In the Cards

So this guy shows up at a psychic’s office without an appointment. The psychic opens the door to her office and says, “I’ve been expecting you!” Before the other night, that joke summed up my appreciation for the world of psychic powers. That and some creepy memories of run-ins with the Ouija Board as a child. And the Drew Barrymore movie when she uses her mind to set fire to anyone who gives her the stink eye, although I always figured she just never got enough love from her stage mom, and, deep down, she was really a nice little telekinetic second grader. Michelle Beauregard changed all that for me. And contrary to popular myth, psychics do require appointments. I made mine for this past Monday night and arrived at Michelle’s office in Center Barnstead with nothing but a “clear mind,” at her suggestion.

I’m here for what Michelle calls an “intuitive reading.” I’ve never done anything like this before and have no expectations, except a vague sense that she’ll spill the beans about my future. As I sit down, my only hope is that I don’t learn that I’ll die in the claws of an enraged giant marsupial, and I definitely don’t need her telling me that she sees me fatter, balder and shorter in my waning years. I don’t need a psychic to tell me - the mirror works just fine for that.

Michelle sits me down, and as she picks up a small crystal and holds it in her hands, she asks me to select a pack of cards from a broad assortment. “Look them over,” she tells me, “and choose the pack you’re drawn to.” I feel no energy emanating from the cards, although that pack on the end looks kinda cool so I grab it. “Those are the Shape Shifter cards,” she tells me as I shuffle them into three stacks. Michelle takes the stack I point to and lays out three rows of six cards each. The drawings on these cards are not what I expected. With titles like “Legacy,” “Success,” “Loneliness,” and “Sorcerer,” the cards look like the album cover concepts Ronnie James Dio rejected for his greatest hits compilation. But there’s no time to think about the breakup of Black Sabbath because Michelle launches into what she sees or feels about me and my energy through the eighteen cards on the table between us.

Michelle is a thirty-year old mother of two, a shamballa reiki master and psychic whose been doing this kind of work full-time for two years. “I’ve always been intrigued by tarot cards, ever since I was a kid,” she says. “And then once I learned reiki and the energy work around it, I heightened my senses and really started to do card readings for people outside my friends and family.” (Check her out at www.theinnateinyou.com) I’m pretending I know even the first thing about tarot cards, and before tonight I would have guessed that shamballa reiki was some sort of bean curd dish served with fresh vegetables, as in “Yum, this shamballa reiki tastes swell with a nice cold glass of soy milk!” But I’ve since learned that it’s a form of holistic healing that focuses on the energy inside of us, and reiki masters use their hands to help channel the energy into the right spots to fix whatever’s ailing you.

What’s ailing me first, apparently, is the fact that I could use a little more money. Michelle feels a “heavy weight” pressing down on her as she focuses in on the card, which, I’m presuming, shows a gas pump and Concord tax bill, but as I look, I think I see a man’s head on a piggy bank, and the man is weeping. Considering it cost me $47 for half a tank of gas to get here, I’d say Michelle is right on target. Holding up the card titled, “The Moon,” she goes on to say a few very insightful things about my wife’s family, which, for the sake of harmonious holiday dinners to come, I’ll keep to myself.

Most of what Michelle tells me is spot-on. She knows that my family owns a cabin in the woods up north and that my mom loves the solitude of it, often spending time there alone. She nails it when she describes my job and what might lie in store for me, although her insistence that there is a 5’10” woman “with long legs, blonde curly hair with either heavy eye makeup or eye glasses” who has a lot to do with my future career success is a tad unnerving. And her description of my wife as “The Sacred Flame,” full of talent, potential and “untapped spiritual energy” is something I commit to memory immediately for future use at the appropriate time.
Michelle barely takes a breath, except for occasional sips of water, and she juggles the crystal in her hands, her eyes glazing over a bit as she moves from card to card. I really have no idea how she’s doing what she’s doing, and her sunny face, her great laugh and the ease with which she seems to be capturing pieces of my past and present and turning them into a puzzle for my future is compelling and comforting.

Not all the news is good. She takes a while explaining how one of my siblings will get into some trouble at work, and how I will be the “guiding light” to help him or her (I’d rather not share) make it through the dark times. She intimates that this sibling’s done something bad, so, just in case, I’m on caller ID high alert at home, my copies of ethical and/or criminal codes handy for quick reference. And then there’s just plain odd. Michelle swears my family and I are soon to see a dinner theater version of the Disney movie “Mulan,” but I honestly have to say we’d need to be forced at sword point to do such a thing. Maybe a meatball sub and a DVD of the movie, but “Mushu and Friends on Ice” isn’t in the cards for us, even though it seems to be for her.

The hour flies by, and Michelle tells me a lot of information about myself, the choices I’ve made, the regrets I have and how my future and my family’s future is generally very bright. Granted, I didn’t need her to tell me that my wife and I are happy together, but it’s sure nice to get the validation, even if it’s based on a stranger’s interpretation of a playing card with a drawing of a scantily-clad woman-lioness hybrid frolicking with a cloven-hoofed man-beast playing a lute and laughing to the sky. The weird thing is that is exactly what we’re wearing for Halloween next year. Coincidence? I think not.