Off To Join the Circus
My story opens in 1864 on a vast sugar plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Beau Rivage is ravaged by border raiders, the privileged Deverell family is killed… all but a ten year old girl named Fancy, who is saved by a wise old slave named Atticus, who sets her feet on a path that will propel her headlong into the wildest days of the Old Wild West.
Magic Rears its Head
Early in my tale, Fancy and Atticus join a Medicine show and 
Circus Train, and begin to wend their way west in the company of a mysterious gypsy named Magda, who talks to the animals in their own languages. I realized the time had come to learn Magic.
Now, you may think that learning magic is not a realistic goal these days, but there are schools for everything in New York City… I even, for a brief time, studied trance mediumship with a famous disciple of Arthur Ford’s, Ethyl Johnson Meyers. Mrs. Meyers was a fascinating woman, in her late 80s whose dead husband was her “control” on the Other Side, a sort of cosmic telephone operator.
“Just because someone is dead, dear,” Ethyl told me on more than one occasion, “doesn’t mean he’s any smarter or well-meaning than he was in life.” When you meet Magda in Paint The Wind, you’ll see that my seductive gypsy concurs with this sage advice. And that was just the tip of the iceberg!
Seeing the Unseen World
To pursue the thread of mysticism in Paint the Wind, I studied Shamanism with Michael Harner, the former head of anthropology at Yale, I journeyed with medicine men to the Upper World and Lower World (not to be confused with the Underworld, because of my New Jersey beginnings.) I was already an Astrologer, but I learned to read Tarot Cards and even tried my hand at scrying (that’s the technical name for crystal ball gazing).
Finally, I studied healing with two of the great metaphysical healers of our day, as well as with Dr. John Upledger, who was not only a great surgeon and medical innovator, but a clairvoyant. And with doctors of Chinese Medicine, to add herbalism and acupuncture to my growing skillset.
“Seeing” is Believing
They taught me how to actually “see” inside the human body without the benefit of x-ray, by going into an altered state of consciousness… it’s a most astonishing process that has been practiced by shamans for millennia. Any old Apache medicine man can do it. The funniest experience I had was early in my training. It took place in a class of 110 laymen and medical professionals.
I was so blown away by what I was learning to do, I thought all the class would desire such enlightenment but was stunned when one doctor voiced the thought of several of them, “I don’t have time for this sort of thing in my practice,” he said. “There are nurses who can run x-ray machines, for heaven’s sake.” I, being less sophisticated, thought “seeing” inside the human body using only a different level of consciousness was pretty cool.
I felt roughly the same awe about this as I did when later, a medicine man taught me how to converse with trees!
You just never know what amazing learning will come to you when you set out to write a saga and you grow very grateful for the chance to poke around in all sorts of knowledge most people never have a chance to be touched by.
