Heavenly Partners 4 - The Seance

HEAVENLY PARTNERS - P4/13
THE MYSTICAL MARRIAGE OF THE PHYSICAL WITH THE SPIRITUAL

Turn-of-the-last-century seance

Page 4 - THE SEANCE

Dear Carol:

I love your idioms and your idea about saving them. Here are two more for your collection. One is "hose pipe," meaning any rubber hose, like the garden hose. The other is "bad to drink" as in, "He was a good person but he was bad to drink."

And here is the seance news. When I arrived at Susan's, she led me straight up to the bedroom. I couldn't sense anything unusual like a ghost. Then, she directed me over to the spot where John stands and told me to stand in it. I did and got right back out. It wasn't a place I could stand in for long without developing chills. When I checked my arms for chill bumps, Susan said, "No, there are never any bumps." All the hairs on my arms were standing straight up, and my jeans had so much static in them they stuck to the backs of my legs. I tried putting just one foot in the spot, but my foot jumped back out. I tried a hand but the hand wanted out. As I sat on the bed to think about it, Susan said, "See. I told you. He's here."

"Someone's here," I said, "but how do you know it's John?" She said, "I've known him for 13 years. I would know him alive or dead. It's John and he wants to tell me something." We decided to go downstairs and drink some coffee, smoke some cigarettes and think about what to do next. When we went back up, John had moved but we could follow him around. He stood by the TV and then by the window. We followed right behind him, chatting about it. Neither one of these other two spots was as electric as the first spot, but both were unpleasant to stand in.

Finally, after being taken by John on a tour of the bedroom and the bathroom, we followed him back to the first spot and stayed there. I read the cards and we saw something about a message about money. I told Susan I had an idea about how to get the whole message. Laying out three Tarot cards, I placed the Queen of Pentacles (Earth, Diamonds), Susan's card. Above that, I placed the King of Wands (Fire, Clubs), John's card. In the center of the two I placed Temperance (Major Mystery, Duality). As I laid them out, I said, "This is Susan on the physical plane. This is John on the spiritual plane. I call upon the great Spiritual Powers surrounding us to open the pathway of communication between them so they can speak with each other and so John can tell Susan the thing he wants to tell her." Then, I told Susan to imagine herself in a conversation with John. As she and I touched fingertips and as she repeated after me, we called upon all those same Powers I had called on before, the Earth, the deserts, the mountains, the plains, the forests, the rocks. We called upon the waters, the lakes, the streams, the rivers, and the oceans. We called upon the stars, the galaxies, the moons, the planets, the wind and the breezes. We called upon the fires that burn in the stars, that burn inside the Earth and that burn inside each of us. Then we called upon the angels, the Spiritual Guides, the Creators of the Universe. We asked these great Powers to lend strength and power to Susan's spirit as we called for John in summoning. We summoned him 4 times. Then, our mood changed and we began to feel light and happy. We laughed and joked and went downstairs for more coffee and cigarettes.

I saw a séance movie once, "The Changeling," the same movie with the power cone, in which the psychic was irresistibly drawn to the foot of the stairs. There she would stand, staring eerily up at the top of the stairs where the spirits were. Then, ever so slowly, she ascended the stairs. Oh, it was spooky! Well, when Susan and I finished our coffee and headed toward the stairs, I stopped at the bottom step and stared up there, just like the psychic in the movie. Susan came from behind me and asked, "What is it?" She went up the stairs with me right behind her, and just as she turned the corner at the top, she stopped and said, "Whoa! Look at that!"

We stared down the long hallway to the bedroom and we saw the hallway lengthen and fill with a white haze. We walked down the hallway, right through the middle of a group of spiritual beings. It seemed to me we were walking through a crowd of people like in a crowded bar. To those hazy spirits I said, "Excuse me, excuse me," as I brushed past them on my way to the bedroom. We agreed there seemed to be about 25 or 30 spirit-people in her hallway. And they seemed like just some friends getting together for a party. We felt very gay and lighthearted, and Susan said she hadn't felt that good since John died.

In this party atmosphere, we sat in the bedroom and laughed and talked. We went down to smoke a few times and came back up. Each time, they were still there. Susan's two cats were with us there, tiptoeing around and looking suspiciously through slanted eyes and twitching their tails and their ears. The gathering lasted for about 2-1/2 hours. Sometimes, the people came into the bedroom filling it up with their presence, sometimes they went out into the hallway. They never did go downstairs. After a while, the haze became lighter and lighter until it finally disappeared and they were gone. We recorded all of it on her tape recorder, from beginning to end. Too bad we didn't have a camcorder. We could actually see the haze.

THE LIGHT

That night, I was too excited to go straight to sleep so I sat up in my bed thinking about it, wondering about it, until finally I fell asleep. I was awakened in the night by the brightest light I've ever seen. I sat straight up in bed to look, but it was so bright I had to cover my eyes. Even that wasn't enough to shield me. I turned my face away but that didn't help either. The light lasted for about 5 seconds and then it was dark again except for the TV screen, which was glowing slightly. When I first saw the light, I thought a car had come through my bedroom wall where the hole is. I thought I was staring into headlights. But I knew that no such thing had happened. The wall was still standing, I was still alive and it's impossible that a car can come through. I'm on a hill. A car would have to fly through the air to come into the apartment, but that's the way my mind was working, trying to identify that bright light.

I was aware also that the light, which seemed to be outside of me, was coming from inside me. If anyone else had been there to see it, they would have seen me sitting on my bed and glowing like a light bulb. And they would have needed sunglasses. The light came from inside me and just poured out of me in all directions, lighting up the room and making the TV screen glow. The next morning when I awoke, I tasted sweetness in my mouth like ambrosia. Later, I found a reference to this light in my Tarot book. It said that magicians and mystics describe it as the light of the mystic, the light too brilliant to behold. I'll say! I even found it portrayed on a Tarot card, the IX of Swords (Air, Spades). When I spoke with Susan later that day and told her about the bright light, she said she had no idea what it could be. She asked me what I thought it was and what it had to do with John, and I said I thought it had more to do with me than with John.

My spell to change my life really is working, isn't it? I am off in a new direction and wherever it takes me is OK with me. I answer my phone when it rings, I read Tarot cards for hours and I feel like the Oracle of Delphi. (Herodotus said the Oracle at Delphi was established when three sisters came from Libya to Greece to set up an oracle. Enterprising girls!) I enjoy reading cards but I am not sure I want to go in that direction. I think something else beckons, something wonderful and mysterious.

One night, as I was sleeping, I dreamed a yellow light was being beamed directly into the top of my head. It gave me a ton of energy! I found an account of this light by the science fiction writer, Philip Dick, who experienced it as a pink light. He said he had a mystical experience, in which he encountered God, who "fired a beam of pink light at my head." Then, he records that his own mind was entered "by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and had suddenly become sane." He said the rational mind was not human, that it was more like an artificial intelligence. Well, that's myself-not! I am feeling saner these days, although I imagine some people would be of the opinion that I've lost any mind entirely.

Susan called two days after the seance to say she had a blissful dream in which she spent the entire night talking with John, and they were so happy to be together. John told her about a mortgage life insurance policy with a certain insurance company, one she didn't know about. She can't remember the name of the insurance company! I told her that unless she can think of the name of the company, she will have to send letters to every company she can think of.

She called her attorney and he put his secretary right on it. The secretary found out the names of all the insurance companies that IBM employees use. She called around until she found one with a mortgage life insurance policy for Susan that John never mentioned to her. And you know what happened?! The insurance adjuster, on learning of John's death, pulled the wrong beneficiary card and paid John's ex-wife instead of Susan! I guess John couldn't live with that, or die with that, however you want to say it. The company still must pay Susan, but her attorney may have to take them to court. Well, there's a thoughtful husband, hanging around after death to make sure her beautiful and pricey home is all paid for! Or maybe he just didn't want the witchy ex-wife to get the money. Whatever the case, he transformed Susan from a grieving widow into a woman of leisure. Check out the IX of Pentacles. There's a picture of it! Now I know why it's her card. Write Soon.

Dear Claire:

I read your seance letter and thought, with no small amount of admiration, "She's really full of it, isn't she?" But in the 28 years I've known you, you've never told me a lie. So if you said it happened, then it did. I eagerly await your analysis of those events.

I should not have been able to go straight away and lay my hands on my Tarot deck. I can't put them down and I cannot see a thing in them and have to keep looking everything up in a real dud of a Tarot book I got from the library. I had Ives order The Tarot Revealed and Mastering the Tarot. What other books do I need? What I need is to find a murky old book store on a back street and go in there and find a dusty old volume covered with fidey webs and full of the power. And I need a long, silky robe in a real brash color and a very large and expensive occult-looking necklace. I think a tiara would be too much.

I've been getting up every morning and confounding myself with a couple of hours of playing with my Rider-Waite Tarot cards, from which I come away with the feeling that I am never going to see anything that I recognize except 78 cards with strange symbols and imperfect artwork. What I can see is that I will only be able to read for myself. I would have to keep ducking behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz to consult the book, and somehow I feel that it would undermine my credibility.

I've been thinking about those "people" in Susan's hallway and I've decided they have no flair for drama, or any respect for tradition. If I were going to appear in someone's hallway as spirit, I would wear a Mrs. Haversham costume -- moth-eaten wedding gown and veil with fidey webs. My accessories would be a broken wristwatch and a mouse-eaten wedding cake. And I would imagine Susan would not be intimidated by that either.

Jessie and I just came from the barn, where we had to feed the chickens for the 4th time today. Jessie takes excellent care of her chickens. I hope they don't get so fat their little spindly legs won't tote them around. Today when we came home, they had gotten out underneath a board, and she cried and cried. But since then, she has become very adept at chasing them back in while telling them, "Git!" and pointing her finger. Apparently, the finger has a lot of power.

I joined a Grolier "Learn to Read" book club, featuring Harry Hippo Takes a Bath and the fabulous Dr. Cat, who Jessie considers the most fascinating character in all literature. Since reading Dr. Cat, she even allows the infamous Dr. Bartlett, whom she previously thought was the Prince of Darkness, to look in her ears with his otoscope. Then I bought her the Fisher Price Medical Bag, and she thinks she is Dr. Cat. There was no otoscope, but she insists on looking in my ears with her little plastic percussion hammer, which does resemble an otoscope. And any time she hears the words "blood pressure," she runs and gets her blood pressure cuff and fastens it around my fingers. I am on a water diet from drinking all the ice water Jessie serves me out of the Magic Tea Party teapot. And it seems I spend a good deal of my personal time lying on the floor and coloring with her as long as she wants to. "Cully, Mommy. Peeze." Last night I colored Big Bird to her specifications. A lot of what she does to me could only be described as sheer torture.

Today after Mr. Moore had his bath and I was walking him, I remembered how thrilled I was when I first got his big, red, hateful self. I brushed him and told him the story of Red Beauty. You may have heard of him under a different color. I also told him the story of The Red Stallion. When Moore had been my horse for a week, and I was fast becoming a doting fool, the first thing I did was climb up in the top of Tam's barn and mount him a window fan. That was just before Tam and her 60 horses moved out and were no longer living with that old geezer. I can't believe she ever was; he was older than Xavier Cougat but had beautiful money.

I'll never forget that day she moved out. Tam and I were tooling into town to have lunch when we ran up on a gunfight in progress at the motel by Shoney's. It had just started and there were cars all over the road with their lights on and with people hiding behind them. I thought at first it was a wreck, but when I heard the gunshots I just backed right out of there. I have the innate reverse of a true coward.

I fell for Mr. Moore the first time I saw him. And I rode him before I bought him, which means I have no excuse for having bought him after that. It was Halloween and I should have known better. He reared straight up and dropped me off the back of the saddle and then stepped on the inside of my knee with the shoes I had just helped Tam put on him. I guess he wanted Weejuns, instead. I had a horseshoe print on my knee, and my hands looked like catchers' mitts. I don't remember anything like that happening to Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. Thank goodness Moore isn't a unicorn. Fortunately, I didn't try to jump him over anything that day, or I would not be writing this letter. One day I was riding him, just after he had been gelded, and an old mare in heat galloped by, cut in front of us, and stopped and batted her eyes like Norma Desmond. After that, it was wild ride. And he was already gelded. What else could I do to him? I guess Moore hadn't been gelded enough.

I could have bought a pony horse named Spotty. A pony horse is that calm, reliable animal leading the racehorse from the saddling paddock to the gates. He is also strong enough to drag the racehorse to the gate, if necessary. I am feeling so remorseful because Spotty is one of the neatest horses I ever rode, and among quarter horses, an apt pupil. The only reason I didn't buy him was because he was not beautiful like Moore, who is part quarter horse and part Thoroughbred. Moore is one of the King Ranch horses. That won't mean anything to you but the King Ranch is famous for breeding fine horses. Moore's grandfather was Royal King, two hands taller than Moore, which explains why Moore is such a big, beautiful red horse. But Moore has his good qualities; he is the only thing that never changes in a changing world. No matter how much I baby him, he is still a dangerous horse to ride. I take consolation in the fact that Moore, with all his faults and his 16 hands high, is the best riding horse I've ever ridden. And as long as I watch him carefully and bang him over the head every now and then to remind him he has a rider on board, he stays that way. Still, as I remember Spotty, I think I'll cry and mop the floor.

Today, Jessie started in on me again, "Wide horse. Wide Mowey," but even though I know he won't throw The Princess, I don't let her ride him for fear that, if he does misbehave and she gets hurt, I'll pull a Rhett Butler and shoot him like the way Rhett shot Bonnie Blue's pony. It is time for me to go out and do Moore's stall and to brush him and feed him and tell him how wonderful he is. Talk about your sacred objects. Write soon.

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