Psychic Telephone · 52
Joanie
Not sure what Psychic Telephone is all about? Check out our first and second posts for an introduction to the project. And read our first post about Joanie here.
All of Joanie’s experiences with intuition and mediumship are intimately tied to her spiritual progress. She was raised Catholic—went to Catholic school, the whole bit—and has hung on to many aspects of that faith, though in her own practice she now combines them with elements of paganism and witchcraft. Her understanding of psychic stuff comes mainly from chipping away at it over time, in like a practical way, the practice of it. And this practice—the praxis of it—requires her to spend a lot of time in meditation and prayer.
Especially at the beginning, she did a lot of that, spending a lot of time in natural altered states, feeling very near to her angels, guides, guardians. And frequently she receives revelations—very concrete symbols and imagery she can use to describe her impressions to other people. But her most profound spiritual experience was when the Virgin Mary revealed herself to her. She doesn’t tell a lot of people this because it sounds—it sounds very much in line with common things the mentally ill describe. These profound religious experiences, you know, like schizophrenic talk. But it was beautiful.
She had been kneeling and praying, in deep contemplation—and then Mary came through the wall. She was right there before her, floating above her. Wearing the blue thing, with her feet on the globe, like you would see on a statue, standing on kind of a hoverboard like the Green Goblin rides. And she was saying, Pray for me. Pray for me. Joanie was so taken aback that she fell over, and then she scrambled to her knees but was so flustered she couldn’t even recall the words to the Hail Mary—a prayer she has known from the time she started speaking. She was trying, starting and stopping, but she could not say it from start to finish. She couldn’t say it. Then Mary, she wept. And she receded back into the wall.
It was very powerful. It left Joanie feeling both emboldened and like a failure. Like she’d been given a spiritual challenge. It provoked her to think that if she has these gifts, and if they’re real, then she owes something to them. In a way, she thinks, she’s been called upon to live her life in a certain way that other people haven’t been called to do. Though she has since relaxed a lot with that and now subscribes to a more natural way of incorporating this magic into her life. The way she moves is magic. This conversation is magic. It’s more fully integrated into her way of being.
And also, you know, it makes her wonder about her mental health. She has only been seeing a therapist for a few years and is only now beginning to understand her mental health history. She still doesn’t have a lot of language for it. This longing, this sense of being broken somehow—she never knew that added up to a profile of like gender dysphoria. And she would say she has definitely had manic states, where for a week she didn’t really need to sleep and spent sixteen hours a day making art and felt like she was receiving messages from God all over the place. Everywhere she looked, God was talking to her directly! She has also experienced debilitating depression throughout her life. But she just thought all that was the life of the artist.
And her family was crazy. Her dad was crazy. It calls into question—she’s calling him psychic, but he was also maybe bipolar. And he treated it all with alcoholism, putting poison out into the world. So she’s dealt with trauma, childhood abuse—including sexual abuse at the hands of the Church. She’s not alone, of course. But it sucks.
So all of it with a grain of salt, you know? She’ll say a bunch of sure-footed, definitive things about life after death, and then she’ll undo it all. She has no clue. All of these things have to sit side by side. All this stuff lives together.