Intuitive Reflections

Fair Offers up Supermarket of Spirituality

Practitioners of intuitive arts read chakras, talk of angels and tarot readings and apply aroma therapy

Malia Liggett closes her eyes as energy intuit Marie Zancanaro reads her chakras. Then Liggett sits for an aura photograph by Colleen Erickson. In a jiffy, it pops out of a large camera bearing the legend: "IT'S ALL GOOD." In the photo, Liggett, of Ashland, has a nimbus of bright light that looks like a big, white afro. Erickson says Liggett has a lot of spiritual energy, but around her throat are dark streaks that suggest communications issues, possibly from a past life. "You're pretty out there," Erickson says. "I like being out there," Liggett says.

Malia Liggett had a picture taken of her aura at the Intuitive Arts and Healing Fair in Ashland Saturday. The fair continues today at the Ashland Community Center (Mail Tribune/Jim Craven)

The reading comes Saturday morning at the Intuitive Arts Fair in Ashland. Zancanaro, of Williams, and Erickson, of Bend, often work together, providing what they say is "full-spectrum healing by two shamans whose powers beat together as one powerful healing heart."

The fair continues from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Ashland Community Center, a spiritual supermarket with psychics, tarot readers, medical intuitives, astrologers, a consultant on communicating with angels and other practitioners.

Organizer Barbara Lee says the goal is to help people trust their own higher guidance.

"Our job is to help them to the next level," she says.

Now a psychic, astrologer and spiritual counselor, Lee, 45, of Ashland, worked for years as a waitress. She puts on events like this one all over the Northwest. This is the third one in Ashland in less than two years.

"There's a lot of energy coming into the planet right now," Lee says. "If people resist, they get more frustrated. If you focus on fear, that's what you're going to create."

Lee has had power for as long as she can remember. Once at age 5 when she'd been watching an episode of "Bonanza" on television, she saw an angel hovering over her parents' bed. The angel smiled and waved to her. A year later when her parents' marriage fell apart, the angel returned and told her everything would be OK.

"A lot of intuitives have had traumatic lives," she says. "To help people, you must have gone through your own stuff."

The batik-covered tables of herbalists, energy balancers and an eyesight improver are festooned with candles and flowers, and the aromas of essential oils fill the air as snow flurries begin outside.

Like Lee, Zancanaro started seeing paranormal things when she was very young. In a diagram, she represents a healthy chakra system as having full, white light over a person's head, blue at the throat, brown around the chest, yellow in the belly and red at the groin. Physical and spiritual problems, anger and spiritual atunement all show up.

"Chakra" is from the Sanscrit word for "wheel." Chakras are visualized as seven psychic wheels or vortices at points running up the center of the body. Each has intricate relationships with astrology, numerology and so on.

Zancanaro says seeing chakras is so easy she could do it in line at the grocery store if she wanted to, but she never would, because it would be invasive.

"We call her the human MRI," Erickson says.

"It's more about stopping seeing it," Zancanaro says.

Lee says she hopes for 800 to 1,000 people to visit the fair over the weekend. She says she seldom encounters anybody who says it's all bunk.

A woman who gives her name only as Chris says she expected a bit more variety and cheaper services at the fair (a chakra reading is $25, aura photos are $20), like she found at the psychic fairs in years past at the Josephine County Fairgrounds. She had a past-life reading and says it was valuable to her. She asked her identity be kept confidential because she runs a highly visible agency and doesn't want her professional life confused with her personal interests.

As more people drift into the center, the flakes swirling outside grow thicker, cloaking Lithia Park in white.

Reflecting on her readings, Liggett says they were right on.

"It made perfect sense, for where I'm at in my life," she says. "How much we let in is up to us."

Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail bvarble@mailtribune.com

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