An Oracle Turtle Shell. Tortoise plastron with divination inscription from the Shang dynasty, dating to the reign of King Wu Ding. Held at the National Museum of China in Beijing.
In Part 1 of The Believing of Seeing, we examined the Oracle of Delphi and its importance in the ancient world. Today we meet a modern day psychic who shares with us her own insights into her gift of foresight.
Jeannie Reed is a professional psychic with an international clientele. For thirty years she has practiced her craft. She believes that each of us has psychic ability that only needs to be nurtured and developed to be realized. Below she describes her awakening as a professional reader and the evolution of her ability to see what others cannot.
**************************
Between 1912 and 1922, the great German Romantic poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a series of ten poems dedicated to the one he loved. The Duino Elegies are romantic, evocative, heartfelt, and deeply inspiring. They are emotionally powerful and beautifully written. And for six months, in the late 1990s, this book of poems was my oracle.
While I have been a Tarot master for thirty years, I long ago decided I wanted to know as much as possible about the whole world of the arcane, the unknown. Thus began my quest to become familiar with, if not understand, the major oracles in use today. And so, I have studied the ancient science of astrology for forty years. I have been working with the ancient runes for thirty years; I have more than a passing acquaintance with numerology at this point; and I’ve so far devoted thirty years of study to the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching. Because I realized early on that the seeds of the future were planted far back in the long-ago past.
I began this life as a professional psychic from a strange place, I think. I viewed the world of oracles as a skeptic. Like the Biblical Thomas, if I couldn’t appreciate something with one of my senses, it just didn’t exist for me. All around me, in the 1960s, people were dabbling in Tarot and astrology. I thought they were ridiculous and misguided. Science was what I knew.
And then one fateful day in 1968 in North Hatfield, Massachusetts, I was walking on the root structure of a 100-year-old maple when it was struck by lightning – and my life changed forever. For the first time, I was able to open my mind to the possibilities of things I cannot see, feel, hear, taste, or touch. For the first time I was able to know things I hadn’t experienced or been taught. For the first time, I began to see that an oracle, in the right hands and with the right attitude and knowledge, is a miraculous thing we can use to know what we do not know.
It has been a while since that lightning strike, and over the years I have discovered that almost anything can be used as an oracle. When in the late 1980s I opened the Rilke Elegies, asked straightforward questions, and put my finger on a page “randomly,” every single time, for months, the answers were accurate. What I read there reflected the reality of what was, or what was to be. Did Rilke intend for his poems to be used like this? No. But the fact is that I did use them like this. And it worked.
Likewise, the Bible. I was going through a rough time at one point, and I asked my questions and opened the Bible and put my finger down “randomly” and, sure enough, what I read there conformed exactly to the situations. In this, though, the words and tone were far more inspirational than what one can get from a book of poems. Was the Bible intended to be an oracle? The jury is still out on that. But from my experiences, I would have to say that in the right hands and coming from a place of acceptance, it can be exactly that.
This Is Not Fun and Games
This idea of acceptance leads me to talk here about the danger of oracles. First, working with oracles of any kind is not a game. If you ask the same question over and over, desperate for a different answer than the one you’re getting, you’re in danger of obsession. And that’s a bad place to be psychologically. I know. I was there. For a short time in the 1960s, I was attempting to use the I Ching (a magnificent piece of philosophy and probably the most accurate oracle in the world) to tell me what I wanted and needed to hear about a guy I cared about. I almost made myself nuts because, of course, the oracle was giving me the truth. And, as in the Tom Cruise movie, I just couldn’t handle it. Thank God I realized, suddenly, after days of this, that I was making myself crazy. I closed the I Ching and didn’t open it again for twenty years.
Let me give you an example of what this oracle can do. The I Ching is a book, a compilation of songs and philosophy, written thousands of years ago in China. I was using it at one point to try and solve the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. One of my questions was, “Why was Kennedy killed in Texas?” The reply? “Kindred spirits in the Southwest.”
Astonishing.
My Career
Early on, though, among all the oracles, I found Tarot. Or should I say, Tarot found me. All of a sudden, card readers were everywhere on Manhattan Neighborhood Network TV; one woman I know came into the pub where I was hanging out and showed me a Tarot pack she had just bought; and then another. I was intrigued. And scared. But not scared enough to run the other way.
I approached Tarot the way a college student approaches calculus, or history, or psychology. I started to study. I read every book I could get my hands on about Tarot. (There are a few good ones out there.) I started reading for people, without charging, and I did this for four years. For the first year I usually had the book open in front of me. (You cannot learn Tarot in a day, no matter what they tell you. It took me maybe a year to master all the basic card meanings, upright and reversed.) Finally, I felt I knew enough and was being accurate enough to start charging people for my service. But it would be fifteen more years before I would consider myself a master.
Today I read using a system I designed myself, for card meanings, card combinations, and card placement. So I guess you’d say I’m fearless now, now that I understand the power of Tarot. And in what I do I’m proud to say I’m a pioneer.
Symbols = Ideas
Tarot is a world of symbols. Color, line, form, philosophy, archetypes, all merge to strike subliminal chords in us. Maybe some of you recall the old advertising trick: splicing 1/24 second of a popcorn image into a movie. Suddenly, everybody in the theater wants popcorn and nobody knows why. Such is the power of the subliminal suggestion.
Well, Tarot does the same thing in a profound way. Using cards I can diagnose illness, warn people about stock market crashes, encourage people to take the wonderful career and life leaps they want to make but are afraid of taking. I can caution people about poor relationship choices, inspire sound money management…. The images I’m looking at combine at the subliminal (subconscious) level in me to become thoughts. In this case, the “I want popcorn” from the film becomes: “You have a predisposition to diabetes.”
What Do You Want To Know?
Strangely, I have to say here that the single most important thing about getting the right oracular answer is asking the exact right question. A young woman comes to me and wants to know about a guy she’s dating, and I am looking at her job falling apart, the fact that she has no money, the fact that she may be homeless tomorrow. Well, I am seeing these things because at that moment they are far more important than her relationship.
Likewise, there is no way to pull an end run around a good reader. No matter what you ask and how you try to avoid asking the question, a good reader will still see the answer. And so I have discovered that the absolutely best question you can ask, at least at first, about any situation is: “What is the best thing I can know about _________?”
And accept what you are told if it makes sense to you, knowing what else you know about the issue.
So What Makes A Good Reader?
The sad fact is that there are many people out there who don’t have a clue what they’re doing, who have no real knowledge of Tarot, but who are nevertheless using it to take money from people. Most of these folks are well-meaning. Some are simply criminals. (Do not do not do not ever go to a storefront “Reader/Advisor” of any kind. These people know exactly how to determine your worth and then separate you from it. They are dangerous. They are a subculture in the United States. They are everywhere looking for vulnerable people to take advantage of. And they are NOT psychic in any way, shape, or form.)
What do you do, then, if you’re looking for a psychic?
Here is what I tell people: If you have good reason to trust someone, consult that person. Maybe the reader has written a really persuasive book. Maybe you have seen or heard the reader work on TV or radio and listened to positive feedback. Maybe one of your friends, someone whose judgment you trust, recommends a reader. In these three instances, by all means take a chance on that reader.
But always listen with a tiny bit of skepticism. And never ever ask questions until the reader has been talking a while. Because in every question you ask, there is information about you and your life. The reader should be giving you information, not vice versa!
I also counsel my clients to use the information I give them in conjunction with everything else they know, so they can make solid decisions. I do not give advice. Who am I to advise anybody about anything? I tell people what I see. Period.
And what exactly is it that I’m seeing? I’m seeing information that is coming from them.
We all know everything, you see. It’s just that we can’t access it. It’s like: the Internet is out there with all the information in the world, but without a keyboard we cannot connect to it. Tarot is my keyboard. The universal unconscious is my Internet.
Physics
This brings me to something fascinating. I started working with oracles, and Tarot in specific, having been scientific in my approach to life. And I thought Tarot was about as non-scientific as you can get. Colorful pictures on pieces of cardboard? Be serious! Until I realized that string theory, and quarks, and the whole world of modern physics actually almost proves that I can know what I know just by pulling it out of the air, by looking at those pictures.
And so now I have come full-circle. There are many out there who have also reached this starting point. (Here I can recommend the book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters.) Physics is leading to God, as Einstein promised it would long ago. The universe is, after all, quite too perfect to have happened by accident.
Adapting to the Times
I have always had an interest in using Tarot and the I Ching to solve crimes. I’ve worked with an NYPD homicide detective on two occasions, both times getting “good” information on cases involving murdered kids. And sometimes I’ll read a news story about a stolen or murdered child whose case is now cold, and I’ll do what I can. Again, in a couple of these situations I’ve been able to give good information to the police departments involved.
Then came 9/11 and the whole world changed.
It took me less than 24 hours to know there was a “money man” behind the WTC attacks and another 24 hours to know he was somewhere in the Tora Bora Mountain region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I didn’t know bin Laden’s name, but I had him. After that I did a lot of work on terrorism, came up with a lot of solid information, and passed it on to the right people.
I feel now that this work is my calling. As long as nations are vulnerable and groups like al Qaeda are out there, people like me can do things to stop them, deter them, subvert them, nail them.
Now, governments, including our own, have tried using psychics to do this kind of thing, but I have to say, again, that not everybody who calls himself/herself psychic is in fact the real deal. Truly, the real deal are few and far between. But we are out here. (The wonderful Dorothy Allison, New Jersey housewife, comes to mind: she “sees” murders and finds victims and identifies killers and for a long time has been in demand by police departments all over the United States.) Dorothy Allison is rare. I cannot do what she does. She has no tools. She is simply “connected.” But with my tools, I can come close.
Developing Your Gifts
I teach Tarot, and I have discovered that if you have psychic ability, it can be developed. It can be developed by working with something like Tarot for hours every day. It seems that if you live long enough in a world of symbols, something in the brain changes. You start to get information but you don’t know exactly where it’s coming from. Every once in a rare while, for example, a dead person will show up in one of my readings. So far it has always been to give really solid advice to the person sitting across from me, or consolation, or simply reassurance that my client is not alone. I don’t see this individual. I see the individual in the cards. I have also “seen” a 747 in the King of Swords (where it isn’t) and learned that the client’s brother is a commercial pilot. I have seen a jigsaw puzzle piece in the throat of the Page of Pentacles (where it is not) and learned that the client has a son who swallowed that piece when he was five. I have seen a little white dog with black eyes in the Queen of Pentacles (where it is not) and learned that this was in fact the client’s dog.
When I started out, all of this was impossible and remote. I could never even imagine this stuff. But Tarot takes us at our own pace, and at this point I have come to realize there are simply no limits. It’s a beautiful thing.
Roots
As for the origins of Tarot? Whatever prompted the first design of these cards is in fact lost in the mists of long-ago time. I wish I knew who thought it up: I’d like to shake that person’s hand for a job well done.
Author: Jeannie Reed has been working as a professional psychic for 32 years. She is a tarot master with expertise in astrology. She has been studying the I Ching as an oracle and a philosophy for three decades. She believes that psychic ability is a biological gift no longer as needed now by mankind as in the distant past, when defense against the unknown was crucial to the survival of the race. She feels that the principles that enable psychic work to be done will eventually be uncovered by modern physics: photon twinning, string theory and the Heisenberg Principle are just the tip of the iceberg. She describes her approach as working with her clients in a compassionate, practical way, to provide them the tools they need to solve their problems, resolve their issues and lead psychologically uncluttered lives.
Jeannie can be found at http://www.abcdesp.com
She can be reached at jeannemreed@yahoo.com
AntiquityNOW 