not on quilts this time, but instead on the last little prep things for the arena. Specifically, this week, we've been painting buffalo skulls.

Each of the four gates in the Sun Dance arbor/arena area faces the compass points of north, south, east and west. Each gate or opening is blessed with a sacred buffalo skull sitting at that entryway. The skulls are often painted with the colors associated with that direction and it's spirit nations. We also had extra skulls for use during the Sun Dance ceremony itself, and all these skulls needed first to be sealed, the primered, then painted, and then some had extra detailing added.

I arrived this week to having Lester, Tra and Jon all sitting in front of skulls on a table in Jon's garage and when I walked up, everyone looked at me expectantly. "Good, you're just in time," Lester said.

"In time for what?" I queried.

"Can you paint lightening? We want this skull to honor the Wakiyan nation, the lightning and thunder beings."

"Sure," I responded, if you have a photo or a picture you would like me to put on it.

They were all way ahead of me. Lester chose his favorite lightning photo graph and I went to work. Before this month, I had never even considered painting buffalo skulls as even a remote possibility of anything I would do this lifetime...but if it can help with doing anything to support their traditional ceremonies, I'm willing to role up my sleeves and dive into just about anything.

The basecoat had already been done and was dry when I arrived. Photo in hand, I found the most delicate paint brush I could, and took both pure white and violet acrylic paint and set to work following Lester's instruction as to where he wanted the lightning to run. This is what I came up with:


I think it turned out alright for my first ever lightning buffalo skull.

Psychic training

I recently was interviewed by a reporter from Parade Magazine. She asked me about my day-to-day life as a professional psychic and medical intuitive. It's always interesting to me about what folks are curious about. She wanted to know if a person could take psychokinesis training classes, or telekinesis training. I told her that there are several seminars or paranormal classes available across the country, where people could increase their psychic skills. The Internet and Google tend to be your best friends in this type of a search. Type in what you're looking for, and start surfing the Web!

When it comes to energy projection or abilities with telekinesis, I've never met anyone quite like my friend Andre, who passed through my life three years ago. I've chronicled my experiences with the amazing abilities of this spiritual guru on my website.

I've also been fielding a lot of questions about the economy lately. My advice? Hold on.. we're going for a ride. I see a continued decrease or deflation in the real estate sector, which will end up with higher foreclosure rates. The chickens from the sub-prime mortgage loans are coming home to roost.

When Mother Nature Prunes

This weekend, Mother Nature went on a rather extensive pruning spree where I live in Central Iowa. We received a rather hefty dose of ice followed by a foot of the heavy white stuff. For those of you who have wondered what sort of a place this psychic clairvoyant lady lives in, here is a quick picture of the gazebo in my back yard. Yesterday, I stood looking in this direction and the breaking of tree limbs sounded like gun shots. This morning I could stand outside and as the ice began cracking and melting off the trees, I could have sworn a thousand people at once were trying to pop ice cubes out of ice trays. Mom Nature saw fit to trim off the top of my red bud tree and take out a black walnut that I was wondering if I should cut down anyway. Guess she made the decision for me.

Lakota Sweat Lodges

I was honored to have my Medicine Man friend Lester come over to the house this past week to help me with a few things. Over the past year plus, we have come to find that our friendship and respect for each other has developed into quite the unique working relationship. My medical intuitive and psychic skills, combined with his understanding and deep connection to Spirit proves to be a winning combination in helping folks with their health problems and emotional issues.

I have been impressed time and time again with how strongly and quickly a traditional Lakota Medicine Man can get things done with her or her chanupa (sacred pipe) and Sweat Lodge. It pulls together a combination of factors that I don't see in healing methodologies elsewhere.

First, in order to seek help from a Medicine Man, you must opagi him or her. Opagi is a word that means literally "an offering of smoke." The action of approaching the Chanupa carrier (or Water Pourer) with a pouch or can of tobacco to ask for a lodge to be held to help with a difficulty you are having means that you have taken the first proactive step to make a change. By choosing to ask a Shaman for help means that you recognize that the Spiritual component is an extremely necessary one. For health related issues, the Western cultural equivalent would be approaching your minister to ask him or her to pray for your health, knowing they will also be acting as your doctor.

An Opagi, or offering of smoke, means you actually go out and purchase a can of organic tobacco and gift it to the Medicine Man when you ask for their assistance. Since most of us don't have this sort of thing just laying around the house, making the effort to go out and purchase it, set up a time to meet with the Shaman and take the time to tell him or her what has happened, what you need and why sets several things into motion. First, the Universe knows you are taking the those initial baby steps toward getting help. Second, by acquiring the tobacco and visiting the Water Pourer, you are honoring him or her in a time honored, sacred, traditional way. Third, by saying out loud what has brought you to this place of unbalance or dis-ease, you are sharing your story and taking the first steps at getting the problem out into the open so it can be dealt with.

When you opagi or ask for a healing lodge for yourself, the list of stuff you have to do to get ready for that lodge to take place is not small. It consists of: providing enough wood for a 3 hour bonfire's; acquiring anywhere from dozen to two dozen or more granite rocks that are the size of a melon; getting more tobacco as gifts for the Water Pourer, Fire Tender, and Drummer; making a star quilt or purchasing a quality blanket such as a Pendleton Wool blanket; bringing a large pot of fresh soup for everyone to share after lodge; making whatever number of tobacco ties and flags the Water Pourer requires of you for that lodge; being ready and willing to complete the process of saying thank you to the Spirits and the Shaman by doing a traditional Wopila ceremony at a future time designated by them.

That's a LOT of stuff to do....especially if you are sick or emotionally don't have it in balance for whatever reason. Isn't going to a Western physician and taking a pill a lot easier? Well...maybe that's true.

But the Lakota protocol steps up the healing process in many ways that traditional Western medicine does not. There are so many things to do go get ready for a healing lodge, that a single individual really is forced to ask for help from all kinds of friends and family, even strangers, to make sure the lodge happens. I've been known to call all my friends and ask them if they have melon sized rocks on their property or in their gardens that I can have...but then I have to explain WHY I need them. Thus I am forced to retell my own story. I must explain about the rocks and the sacred fire and about this non-traditional method of seeking health and balance. It requires that to share what's going on in my life with others. It reconnects me to them and them to me, and helps me move the old stuck "stuff" that caused me to get ill in the first place out of my body! It gives others an opportunity to listen, care and offer love and support in their own way.

In making prayer ties (the Lakota word is chanli apahcha or tobacco bundle) you are asked to say a prayer for what you want when tying each of dozens of little colored cloth pouches on a piece of sinew. Again, there is nothing equivalent in our own culture that physically creates a visual representation of prayer after prayer after prayer. The string of little cloth bundles is a tangible representation that we are proactively seeking help from the Creator(s) to get unstuck in life. The repetition solidfies within ourselves and within our connection to Spirit what it is that we want and are working with God/Goddess to create. Each tobacco tie then becomes another baby step in taking back one's own health and balance.

The gift of a blanket to the Water Pourer is not one FOR him or her...but one they in turn will give away as they see fit. You are purchasing an expensive item or putting your own energy into creating one from scratch. I advocate the creation of a blanket if you can do it....I can tell you that in making the effort, each and every stitch then becomes sacred and the thousands of stitches take you forward in thousands of tiny threads that interweave you, the blanket and the Spiritual universe.

Finally, when you ask those closest to you to attend the lodge, you are really asking those friends and family members to prayer for you! You are opening up to allow the energy and love of others to heal you. The conscious asking makes it so that you don't stay an island, alone and isolated struggling with your own healing. You proactively seek love and help and let other's in on that process. You're asking them to go through this hard journey with you. They consciously choose to enter and show they are willing to suffer the tremendous heat and steam of the sweat lodge to help you heal. Only really good people with true loving and caring energy are willing to make that sacrafice!

Finally, in the minutes before the lodge takes place, the Water Pourer gets together with you and the chanupa is filled. Each pinch of red willow bark that goes into the pipe is a clear request directly from you to Spirit about what you seek for your health, happiness and rebalancing. You consciously choose to involve the Creator(s) in your healing process.

Adding it all together, this kind of healing process is a far cry from the Western model where you see the doc, get the prescription filled, and go home, take the pill with a glass of water and lie in bed alone.

The speed at which I've seen this Lakota protocol work on an individual's health has been nothing short of astonishing! Looking over the long list of traditional details and how they force us to reconnect with ourselves, others and Spirit to heal...it's no wonder the Lakota have held onto this system for thousands of years.

It simply works!

Non-Standard Psychic Divination Techniques

Oreomancy: Tasty Fortunetelling

Sometime, just for fun, I step away from the traditional serious professional psychic and medical intuitive work and teach something that touches on metaphysical history as well as letting my students have fun. Several years ago, I was holding a workshop to a group of gals on traditional tea leaf reading. it was then that I also introduced them to other fun food divination tools. While I taught this manner of fortune telling or psychic divination tongue in cheek (or perhaps cookie in cheek) it was extremely gratifying to find that using Oreo cookies as a useful and accurate divinatory tool really worked.

Oreomancy is quite simple. Hand a cookie to the Questioner and have them hold it between their palms, focusing on the issue. After a moment or two, they twist the Oreo quickly clockwise to separate the top part of the cookie from the bottom. Beginning with the cookie in Questioner's left hand, the Oreomancer takes this chocolate wafer and reads first the past and or present. The cookie in the right hand of the Questioner pertains to the future.

Easy interpretation tip...just remember, the Oreo "Stuff in the Middle" is the stuff of life! To help you get started with the details, here are some classic Oreomancy interpretations after the twist has been completed:

All the Stuff is on the left cookie -- You're at a point in your life where you're leaving a great deal of stuff behind and starting with a clean slate (cookie) for your future.

All the Stuff is on the right cookie -- You have a lot of stuff to look forward to! There is a full future ahead, with lots of yummy abundance.

S shaped Stuff line -- Super Stuff! You have super things in your past or future (depending on left or right wafer.)

Ripped or jagged stuff line -- Take care of your stuff better! Your pushing and tearing things, going to fast in life and need to slow down and treat you and your stuff with more TLC.

Stuff dripping over the cookie's edge -- the stuff of life is spilling out all over. Time to declutter and get everything back where it belongs.

Smooshed and flattened Stuff -- You're forcing life too hard and trying to push to much to get things to fit life the way you want. Take is easy with your stuff! Be more gentle with how you treat the stuff of life!

Stuff flew out and landed on the ground -- Things are falling between the cracks and you aren't revering life or treating your stuff as precious. Warning, this can lead to you and your stuff of life getting seriously stepped on.

Stuff forms the profile of a face -- You have someone leaving or coming in to your life (depending on whether the face is on the past/present or the future wafer.)


I think you get the idea. Next time you enjoy a package or Oreo cookies, don't forget to try a little Oreomancy and savor the Stuff of Life!

What is a Medical Intuitive?

Many times, clients will ask me what exactly is a medical intuitive. First of all, I let them know that a medical intuitive is not a doctor or nurse. I'm not an MD and cannot provide a diagnosis nor can I prescribe for them. That said, what I can do is give them a detailed psychic look at what I see as going on in their body, provide them with the information precisely the way my Sources give it to me and send them back to their own choice of health care practitioner.

Because my educational background is in the life sciences and medicine, when I take a peek inside the human body, the information comes to me in very detailed layers. I guess a good description would be that I'm kind of like a walking, talking CT scan. Muscles, bones, blood vessels, body chemistry all speak to me, but so do things on the microscropic or cellular level. Overlay on top of that a connection between which body systems are going wrong and add in a dose of understanding of the emotions behind the dis-ease and you have a better sense of what my everyday psychic work is like.

I took a big hint from the readings of Edgar Cayce in how I gather medical intuitive information about a specific person. When someone calls me, I ask their full name, birthdate and the city and state where they reside. I'm not asking because I'm doing astrology on the individual...I gather this information because I want to get details about the right person. Let's see if I can explain. If you were to ask me to look at Tom Smith, there are thousands and thousands of Tom's. If you ask me to look at Tom Smith in Chicago, Illinois, there may still be dozens. But if you ask me to look at Thomas Jackson Smith who was born on March 25, 1959 who resides in Chicago, Illinois...then there is just one and only one man who fits all those parameters.

I start with my sketch pad and put the person's info near the top of the page. Then I open up clairvoyantly and ask the Universe for any and all medical information available. I take a good pen and beginning at the head, slowly draw an outline of the body. As the sketch forms, I'm shown where the energy is something other than "normal." Sometimes old injuries pop out, sometimes upcoming ones do. Often times my psychic Sources tell me whole phrases about what's going wrong as well as what the body needs to correct the problem. After I've outlined the entire person, I slowly scan back and forth over top of the sketch seeking more details. Often, by the time I'm done, the entire page is filled with information and then some.

Because I know a great deal about alternative medicine, I'm comfortable working with folks who prefer accupuncturists, chiropractors, herbalists, nutritionists, homeopathists and those who lean toward Ayurvedic medicine. I also have a knack for helping to explain in lay persons terms what traditional Western medical doctors are doing, why they precribe certain medicines and what traditional test results mean. My goal is to help my clients understand their own bodies better. The more educated you are about your own health, the better you can make choices as to how to get healthy again.

How this intuitive process works, I have to confess I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that the accuracy seems to be quite high and the clairvoyant details very specific. When I'm done with the sketch, I simply provide this information to my clients exactly the way it has been presented to me. Again, I won't tell them what to do with it, nor prescribe anything but will encourage them to continue to work with their own health care practitioner.