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Inspirit Common's Psychic Faire

by Bridget Kiely, Amherst Regional High School

At first glance, the bland conference room looks like it could be the site of a business meeting. Six folding tables are positioned around the room with two people, locked deeply in conversation, seated at each one. But today, something far more interesting than an ordinary meeting is happening here: Inspirit Common's triannual Psychic Faire, which offers eager customers the chance to sample any of six different psychics in $20, twenty-minute readings. When psychic Jeanne DuVier is freed up, I walk over to her table and take a seat.

"Shuffle the cards until you feel that you've gotten your energy into them," she says, handing me an inch-thick deck of Tarot cards. "Think about the questions that you want to ask the Tarot. Tell me when you're ready," she says.

I grab the deck from her hands. Much bigger than ordinary playing cards, these feel bulky as I handle them clumsily.

"I think I'm ready," I mumble after a few seconds. She nods curtly then draws two cards from the top of the pile, deftly laying them one on top of the other in the center of the table. Eight more cards follow, four placed in the shape of a cross around the first two. Another four are lined up along the left edge of the table.

She pauses, examining the spread of cards before her. "My first impression," she says finally, "is that a lot of your problems are out of your hands. You have a good balance of all the suits. One Wand, two Cups, one Pentacle…" she says as her voice trails off.

"These," she says, motioning to the two center cards, "represent the crux of the situation. Here you have the VII of Wands and the Lovers." She pauses and inhales deeply before continuing. "It seems like a lot of the stress in your life comes from your relationships with others. You've been feeling like your strength is being seeped away; your needs are not being met. Am I correct?" she asks. I hesitate then nod feebly and look away.

She moves on to the four cards surrounding the central ones. "The Page of Pentacles represents the root of the problem; the King of Wands, your past; the Empress, your present; and the X of Swords, your future," she says. Her long black hair falls into her face as she cocks her head to the side, deep in thought. "I think that the cards are saying that you need to take care of yourself," she says after a moment. "This," she says, pointing to the X of Swords card, which bears an eerie image of a man with bloody swords in his back, "represents death. This shows that you're someone who has taken on too much responsibility." She glances up at me inquisitively, looking for affirmation that her instincts are correct. I smile and shrug.

She turns her attention to the last four cards, lined up neatly in a row along the edge of the table. "The III of Swords represents how you feel right now. This card typically indicates heartache and sacrifice."

"It's most important that you're happy right now," she says as she finishes up the reading. "Not everything is up to you; you still have a lot of growing up to do."

I thank her as I get up and leave.

'Connecting the Dots'

Back in the waiting area, a nervous hum fills the room as people prepare to meet with the psychic of their choice. "What do you think of Juniper?" says one prospective customer to her friend, who has just finished having a Tarot reading.

"Right on the mark," she replies, brushing her auburn hair out of her face. "I've never done anything like this before. But I was blown away - Juniper literally connected the dots. It's an affirming feeling. It made me feel better about all my decisions."

Emily Sparkle, the Faire's coordinator, sits on a couch in the waiting area and looks on, smiling. "This is what we love to see," she says.

Inspirit Common

Sparkle is the owner of Inspirit Common, the store that hosts the Psychic Faire three times a year in Northampton. The store's main location, at 219 Main Street, is just a stone's throw away from the site of the Faire.

"The fall is a great time to get a psychic reading done," says Sparkle, "because the veil between the mundane and spiritual worlds is very thin."

According to Sparkle, Inspirit Common has seen an explosion in the popularity of their psychic readings over the past year. "I think we're in very uncertain times," says Sparkle, a thin woman with glasses and pink dreadlocks. "People are looking for guidance." Sparkle founded Inspirit Common about five years ago with the goal of helping to guide people along their spiritual paths. "I was raised with no religious life," she says. "In my twenties, I worked in this little place where I really decided what path I wanted to follow. I realized that I wanted to create a place where people have all the spiritual tools they need."

Products for sale at the store include pendulums, wands, altar cloths, tribal music, herbs, incense, stained glass, chimes, tarot cards, and much more. Mayan Abdominal Massage, integrative psychotherapy, yoga, belly dancing and Plant Spirit Healing also add to the store's long list of services. Sparkle hopes that the store will provide customers with everything they need to embark on their own spiritual journeys. "To me, it doesn't matter what you call your spiritual beliefs," she says. "They're all paths to God."

'Changing Lives'

Like Sparkle, the psychics who work at the Psychic Faire say that their primary aim is to help their clients with their everyday lives.

Juniper Talbot, a tarot reader and elder in the Lenai Aine Celtic witchcraft coven, says that "the most important thing is that my clients walk away feeling like they've gained something helpful." Talbot, a strawberry-blonde woman wearing a long, lacy black dress and dangly silver earrings, has been practicing her profession for twenty-five years. "Someone who has a clear question about a situation in their lives would benefit most from a psychic reading," she says.

Noelle Southwick echoes this idea. "A lot of times, my work involves clarifying pieces of what's going on. If we can break it into pieces, we can better understand it," she says, smiling. Southwick, a psychic of eighteen years, practices Angel Card readings and spiritual channeling from the angelic realm. She also makes Human Design charts, a personality assessment tool based on a person's time and place of birth. "I truly feel energized by what I do," she says.

A Kirlian photographer and reader named Bennu even ventures so far as to say that her work has changed lives. Kirlian photography is a form of high-frequency electric photography that detects the energy field around the body, more commonly known as the Aura. Bennu cites a memorable example from several years ago, when she photographed a thirteen-year old girl in Vermont. The girl appeared healthy, happy, and well cared-for, says Bennu, but a photograph of her aura came out murky and red.

She asked the girl's mother when the girl had last had a physical. "I told the mother that I would feel better if she saw a doctor soon," says Bennu. A visit to the doctor revealed that the girl did, in fact, have a serious spinal deformity. "The next time I saw her, she was in a full body cast," says Bennu. "Had she not received treatment, she would have had crippling back pain for her entire adult life."

A Lifelong Gift

For most of these psychics, their abilities have been a part of their lives for as long as they can remember. Josh Berkowitz, a nineteen year-old UMass student who does tarot, astrology, and palm reading in addition to energy healing, grew up in a psychic family. "My mother and my mother's mother were psychics," he says. "But for a long time, I assumed that it was something that everyone had - I didn't understand that others didn't have it too."

Talbot had a similar experience in her early life. "As a child, I felt like I knew things were going to happen before they actually did," she says. "Little by little, I discovered that not everyone had these abilities."

Now, they say that their abilities greatly affect their relationships with themselves and the people in their lives. "When I'm unclear about something in my life, I spend more time meditating and asking for guidance," says Southwick. "I pay closer attention to what I say to clients - sometimes there is a message for the reader, not just the client, in the cards."

Talbot agrees that her abilities have affected the way she relates to herself and others. "In addition to being clairvoyant, I'm a Pisces, which is the most empathetic sign in the Zodiac," she says. "I tend to know intuitively what people are thinking and feeling. It makes it hard for me to make casual friends. I get very close very quickly."

Being a psychic, as Berkowitz has discovered, can even affect one's romantic prospects. "I've been rejected from dates because of my profession," he says, chuckling as he casts a glance over at Southwick, whom he is close to. "It's okay, though - I guess you have to make trade-offs for anything you really love."

Addressing Skeptics

Talbot, Berkowitz, and Southwick have all dealt with their fair share of skeptics, but "not as much as you would think," according to Berkowitz. "I think it's part of their own uncertainty," says Southwick. "I just don't feel like I need to prove anything."

Talbot has encountered a different problem with her clients. "What I do face is people with a very clear conception of how a reading should happen, based on what they've seen in the media or with other psychics. It's important to be open," she says. She also warns not to take the media's portrayal of psychic practices too seriously. "In movies, the psychic is always turning over the Hanging Man card. That card has nothing to do with execution - they always get that wrong."

Whatever skeptics and the media have to say about his profession, Berkowitz believes that psychics have something very real to contribute to the world. "People are hungry for someone who is legitimate," he says, grinning slyly. "I think that our society is ready for this."

The Faire's satisfied customers would agree. "I'm so glad I came here today," says Sara McConnell, 26. "They were spot-on."