THE PSYCHIC

The women sat at Jessie’s kitchen table with cups of steaming tea while Pam shuffled Jessie’s Tarot deck. “Do you have cats on everything?” Pam laughed. “I like cats.” “Okay. But I think it’s more than just liking. And what about black cats? How is it that all your cats are black? I mean, you must have a dozen black cats!” “Nine.” “O Now! You’re kidding!” “Nine.” “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to find nine black cats!” Pam put the cards in the middle of the table. “Break them into three piles.” Pam picked up the deck again and thought a minute as she caused the cards to break three times. “The cats all found their way here on their own.” Pam looked at Jessie with a quizzical look. “You’re serious?!” “Yes." Jessie laughed heartily as she started dealing the cards into a circle. “Hmmm. Let’s see.” Jessie looked at Pam. “You have some interesting times coming.” “Wait. What is the significance of the black? I thought black cats were slightly evil or something like that.” “Who told you that?” “Well, look at the witch and the black cat.” “Well, for one thing, witches aren’t evil.” Jessie placed a card in the center. It was the Hermit card. Then she looked up at Pam again with some annoyance in the lines of her smile. “Witchcraft isn’t evil either. In fact, it’s a very old and wonderful practice. It’s really called Wicca; it’s a kind of healing practice. People in the old days had little respect for women who made medical potions from herbs. Men in positions of authority thought that any of the remedies that women proposed were automatically suspect because they were supposed to come from the dark side. But the dark side only means from the aspects of the feminine moon rather than from the masculine sun, which has always been the symbol for the male. You of all people should know this.” “Why me of all people?” asked Pam. “Because you’re a medical person!” laughed Jessie. “I never studied witchcraft!” scoffed Pam. “Well, it’s about time you did! There’s wonderful magic in witchcraft. White Magic, not Black Magic. See? That’s where you’re confused.” Jessie put the cards down realizing that her reading was not going to happen in the next couple of minutes. “You’re spooking me out.” “Have you been to a church where people burn candles?” Pam looked darkly at Jessie but didn’t say anything. Something invaded her and rocked her in her chair. “I’m not trying to scare you.” “I know that.” “The candles are a form of white magic. The candlelight calls on the spirits for support.” Pam nodded in a kind of understanding. “You’re a very special person. You can develop your gifts for real good. You’ve already done so much. But there’s more to do, Pamela.” “Nobody’s called me Pamela since my mother died. What are you talking about?” Pam knew Jessie reasonably well now. She had begun to trust her. “What is not understood about witches from long ago is that they were the first herbalists. They were women who understood how to heal with herbs and potions. Consider those times when you were given a cup of warm water with lemon and honey to sooth a sore throat. That was an herbal concoction devised by women caring for their families. When women joined forces in early communities to study herbs for healing—midwives, for example---men of the church began to feel threatened. It was the priests who were supposed to drive evil spirits from the body, but women were coming up with remedies that cured the ailing population in natural ways!” Pam listened with a smile that formed unconsciously across her face. “That’s really logical.” Pam laughed out loud. Jessie smiled, too. “I can save you years of frustration, Pam.” Pam looked wide-eyed around the room. The place was comforting. Jessie liked the color green and she used blue accents along with the simplicity of white linen in places. Her husband was known to pop in once in a while and smile, usually not saying anything, just smiling before he wandered off to do some chore or other. He had made a couple of pieces of simple wooden furniture: a small table and a plant stand that he had painted green. Two large framed cross-stitch samplers graced one wall. Pam noticed a basket where a small hoop contained the current project. “You see. We are here on this plain ordinary realm, this 'reality', but there is more than what we see here.” “You’re talking about spirit.” “Well, yes, but that’s not it. Spirit is no more than simple energy. There is nothing mysterious about spirit, Pam.” “I think I might understand,” said Pam, as she remembered the day she smelled her mother’s perfume. “Hang on. Hang on.” Jessie got up and walked heavily toward a closet. She opened the door and brought out a rolled-up poster-size roll with a wide ribbon tied around it. “This is 30 years of work.” Pam watched as Jessie unrolled four feet of an 18-inch-wide piece of white paper. It looked like a scroll from in ancient Egypt. “This is what I call my ‘Big Work’.” Pam leaned to see closely. “Notice the 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 months in a year, 12 Apostles, 12 in a dozen, along with the Hebrew letters that subscribe to the orders laid down in the Kabbalah. That’s the Tree of Life, you know, from the Jewish tradition.” Pam did know, but she sat quietly, looking at this extraordinary chart, hand-lettered and in very fine detail. Her eyes moved along to see hieroglyphs and runes, along with Roman numerals next to Hebrew letters. As she bent to look more closely, she found that something was making logical sense detail after detail. “You see?” Pam laughed and allowed her warm brown eyes to shine in a crinkle of delight. “Well, I see something. Yes.”