Magic?

I asked Amber how often she checks to see if she might have developed superpowers. She looked at me curiously and said she never does this.

"I don't mean flight or invisibility," I corrected, sure I was being misunderstood. "More like squinting at an object and seeing if it will move or catch fire. Or making your hand glow. Or putting thoughts in people's heads or reading their minds. You know?"

"Never."

"So you don't check to see if you are suddenly psychic?"

"I am psychic," she said.

When she was at a sleepover, she had a vivid premonition of a girl being tossed on a bed by her mother's boyfriend, bouncing, and slamming her head against a nightstand. Amber thought to mention this vision but was too shy to follow through. The boyfriend tossed the girl. The girl bounced. The girl flew at Amber, who positioned herself in front of the nightstand, saving the girl and hurting her own butt.

Amber is not mentally ill or, if she is, it is not as I believe myself to be. She doesn't have to question what constitutes anecdotal evidence of psychic abilities or what of psychosis. Amber can be a one-time psychic because she believes that her mental health is intact. Depending on the hormones flowing through her body, she may feel less in control of some of her emotions, but she still knows what is true.

It must be reassuring to have that confidence.

Once, in our former apartment, Amber was rooting around in the refrigerator. I could not see her but heard her ask some specific question, something more in-depth than a yes or no, and answered it. Her head popped up, as I answered something that she had not had a chance to vocalize. This has not happened before or since with anyone, as far as I am aware. In that one moment, for no reason I can understand, I read someone's mind. Maybe it was as simple as my brain putting together the antecedents, knowing Amber, and asking itself a question in Amber's voice. I was not trying to do this. I sense that, if I did try, it wouldn't have happened.

I have had a few other experiences that beggar belief, but I did not have a witness and so give them less credence. Something that only I observed is as good as unverifiable. I am skeptical of things I think and feel, uncertain whether they derived from objective reality or if my mind conjured them I did not stop it in time.

While I am sorting through assumptions, I have had to take a hard look at witchcraft. The one time I mentioned my religion to my former therapist, she did a double-take and fixated on the point. I assured her that I meant witch in the most boring sense, not the one where I could levitate on a broom. She needed to know I was spiritual and not delusional. I did not mention it again during our sessions.

Before the pandemic, I listened to a witch detail her vision quest. It sounded like the ramblings of a kindergartener with burgeoning schizophrenia. Within the context of witchcraft, she is embraced when talking about fairies whispering in her cat's ears. She did not mean this metaphorically. She claims to have seen tiny magical beings talking to her cat. Her story was not met with wide-eyed incredulity, except from me. Even I knew better than to call her out.

I once worked for psychics at a Renaissance Fair, most of whom called themselves witches. They told me that one of their number was no longer of this world. Her body was present, but she had "chosen" to forsake an earthly life to better accommodate the needs of the spirits. She was in the ether 100% of the time, head bolted to the clouds. Since she was a whiz at interpreting tarot cards and belong to a respected coven, no one should have expected her to pay her bills, drive, or do grocery shopping. She was blessed to be a part of the other world to the exclusion of this one. She was incapable of remembering to shower and would become lost in the street if not directed, but she could tell you that you were pregnant two weeks before you missed a period. Wasn't that worth her sacrifice?

(I worked there in the summer of 2001 until mid-September. None of the psychics forecasted what was going to happen on the 11th, but they all had creative excuses why they didn't.)

That's what it boils down to: Can you manage your life? If you can, then you're allowed your eccentricities and indulgences. The fairy eavesdropper is an attractive woman who is professionally accomplished. It is fine that she full-throated details how her guardian angels battle the demons sicced on her by an ex. This is just who she is. It works for her. If I said the same, my loved ones would insist I return to therapy and check my medications.

In the Pagan community, one who does not boast of intuition, if not outright mind-reading, is deficient. Witches treat psychic powers as a birthright. They teach classes, often at a large and ongoing cost, to hone skills science says do not exist.

In the past, I have had bodily premonitions and would call to ask loved ones if they were okay. They inevitably were okay, but I wouldn't let myself accept that I was not tuned into something grander, even if I couldn't succeed in selecting the right targets. I would not have called this sensation "anxiety," what it truly was. I would weep in an abandoned stairwell before my creative writing seminar, certain I was a cursed sensitive. (I would recover from these fits after weeping, so how could I have a mental illness? No, I was supernaturally gifted. You were wrong to suggest otherwise, not that anyone did.)

On December 31, 1999, a sensation that something was going profoundly wrong seized me. I had to lie down for an hour, so powerful was it. Y2K was destroying civilization, that was certain. I did not connect that, thirty minutes before, having eaten shrimp. I was psychic, surely, and not suffering from potentially lethal anaphylactic shock from a shellfish allergy. There are consequences to magical thinking.

All that said, Earth-based spirituality makes sense to me. I have connected with the sacred in some--but not all--rituals. Free Spirit Gathering, where hundreds of fellow witches surrounded me, hosted some of my best memories. It is not ridiculous to believe in something counterintuitive that gives one's life beauty and purpose. Yet belief borders on the pathological based on how much and what one believes. It is insanity unless the right people, and enough of them, agree with you.

Part of my process in the last few years has been to pick out what I took to thinking because "what if" or it seemed fun, but which went too far. I have made myself spiral into anxiety imagining all the branches of some hypothetical and improbable situation. This ability makes me a better author, but it doesn't bring me closer to the sacred when I am having a panic attack.

I took an educational psychology class with a woman who had little interest in teaching that subject. She wanted us to cleanse each other's auras and bend spoons with our minds. I was offended, not only because I was paying thousands in loans for a class that would teach me nothing, but because she was my funhouse reflection. In a safer place, I would have admitted to believing some aspect of these practices. After all, I am an expert in the connection between occult rituals and flying saucers. I am conversant in weirder things than Kirlian photography. I can be lenient with strangeness when I have the plausible deniability of writing about it.

Is it liberating to be able to say ridiculous things without fear that someone will call them out? I understand the irony of this, as I seek out where people claim to have seen aliens, Bigfoots, and ghosts. I do not have confidence I will see these creatures. These sightings are stories, my native currency. I am not required to believe what I seek out.

It comes down to a brew of apophenia, finding connections between random phenomena, and intuitive ontology, that people have evolved to cling to categories that are advantageous to believe but not causally accurate. In that overlap is religion. God does not give a damn if you don't eat shellfish--though I should refrain--but it sure helps your chosen people survive an outbreak of red tide. Checking the door three times (or five if it is a Friday) doesn't help it be locked, but it does mean that you may not experience a break-in. By believing these things, you may live to pass them on. It is adaptive, but it is not objective. The former is biblical law. The latter obsessive-compulsive disorder, but all it would take is enough people to find it holy. I do not want to mistake the orthostatic hypotension I hear when depressed for the voice of the gods.

Soon in Xenology: Probably more about COVID-19, since, you know, the world is ending and everything.

last watched: Ghost Stories
reading: The Eyre Affair