1. My Call To Mediumship
My Call To Mediumship (1 of 3)
1985 Lily Dale
The words, “You will come full circle,” would be tattooed in my mind. Its meaning, like a spell cast upon me, a time capsule message, for a delivery date that would leave me slack jawed and temporarily speechless.
There I sat in a dimly lit room among a circle of women, my mother was to my right with two other women to my left, their countenances, wide eyed and expectant. Across from us were three other women, who remained poised, calm, and certain. I did not know it then, but they were mediums, and we were their sitters. We had lost our farmhouse and now resided in a small cottage on Cassadaga Lake. It was a mere stroll through the tree line from the now famed and historical, spiritualist community, called Lily Dale.
My mother was a dabbler in the metaphysical world. She was a halfhearted soul searcher, involving herself with Ouija boards, tarot cards and astrological musings. Those were her soul pointers, only scratching the surface of what I now know about the deeper realms of practicing spirituality. However, it would serve to give temporary solace to her painful life. My mother’s life was an act of doing and asking questions later, culminating into precarious outcomes and misfortunes.
She recruited my brother and I on a regular basis to play the Ouija board. At that time, at age nine, I was primarily the observer to the activity, while my brother’s keen ability to read the messages, even before it was spelled out, made him an essential player. In a sense he was a medium, receiving messages from spirits passed over, the board being the bridge for communication. We all had psychic gifts, but only I would come to fully recognize it, and embrace it later in my life.
I didn’t want to be stuck in the dark, musty room with three women staring through me. The smell in the room was ancient, and its silence haunting, like that of the farmhouse. It conjured up endless nights of suffocating under the blankets, with my eyes slammed shut, and my fingers pressed into my ears to deafen the mummers of dead people. I was determined to be an actress, not a ghost whisperer. My thoughts were soon interrupted, as one woman cleared her throat to speak directly to me. I hoped she didn’t mention anything about dead people. My eyes hung in my lap as a stream of words began to pour out of her mouth. I don’t remember much and her words landed cryptically, but what I did remember, and would never forget, are the words, “You will come full circle.” These words would follow me for thirty years as the perfect set-up from spirit. They delivered a message, you too are a medium.
The book Droplets of God, an autobiographical account of Mavis Patella, a renowned medium and tutor at New England’s famed college, Arthur Findlay, gave me my full recognition moment of “coming full circle”. In just a few pages I was swept into Mavis’s extraordinary life, captivated by her struggles, health challenges, and insecurities that destined her to mediumship. I delved into this book like I was on a secret mission to find the meaning of life and instead I found the meaning of my life. I was coming full circle. I flew through the pages, and I rounded the corner when Mavis recounted the first time she visited Lily Dale in Cassadaga, NY. My eyes reversed about ten times over the words Lily Dale, Cassadaga, NY, while childhood memories flashed across the screen of my mind. One by one, the events of my life unfolded into the realization that life had been leading me here, to page 177, as the meaning of the words “You will come full circle” came to fruition. I was destined all along, not just to be a sitter, but to be a medium.
Continue reading , A Call To mediumship , Wolf’s Visit (2 of 3)