Intuitive Reflections
Paranormal Event Comes in Crystal Clear
Expo: Channels are open, and they know what we're thinking.
(By Janet Filips - The Register-Guard - Sunday November 14, 1999)Can you feel it? The psychics are in town
As a gloriously and oddly warm November sun blazed outside all Saturday. they examined palms, analyzed dreams, read tarot cards and more, filling an otherwise dreary hall at the Lane County Fairgrounds with who-knows-what forces
Is it a bunch of metaphysical hogwash or a bridge to a higher plane? Let your inner voice be your guide; but there is something soothing about talk of chakras, inner power and joyful spirits.
Between Saturday and Sunday, organizer Steve Strickland expects as many as 800 visitors to pay $6 admission to the Lifeways Psychic Expo, buying them the chance to listen to talks by psychics, browse wares from vendors and Spend .3 typical $20-$25 for a session with a Psychic.
"Eugene is the town where the lectures are busiest," said Strickland, who puts on psychic fairs twice yearly in Portland, once a year in Ashland and every other year in Eugene. "They want information."
The setup is like a psychics' carnival with a dash of decorum. Folding tables are covered with lovely cloths, polished stones and burning candles. Retail booths are draped with soft fabric swags. The scent of incense and tinkle of wind chimes drift by. Small groups of friends stand in clusters, comparing color Polaroids of their auras.
"You're fine; how am I?" joked Alan Schwartz, a 58-year-old from Seattle, giving the traditional psychics' greeting. Schwartz, who said he holds a doctorate in education, reads palms and tarot cards and acts as a medium. He's been doing it since age 3, when his great-great-grandfather came to the door in an image and touched him, he said.
"That gave me the experience of being able to see things way before they happen," said Schwartz, who grew up in a strong Orthodox Jewish household and remains skeptical as the next person about psychic claims.
But that is how he earns his living, acting, he said, as a cross between a clergyman and a psychologist. "We see motives inside people, and we try to give insight into their motives."
At a neighboring table, 45-year-old Dawna Z rolled dabs of purple oil paint onto an artist's board. Z, an intuitive artist from southeast Portland, has glitter on her face, a crown of flowers on her head and an ancient Tibetan dragon around her neck. She does touch drawings:
"I do a spoken reading, and as I talk, the images I see coalesce into an image that's affirming for that person. I know what I'm being given is what the person needs."
Psychics come in all kinds of packages and styles, from the flowing white beard, lion claw necklace and fur-trimmed robes of Rom Brusius, Glendale clairvoyant, to the blue oxford button-down and patterned tie of Ed Campbell, Seattle palm reader.
If you give Brusius an opening, your life will open to him, like a book, he said, and he can turn the pages forward and back, presenting insights into personal patterns.
Campbell, using a bright light and pancake-size magnifying glass, scrutinizes the hands for traits that signal more general qualities.
Nancy Chong, 51, a Eugene licensed massage therapist, was attracted to Campbell's technical approach.
"He gave me some very practical information," she said after her reading. "Like to wear a red stone on my ring fingers because the creativity has been stifled by this finger" - she pointed to her middle finger. "My self critic has been squashing my creativity."
Bring on the rubies.
Barbara Lee (right), a clairvoyant astrologer and energy healer from Ashland, gives a tarot reading Saturday.
(David Friedman/Register-Guard)
Barbara Lee, 43, looks like she could be your average school teacher, except for something arresting about her eyes. They are extra big, luminous and intense. When Lee was 5, she said, she saw a smiling, winged angel hovering over her parents' bed.
Now Lee reads chakras - the seven yogic energy centers in the body - does tarot cards, astrology and psychometry, which involves picking up wavelengths from an object (such as a ring) or a paper with a question written on it.
She holds a folded paper in the palm of her hands, tips her head down, breathes deeply and waits for an image, a word or a physical sensation to guide her in her answer.
It's all about energy," she said, shuffling her tarot cards.
If it sounds like all about kookiness to you, 53-year-old Bredan Marsh understands, even though she is now a believer, A year ago, out of love for her five cats, the Springfield accountant attended a workshop on communicating telepathically with animals. To her surprise, it worked - for six months.
"It's hard to tell people about this, because they think you're crazy," said a laughing Marsh, who looks as conventional as they come in her plain cotton knit shirt and short, business-like hairstyle. When she received the flyer about the Psychic Expo, she thought it might help her reconnect with her earlier success.
Eight years ago, she was a total skeptic, she said; her subsequent forays into alternative medicine triggered a shift that she describes as permeating her whole life.
So on Saturday, Marsh attended a talk by Ralph Gardner on "Waking up on the Spiritual Path," then paid $20 for his Heart Opening session, a combination of touch and a hollow-sounding humming called toning. "Creates deep connection with your inner joyful spirit," said his sign.
"I was alternating between crying and feeling all bound up and feeling more relaxed and open," Marsh said afterward. "I could feel the sound inside. Like things were shifting around, like things being reorganized inside. I felt very peaceful at the end."
Kaleb Taylor, 23, and friend Morgan Hentrup, 19, arrived at the fairgrounds expecting to find the Holiday Market. Taylor - who works at Symantec and has practiced magic for seven years - was intrigued when he saw the Psychic Expo signs. He bought incense and plans to return today to watch psychic Chas M. Stone attempt to channel an angel named Nathanael.
Hentrup isn't sure she can make it. "It would be something I'd be interested in seeing," she said. "I'm not sure how much I believe it."