Outlaw Metaphysics

The South is a magical place, filled with h’aints and witches, outlaws and wild child snake lovin’ top-hatted preachers, rebel ghosts and doe-eyed voodoo queens . . . it is a world where darkness and light sometimes cross paths, where beauty and decay walk hand in white-gloved hand to its own special beat. There are cities filled with spirits: Richmond, New Orleans, Franklin, Tennessee; cities where music lives deep in ground, welling up to a surface full of fire and fury: Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Muscle Shoals, Tupelo, Mississippi.

The South is both a place and a state of mind. My family is Southern; this means they are prone to certain ways, certain attitudes. A way they comb their hair, put dinner on the table . . . a certain type of music they listened to, and shared with me, as well as a fairly cohesive blue print for the types of choices I was expected to make, a legacy to carry with me and to always, always rebel against. But their attitude and style is still buried within; deep down inside it is still a part of my cognitive DNA.

My great-great many times great grandfather, John Brewer, was a member of the original House of Burgesses, the first elected body ever assembled in the colonies, in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1629, as was his son, years later. There are Southern aristocrats (six U.S. Presidents, three First Ladies -- and Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams) as well as poor mountain people from East Tennessee, and the western Carolinas, dripping down from the Family Tree.

My grandfather, Terry Mainous, was BOTH Deputy Sheriff and Moonshiner -- down at the head of a holler looking up at the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky, back before the Second World War. The blood of the Cherokee as well as the “last lost tribe”, the Melungeons, also pulses through my veins.

Attitude, history, DNA. Blood. The South, to a large extent, is felt in the blood.

My own personal journey has led me, for now, west to California, running back and forth between Hollywood and the San Francisco Bay. I have built a career, and a name (of sorts), over the years as a psychic and astrologer, known to many as The Rock n Roll Psychic. I have been on TV and radio hundreds of times, written books, designed Tarot and divination decks, worked as an actor in Hollywood and was twice selected for “Who’s Who in Business”, too !! Damn, what an interesting guy I am !!

During my twenties, I wandered around the country, chanting with Buddhists, hanging with artists and witches and rebels of various flavors, in an uncharted hunt and peck psychic pilgrimage. I read a lot and stubbed (and stepped on) many a toe, test-driving how best to understand these “things” circling around inside my head. Mr. Toad’s Wild Road, indeed. I am surely not the only one who woke up one day and saw that the world was “different” than the text books suggested.

As a little boy, I was fascinated by ESP and ghosts, reading Hans Holzer’s ghost books and Stranger than Science and anything else I could find. Later, I turned on to astrology and in my very early twenties, in a loft in downtown San Francisco, I took a class on “past life regression” which, very quickly, changed my life.

All this is part of my "karmic blueprint" . . . my genetics, my soul. My autobiography "Karmic Outlaw" will be done soon. My path has been a long and winding one but the South -- and the family tree, play a big big part . . . Outlaw Metaphysics, biting every hand that would feed me, shiny wool of the blackest black. The blackest black.