Shaking Hands With Merlin
Photo by Marilyn Groch-Moran
As a professional psychic, I have questions. Such as, how could I create more value for my clients? What does it feel like to be the client seeking a reading? How do other psychics work and what can I learn from them?
So periodically, I get readings from recommended professionals. Hence, my visit to Cassadaga, Florida.
Cassadaga was founded by a trance medium (George Colby) who in the 1700s was guided across the country to this precise Florida location by his Native American inner spirit guide, Seneca. Officially chartered as a spiritualist camp in 1894, it was modeled after New York’s Lilydale and meant to be a haven for psychics.
When I heard about it from my friend, Susan, my love for all things psychic was piqued, and my desire to share it with you was intense. Sometimes I forget I’m not an intuitive journalist, and you’ll see why that statement is important later.
Would this place be the real deal or another mecca for anyone who wanted to ply the trade but wasn’t necessarily A-list?
Susan is an award-winning writer, smart person, and always fun. In mentioning Cassadaga, she told me something more:
“He changed my life,” she said over the phone. She was speaking of Arthur, the psychic she saw in Cassadaga some years before.
“He’s powerful. He told me things I wasn’t ready to hear.” Her words seemed to linger in the air.
“I was wiped out after,” she said. “Just gone.”
Well, I wanted to hear things I wasn’t ready to hear and have a reading so intense I’d need to lie down afterward. Imagine what I might learn about myself, about psychic readings, and for my clients. Imagine what I could share in my newsletter.
Then I opened his website and clicked on the video of him speaking.
Lots of people have messy hair and bad teeth. It doesn’t mean they can’t do the job. But everything in me said “fraud.”
I called Susan back. “It says he was university tested but doesn’t name where,” I said as she continued to praise him. Non-specifics are an easy tell.
“UCF,” she said (or some initials that sounded real). “Look him up. He locates missing people. He can read your DNA and tell you your family history…He’s powerful. Call him.”
And so I did. While riding in the back seat of another friend’s car as we inched along a narrow road at Lake Apopka nature preserve while looking out the window to count alligators and sea birds.
Arthur was a talker. And as I listened I also thought Arthur was a liar. He told me about himself how he would read my family history through my DNA. Just bring him family photos and set them face down. Also, could he speak with my friend driving the car because he could read for her too?
That’s my friend Marilyn, who is an accomplished artist, smart as the proverbial whip and does not suffer fools or anything like them. No, she didn’t want to speak with him but she’d drive me to see him tomorrow. 11 a.m. He needed me there by 11 a.m. so I wouldn’t interfere with the 1 p.m. person. I didn’t believe he had a 1 p.m. person but Susan said he was powerful, remember?
Reading Day
I knocked at his door at 11 a.m., Marilyn standing behind me for moral support. Arthur wasn’t sure of his address and could only describe his home by its nearness to the haunted hotel and the vehicles he had in the garage.
I waited…no answer. I knocked and waited and thought “I can leave.” But then the door opened and standing before me was Arthur. Bare feet, pillow-crushed gray hair, beige pants that were mostly zipped up, and a dirty beige shirt with stains.
I reminded him who I was and why I was there as he stared at us bleary-eyed. In my mind, I was still thinking, “we should just go.”
“Aren’t you at 1:00,” he asked before finally letting us into a front room that was bright from all the windows, which even included the window partly held up by an old board.
He wanted Marilyn and me to sit together on the worn love seat because he insisted that he had to talk to me again. So, he talked and he talked and he told me much of what he had the previous day and he told me to slow down when I tried to speed things up because he did things a certain way. He assured me that at the end of the reading he would ask if I was helped. If I was, then I would pay. His fee wasn’t excessive. Even though I still wanted to leave.
This is where I remind you and me that I’m not a journalist, though I write for different publications. I make my living doing psychic readings and I’m passionate about readings being authentic.
But I’m also an empath. You know the word empathic…feeling others’ feelings? In my case, often turning into a chameleon and taking on the reality of my surroundings, the personalities of my kidnappers, so to speak. That’s why I can tell clients how they’re feeling even when they don’t know. I can feel it for you.
Even though I wanted to leave, it didn’t fully occur to me that I could. Politeness as a fault? Keeping my word? Learning an old lesson a new way, and still thinking I was a journalist would could write this up for you…?
Let me read all these books, take all sorts of classes, test out readers so my clients won’t have to. Plus, Susan has had a reading with me. Did she think he was better?
My training has been to leave people uplifted and open to new possibilities but go ahead, give me so much DNA information that I will be wiped out. I’ve felt wiped out after giving a reading but never after getting one, and that includes from the astrologer who cried through the whole thing because she said my mother didn’t love me.
After regaling us with his talk, ex, “I might tell you your mother was a lesbian and that it wasn’t your father’s fault they broke up. I told that to another client and she was astounded.” All the while eyeing us, me on the love seat in front of him, and Marilyn not following his orders, sitting on a chair behind him.
It was like someone throwing out words and looking to see when your eyes light up.
So I gave him nothing. I didn’t hide my information but I didn’t share it. In general, I hate when people test me because once I agree to do a reading I’m all in. I don’t care if you tell me stuff you know, I’m looking under it for what you don’t know, for patterns, for instance, that if you were aware of it could change your life, or certainly your approach.
Suddenly, another door snapped open and a woman with strands of ragged white hair asked why we didn’t come into the house?
She looked and he treated her like the old servant in a Russian play so I wasn’t sure if she was his wife. I soon followed him through another room that was scattered with books and papers, which led to a kitchen if you turned right, and to the reading room on the left.
The Reading
This room was less cluttered, a round table on which he’d set a glass of water, a large window looking out to small grassy yard. We sat on couches facing each other.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” he said, crossing his legs and picking at one bare foot, “but I don’t find you sexy. Men won’t find you sexy. They’ll think you’re exacting like an accountant or a spinster school teacher.”
I placed the photos I’d been instructed to bring face down on the table. He was supposed to touch them and read my family’s historical DNA.
As he lifted the printer copy of my parents, the light flowed through the page revealing their outlines. “I feel there’s two people,” he said. “A man in a cap; maybe a military uniform.”
“That’s true,” I told him, not sure what he could see through the paper or how much was his own ability.
Flipping the copy face up, he declared the woman beautiful but spoiled and cold. However, the man was nice.
“They’re my parents,” I finally told him and at which he seemed surprised.
The reading went downhill from there (assuming the proceeding was the uphill.)
His tips: I should date more. Green eyes are rare and I did I know I had them? I’m less threatening when I smile. My friend who came with me shouldn’t be trusted.
And then, to use a cliche, he hungrily reached for the money. No, parting line about hoping I’d been helped to see if he earned his fee.
And me, I couldn’t wait to leave. It was like being stuck in a dying conversation at a party where you don’t fit in.
Every reader has had clients who wait until the last minute to either ask an earth-shattering question or to suddenly say that they don’t want to pay because they wanted something they weren’t given.
When it happened to me, the woman then asked if she could still have the recording of her session so she could learn more about herself.
Which means I’m conscious of being respectful even when the situation demands something else.
And I’d lost my center. Partly because I’d stayed long enough to feel obligated. All the while pondering in my own mind about how I would create some value from this experience.
Conclusion:
Sad to say, the story continued because I asked for a receipt for my cash only payment. Apparently, I’m the first ever to ask and it involved Albert’s suddenly running from the house, coming back while his wife was still trying to make the computer work, and finally, signing a piece of scratch paper for me 30 minutes later.
What Can You Learn From This?
Look for the hook. Maybe yours isn’t the call to deeper learning, or a need to expose others who pervert your profession, but you almost inevitably have the eye where a hook can attach.
Forgiveness: If you get snagged into a situation and lose your bearings. Maybe your issue isn’t about being polite, or a “good girl.”
I’d have had to forgive myself had I walked out without paying until I came to my senses and remembered the original agreement. I was supposed to be helped.
Was I helped?
Printing out my parent’s photo the night before, Marilyn did a profoundly accurate interpretation of their issues and personalities just by using her artist’s eye, which misses nothing.
“You did learn something,” Marilyn said. “You learned how good a reader you are. Don’t forget it,” she said.
5 Top Reasons to Go to Me Instead of Arthur:
1. Accuracy
2. Honesty
3. I don’t pick my feet
4. I don’t promise what I can’t deliver
5. It doesn’t take half an hour for me to figure out how to write a receipt. (I also don’t require cash only)
