“Fasting also helps induce visionary states, but it is no longer proper to weaken our bodies in order to boost our spiritual powers. That was the old way. It was appropriate for its time, but it is no longer recommended to employ that technique. These days we are called to strengthen our spiritual abilities to the point that we can use them amid the hustle and bustle of daily life and remain in good mental and physical health.”
“I hear ya,” Phoebe said.
“Drugs and alcohol can induce non-natural states of consciousness, but that is strictly forbidden for anyone on the white path. Drugs open a person to many influences and they expose you to bad beings in situations where the benevolent spirits are unable to protect you. Certain drugs can break you wide open to be used by the worst possible entities, so you must never expose yourself to that.
“You are very fortunate that you have never used drugs or even alcohol. Every drink of alcohol severs your connection to your guardian angel, which is the last thing anyone wants.”
At least Phoebe had done something right. It was a relief for her to hear it, because it had certainly been a damper on her social life.
“Seasons of the year also have an effect on spiritual capacity. Humans naturally go inward in the wintertime. The veil between worlds is at its thinnest during the thirteen days from Christmas Eve through the Twelve Holy Nights, which end on January 6. This is the best time of year for spiritual communion.
“January 6 is historically associated with Three Kings Day, the day the three kings reached the baby Jesus, and also Epiphany, the day Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River. After that, the door closes again until around Easter.
“The eve before your birthday is also an especially propitious time to ask for guidance from your angel. Each year the spiritual world draws very close to you during the evening and night before your natal day.”
Phoebe listened to all this and paid close attention, but it sounded pretty far out. She would’ve disregarded a lot of it if the people in the monastery hadn’t been so kind, smart, and sane.
“Psychic abilities can also be enhanced by factors such as geology or weather,” Caterina said. “For example, high places such as mountaintops have a distinctive character as do low places like the Dead Sea and the Jordan River Valley. Jungles have a different effect than deserts or Arctic ice floes.
“For example, King Arthur’s knights would stand on the edge of the cliffs at Tintagel and hold out their arms to let the buffeting winds and crashing waves power them like a battery. There is something special about the boisterous collision of the elements there—earth, wind, fire, and water.
“These knights, of course, were very special individuals. They were able to feed off the way the sun shone through the water droplets that were being tossed into the air from the spume. It fueled them for the tasks they had to undertake on behalf of Arthur. It gave them enormous strength, which they used in the service of good. Have you ever been there?” she asked.
Phoebe shook her head.
“It is an extraordinary scene, very dramatic. It stands on what modern people would call a power spot—a high, narrow, rocky cliff on the north coast of Cornwall. The rock there is old Devonian slate. That is an extremely hard and durable stone. It was quarried for centuries to use for roofing tiles. The Atlantic Ocean in that area is a gorgeous light turquoise green on account of the copper in the slate rock. The waves beat ceaselessly upon the rock and wear it into sand. The copper laden sand is what turns the water the unusual shade of green.”
Copper, water, and knights dressed in chain mail, Phoebe thought, an antique Arthurian battery.
Phoebe appreciated the lessons, but by the end of the day, she was always ready to go home. It was a beautiful drive through a little-used corner of the world. Phoebe enjoyed taking care of her patient. He was a super guy. But she also liked her snug little white farmhouse with its tin roof and wraparound porch.
Chapter 3.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was halfway between New York and Florida, and within a day’s drive of eighty percent of the population of the United States. The combination of a convenient location, physical splendor, and no admission fee meant it was the nation’s most popular family vacation destination.
The sparsely populated community of White Oak was fortunate to be tucked into the woods a few miles off the main road. That meant that the nine million people a year who drove through the park on Highway 441 zipped by without realizing White Oak was even there.
The inhabitants of the little village all knew each other and got along fairly well together. It was a typical insular Appalachian social unit where saints, sinners, eccentrics, artists, craftsmen, farmers, mechanics, musicians, criminals, layabouts, and downright crazy people combined to make a functional whole. Everyone had their place.
Phoebe thought it was heaven on earth. She was never happier than when she was hanging out with her friends at Hamilton’s General Store eating deviled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and sweet tea. She wouldn’t want to do it all day every day, though, so it was good to have a job to go to.
* * *
Her lessons continued each day. “Each person is different,” Caterina said. “No one’s gifts are the same as anyone else’s. So a high degree of trust is required in order for people with spiritual gifts to be able to work together. It is a very delicate business, but it is actually the best possible situation—when it works. That is the meaning of the two or more that Jesus mentioned in the Bible.
“It is technically impossible to be a Christian all by yourself, but when two people have enough purified good will between them to combine forces and work for the good, then Christianity becomes possible. A great enhancement occurs that strengthens their individual powers. One plus one makes more than two.”
Wow, Phoebe thought, that sounded pretty cool.
Caterina repeatedly hammered the point about disregarding opinions and personality issues. “Subjectivity is the poison that must be avoided at all costs,” she said. “The border between objectivity and subjectivity is where things begin to break down and your information becomes useless, or worse, destructive and misleading. You must learn to read your own distinctive instrument without projecting any of your own stuff into the process at any point. This is extremely difficult.”
No kidding, Phoebe thought. She realized she was made up of a constant flow of random judgments about nearly everything. I like this, I don’t like that. Thank heavens she had her medical work to fall back on for an example of proper thinking. When someone was hurt, you didn’t alter or withhold treatment because they’d gotten injured doing something foolish.
* * *
One day the Boss asked her how her lessons were going.
“Pretty good, I guess,” she said. “But I can see that it’s a long process.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is a lifetime work.”
Phoebe wondered, yet again, what the Boss’s specific diagnosis was, but so far she’d never been given a straight answer by anyone and she’d never met the physician in charge of his care. Her job was to monitor his condition carefully and administer his medicines according to schedule.
He took some ordinary medicines, but he also took other interesting things, like plant essences made right at the monastery from herbs they grew in the garden. They used poultices, essential oils, and decoctions of various sorts of roots, leaves, flowers, and fruits.
It was interesting work. During her breaks she was tutored as the only pupil in a School for Psychics. That stuff was pretty interesting, too. So far she hadn’t mentioned the psychic training to anyone. Her friends in White Oak had no idea what kind of place she worked or who her patient was. She couldn’t imagine talking about her wacky private lessons either.
* * *
Caterina lectured her about the various kinds of psychics. “There are many diverse ways of seeing,” she said. “Some people receive information from the spiritual realm by touching a person, or by getting clos
e to them. Some do it by looking at photo, or by holding an item that was used by a particular person. Some rely on scrying—reading crystal balls or mirrors.
“Some people can perceive auras—the energy fields that hover around people or objects. Some people can see or feel changes in the energy fields in nature and they can use this ability to locate things like underground water or search maps with their hands—that is called dowsing.
“There are people who are excellent at perceiving medical information and others who can do remote viewing of events at distant times or places. There are other sorts of phenomena that we will not concern ourselves with. The list is nearly endless and some of the techniques are dangerous or harmful.
Yes, Phoebe thought, let’s leave off anything that might lead to spontaneous human combustion.
Caterina gave her a look that made her wonder if she’d read her mind, but she continued the lesson as usual. “The best way to understand psychic phenomena is by using three basic categories: Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. And I do not use these terms in the normal meaning of the English words. In this context we use Imagination with a capital I to refer to a visual phenomenon, a spiritual seeing, which is the lowest level of psychic ability.
“Inspiration, an auditory phenomenon or spiritual hearing, is the middle level of ability. And Intuition, a kinesthetic or bodily sensation, which accompanies the direct download of knowledge into a person. This is similar to what modern computer people might refer to as downloading from the cloud, except it comes from spiritual beings such as angels rather than a massive server.”
“Does any of this sound familiar to you?” Caterina asked.
Phoebe hesitated out of habit before speaking. This was the kind of thing that was extremely common in the Southern Appalachian Highlands, but that you had to be careful talking about. Certain dogmatic people with no first hand experience of psychic phenomena would immediately attribute the phenomena to the Devil.
Of course some people, bad people or misguided people, actually were talking to the devil. You had to be careful what channel your internal radio was tuned to or you could be picking up the crazy channel or the really really bad news channel. Phoebe decided to tell Caterina the truth.
“I’ve had special dreams all my life,” Phoebe said. “That kinda thing runs on both sides of my family. The women have dreams and see things before they happen. Not often, but they’re real strong when they happen and we’ve learned to take note of them. Some of us also get information from touching a person, either accidentally or on purpose, or by standing close to them.”
Caterina nodded.
“I notice I can smell diabetics who are out of regulation. I used to think everybody could do that, but over the years I’ve realized that it’s like some of the other special types of information I get, most people can’t do it, or won’t do it.”
Caterina nodded again. “It is a burden,” she said. “Great responsibility goes along with receiving this type of information. Many people subconsciously reject it for that reason. Anything else?”
Phoebe paused again. She didn’t like to tell this to anyone except on a need to know basis, but she wanted to cooperate with the Boss and her coworkers. “I can hear the dead sometimes.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Caterina said. “Do not worry that I will think you are having hallucinations. Le Seigneur was aware that you had this ability from the color of your aura. He says it is a band of white near the skin surrounded by a clear zone some people call crystal. The white and crystal are encased in a clear dark blue field. Le Seigneur says these colors mean that the dead can see you and will want to use you to pass messages to their loved ones.”
Phoebe’s eyes burned with the effort to hold back tears. Her parents and a couple of her closest friends knew about this and accepted it, but she never imagined she’d ever get validation of the phenomenon from anyone.
Caterina patted her knee. “It is alright. Never lose your humility. It will protect you. Without humility you cannot do this work safely. Never forget this.”
Caterina administered a series of general tests, and at first it looked like Phoebe wasn’t going to be able to do anything useful after all. She couldn’t see auras, and when Caterina took a deck of cards, drew one, and focused on it. Phoebe couldn’t say which one she was looking at. She had no idea. When requested to guess, she would guess wrong.
Caterina asked her if she knew where the Boss was, if he was alone or had someone with him. Again, Phoebe came up dry. Further testing revealed that none of Caterina’s dead relatives were trying to talk to her, as far as Phoebe could tell, and she had no idea what the future might hold for the older woman.
“I’ve never been able to do any of this stuff on demand,” Phoebe explained, frustrated. “Sometimes things will pop into my head, certain types of information that I’ll realize there’s no way I should know. That’s been hard to deal with. For most of my life I thought everything that was in my brain was there because it was supposed to be there.
“I mean how could a young person be expected to know that some of the things inside their head got there in a different way than some of the other things? How was I supposed to know I was different? I had to learn that the hard way.”
Caterina nodded in sympathy.
“Only after several extremely unpleasant incidents did I realize that sometimes I knew things other people didn’t know, things I had no rational way of knowing. Sharing this kind of information was like handling dynamite. Mentioning it freaks people out. So gradually I learned how to tell whether the information was something I got the regular way—or the other way—before I said anything out loud.
“It sorta makes me crazy. Our culture accepts the validity of some types of information, “ said Phoebe. “If it’s a successful businessman talking, for instance, he’s considered to be visionary in a good way. But if it’s anybody else, they’re considered a flake or a nutjob. And if you get auditory information, like me, if you ever mention that you heard something, everybody thinks you’re crazy for sure!”
Caterina burst out laughing.
* * *
Phoebe spent time with Caterina, day after day, without noticing any improvement. Finally she felt she had to say something. “I’m sorry,” she told her teacher, “I’m afraid I’m wasting your time.”
“Perhaps we should consult Le Seigneur for guidance,” Caterina suggested.
The Boss maintained his confidence in Phoebe’s ability. “Perhaps we should reverse our approach,” he said in his melodious French accent. “We could first discover what types of information you are sensitive to, and then focus your training around those particular things.”
Phoebe was willing to try.
Chapter 4.
“The energy around you is quite distinctive,” he said. “It cannot mislead or lie. The blue and white soul colors indicate that you are tuned to a high frequency. This means you are lit up to the spiritual world. You are easy for them to see. The dead flock to you because they realize you will be aware of them. It also indicates that you have medical gifts. This aura configuration is shared by many of the Sisters of Mercy, the medical order of nuns. It is mirrored in their habits of dark blue with white wimples and veils.
“I myself am already benefiting from your medical skills, so we know this blue and white is accurate for you. But your ability to work with the dead, we are not currently making use of. That is an extraordinarily valuable trait. So, if you are willing to keep trying, let us see what we can do with it.”
Phoebe nodded. She couldn’t say no to the Boss. He had the same effect on everyone. The guy was a saint.
“When you visited the Frick Collection a while back,” he said, “what appealed to you the most?”
Phoebe thought about it, and said, “The portrait of Sir Thomas More.”
“Have you dreamed about any of the paintings since your visit?”
“Just one of them, the Rembrandt portrait of the man on the
horse. I find myself thinking about that one sometimes.”
“That painting is commonly referred to as the Polish Rider,” the Boss said just before he called Arabella Devlin-Forrest, his awe-inspiring, Administrative Assistant. It took the formidable Arabella no more than her usual micro-second to appear in response to his summons and he asked her to bring him a book. Phoebe didn’t understand the name of the book. It was something French.
When Arabella returned with it, the Boss asked Phoebe to page through it and point out anything that caught her attention. Phoebe pulled up a chair and sat beside her patient’s bed, turning each page slowly, not knowing what to expect either in the content or the vibe she was supposed to notice. Then suddenly she did know.
A jolt went through her, causing her to shudder. She pointed to a painting that was captioned Portrait of Man with Glove. It was by Titian.
“How is this image speaking to you?” the Boss asked.
“I feel like I know him,” she said.
“Is that all?”
Phoebe was too embarrassed to speak.
“Go ahead,” the Boss said, “It is very important that you be precise. What do you feel?”
“I feel like I love him, like I’m in love with him,” Phoebe said, her eyes starting to burn. “But I don’t even know who he is.”
“Is that all?”
“I feel better when I look at him than when I look away,” she shuddered lightly again.
“You are having a frisson?” he asked. “A visceral reaction on the skin?”
Phoebe nodded.
“That is good,” he said. “You are an auditory seer as we knew from the shade of blue in your energy field and now we see you are also kinesthetic. That is to be expected. The greater part of human hearing is done with the whole body, not just the ear. Most of hearing occurs on the surface of the skin.”
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics Page 2
