Prophet and Loss

"The believer is happy, the doubter is wise."--
Hungarian proverb

I wrote the Disaster Recovery Plan for Enron. I realize that now this is analogous to saying I designed the life boat plan for the Titanic but there was a time when this actually looked pretty good on the old resume. I have done quite a few of these consulting/project management gigs over the past few years, bopping around the country like a migrant farm worker from project to project. But before my little path down management consultant lane, I had another fairly interesting job, one that also allowed me to travel and even be on radio and TV, too--something the business world never provided.

I worked as a professional psychic, like in the read your palm and tell you what’s going to happen next Tuesday kind of psychic which is not usually considered to be the perfect apprenticeship for a career in business.

Of course, being a punk rock anarchist bliss baby is not usually considered good form for the budding businessman, either. So I guess you have to make do with the goodies left over from a misspent youth as best you can.

If you suffered from bouts of insomnia back in the early nineties there is a good chance you may have seen me on TV. I’m sure most of you have seen the “1-900-Psychic” infomercials, you know the ones where the cast and crew from Another World or General Hospital sat around and talked about their own personal psychic friends.

Well, I was on one of those—along with Erik Estrada, Jenilee Harrison, Stuart Damon, Richard Roundtree, and a host of others. My little blast with prosperity consciousness aired throughout the U.S. and Canada twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for about a year and a half, all to the sweet clanging tune of about 150 million dollars, all the while serenading multi-billionaires to sleep while simultaneously robbing lonely hearted waifs and welfare mothers who could not possibly afford the calls.

I don't know who called these lines but I do know the callers must have had their phones conveniently placed near their TV. Perhaps you’re wondering if these calls are really answered by the caring, talented professionals they advertise on TV? Or are they, instead, answered by some apprentice witch with a bad haircut and a brand new tarot deck, working the phones for $6.50 an hour, with no talent, no experience, and absolutely no understanding of the potential Pandora’s Box they may be unleashing in the collective psyches of America.

More likely than not, most callers are going to get the latter. I've seen people come in, right off the streets, literally, who taped interpretations to the backs of their cards and then read them ff, card by card, nothing more. Certainly nothing that anyone with twelve dollars for a tarot deck couldn't do for themselves.

As far as education, I dropped out of several very nice colleges--was once the academic wunderkind, then the creative writing wunderkind--never did graduate but have the fancy liberal education of a Ph.D. My real education is shamanic, metaphysical--out of this world. And as a former New Age poster boy, one labeled "The Psychic Adonis" I had what is commonly referred to as "attitude".

But I did kind of make it after all. I mean it’s the American Dream, right? Crazy rebellious white boy sucks it up and gets the BIG BOY job, plenty of cash, RESPECT(?), foldin’ the green, struttin’ the (new) STRUT. I had escaped—at least temporarily—the grave yard of failed bad boy poets and long haired layabouts who wake up to find they’re forty years old and working as a telemarketer (or worse) and see nothing but a long slow line to a soggy cardboard box and a hand-me-down bag of kibbles n’ bits. I am constantly seeking the reasons why we're here.

This, too, is just one more potential step on the road to financial and social oblivion but a boys gotta do what a boys . . . I believe so strongly in reincarnation and I look to the beauty and wisdom of many different spiritual systems to help me try to piece together the how and the why. I believe, also, very strongly, in the power of art as a means of expressing the soul.

Spirituality is kind of a tricky thing. I have been looking for a long time and still haven't quite figured it out. For now I am content to steal from several religions to make sort of a syncretic spiritual stew--the Sufis, Russian Orthodoxy, the Power Puff Girls, the Jewish Kabbalah, with New Agey stuff everywhere you look and a heavy dose of Paganism for those cold winter nights.

I also believe, very strongly, in the power of magick, with a "k". But my conception of magick is perhaps somewhat different than the norm. To me--Magick is awareness, awareness of self, awareness of the not self, awareness of the IS. Magick is not spells, rather not ONLY spells but instead is the ability to control one's self, so that in that control of self one can more easily attract those things/people/events most necessary for growth.

True Magick comes from within. It is born in the ability to focus, to concentrate. Focus leads to vision, vision leads to desire, desire leads to focus--the three become one.

All Magick is born first in the ability to control the self. This ability is the birthplace of all transcendence. Magick IS transcendence, the power of focus, the directed gaze. Magick is the ability to attract, the ability to attract is grounded in the ability to BE, like attracts like. To attract one must first become. To become one must first see.

Magick is Vision. It is seduction, it is self-awareness, it is power. The power of the self, which is ultimately the power to align. No one is bigger than the natural world, the law, but one can ALIGN themselves with the higher realm of the natural order. This is the goal of Magick. This is THE WAY, the way UP is always THROUGH.

The way is always through. As above, so below; that which was, will be. The way . . . is . . . always . . . THROUGH.