Intuitive Reflections

Parties

• Company parties are $150 an hour, where people usually line up for hours to see Barbara.
• Personal Parties are $100 an hour.
• Reintroducing the idea of the Tupperware hostess, if you get a minimum of 10 people you will get a free reading and the guests will pay $30 each for a mini reading.

Parties With a Future

Barbara Lee's got a deal for you and four of your closest friends -
in-home parties with a psychic bent

(By Jonel Aleccia of the Mail Tribune)

So, your neighbors have all the plastic lettuce crispers they'll ever need, all the moisturizer and makeup they can wear, every educational toy their kids can handle?

The way Barbara Lee sees it, now it's time to invite a few folks over for a whole new kind of in-home party, a get-together where guests come away with psychic insight instead of mail-order merchandise.

As one recent participant put it: "I've never been to a Tupperware party like this!"

A self-proclaimed seer and practitioner of "intuitive reflections." Lee, 39, of Ashland offers a service that takes otherworldly readings out of psychic fairs and into people's living rooms.

Modeled loosely on the popular party plan sales approach, Lee's psychic reading parties gather together four or more friends and a "hostess" - or host - for several hours of divination based on mandala stones, tarot cards, crystals, psychic intuition and astrology.

"For some people it's just for fun, but for other people it's something more," said Lee, a former Discovery Toys and Jafra cosmetics dealer who now divides her time between psychic readings and waitressing at a local Mexican restaurant.

Guests at a recent party agreed that an evening of psychic insight was entertaining, as long as folks didn't take it too seriously.

"If you can get some good information, that's a good thing, but I wouldn't base my life on it," said Tom Hardgrove, 49, an Ashland landscape contractor who agreed to let Lee plumb his psyche.

One by one, Hardgrove and other participants at a recent party trooped into the kitchen, where, for $30 per person, Lee prognosticated on subjects ranging from employment prospects and health to love relationships and self-fulfillment.

Barbara Lee, right, conducts Tamara Strickland's reading at a recent party.

(Mail Tribune/Steve Johnson Photos)

Wide-eyed, Strickland nodded.

"That's right," said Strickland, a bank teller and mother of two. "That's exactly right."

That same night, Lee told Hardgrove that it's time for him to release anger and move out of a difficult relationship.

"What have you been doing? Looking under my covers?" Hardgrove asked, laughing.

On the contrary, Lee said she was just tuning in to the psychic energy that emanates from everybody, energy that she said she has been especially sensitive to since childhood.

"I saw an angel when I was 5 years old," she said. "I was watching TV with my parents and I saw this angel hovering over my parents' bed. The angel smiled at me."

Ever since, Lee said she has felt connected to the mystical side of life. As a young adult, she began reading about astrology, tarot and psychic self-help methods and getting readings at psychic fairs.

The more she learned, the more she trusted her own psychic senses, which ranged from hunches about what people were feeling to predictions about future events.

"The trick is to ask questions and listen inside for the answers because that psychic voice is so silent," she said.

Nine years ago, Lee began giving readings; five years ago, a friend and fellow seer invited her to start working at psychic fairs.

"She told me, 'You can do this,'" Lee said. "She was the motivating factor."

Success at the fairs inspired Lee to market her skills as an astrologer and practitioner of Reiki, an alternative energy therapy. She bought a computer program that allows her to produce detailed astrological charts from home and began offering astrological readings. Then she hit on the idea of offering psychic reading parties as well.

"When I was doing Discovery Toys and Jafra, I liked working with groups," Lee said. "But it was never comfortable to me to just call people up and try to sell things to them. Now, they call me."

Lee, who writes an astrology column for the Wellspring Journal magazine in Ashland, has held nearly a dozen psychic reading parties in the past few years. Most people who book them are either intrigued by the novelty or seriously seeking spiritual answers, Lee said.

"Some people want new ways to fix their problems because the old ways don't work any more," she said.

So they're willing to watch and listen while Lee bows her head and invokes energy "for the greatest good" and then instructs them to toss a handful of polished stones onto a board printed with a brightly colored wheel. The wheel is divided into 12 pie-shaped wedges that correlate with the 12 houses of the astrological Zodiac, as well as into zones that reflect a person's physical, mental, emotional and spiritual states, Lee said.

The rocks, called "mandala stones," are each imbued with specific meaning that roughly matches the cards in a Tarot deck, she said. Interpreting where the rocks land on the wheel and what they mean makes up most of the reading.

In Strickland's reading, for instance, a small piece of quartz landed in the 10th wedge of the wheel, which Lee said is ruled by Capricorn and governs career moves.

"This rock is the tower and it indicates sudden change," she said. "You may think about moving out of the area or there may be a change in your circle of friends. And that might have to do with a change in job. There is a change in job. In the fall, in between the fall and Christmas, about October.

"I don't always know, I just say what comes. You'll have to let me know."

Strickland returned to the living room, where other guests were sipping wine and perusing books about Tarot and astrology.

"We're finding our soul symbols," said Strickland's husband, Jeff, 36, leafing through one the reference books Lee brings to every party.

Like other people new to psychic matters, the Stricklands weren't sure how seriously to take Lee's reading. A few days after the get-together, the couple agreed it was fun, but not necessarily revelatory.

"It seemed so right on while she was talking," Tamara Strickland said. "But when I thought about it later, it was all about career, relationships and family issues. Who doesn't have that?"

Jeff Strickland said he didn't learn much that he didn't already know.

"It was entertaining," he said. "But I felt like she was fishing the whole time, like she was wondering if she was right."

Getting it "right" isn't necessarily the point, said Lee. She regards her readings as impressions of issues people need to address in their lives.

"Sometimes I get specific things, but it's not like 'Don't get on that bus!'" she said. "Sometimes people come because they're at a crossroads in their lives and I can tell them a direction. I set up a mirror for their own reflections. I'm not telling them anything that they don't already know at some level."

Carol Horobin, a Jacksonville astrologer with a background in clinical psychology, said if nothing else, group readings such as Lee's offer friends the chance to discuss common issues.

"I have found that there is something alike in all of the people having readings," said Horobin. "If one person has to deal with letting go, letting go comes up for everyone. It's like the energy going through the group."

While she takes psychic readings more seriously than mere entertainment, Horobin said she has no strong objections to the party events.

"I feel that the party format is fine if it's someone like Barbara, who is spiritually in tune," Horobin said.

Psychic reading parties like Lee's are unusual, said Stephanie Cole, co-owner of Soundpeace, an Ashland bookstore specializing in New Age merchandise.

"I haven't heard of anyone else doing it," she said.

But Cole said she isn't surprised to learn that people would invite friends and neighbors over for coffee and a psychic peek.

"It's all part of the increased interest in spiritual and New Age issues," Cole said. "If you think of it in the Oprah context, of all the spiritual people who have been on TV, it makes sense, it's the next thing."

The party spirit: Ashland psychic will read for you and your friends.

Barbara Lee clasps the mandala stones she says help her gain insight into clients' lives. Lee offers readings at in-home parties for a host and four friends using such props as the stones and tarot cards.
(Mail Tribune/Steve Johnson Photos)

Interested?

People interested in Barbara Lee's psychic parties can call her at 208-773-7822 or email her.

Most parties include four guests and a host or hostess; sessions typically last between three and four hours.

Cost is $30 per person, except for the host or hostess, who receives a reading for free.