SPOTLIGHT : MEDIUM TO WELL DONE : Reporter on Psychic Shopping Trip Finds Some Quality Advice in Spirited Packaging

It’s best to shop for a new car during clearance time. Spring is the propitious season in which to plant a garden. And if you’re thinking of looking into unseen psychic forces, the time to do so evidently is now.

Long before the invention of Milk Duds and Power Ranger costumes, Halloween was originally called Sambain (pronounced sow-en ) after the Celtic god of death. Presaging the months of nature’s decay and cold, ancient Celts, pagans and early Christians deemed Oct. 31 as a day when the departed drew near, and a time ripe for seeking divinations of love, luck, money and other pending concerns. According to some today, Halloween remains the Blue Light Special of the cosmic plane K mart.

“Sambain is a significant day. The veils are said to be very thin between the spirit world and the mortal world, so contacting departed souls, clairvoyance, any work with the other side would be considered very effective at this time,” said Guy Richard, whose Costa Mesa shop Isle of Avalon is a magic-worker’s supply house, stocking warlock robes, Dragon’s Blood bath and shower gel and sundry items.

According to Costa Mesa Tarot reader Lorene Judd, “It’s the day that the heavens open and you have the clearest access to all the souls that aren’t in-body any more. That’s why people think of ghosts and spooks and everything, because it’s the day you can really connect and communicate with everybody that’s out of body.”

So let’s, shall we? For those tired of the usual theme park Halloween diversions, we decided to check out some of the en-veiled alternatives.

You need look no farther than the Yellow Pages to find--listed between Sperm Banks and Sporting Goods--a Spiritual Consultants heading. Add the listings under Parapsychologists, Astrologers, Occult Supplies and Psychic Counseling and Healing, and you’ve got more advice than a body can handle.

A decade ago psychics weren’t accorded much respect or profile in Orange County. The standard would be a palmist with a whitewashed house next to a railroad track. One might still expect the business to be centered in immigrant neighborhoods with a strong folk tradition, and there is indeed no shortage of those, though many don’t advertise in the phone book.

But the real psychic hub these days seems to be Newport Beach, with spokes radiating out to Costa Mesa, Laguna and Irvine. Perhaps the Reagans’ reliance on an astrologer made it acceptable in upscale communities. A cynic might suggest that psychics are going where the money is. Judd has a more interesting explanation.

“Money and power don’t have anything to do with it. There’s an energy vortex here. If you look around you’ll see a lot of health food stores here, yoga centers, holistic health, acupuncture and acupressure massage. If you know about meridians or power spots like Sedona (Arizona), you’ll see there’s a power spot in this area, and if you check out the grid you’ll see there’s an energy vortex, and when you’re in a power spot in a vortex, it’s easier to access this type of information. We’re talking fourth and fifth dimension. There’s a doorway here,” she said.

It’s a hard position to argue with given that, as we spoke, someone was banging on a shaman’s drum outside the psychic reading room we sat in, ensconced in Visions & Dreams Emporium, a Costa Mesa New Age shop. There, one can find taped channeled communications broadcast from the Pleiades star cluster, Tarot cards and abalone shards. “Abalone attracts angels,” claims a placard.

Judd was one of five randomly selected psychics I visited for readings last week. I don’t recommend seeing five psychics in a row. My psyche feels rubbed to a nub.

It was an interesting experience, though, both to contrast their various approaches and to note an impressive consistency between their collective readings.

Before you take this as a confirmation of things arcane, bear in mind that I am predisposed to believe in psychic occurrences, and have been ever since a high school friend and I were once standing beside a river and, for no reason on God’s green Earth, simultaneously thought of Sebastian Cabot.

I don’t question that there are connections in this world that aren’t readily apparent, though--as might be expected of one whose psychic experiences revolve around large, dead, bearded TV actors--I don’t regard them as taking precedence over the engagements and wonders of daily life.

I didn’t tell a couple of the psychics beforehand that I was a reporter, but I also didn’t try to catch them up in trick questions or misleading information. Rather, I asked about things that honestly concern me, and those didn’t happen to be the sort of concrete names-dates-places answers that would prove or disprove the accuracy of their skills.

As with any profession, there are doubtless hack psychics, though the ones I met seemed earnest in their work. Whether they are connected to another plane of being or not, to varying degrees I walked away from each reader with a respect for her intuition and advice. All I’ll venture is that if you have a curiosity about things psychic, and the money to spend, getting a reading is a lot more fun than a session with an investment broker.

Unless you’re the sort that enjoys pulling beards off Santas, I don’t recommend going to psychics with the intent of proving them wrong. You likely won’t get a good reading, they’ll probably have ready reasons--such as your bad faith--why the reading wasn’t good, you’ll be out a chunk of money, and if their powers are real, who needs a psychic honked off at you?

*

If you had a choice, wouldn’t the first psychic you visited be named Yolanda? We thought so too, and so started our mystical journey in Anaheim with Yolanda Todorovich, a woman of Yugo-Serbian extraction who says her family has been doing readings in Orange County for three decades. She works with your choice of either Tarot cards or palms, and her reading came closest to one’s expectations of the classic Gypsy palm reader.

Her place of business has burgundy carpeting, pink walls, a small furry dog with a face like Ernest Hemingway, religious icons, and a sign reading, “If you have a cold or flu please let me know right away.”

“That’s something we can’t protect against,” she revealed, sniffling.

Todorovich asked a few questions, the first being “How will you be paying for this?” (Like many readers, she takes plastic.) Most of the time, she gave answers.

Her observations were emphatic, dramatic--colored with a revelatory or cautionary tone--and she often dealt in specifics. If in the next three weeks I have a mishap swimming, an accident with a red car or a knee injury, we’ll let you know. She also revealed that in past lives I’ve been a Chinese philosopher and an African witch doctor.

She said things about my pathetic love life that seemed pretty spot-on. On the career front, she, as all four psychics after her were to do, strongly suggested I leave my work and embark on a project on my own. There’s nothing like using your employer’s expense money to be told you should be ditching them!

Of the readers visited, Yolanda got top points for style of delivery:

“I’ve got to tell you something, mister. You’re going away . You’re going a distance . You’re going to cross deep waters to a foreign country that’s going to be ruled by a king or queen. And through this journey is where you’re going to find your success. And, Jim, what’s this thing with the desert?”

Well, the desert part could well be the planned trip I took to the California desert odd-spot, Slab City, a few days later. The distance could be a junket to royalty-ruled Thailand I’ve been trying to scam. Go figure.

*

Next stop was the Learning Light Foundation in Anaheim. The foundation--the name was changed from the Psynetics Metaphysical Center early this year to avoid confusion with Dianetics--has been in Orange County for 32 years, more than 20 of those in an old church on East Lincoln Ave.

“Our mission statement is to promote education and research relative to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the individual,” says Douglas Baucom, who co-helms the foundation with his wife, Susan. To that end they offer a wildly non-judgmental variety of services, spoon-bending parties, classes in Angel Awareness, a UFO Abductee Support Group and so on.

Baucom doesn’t believe there’s more parapsychological activity around Halloween, “But I think there’s an increase in our awareness of it,” he said. The foundation is hosting a Halloween party with psychics on Saturday. Psychics are typically there for walk-in business on Saturdays--designated Psychic Day--and by appointment on other days. Two alternative churches meet in the main hall on Sundays. But on a recent weekday, the church stage was the quiet spot used for my reading.

The woman conducting it (uninterested in publicity, she asked us not to use her name) uses psychometry: She holds an object usually on your person--car keys, in my case--and senses things from it.

Particularly compared to the effusive Todorovich, her speech was tranquil and unaffected, and her answers dealt more in tendencies and waves than in specifics. She too saw me making a long-distance trip. “I saw the letter T, and the first country I thought of was a distance like Tahiti,” she said, which is close enough to Thailand for me.

She also saw me making driving trips to Washington State, which I do often enough, and she made a solid hit on my food allergies. Though she was one of the psychics I didn’t tell of my profession until later, she said, “I see paper and I see ink.” She also saw me moving to the Southeast, which I have no intention of doing, though I’d like to chalk that up to my car key coming from Tennessee.

Though it’s not the sort of stuff that lends itself to quantification, I was most impressed by her perception of my cluttered mental state, and the solid advice doled out on that account.

*

Melissa Scott’s office is a far cry from the New Age vibe of the Learning Light Foundation. She works out of a very businesslike Costa Mesa office, and she typically works in a stylish business outfit. There’s nothing like a Formica table top to make a crystal ball and set of Tarot cards look even more arcane.

Scott, 30, says she has been psychic since childhood and a professional for 10 years. Many of her clients are professionals as well; they come to her to help form business plans. Not surprisingly, there isn’t much mumbo or jumbo to her delivery.

She says she’s usually right, but adds that no one should ever cede his or her own decision-making process to a psychic’s visions.

“This is about observation and information, and I believe you have to take everything with a grain of salt,” she said. “I never say, ‘You absolutely should do this,’ because you have to use your own judgment and make those decisions.”

Along with advising me to make a career jump, she added further impetus: “I see someone new you’ll be working with, a dark-haired individual that’s in charge. This person seems to have a very intimidating, controlling personality. I would caution against being involved with this person.”

A question often asked by cynics is: With such ready advice for others, why aren’t all psychics rich?

Scott’s answer: “I ask myself that constantly. There are people in this business who are making a lot of money with the 900 numbers and things like that. But I always think, ‘Why don’t I know the lottery numbers?’ I don’t know why I don’t. But I think we always receive the information that is the highest good for us at that time. There are certain other things you’re not to know until it’s their time.”

*

In a field that already is subject to much ridicule, it takes a certain amount of spunk to call your organization the Morontia Society. On this mortal coil, the society’s sole representative is Bonita Kent. Morontia, she says, is the highest plane of being accessible to us, and the society she communes with there comprises angels and enlightened beings.

Kent is a sunny blonde who does her readings in the Laura Ashley-like environment of a typical Irvine condo. She says she connects through automatic writing, with her writing hand directed by departed souls, the Archangel Michael and a guide she calls Morontia Spirit Woman. It’s an interesting show.

The messages Kent delivered, at least at my present Karmic level, often seemed like gobbledygook to me. Despite that, this was the one reading during which the hairs on the back of my head were doing pushups.

Kent doesn’t go into a trance and isn’t given to theatrics. Her speech remains conversational, people walk their beagles outside, and the only unusual sound is her pen forming loopy letters dictated from beyond. Yet it was decidedly eerie, even if the information coming in wasn’t connecting.

I’m not much on contacting departed spirits. I don’t know many dead people and figure they probably have better things to do. And the famous dead? Where’s the decency in pulling Jimi Hendrix back from his enlightened plane just to ask him what gauge strings he used?

Perhaps one of the problems with the reading was that Kent started receiving messages from my departed maternal grandmother. She was a sweet woman, but a dithering one, about as comprehensible as a Wookie in this life, and evidently not much more lucid in the next.

Between Grandma, Morontia Spirit Woman and the Archangel Michael, I was given a load of oddly phrased advice that was sufficiently sound and generic that it shouldn’t do anyone harm, but it also didn’t seem to have much to do with me. My hairs enjoyed it though, as if they were getting an electric charge from beyond.

Others are more satisfied with the contacts. Like Scott, Kent said that several of her clients consult with the beyond on business matters. The head of one family-held company, she said, “comes in every two weeks and consults with her departed brother. It’s like a board meeting that he governs, and it’s been totally on-target, developing the business plan and new divisions.”

*

The readings Lorene Judd and others conduct at Costa Mesa’s Visions & Dreams take place in a carpeted room, where no electricity invades. The room is lit by candles, and a wind-up clock ticks off the minutes like a psychic cab meter. Visions here are purchased at $1 a minute.

Judd--who also teaches yoga--works with Tarot cards. Like Scott, she says the spirits are selective in what they allow to be revealed. “Readings sometimes are absolutely right on and the cards really talk. But sometimes it won’t come through, if it’s better for you to find it out on your own; or maybe what you have to learn is about some type of illusion and the illusion can’t be lifted until you find your way through it or it wouldn’t be fun for you. So it all depends.”

Her reading for me touched on the same themes most of the others had. There were sprinklings of hard information, as when Scott had pegged my desires to move to northern California or Washington. But the intriguing part wasn’t the revelatory stuff, it was the quality of the advice they gave, which in several cases I’d rate up there with the sort I get from longtime friends.

Is there magic involved, or empathy and shrewd guesswork? I don’t know, but it’s a good show. And who wouldn’t want to have a mysterious stranger tell them, “I see you’ve done a lot of soul searching lately?” It sounds a lot cooler than “I see you watch lots of TV.”

Getting Psyched

* Yolanda Todorovich does her readings at 216 N. Brookhurst Ave. in Anaheim. (714) 535-7644. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. She charges $45 for a half-hour session.

* The Learning Light Foundation is at 1212 E. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim. (714) 533-2311. Psychic readings are available on weekdays, by appointment, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at $25 for a half-hour reading. The rate is $20 on Saturday, when psychics are available from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

For Halloween: Friday night at 7:30, UCLA Parapsychologist Barry Taff lectures on ghosts. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Saturday, the foundation is hosting a Halloween Fest from 7 to 11:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Along with food and dancing, there will be a costume contest (“Come as you were in a past life” they suggest) and psychic readings will be available for an additional $13.

* Melissa Scott does her readings in the Theodore Robbins Building, 2025 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa. (714) 645-2195. She charges $50 for a half-hour reading, by appointment, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

* The Morontia Society, represented by Irvine’s Bonita Kent, does readings by appointment only. Kent can be reached at (714) 854-2538. She charges $60 for a one-hour reading.

* Lorene Judd and others do readings at Visions & Dreams Emporium, 1804 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa. (714) 650-6929. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Reservations are recommended. Readings are $1 per minute, minimum 15 minutes. The shop also carries Tarot cards and a wide variety of New Age items.

* Across the street at 1835 Newport Blvd., suite E-273, Isle of Avalon specializes in items for “neo-pagans,” according to owner Guy Richard. Those include Money Draw oil, cat-shaped candles and banishing powder. Don’t look for Eye of Newt, though. “No one today knows what they meant by that, though it was probably a fanciful name given to an herb. They often did that,” says Richard. “We carry Deer’s Tongue, but its an herb, not a real deer’s tongue.”

The shop offers classes in Tarot reading, spell casting (only positive magic, not “hate magic,” Richard says) and Beginning Wicca, studying the pagan earth religion. Shop hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. (714) 646-4213.