Truth To Power

When we stand together and use our voices they can not be silenced no matter how many voting machines they rig, or voters they scam off the rolls. I was never nervous about this election until I went to our polling place and found out how crazy things were going down there. Then I worried (human fear not intuition fear) that somehow fate would be thwarted in some evil Faustian deal with the devil made by Romney.

This election was settled by Spirit in the first days of December of 2011 as I posted back then and everything Spirit told me (I don’t know what else to call it) came to pass exactly. Now I know why my Aunt was laughing her head off and saying that I would be right. She knew I would be freaking out like everyone else. She tried to calm me but I am human and a Romney/Ryan presidency would be a disaster for the world – seriously.

Anyway I am SOOO Happy that the right man is in the job and that the Universe is  moving forward as it should – that no amount of money or powerful idiots could change what was meant to be. It is because of us – the people who saw through all of the lies and deception. I have never been prouder of the US not because Obama won but because people GOT IT!

Thanks to all who have participated and to all who have been reading my frantic freak-out blogging.

Peace, abundance and blessings to all,

Denise

And thanks to my deceased Aunt Doris and Grandmother Minnie for appearing yesterday in an effort to reassure me (and my readers) once and for all despite knowing it wouldn’t work.

Still Standing

     The exact words that came to me by spirit on December 5, 2011 were, “It’s going to be a nail bitter between Obama and Romney even though it shouldn’t be. It will be close but Obama will win.” That is exactly what I heard.

     Later that voice said to me when I heard the words “Paul Ryan” the voice said, “This will be the nail in the coffin.” I took that to mean that there was no way the future could change once Romney picked him. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant since I knew nothing of Ryan or his policies. I assume that it meant Obama’s win was solidified and once I learned about Ryan’s policies I understood why it showed Romney’s hand in a negative way.    

     Romney aligned himself with the radical right and therefore those who may have been inclined to vote for Romney as the white “more business friendly” Obama – which of course he is not. (He’s actually got the social policies of a Victorian and the business ideas of the Wall Street guys who crashed the economy.) He would be a deadly choice and this is why spirit said to me, “it shouldn’t be.” Meaning people were going to be deceived by double talking, lying, manipulative turns of policy Romney would put out there in his grab for power above all – service to himself above all else. I stand by this despite everyone’s fear. I think there will be some sort of problem in Pennsylvania where voter fraud might be a problem – giving the state to Romney when Obama should be the victor. However Obama will still win despite this.

Best wishes,

Denise

Thunderbird and Heyoka

I’m reprinting the information from another site the author is Steve Mizrach.  I’m doing so because this information is important to me. I dreamed of lightning and was approached by Thunderbeings who told me, “We are walking in a sacred manner,” the repeated this over and over. I had this dream about six months ago and I knew at the time it was a harbinger of chaos and war. The next night I had a visitation from an angel Yah-Shew-Ah or Joshua at first he came to me in a white tunic covered in dirt and then revealed himself to be an angel. He claimed to be an ancestor of mine. He then gave me a spiritual gift that I have been spending much time using. It is the gift of protection – in the way that those who were spiritually pure were protected during passover.

I had wanted to give readings for people on the site, but my life became very hectic, as I dealt with many friend’s crisis’ as well as trying to work and raise a toddler. So I will do this instead. I can offer this gift. It is the gift of spiritual protection. Anyone who needs it can contact me via this website through a comment or through the e-mail: astrologyandpsychicpredictions@gmail.com. I know it sounds strange but there are many weird things to come and if you give me your name, birth date (time would be good as well as where you are born so I can locate you on the Auric plane) I will put protection around you. My only caveat is that if you ask me to do this I will get information about you and if I can’t protect you I will let you know the reason – for example if you are sick and are ready to cross over I can not protect you from that or if you have done heinous things I can not protect you from your own karma. If this occurs I will contact you via this site in a post stating your initials and place of birth and ask you to e-mail me so I can let you know why the protection did not work – if of course you contacted me for help in post form if not I will just e-mail you back from the astrologyandpsychicpredictions@gmail.com.

This is a crucial time in human history. It is not the end but it does have the potential to be the end of many things which could lead to major re-adjustments. If you want spiritual protection during this time of transition please do not hesitate. I will make a nightly list and do the ritual for you. This is the most I can offer at this time but in my opinion it is much more powerful and helpful than simply “knowing” what you will live through in the next year.

Please read this very interesting article that I reprinted which was sent to me by my husband due to my connection with the Thunderbird spirits and heyoka. Interestingly my husband is of Native American ancestry (I mean he’s nearly half and a registered member of a tribe – a direct ancestor of those that walked the trail of tears) as far as I know I’m not, (I’m almost entirely Eastern European w/some Scottish/Irish on my mother’s side, but I know nothing about my mother’s father (the Scottish/Irish side) so perhaps I have some Native American roots I am unaware of. Either way all humans are related and all racial memory becomes universal human consciousness that we can tap into.  Also on a side note the angel was from the old testament (which I don’t know very well since I was raised Catholic after my Jewish father’s death – despite being raised culturally Jewish – crazy, huh? I guess that’s why I figure all religions are fine as long as they make sense to the person who belongs to them – different strokes and all. Whatever gets you close to the Great Spirit/God-Goddess is great.)

Many blessings to all of you – make everyday count – let the Great Spirit whisper to you through your heart and your life will be complete,

Denise

 

by Steve Mizrach

http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/thunderbird-and-trickster.html

Thunderbird and Trickster

Introduction

The Thunderbird is one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology. He is found not just among Plains Indians, but also among Pacific Northwest and Northeastern tribes. He has also become quite a bit of an icon for non-Indians, since he has also had the honor of having automobiles, liquors, and even a United States Air Force squadron named after him. Totems bearing his representation can be found all over the continent. There have been a number of curious theories about the origins of the Thunderbird myth – ones which I will show are probably wrongheaded.

In this paper, moreover, I want to examine how the myths and legends of the Thunderbird tie into the sacred clowning/trickster ritual complex of Plains tribes such as the Lakota. I will show how the Thunderbird is intimately connected to this complex, and attempt to explain why. It is the intimate association between these two traditions that may help explain some features of Plains culture and folklore. Aspects of the Thunderbird myth only make sense in light of these associations.

Plains Indians myth and folklore

In order to understand Plains Indians folklore, we have to realize that their myths were not just “just-so” stories to entertain, divert, or make inadequate efforts at naturalistic explanation. Rather, Indian myth functioned in religious, pedagogical, and initiatory ways, to help socialize young people and illuminate the various religious and other roles in society. Indian myth was always fluid, and grounded in the present, which is what might be expected of societies which largely lacked static, written traditions. Storytelling was an art which was maintained by the medicine people with great fidelity, because it was used to explain the development of certain rituals and elements of society. (Hines 1992)

Some have looked at the Thunderbird myths through the same lens of understanding applied to European mythology. The Thunderbird is like the Indo-European dragon or ogre or Leviathan, a huge monster who kidnaps virginal maidens, and who must be slain by the brave hero. Or the Thunderbird is simply treated as some kind of fantastic oddity, like the mythical unicorn or mermaid – an impossible construction borne from the extremes of the imagination. Both these attempts at explaining myth lose the important point of seeing Thunderbird as a personification of energies in nature – those found in violent thunderstorms and such – and his crucial dual nature.

Still, the Indians were not merely “mythmaking” in the pejorative sense. They no more literally believed in a giant bird generating storms through the beating of its wings, then Christians today literally believe in their divine being as an old man with a beard sitting on a marble throne. Thunderbird is an allegory; his conflicts with other forces in nature are then an attempt to allegorize relationships observed in the natural order, such as the changing of the weather. Like other Thunder Beings, he is essentially an attempt to represent the patterns of activity of a powerful, mysterious force in a way that can be understood simply and easily – sort of the way in which a weather map functions today. (Edmonds and Clark 1989)

The Plains Indians believed that everything that was found in nature had a human representative in microcosm. Everything in nature often contained its own opposite polarity, hence the expected existence of beings such as contraries, women warriors, and berdaches. Because the Thunderbird in particular represented this mysterious dual aspect of nature, manifest through the primordial power of thunderstorms, it is not surprising that his representatives were the heyoka or sacred clowns, who displayed wisdom through seemingly foolhardy action. Western thinking has prevented us from seeing the reasons why Indians perceived this connection. Few anthropologists have sought to locate how Thunderbird may have been mythologically linked to Trickster.

The Nature of Thunderbird

In Plains tribes, the Thunderbird is sometimes known as Wakinyan, from the Dakota word kinyan meaning “winged.” Others suggest the word links the Thunderbird to wakan, or sacred power. In many stories, the Thunderbird is thought of as a great Eagle, who produces thunder from the beating of his wings and flashes lightning from his eyes. (Descriptions are vague because it is thought Thunderbird is always surrounded by thick, rolling clouds which prevent him from being seen.) Further, there were a variety of beliefs about Thunderbird, which suggest a somewhat complicated picture. Usually, his role is to challenge some other great power and protect the Indians – such as White Owl Woman, the bringer of winter storms; the malevolent Unktehi, or water oxen who plague mankind; the horned serpents; Wochowsen, the enemy bird; or Waziya, the killing North Wind. But in some other legends (not so much in the Plains), Thunderbird is himself malevolent, carrying off people (or reindeer or whales) to their doom, or slaying people who seek to cross his sacred mountain. (Erdoes and Ortiz 1984)

Many Plains Indians claim there are in fact four colors (varieties) of Thunderbirds (the blue ones are said, strangely, to have no ears or eyes), sometimes associated with the four cardinal directions, but also sometimes only with the west and the western wind. (According to the medicine man Lame Deer, there were four, one at each compass point, but the western one was the Greatest and most senior.) (Fire and Erdoes 1972) The fact that they are sometimes known as “grandfathers” suggest they are held in considerable reverence and awe. It is supposed to be very dangerous to approach a Thunderbird nest, and many are supposed to have died in the attempt, swept away by ferocious storms. The symbol of Thunderbird is the red zig-zag, lightning-bolt design, which some people mistakenly think represents a stairway. Most tribes feel he and the other Thunder beings were the first to appear in the Creation, and that they have an especially close connection to wakan tanka, the Great Mysterious. (Gill and Sullivan 1992)

The fact that Thunderbird sometimes appears as something that terrorizes and plagues Indians, and sometimes as their protector and liberator (in some myths, he was once an Indian himself) is said to reflect the way thunderstorms and violent weather are seen by Plains people. On the one hand, they bring life-giving rain (Thunderbird is said to be the creator of ‘wild rice’ and other Plains Indians crops); on the other hand, they bring hail, flood, and lightning and fire. It is not clear where with them worship and awe end, and fear and terror begin. Some Indians claim that there are good and bad Thunderbirds, and that these beings are at war with each other. Others claim that the large predatory birds which are said to kidnap hunters and livestock are not Thunderbirds at all. Largely, I suspect that this dual nature of the Thunderbird ties it to the Trickster figure in Indian belief: like the Trickster, the harm the Thunderbird causes is mostly because it is so large and powerful and primeval.

Origins of the Thunderbird Myth

Cryptozoologists like Mark A. Hall, having studied the Thunderbird myths of numerous tribes, and compared them to (mostly folkloric) accounts of unusually large birds in modern times, as well as large birds (like the Roc) in other mythic traditions, suggest that there may well be a surviving species of large avians in America – big enough, apparently, to fly off carrying small animals or children, as has been claimed in some accounts. (Hall suggests the wingspan of such a species would be several feet longer than any known birds – certainly bigger than that of the turkey vulture or other identifiable North American species.) (Hall 1988) Such researchers feel the Thunderbird myth may have originated from sightings of a real-life flesh-and-blood avian which might be an atavism from earlier epochs (a quasi-pterodactyl or teratorn, perhaps.)

However, the big problem with this theory is that most ornithologists consider it to be quite farfetched. If such a species existed (a situation akin to the folkloric Sasquatch), it would be amazing that to this point it has remained unidentified and uncatalogued. A species of birds that big, unless it consisted of an extremely small number of members, would find it hard to avoid detection for long. Hall does suggest the possibility that maybe, like the mastodon, these large birds were hunted to extinction prior to the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent. Still, the other problem with his theory is that it ignores what Indians themselves have to say about the Thunderbird.

They describe the Thunderbird as a spiritual, not just physical, being. It is not seen as just a large, fearsome predatory bird that people tell stories about. Rather, it’s an integral part of Plains Indians religion and ritual. Only by ignoring this fact could we put our Western ethnocentric biases into effect, and reduce it to a zoological curiosity. The Thunderbird is much more than that; the Indian attitude toward it comes from more than just the mere fact that it is supposed to be really big. To understand the origins of Thunderbird myths, it’s necessary to see how they connect with other elements of Indian belief and ceremony – especially the Trickster complex – and see how they fit into the structure of Plains Indian myth as a whole.

Clowning around in Plains Indian culture

Clowning, like the icon of the Thunderbird, could be found in almost every North American Indian society. In every case, it involved ridiculous behavior, but on the Plains it especially exhibited inversion and reversal as elements of satire. There were four types of clown societies on the Plains – age-graded societies, military societies, the northern plains type, and the heyoka shamanistic societies. The behaviors of all sorts of clowns revolved around a few basic themes or attributes: burlesque, mocking the sacred, playing pranks or practical jokes, making obscene jokes or gestures, caricature of others, exhibiting gross gluttony or extreme appetite, strange acts of self-mortification or self-deprecation, and taunting of enemies or strangers. (Steward 1991)

The age-graded clown societies primarily consisted of older people who had been inducted into their ranks – groups such as the Gros Ventre Crazy Lodge or the Hidatsa Dog Society. These clowns were assumed to simply be playing a role appropriate to their sodality, rather than receiving some sort of supernatural inspiration. They carried out certain expected ritual performances on proscribed days, such as the Crazy Dance or the imitation of animals. In contrast, the military clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Bow String Warriors, often carried comical or ridiculous weapons, but were also expected to show absurd bravery in battle, provoking the enemy into giving up its discipline and cohesion with taunts and insults. Not surprisingly, they sometimes rode their horses backwards into battle.

The northern plains clowns, found among tribes such as the Ojibway, wore masks which made them appear to be two-faced, and costumes of rags which made them appear comical. All of these three types of clown societies practiced a sort of conventionalized or patterned sort of anti-natural behavior. That is, they might do something which seemed strange or contrary, but under somewhat regular conditions. You knew when they might do something weird – and there were times when they were forbidden to perform their antics. Further, they might often “give up” the clowning way of life, and return to a non-contrary state by marrying and engaging in a more normal mode of existence.

The heyoka were different in three primary ways from the other sorts of clowns. They were truly unpredictable, and could do the unexpected or tasteless even during the most solemn of occasions. Moreso than other clowns, they really seemed to be insane. Also, they were thought to be more inspired by trans-human supernatural forces (as individuals driven by spirits rather than group conventions), and to have a closer link to wakan  or power than other clowns. And lastly, they kept their role for life – it was a sacred calling which could not be given up without performing an agonizing ritual of expiation. Not surprisingly, these unique differences were seen as the result of their having visions of Thunderbird, a unique and transforming experience.

Testimony of Black Elk: the heyoka and lightning

The Oglala Indian Black Elk had some interesting things to say about the heyoka ceremony, which he himself participated in. Black Elk describes the “dog in boiling water” ceremony in some detail. He also describes the bizarre items he had to carry as a heyoka, and the crazy antics he had to perform with his companions. He also attempts to explain the link between the contrary trickster nature of heyokas with that of Thunderbird.

“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm… you have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better. And so I think this is what the heyoka ceremony is for … the dog had to be killed quickly and without making any scar, as lightning kills, for it is the power of lightning that heyokas have.” (quoted in Neihardt 1959: 160)
Today, of course, Western physicists describe the dual nature of electricity. An object can carry a positive or negative electric charge. The electron is simultaneously a wave and a particle. Electricity and magnetism are thought to be aspects of the same force, and as is well know with magnetism, it comes in polarities, with opposite poles (north and south) attracting. Though the Indians did not have access to our modern scientific instruments, they are likely to have observed some of the same properties in lightning. Thus it would have been intuitive to link the dual spiritual nature of the heyoka (tragicomedy – solemn joking – joy united with pain) with the dual nature of electricity.

Thunderbird and Heyoka, the Sacred Clown

It was believed among the Lakota and other tribes that if you had a dream or vision of birds, you were destined to be a medicine man; but if you had a vision of Thunderbird, it was your destiny to become something else; heyoka, or sacred clown. Like Thunderbird, the heyoka were at once feared and held in reverence. They were supposed to startle easily at the first sound of thunder or first sight of lightning. Thunderbird supposedly inspired the “contrariness” of the heyoka through his own contrary nature. He alternates strong winds with calm ones. While all things in nature move clockwise, Thunderbird is said to move counterclockwise. Thunderbird is said to have sharp teeth, but no mouth; sharp claws, but no limbs; huge wings, but no body. All of these things suggest Thunderbird (and the heyoka) have a curious, paradoxical, contrary nature. You could become heyoka through a vision of the Thunderbird, or just of lightning or a formidable winged being of power. (Steiger 1974)

While clown societies were found throughout the Plains, the heyoka, or sacred clowns, were usually few in number, but were found in almost every clan. Heyoka were contraries, often speaking and walking backwards. They acted in ridiculous, obscene, and comical ways, especially during sacred ceremonies. They were thought to be fearless and painless, able to seize a piece of meat out of a pot of boiling water. They often dressed in a bizarre and ludicrous manner, wearing conical hats, red paint, a bladder over the head (to simulate baldness), and bark earrings. The heyoka was thought to usually carry various sacred items – a deer hoof rattle, a colored bow, a flute, or drum. His “anti-natural” nature was thought to be shamanistic in origin — and as a contrary, he was expected to act silly and foolhardy during battle (although this was found more among warrior clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Warriors.)

However insulting or sacrilegious heyoka actions might be, they were tolerated, since it was assumed they were acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. Heyoka were freed from all the ordinary constraints of life, and thus were usually not expected to marry, have children, or participate in the work of the tribe. Despite their bizarre acts (such as dressing in warm clothes during summer or wearing things inside out), they were trusted as healers, interpreters of dreams, and people of great medicine. Whenever they interrupted the solemnity of a ceremony, people took it as an admonition to see beyond the literalness of the ritual and into the deeper mysteries of the sacred. Like the flash of lightning, the heyoka’s sudden outbursts and disturbances were thought to be the keys to enlightenment – much like the absurd acts of Zen masters in Japan. (Hultkrantz 1987)

Thunderbird and Trickster

Part of the link between heyoka and Thunderbird comes from Iktomi, the Trickster figure. Iktomi is said to be heyoka because he has seen and talked with Thunderbird. Iktomi is the first-born son of Inyan (rock), and is said to speak with rocks and stones. Like Coyote and other Trickster figures, Iktomi likes to pull pranks on people, but is just as often the victim of tricks and misfortunes. This makes him at once a culture hero, and a figure to be feared and avoided. Iktomi was thought to be a hypersexual predator, one who frequently pursued winchinchalas (young virgins) who bathed in streams, through various methods of deceit. Yet his pursuits and antics often wound up with him inadvertently getting hurt or winding up in trouble.

Paul Radin suggests that Iktomi and other Trickster figures are akin to the Great Fool or Wild Man of European folklore, who often shows up in the Feast of Fools and other ceremonies where the social order is turned topsy-turvy. (Radin 1956) Jung, following his lead, claims the Trickster as an archetypal part of the collective unconscious; and his “crazy wisdom” as emblematic of humankind’s earlier, undivided, unindividuated consciousness. Iktomi and other tricksters seem to be at the constant mercy of their desires; yet their blind luck always seems to protect them from the consequences of their missteps. He is dangerous primarily because he is so powerful, yet so rarely has the forethought or good judgment to use his power wisely. Radin and others proclaim him the representative of untamed, unpredictably wild nature, within the confines of culture.

In other cultural traditions, thunder and lightning are connected with the unexpected. We talk about a “bolt out of the blue.” In American folk culture, there are a host of legendary stories of mysterious cures or transformations wrought by someone being struck by lightning. It’s at once dangerous, and a symbol of sudden, shocking revelation and inspiration. It’s also the primary weapon in most pantheons of the chief sky god (such as Zeus in Greek mythology.) For the Plains Indians, thunder and lightning symbolized the vast, uncontrollable energy of nature. It’s not surprising, then, that the Thunderbird is connected with the strange, uncontrollable force of the Trickster figure, and his avatar, the heyoka.

Significance of the Trickster Figure and “Contrariness” in Plains Society

Psychological anthropologists, especially those oriented toward psychoanalytic theory and depth psychology, point to the Trickster figure as a sort of important cultural “release valve.” He represents the “return of the repressed,” the Dionysian aspects of life only temporarily held in abeyance by the Apollonian forces of civilization. The carnivals and feasts held in honor of fools in Europe, suggest some anthropologists, are “outlets,” allowing people to invert the social order temporarily as a way of promoting its continuity in the long run (avoiding its ultimate collapse.) The ruler is dressed in peasants’ clothes, and some ignorant serf is crowned king. Symbols of authority normally held in extreme reverence are mocked and desecrated.

Clowns and contraries in Plains societies do not just come out once a year, however. They are permanent parts of the society, and are seen as continual reminders of the contingency and arbitrariness of the social order. Long before French theorists came on the scene, the heyoka was reminding his own people about the social construction of reality. By doing everything backwards, the heyoka in a way is carrying out a constant experiment in ethnomethodology, showing people how their own expectations limit their behavior. Like a good performance artist, the shocking behavior of the heyoka is supposed to confront people and make them reconsider what they may have arbitrarily accepted as normal. It’s to “jolt” them out of their ordinary frames of mind. (Steward 1991)

More importantly, as a representative of Thunderbird and Trickster, the heyoka reminds his people that the primordial energy of nature is beyond good and evil. It doesn’t correspond to human categories of right and wrong. It doesn’t always follow our preconceptions of what is expected and proper. It doesn’t really care about our human woes and concerns. Like electricity, it can be deadly dangerous, or harnessed for great uses. If we’re too narrow or parochial in trying to understand it, it will zap us in the middle of the night. Like any good trickster, the heyoka plays pranks on others in his culture not to make them feel embarrassed and stupid, but to show them ways they could start being more smart.

The Account of John (Fire) Lame Deer: Heyoka and ASC

Lame Deer calls the heyoka the “upside-down, forward-backward, icy-hot contrary.” He describes in detail one particular heyoka trick which may give some clues to the nature of their antics. Apparently, they would grab pieces of dog meat out of a pot of boiling water, and fling them at a crowd of people, without being burned or harmed in any way. (Why dog meat? Lame Deer gives a clue when he says, “For the heyoka, he says god when he means dog, and dog when he means god.”) Lame Deer suggests before doing this they chewed a grayish moss called tapejuta. I suspect that heyoka were able to perform this feat through going into trance, an altered state of consciousness, by utilizing this and other psychotropic plants on occasion.

More importantly, I think they induced trance in others through their contrary behavior. Psychologists have noted that trance does not always occur through rhythmic repetition. Another way in which it occurs (the “paradoxical state”) is through a sudden shock to the nervous system. Ethnomethodologists have often noted the blank, glassy stares and strange states produced by violating peoples’ expectations – by, for example, getting into an elevator and facing the other people in it. It’s in such “paradoxical states” that people often may assimilate new information quickly, without filtering. They also may be able to “abreact” psychological trauma. For these reasons, the heyoka may have been seen as a source of wisdom and healing.

Lame Deer seems to suggest the power of trance is connected to the power of Thunderbird. As a paradoxical state of consciousness, it ties into the paradoxical energy of thunder and lightning. The crash of thunder can startle us and wake us up out of dreaming sleep. The trance of the heyoka comes from sacred power. He ties it all together in a way that’s fairly succinct:

” These Thunderbirds are part of the Great Spirit. Theirs is about the greatest power in the whole universe. It is the power of the hot and the cold clashing above the clouds. It is blue lightning from the sun. It is like atomic power. The thunder power protects and destroys. It is good and bad; the great winged power. We draw the lightning as a forked zigzag, because lightning branches out into a good and bad part… In our Indian belief, the clown has a power which comes from the thunder beings, not from the animals or the Earth. He has more power than the atom bomb, he could blow off the dome of the Capitol. Being a clown gives you honor, but also shame. It brings you power, but you have to pay for it.” (quoted in Erdoes 1972: 251)

Conclusion

The Thunderbird’s association with heyoka clowns is not simply serendipitous. The fact that the Thunderbird displays many paradoxical and contradictory attributes links it to Trickster figures and to the contraries of Plains  Indians culture. This culture complex probably resulted from Indian beliefs about nature and the ways in which thunder and lightning exemplified the manners in which it could be at once capricious, beneficent, and destructive. The Thunderbird’s own link to the original Great Mystery suggests that the role of the sacred clown was seen as one of the highest in Plains society – like wandering fools in Europe, they were thought to be touched by the Divine power itself. Like Thunderbird himself, the heyoka was thought to be a conduit to forces that defied comprehension, and by his absurd, backwards behavior he was merely showing the ironic, mysterious dualities that existed within the universe itself.

Bibliography

Edmonds, Margot, and Clark, Ella E., Voices of the Winds: Native American Legends, Facts on File, New York, 1989.
Erdoes, Richard, and Ortiz, Alfonso, eds., American Indian Myths and Legends, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984.
Fire, John, and Erdoes, Richard, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, Washington Square Press, New York, 1972.
Gill, Sam D., and Sullivan, Irene F., Dictionary of Native American Mythology, ABC-CLIO Inc., Santa Barbara, 1992.
Hall, Mark A., Thunderbirds: The Living Legend of Giant Birds, Fortean Publications, Minneapolis, 1988.
Hines, Donald M., Ghost Voices: Indian Myths, Legends, Humor, and Hunting Stories, Great Eagle Publishing, Issaquah, 1992.
Hultkrantz, Ake, Native Religions of North America, Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1987.
Neihardt, John G., Black Elk Speaks, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1959.
Radin, Paul, The Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1956.
Steiger, Brad, Medicine Power, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1974.
Steward, Julian Haynes, The Clown in Native North America, Garland Publishing, New York, 1991.
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Regarding A Few Posts from Readers…

Hi I got one comment from JoJo who was mad at me for talking to much about other things like religion. Oh, well, in my opinion all things are related and I like to push the envelope in regards to our assumptions about religion especially because it is often used as a crutch to do horrible things. It is also something most people are afraid to examine because of the “FEAR OF GOD!” which is a terrible ridiculous idea. One that serves organized religion well, keeps their 10% coming in and people’s minds shut off from having a relationship with God which is very sad.

Religion is also so often used to destroy others with, to invade countries, to feel righteous – all very bad things that lead to suffering and are the antithesis of spirituality. I think it’s sort of funny that people want me to just be a psychic and predict things. Where do these people think I get my information? I was given the gift because I have spent most of my lifetimes trained in different religious traditions. If anyone spends the vast majority of even one lifetime meditating and doing trance work they will get psychic information. I have memories of my past lives and believe me I earned these abilities both in other lifetimes and in the circumstances of this lifetime.

In this lifetime I have been trained in a religious tradition and have a ministerial credential. I have performed quite a few marriages in my years. It’s a strange idea that some people separate spirituality from psychic ability. It is impossible to have the “gift” and not connect with spirits, inter-dimensional beings (angels, fairies, guides, the higher self or whatever one wants to call it) and have flashes of God/Goddess’s love. Being a psychic is a modern form of shamanism. And shamans are in direct connection with the divine. Seriously, where else would the info come from? I guess that’s why some super right wing Christians think psychics are in league with the devil because their preachers tell them they are the only ones who can spread the TRUTH, while they misquote and misunderstood the bible (mostly Christ’s message, they seem to do well with the damnation part aka the Old Testament aka the Torah which isn’t supposed to be the Christian part but I guess I’m just getting fussy) and it’s perfectly fine to be like a lame parent and “Do as I say not as I do,” for many of these leaders, being major hypocrites (to say the least in many cases). Many of these “preachers” have the energy of a used car salesman on meth like Ted Haggard. Jeez, way before he came out he seemed strung out on coke and I would have better the deed to my house that he was getting some man action. Not that there would be anything wrong with him being gay or even having drug problems if he wasn’t running around damning everyone else to hell for having the same problems. It’s just disgusting the things these people do in the name of religion. They are so hateful to gay people and people with drug problems or any sort of problems which is so NOT CHRISTIAN! I know there are many really great Christan people who follow the words of Christ and who are loving and kind and pure. I wish they would speak up against these nut-jobbers who seem to be using the religion to just get rich and take advantage of people by dignifying the lowest human traits like racism, anger, hatred, war mongering, fear, etc. and find these bizarre ways to elevate this low level behavior to a spiritual club (this behavior is anything but spiritual or God-like unless one’s conception of God is that he’s a jealous, evil, mean-spirited, blood thirsty father figure who likes to create people to have sexual desire only to punish them for it, talk about Sadistic!) Christ said things like “He who is without sin cast the first stone, love thy neighbor as thyself, etc.” I mean we all know his teachings, they were not my Dad in heaven’s gonna kick your ass with his oozy if you don’t do what I say!

And anyone can be psychic if they want to spend a few lifetimes meditating and praying all the time. Or even if they want to devote  a big chunk of this life to knowing and understanding God/Goddess through meditation and trance work.

In modern organized religions God is often so formalized, intellectualized and distant that many priests and preachers don’t get to actually experience God directly but rather go through the prescription of the bible or other holy books. I have met priests and nuns who have a beatific quality, it’s obvious they are very connected to Spirit (most Buddhist monks and nuns are like this, they spend the vast majority of their time meditating). But western religions are not big on shamanistic practices or on forging ones own connection to the divine, but rather we are taught to blindly believe the bible and those religious figures who teach it. History has proven this to be problematic from the burning times of Europe when 25% of all women were murdered to our current crisis of Christian Crusaders blowing up abortion clinics, terrorizing doctors and building Mega Churches with our tax dollars for the military so they can get pumped up in their fight against Muslim extremists. Does anyone see the problem here? I’m sure 99.9% of you do.

So for those who don’t like the theological side of me, well, I’ll just have to say I’m given information by a greater force than myself and that includes where my spiritual beliefs come from, they come from a lifetime of connecting and praying, meditating and giving myself over to the Great Spirit to channel the truth. If it doesn’t jive with a book written more than 2,000 years ago, oh, well. And if it you’ve meditated on your own connection and what I say doesn’t feel right to you, I completely respect that as we all have our own spiritual paths. But the one thing I will never respect is paying someone else to do your spiritual work for you because not only does it not work, it actually causes spiritual devolvement. It is the most dangerous thing about organized religion which is why, ironically, I have more in common with most atheists and agnostics, in this regard, than I do people who blindly follow a specific faith without using their own higher self to guide them on that path.

All religions are the truth. It’s just the truth is buried inside the faith, and one must do the digging on his or her own to progress down the path. This is because religions become like a millennium long game of telephone, and by the time the information is given to you via multiple interpretations of the scriptures and political events that color or even edit either the meaning/tone or actual information in the scripture. Try reading all the different versions of the bible. Now imagine all those versions came from early translations that were translated from early translations that were passed down through oral tradition for thousands of years. As you can see the truth soon becomes a needle inside hundreds of tangled haystacks. Many of these haystacks manipulated (say sprayed different colors or covered in chemicals or whatever) by the culture and those in power at different points in history. The only way to find that needle is to close your eyes, meditate upon it and plug into the part of you that is one with God. If you do, you walk right through all the thousands of haystacks, right to the center of the one that has the needle inside it, as if it was never lost.

Many Blessings,

Denise

Oh, and to John who posted about Lincoln,

I’m from Illinois so I’m sure I didn’t get the whole story of Lincoln. I don’t know enough so I can’t argue with your information. I’m sure he was corrupt in some ways. But he did end slavery and that took some pretty big balls.

I had heard someone in passing say he was racist, but I think everyone was back then. People were segregated and whites had no real contact with African Americans and those who did would have had contact with either slaves or extremely poor and/or undereducated African Americans thus adding to people’s stupid assumptions.

The moral argument against slavery wasn’t that they believed in the equality of the African Americans, it was about the immorality of slavery itself. I think it’s a bit much to believe anyone back then was really that advanced in regards to their understanding of race or gender. I’m sure Lincoln was a total sexist, too. As the vast majority (99.99999999%)  would have been because it was the culture they were raised in where women and minorities were not given the same opportunities and of course if you limit people then they can’t help but live up to their culture’s limited expectations. It is only the rare few that are able to rise and then they are considered the “exceptions.”

There’s always a way for people to protect their ignorance. I thank you for your information about Lincoln. I’ll have to do more research about him.

Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett & the Coverage & Fame

As Grace mentioned the connection between Michael Jackson and Karen Carpenter immediately came to my mind at the time of his death as well. I have a feeling that the real killer here was his anorexia, the drugs just made it worse.

Interestingly, the coverage of both Fawcett and Jackson’s deaths have been very odd, in my opinion. Very few of those who gave statements in the death of Jackson seemed very real, instead they focused on his career and their connection to it. Quincy Jones made sure to give the number of records sold and which records he worked on before saying he felt like he lost his “brother.” I don’t know about you, but that’s not the first thing I think about when I have tender thoughts of family members. Most of the celebrity “grief stricken statements” seemed more of an opportunity to show off their accomplishments and boil down the whole of Jackson’s life as if he were a cartoon. It’s no wonder one of the lawyers who represented him during the case against him for child molestation described Jackson as “one of the loneliest people,” he’d ever met. The only celebrity statements that seemed remotely like normal human reactions were Lisa Marie Presley, Brook Shields and Elizabeth Taylor’s.

I have to admit that I am cringing through most of the coverage of his death which seems to vacillate between extreme hyperbole (Ann Courie saying there might not be any MTV without Jackson) and turning him into a convenient way for certain celebrities to plug their own talents and importance. To say it is crass is a far too great of an understatement and the fact that the media (which itself seems to have gone the direction of placing its own head so far up its own butt that it hasn’t seen daylight in 20 years) is fanning the flames of this hyperbolic narcissistic feeding frenzy, at least hear in NPD central, Los Angeles.

And the sad documentary (which is made only that much more sad by Farrah Fawcett’s death) also seems a strange macabre ego massage. While I feel very sad for anyone who has health troubles, it seems an odd way to gain celebrity status, which has been happening as of late, some woman in GB did her death as a reality show, another dude the same, and then it seemed, in an effort to rekindle her celebrity, Fawcett allowed the documentary to be made. I’m not sure what is sicker people watching these other people suffer during the last moments of their life or the desire to be watched while walking through death’s door.

For some reason (being under the weather with nothing else on TV) I found myself watching part of the Fawcett documentary which was an odd mix or sadness, beauty (Fawcett’s journal writing about her experience was engaging and poetic) and twistedly narcissistic. She insisted on going home after having major surgery back from Europe to the US despite doctors’ warnings which I found oddly arrogant. After facing a deadly disease, going to another country for expert help, and one can only imagine facing your mortality squarely, she did the unexpected, she ignored their advice in characteristic stubborn star fashion. the normal comforting blanket of celebrity became a strange disconnect from reality, a retreat into her specialness which she paid the price for on the flight back as the doctors had warned.

It’s odd that we’ve now had a 96 hour news black out because two celebrities have died. One more infamous in recent years than famous, the others most memorable moment in the past fifteen years a bizarre seemingly drug addled interview on Letterman with “art” made by her naked body, published in Playboy when she was 50 years old, well past the expiration date on the public’s appetite for her nudity. She then came home after the expert doctors she’d gone all the way to Germany for who told her not to fly home early, which she did anyway (a typical sort of celebrity knows best sort of attitude which I’ve seen a lot here in LA) to her apartment with a giant Andy Warhol portrait of herself in the living room. She claimed to desire her privacy and was angry about people finding out about her health problems – so why the documentary detailing the nitty gritty of it? The answer to this seems to be a pathological need for attention, which appears to be the bane of the famous/infamous’ existance. Farrah’s diary entries, written and read by her in the documentary were very well written and moving, revealed a lot about the sheltered and privileged life she led when she wrote an entry about never having gone through any real sort of health problem and how she wanted her life back. While she did count her many bliessings she also infered her specialness was given by God instead of understanding that her life, as all lives have lessons and one can not rise above being human to be anything other than as special as anyone else. She seemed to lack the insight of her connection to the whole of humanity and there was a constant feeling the reason for the documentary was an indignance with her own mortality, that somehow fame which had made a goddess out of her, could not give her the one thing that a real Goddess would have, immortality. She seemed to be beffudled by the idea that she was human and had an odd percpective that her facing death was somehow anything more than what we all share. We all die. We all have pain. We all suffer. There is no escaping this, yet there seemed to be a part of her that came through that actually thought she would somehow escape the inevitbale almost as if she had never considered it until she was staring it down. And although she seemed mildly humbled when she was feeling her worst as soon as she got good news she abandoned her inner quest back to her throne. It was very odd.

I live in Los Angeles and at this point I’m not sure if this sick fascination with the “famous” is a function of the bizarre and twisted culture of Hollywood that is warping my greater view of American culture or whether American culture truly has become a tabloid, insanely obsessed, strangely narcissistic fish bowl.

As a way to escape the onslaught of Jacskson and Fawcett endless non-news stream, we turned on Bill Maher. Ironically, he actually did talk about Michael Jackson with Billy Bob Thornton, however when that interview was done MJ would still have been alive. But what struck me like another hammer over the head was the first interview with Cameron Diaz promoting her new movie, where she plays a mother who has a second child to save her first one from cancer (she needed a donor match). Interestingly, Diaz revealed a lot about the strange curse disguised as a gift, known to us commoners as “celebrity.” In her comment she mentioned that people (the public) expect her (or any celebrity) to stay the same as when the public “fell in love” with them. That said celebrity, in her case was when she was 22, which she used as an example.  She then went on to talk rather candidly with Maher about her feelings about marriage and children which she said she understood (only and purely) as a biological need to procreate. Seriously, that’s what she thought marriage and family was about. And she said she didn’t believe anyone who got married thought they would actually stay married and anyone who married held onto the security blanket of a possible divorce down the road.

Wow, I thought, she sounds like a 22 year old girl who was very immature for her age.

In a strange way she harkens back to the ancient archetype of the virgin (not what the virgin became but what it was initially which was a woman who had no need of family or men and was considered complete onto herself – she represented the girlhood phase of femininty just as say the bacholor or Peter Pan represents eternal boyhood. However virgins were dedicated to the Goddess and spent their lives in service to the spiritual path of the maiden).

But back to the point I was making about Diaz’s understanding of, let’s be honest, love. Bill Maher also suffers from the same affliction as she, an inability to really connect with others and have true empathy. You may wonder how I jumped to such a conclusion based on the interview and her rather shallow portrayals on film. Well, I’ll break it down. Firstly, there is partial truth to the need for procreation and for most people this is how they leave their mark on the world through their family. However more important than that basic primal desire is what is masked underneath that desire, and that desire is the desire to be one with another living being – to find connection. Sexuality in most ancient cultures was actually seen as a way to connect with the divine through feeling the oneness and the living spirit of God/Goddess in your partner. Sure, now sex has been turned in on itself to control people with, turning their most primal and spiritual desires into something to be disgusted and embarassed about so the 3rd party religious institution can rid a person of their sin and make them holy again through disconnecting them to the very source of the spirit of the Creator. It is through sexuality that we become divine/co-creators or potential co-creators (at least in a physical/symbolic way)  in the ever expanding universe.

It was interesting to see Maher and Diaz, two sides of the same coin, sitting across the table from one another, each wearing a different mask but unknowingly of the same distorted viewpoint. Diaz representing what she said were the many “opportunities” she had been presented with unlike her parents and Maher, who I suspect never got past some twisted Freudian relationship with his mother, both so empty and insecure and afraid to be vulnerable to anyone, preferring to stay frozen in time and in control at all costs. I say this because one of the greatest gifts of romantic love is being out of control, losing your mind and then seeing yourself through the mirror of your partner who challenges you to be a better human being, not neccessarily richer, or a bigger star, but a more evolved soul, something most of Hollywood is completey unconcerned about. It’s interesting here as an aside to note, that the card representing the film/TV industry is the Devil card in the tarot. I had been told this by several readers and then put it to the test only to find it was true. When reflecting on why this would be I realized that the grueling work schedules and focus on material things and status are the greatest fixation for the vast majority of people who participate in the industry. There is a one-upmanship unprecidented in any other field and a vaccous need to be the most famous of the famous, which of course is born of great insecurity, shame and narcissism (which by defination is a shame disorder but that’s another aside).

I’ve seen (because again I lived in LA for a very long time and you can infere what you want…) a pattern among celebrities or people who attain a level of fame. The best metaphor I could come up with was imagine that these individuals are flowers in a field and plucked and pressed in a book, dried to perfection and kept forever in this state. Their life stays frozen. Their spiritual growth frozen, because no one will confront them anymore for fear of their status (by being friends/lovers or whatever of the famous person) will be lost by a blow off. Even the most evolved souls who truly seek out ways to improve their spirits suffer under the weight of being plucked and pressed, losing their roots and being isolated, stared at, admired from a far for appearance only, and being under a constant microscope.

Fame is a killer, like heroine it is addictive and intensly destructive yet most Americans suffer under the delusion that it’s something to be desired and like a magic potion will solve all of their trouble if only they could be rich and famous like the celebrities they adore.  So many people that go into the performing arts do it for the sake of fame and believe the lie that life will be fixed on the other side. A belief I’m sure Kurt Cobain had as so may other rock stars before him, only to find that wherever you run there you are, and being famous doesn’t change you, you  just have a thousand eyes watching every move you make, judging, reporting and admiring, heightening the insecurity and shame felt pre-fame. I’m quite sure this is why so many celebrities (especially musicians who carve their own path and whose success is more dependant on their ambition than actors whose fates are more at the whim of circumstance) die horrible premature deaths, hooked on drugs, unable to enjoy a decent salad due to body dismorphia, completely alone because no one is willing to be honest (although most celebrities would just rid themselves of anyone honest so that’s a self-created problem) and confused, taken advantage of, but hey, they get to live in houses so big they probably only use one percent of the space they own, and wear clothing that costs more than some people’s homes. Seems like a fair trade.

I want to say here that I don’t believe in romanticizing people after death. Perhaps because I know the souls of all individuals proceed and are eternal, I don’t feel there is any use in lying. When Nixon died he became Saint Nixon, Reagan an Angel. We learn nothing from the lives of those we have had the privelage to watch if we do so dishonestly. I am not criticizing these individuals. I am criticizing the disturbing way our culture fixates on certain individuals to the point of their destruction. I truly feel pity for those who spend their lives chasing fame, fortune, and status. It all too often leads to a lonely life spent chasing a phantom carrot. For the souls who have crossed over, all of them, not just those whom we have seen on TV, may their spirits be guided to the light as peace and love consume them.

Many blessings,

Denise

The Light

Remember the weird garage light incident? Well, we had an electrician not only come out, and check the wiring for a short, and he completely changed out the light fixture. Guess what? The morse code spirit was back! Luckily, this time the light was its white self, and my husband saw it for his very own eyes.

A reader had suggested that she’d noticed signs were often literal and had mentioned the orange color was perhaps related to Orange County, within days of the orange light incident news of Caylee Anthony’s remains were uncovered in Orange County Florida.

From my experience white light, although it would on the surface seem to be benign, is associated with major world events which aren’t good. I’ve seen flashes in the sky, and have had other weird experiences with white light that I won’t bother to go into, just before major global events.

I have to admit I was a little annoyed at the garage light, and thought perhaps it was a trickster ghost or a negative entity. So I devised a means of communications with it. I gave it 10 seconds to respond, one flash for yes, two for no. The weird thing was, it actually worked stunningly well. Accordingly, I ruled out this entity being a ghost, angel or demonic spirit, and lets say it claimed some sort of divine origin from beyond our understanding of God in the realm of Kether for those of you who know the Tree of Life or the Kabbalah. 

Long story short it wanted me to let everyone know that we are at the beginning of the end of the world as we have known it. The end of crazy materialistic greed, and indifference to morality and our fellow man. We are at the end of Capatlism as we have known it, witnessing the fall of that ideology just as 20 some odd years ago Communism fell. What will come in its wake I feel will be something more in the middle, a capatlistic form of socialism if we are smart, if not, and we remain steadfastly glued to our greed and selfishness it could turn into a world of extreme explotation. I’m an optimist so I’m going with the former rather then the later. 

I wasn’t going to post tonight because I’m exhausted from the holiday and just catching up with all of it, but I was woken up by this energy, and urged to put this information out there. 

We will learn a lot of spiritual lessons coming up, compassion, kindness and a new respect for life and humanity. But I fear we will be so caught up in this global paradigm shift (mostly economic and political) that we maybe blind-sided by the eco-disaster we are headed for, and all that intails including global health problems. I also fear with this period of restructuring we will see a rise in groups trying to vi for power through terrorism, and more corrupt people trying to bully their way into positions of power. We must all be and stay involved in the politics of our world. It is imperative to our survival.

So for now that’s all I’m going to write. I’m very tired and I had to get that off my chest. Once the holidays are over. I promise to answer more questions and give more detailed posts.

Wishing all of you many blessings and a warm and wonderful holiday season. Enjoy your loved ones and be thankful for all you have.

Denise

Congratulations to President Barack Obama!!!

Hey everyone, this has been a very emotional day for everyone around the world. We’ve seen the promise of the 60s civil rights movement come full circle and the promise of the American Dream restored! This also bodes well for our economy. John McCain’s chart interacted very badly with the Dow Jones, and as we saw him ahead in the polls by 12 points, the Dow plummeted. This may seem coincidental, but it is actually karmic. 

I just want to let you all know that while we are in for some strange economic times ahead, the karma of the Dow, in this current time stream, with Obama as president will be lessoned greatly. I’m going to look at his chart and compare it to the Dow Jones and NASDAQ and do an update about how this new energy will change the economic future of the world. And trust me it will.

This brings me to a point I really feel needs to be made. Some of you have mentioned other psychics, with predictions that stretch 30 or more years into the future — some have asked me to tell me your future. I want to explain something that often is confusing. It is why no psychic can ever be 100% accurate and why if you see a scary prophecy, take it as a warning rather than as an absolute. You have the power to change your life and we, collectively, have the power to change the future. 

Time and fate are not fixed. We have free will and our actions, decisions and lessons change the flow of time. There are multiple futures, Einstein talked about this. And it’s true. We have the power to change our lives and the world, but it requires effort. The reason precognitive people can see the future at all, is because most of us are lazy, and once walking down a path are very likely to continue on it. This is a readable time stream. But there is always the opportunity for growth and leaps. We are here to learn.

It is my belief (based on what the spirit world has shown me) that we come back, many times. Our body is temporary, but our soul is immortal. This is how our universe works, we are a microcosm of it. Our universe is binary, divided in halves, chaos and order, light and dark, forward and backward, good and evil, greed and sacrifice, male and female, mortal and immortal. We are all things. We embody all possiblities. We are both good and evil, male and female, greedy and self-sacrificing. Every day we make choices about the path we want to walk. Will it be toward the Oneness of Creation? Or toward the Darkness of Selfishness? Oneness comes through the bright side of ourselves and evolves us — the other path devolves us. We always have that choice, this is what free will is all about.

You will notice that the further into the future a psychic predicts, the more metaphor and nebulous wording they will use. This is because there are too many decisions yet to be made to truly predict with certainty what will take place 30 or a 100 years ahead. They maybe able to see that if the Collective Unconscious stays on the path it is on, 30 years in the future so and so event is likely to occur, but a lot happens in 30 years. A lot of new energy in the form of new people incarnating and the chances of the Collective Unconscious staying the same is very remote; which is why most far future predictions are not usually accurate. Not to say that the person who makes them isn’t extremely gifted and perhaps amazingly accurate in general about the immediate future, just the far future is not really a readable time stream. There are too many variables. 

Now you’re saying, but Denise, what about Nostradamus? He was accurate far into the future.

Well, he actually wasn’t reading that far into the future (according to him, his readings were mostly about his time period) and he put his prophecy into quatrains so they have to be interpreted. Now if you take any prophecy written in verse that can be molded to fit any situation and then have an endless amount of time for it to come true… need I say more? It’s like that old thought experiment the “infinite monkey theorem” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Psychics and prophecy can be fun and entertaining, even enlightening, but we all have to take it with a grain of salt. No psychic is omniscient. And a lot of psychics prophecy scary things to get attention, to get noticed. Of course there are scary things in this world, but unless a psychic shows a proven record of being accurate, one should be skeptical. Even if a psychic does show a record of being accurate, skepticisim is required. Because no psychic is ever right 100% of the time! Basically, don’t substitute a psychic premonition or prediction for your own judgment.

I went through my list of predictions about the election and I was mostly right, but I got Arizona and Colorado wrong. Colorado went blue and Arizona red which makes more sense. Also I’m not sure if Prop 8 will pass or not, it looks like it might. And the cards said it would be defeated. So, there you go. If I were to grade my predictions so far on the blog, I’d say B+ or A- but it’s not perfect. And that’s the way it is with psychics.

We have our own logic to contend with (which distorts psychic information) our own bias, and desire, and it gets in the way of reading sometimes. For example I am very pro marriage for everyone. I have personally performed marriages for many gay and straight couples (I’m a licensed minister) and believe all people should have the right to have a family, a partner and love whomever they love. I believe people come in all varieties for a reason, and its not our place to judge or decide who has rights and who doesn’t. We all should have the same rights, be equal under the law, as we are equal in the eyes of the Creator. So that could be why I got the prediction about prop 8 wrong (as I’m writing this it’s still to close to call, but is leaning toward overturning gay marriage here in CA). This is because I’m human. And my feeling is passionate about this issue and potentially got in the way of my ability to be read the issue properly.

I was so proud of CA when we passed the law allowing gay people the right to vote, and so hopeful that I guess I didn’t want to feel the disgusting back lash of judgmental busy bodies who scared voters into repealing the law. Now hopefully this won’t happen. The cards said it would be narrowly defeated, and this is still possible. I’m crossing my fingers. But also the vote Yes on 8 people assaulted the air waves the last couple of days and confused people. I have a gay friend who told me to vote Yes on 8 because he was so confused because the amendment is a double negative sort of thing. Anyway, enough about that.

I just want to thank all of you for participating in this historic day and for doing your part in making the world a better place. For changing the time stream from an oncoming Depression and WWIII to a period of struggle that could ultimately unite humanity and heal our world.

I am proud of America today. We rose to our greater good. We stepped out of the shadow self of greed and chose to see beyond color to the goodness, inspiration and hope Barack Obama engenders.

Pat yourself on the back. You deserve it!

Many blessing to all of you.

(I will answer readers questions again tomorrow. Sorry, it’s been a long emotional day. So if you have posted a question check the blog tomorrow for an answer.)