Jump Girl

by Salicrow

  My illness continued for another four days, making a total of eleven days, in which I lost eleven pounds. I didn’t have the knowledge at that point to put the number into perspective, but after many years of studying numerology I understand that eleven is a master number, meaning it is considered more potent than most other numbers. Numerology is the esoteric study of numbers and how they affect our lives. It’s focused primarily on significant dates, such as those associated with birth. However, temporary vibrations, such as those associated with phone numbers, addresses, and significant personal events are also deemed important.

  The number eleven carries the energetic frequency of the master teacher. When it presents itself in one’s life, as it did in mine, it’s there to shed light upon darkness. Eleven is connected to psychic knowing and intuition, helping one see what is hidden. In my case, I believe eleven was shedding light on my fear that my father would leave my life. I had an unreasonable fear that his leaving for meat-cutting school was him leaving my life entirely, something he didn’t do until the end of my teenage years, when my parents got divorced and my father stepped out of my life for thirteen years.

  As a child, I reacted to psychic input without understanding what was happening. In this case, my body and mind knew my father was going to leave us, no matter how many times my mother assured me he was coming home. Something inside me was preparing for him to depart from my life.

  Later, in an effort to better understand the timelines associated with the psychic information I received, I started looking for signs by which to read psychic time, developing my personal symbolism as I went. For instance, I found that if I saw a sun, it was telling me things would come to pass within one solar year. If something was going to happen a long way out, I would feel the breeze of time or sense a calendar flipping through months and years. Developing a personal symbolic language is important to understanding the psychic input we receive. Symbolic information is useful because it helps us broaden our vocabulary, giving us shorthand for our psychic mind to play with. Without these guideposts, we are often floundering, receiving information without boundaries.

  I often ask myself: Would I have been able to more easily navigate the hardships we experienced as a family if I had been aware of their boundaries in time? Could I have avoided them altogether? Or was there such a strong need to experience the situation written into my life’s story that I would experience it no matter how it came about?

  13

  The White Witch

  My bout of illness at eleven was a catalyst for my intuition. I spent much time lying on that sofa and reviewing the situations in which I knew things about people and events without being told. I began to understand that the things I knew and saw and that others didn’t were much more than parlor games. I knew I wasn’t alone in the way I perceived the world; Grammy Brown and Sandy also knew and saw such things. I was fascinated with the fictional witches, genies, and wizards I saw on television. I knew they weren’t real, but I sensed that they were based on reality. Where were the real magic makers of the world? Where were others who saw and knew things?

  The world set about giving me the answers I sought. When the cosmic information field calls me to focus my attention on something, it feels like a magnetic force emanating from the situation, demanding my attention. Psychic information can be received from anyone or anything at any time. It’s a matter of energy attaching to you. A raccoon running across the road, a sealed envelope, or a conversation one overhears can all carry psychic information. Information can come from gazing into mirrors or scrying pools, reading tarot cards, or interpreting runes. It’s always a matter of paying attention to the first thought that enters your mind, and getting out of your own way. The universe, God/Goddess, is communicating with us constantly.

  I can be standing behind someone in a grocery store checkout line and suddenly find their conversation with the clerk to be mesmerizing. I can be driving down the road and have a sign for a used-car dealership jump out at me like words on steroids. In such moments, it’s as if the rest of the world slips into the background and becomes fuzzy and unimportant, while the object of my attention becomes radiant and demanding. I know intuitively that the information I’m receiving is important, even if I’m unsure why.

  Over the years I’ve become accustomed to such moments, and now I recognize them as wyrd, an Old Norse term meaning “connected to fate.” I know without a doubt that their significance will present itself to me when the time is right. When triggered in this way, I often slip quickly into inquisition mode, probing the situation with questions until I’m satisfied that I know what I need to know—or that I know I need to wait. When receiving psychic input, I don’t blindly accept it; I question the situation from all angles.

  Around the same time that my fascination with life’s mysteries was stimulated, I overheard my mom and her friend Jenn talking about a white witch. Jenn was still living with us, and we were all hanging around the house doing nothing one day when I heard Jenn say, “His mother is a white witch.” She followed this proclamation with a detailed account of how the white witch was also a well-respected community member and a Catholic to boot. It was the first time I’d heard the word “witch” used to describe a living person. My Grammy Brown would be considered a witch, but she was simply known as a wise woman. The fact that someone else was known as a witch meant there were other real people who studied the mysteries. This discovery held great meaning for me, because I planned to be a witch myself.

  Real witches continued to quietly brush up against me throughout my childhood and teenage years. People I didn’t know made comments about the intensity of my eyes, remarking on the way they seemed to penetrate a person’s being. Some called me a witch in a half-joking way. Never once did I associate being a witch with a fairy tale or an evil sorceress on TV or in a movie. I knew that a real witch was a seer, communicator, and healer. I knew that, like Grammy Brown before me, I was indeed a witch. I just had to train my abilities and mature.

  14

  Lessons of the Water

  J. K. Rowling was onto something real in the Harry Potter books when she began the wizards’ magical education at the age of eleven. The years between eleven and thirteen exist betwixt and between, in a space separating child from adult. That is the age when we start to question our own existence and why we’re here in this place, walking the earth with these particular people.

  For me it was a time of expanding consciousness and becoming closer with my own personal mortality. My parents were very social, and we always seemed to have company or to be on the road heading out to see people, but I felt alone while surrounded by people. My sisters were still happily existing in the glory of childhood, a place I had taken the first tentative steps away from. The world of adults was not yet open to me, so I sat on the fringe, watching, thinking, and learning from the world around me.

  Water was one of my strongest teachers during this period. Its lessons were reflective and deep, pushing my psychic knowing and individual baptism to new levels. Even as a kid I knew that my experience with water was profound, a moment outside of time, a lesson meant to stay with me throughout this lifetime and others. It not only opened my eyes to the fact that my spirit and body were separate; it also showed me that water was alive.

  Shortly after I turned twelve, I spent the day with my family and friends at one of our favorite waterholes, the Middle Falls of the Ammonoosuc River, located behind the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods. We had been there many times, and I knew the best spots to jump, where to be cautious, and what places to avoid. It was a hot day during a dry summer, and the water felt warm, which made it easier to stay in the water after plunging in. I spent about twenty minutes jumping off rocks, plunging into the pool, and playing in the current. My father cautioned me about swimming against the current, reminding me that it was more powerful than it appeared and that swimming upstream can quickly exhaust you. I didn’t really listen. I was having a good time fighting my
way to a small waterfall and then letting the current carry me downstream. I believed his words to be meant for children, not for me.

  It happened quickly and without warning. The water simply took me. My body was exhausted, and I could not find the energy to stay above water. As I slipped under the surface, I was acutely aware that I was both in my body and outside it at the same time. It felt like one of my lucid dreams, in which I was both doer and watcher. The doer was being pushed by the current, both downstream and below the surface, arms and legs flailing about. The watcher was calm and contemplative. I knew I was drowning and what that meant. My life was endangered. But the part of me that was watching was doing so with great interest. Thoughts swirled through my head so rapidly that it seemed like I was under the water for at least an hour. But in reality it was only a few short moments before my father fished me out and saved my life.

  I have thought of this moment many times. I have a keen memory of feeling completely free. With my consciousness outside my body, viewing myself as the current tossed me around, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my body and spirit were separate. I was having an out-of-body experience, or an OBE, as it is known in the metaphysical world. Over the years I have had many such experiences, sometimes brought on by pain, like when I had my daughter; sometimes brought on by choice, through active meditation and journey work; sometimes brought on spontaneously. The body and soul are connected energetically. When we leave our body, we still recognize it from the outside, and it fits us perfectly, like a custom suit. As long as it is healthy and intact, we can find our way back in.

  After I sat on the bank for an hour regaining my composure, my dad insisted I get back in the water. He said it was important to let both the water and myself know I was not afraid. I’m thankful he did this, because now instead of fear I hold a reverence for rivers. After nearly succumbing to a watery grave, I began to see water as a teacher and as a being of sorts. I realized through my experience in the river that water, like fire, was alive. It did not have the same values as a human, with the same views of good and evil; but it was alive.

  I also revere the particular jumping spot on the river that nearly took my life. It has become one of my most sacred places, and I visit it often. I have brought many students and friends to that spot to spend moments with God, moments of releasing one’s hopes and fears to a higher power. The waterhole is like a giant bowl scooped out of the rock face. The cliffs on both sides are rounded inward, creating a half circle. Halfway down one side of the bowl, a rock sticks out, and you can climb up on it and jump safely into the pool below. There is something wonderfully contemplative about waiting on the rock to jump. Knowing how cold the water is, most people hesitate for long moments before taking the plunge. I’ve used those moments to focus my mind on thoughts of what I want to transform. When I leap from the rock face and my body hits the cold water, all thoughts are gone. My dreams, aspirations, and goals are sent into the universe for creation.

  Self-baptism is one of my favorite forms of spellwork (you can also call it active prayer), and I’ve used it for many, many years. I have done it at other watery spots, but there will always be something special about doing it at the place where water first claimed me.

  My second experience with water as a teacher happened the same year. Like the first, it brought me up close and personal with death, only this time not my own, but Grammy’s. My family drove to Portland, Maine, to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the Portland Civic Center. I was excited to go and happy that Grammy Brown could go with us. It was a long ride, almost three hours, and Grammy hadn’t been feeling well. She had a wound on her toe that wouldn’t heal. It was so painful that she had to cut the toe area out of her sandal on that foot in order to wear shoes at all.

  The circus was fun and exciting. We got to see elephants up close before the show, and the acrobats wore flashy, beautiful costumes. Just before intermission, Grammy needed to go to the bathroom, and I went with her because my dad didn’t want her to go alone. We chatted up a storm as we walked down the corridor to the bathroom. I was so excited about all the things we’d seen and all that was to come.

  When we entered the bathroom, we saw that the floor was covered in about an inch and a half of water. Something was overflowing. I don’t know what it was, but Grammy became concerned about getting her bandaged toe wet. She really needed to go to the bathroom, which meant she had no choice but to cross the watery floor. After exiting the bathroom, she was pleased that she’d managed to avoid getting her foot wet.

  I held Grammy Brown’s hand as we walked back to our seats, but I felt heavy with sadness and anger. Now everything about the show annoyed me. I got angry when the clown came over and shook both my sisters’ hands, but not mine. I found the whole thing lackluster, and I kept thinking about the water on the floor and Grammy’s foot.

  For years after our family trip to the circus, I believed I had gone to the circus twice. I don’t know when I started believing this, but I was sure I had been once when I was eight and a second time when I was twelve. I was so convinced of this that I would argue with my mother and my sister about it. I broke the single event into two: a good one and a bad one. All of my good memories of the circus were placed into the first trip, and the bad memories of neglectful clowns and flooded bathroom floors were relegated to the second trip. Even now there is a shadow of reality in my mind that wants to see the day as two separate events, one delightful and one distasteful.

  Years later, during my Druid training, this memory was set right, and I was able to understand why I fractionalized the experience. We students were doing a journey, in the form of a guided meditation, to meet with the element of water. We were told to go to a river or stream that was special to us. I have a natural ability for dreamwork of all kinds and immediately found myself floating down the Zealand River, another childhood favorite. The water there is much calmer then the Ammonoosuc, and I felt at peace. I was listening to my teacher’s voice when Grammy Brown appeared on the riverbank. She had been dead for nearly twenty years, so I knew immediately that this was her spirit coming to visit me.

  She was calling me to the riverbank, telling me she had something to show me. I tried to explain to her that I didn’t have the time and that I was supposed to be paying attention to my teacher’s guidance for this journey. She became insistent, so I made my way to where she was standing. She was pointing at the water directly in front of her, where there was a spiraling vortex. As I looked into it, the vortex pulled me into and through it.

  When I came out the other side, I was standing in the bathroom of the Portland Civic Center. The floor was flooded, just as it had been all those years ago when I’d gone there with Grammy during intermission at the circus. As I looked around I saw myself standing there in my terry-cloth shorts and Princess Diana haircut. I was aware of my twelve-year-old self, but my twelve-year-old self was unaware of me. She was experiencing a painful foretelling.

  I followed the gaze of my preteen self into the water on the floor. Looking into its mirror-like surface, I could see my grandmother lying in a hospital bed. She was dead, her body still and cold. Her foot was propped up on a pillow on top of the covers, and the wound on her toe was showing. Then the door to the bathroom stall opened and Grammy stepped out. At that moment I was pulled into the water of the floor and back out through the vortex into the river.

  Shortly afterward, the teacher called us back home from our journey so we could discuss our experiences with the element of water. When I returned, I was crying heavily, and I felt overcome with emotion. I hadn’t done what the others had done, but I’d had a true meeting with water, one in which the element had worked as a scrying mirror, showing me the secrets it held. I felt a deep peace and understanding. My division of the circus memories suddenly made sense. Before the bathroom, I was just a kid at the circus with her family. After the bathroom, I was a kid who had seen the death of the person she loved most in the world.

  T
he recovery of that memory was one of the most powerful moments of my life, both personally and in my life as a healer. It showed me how the mind can create its own stories when the pain we feel is too much to deal with. I’d always assumed that I’d psychically felt Grammy’s death coming, but it was more than that. I had seen her death with my own eyes, in my own mind, and the experience was too painful for me to own at that time.

  As a psychic I often receive messages from people who believe they’re cursed because the only thing they ever foresee is death. I explain that there is a logical reason for this. Death provokes strong emotions and creates moments that are more luminescent and more easily seen by the intuitive mind. Death and birth shine like the light of a household lamp in the web of fate, whereas events like getting a new car or tickets to your favorite concert give off a dim light equivalent to an individual Christmas tree bulb. That is why people have more psychic premonitions about death than anything else.

  At twelve years old I was unable to imagine my life without Grammy Brown, and that thought, that knowing, seen in the flooded water of a bathroom floor, was more than I could accept. My higher self did not allow me to completely forget the event, but at that time I was unable to accept the vision I’d had. My mind scattered the information here and there, like breadcrumbs for me to follow.

  15

  The Dead Zone

  The age of twelve was awkward and difficult for me. Dolls, games, and childish fantasy were fading from my life, with the pressure of the outside world reminding me that I was too old for such things. I started reading adult books at twelve, finding in their pages a welcome escape from the day-to-day hardship I felt. My mother was a fan of psychological horror, and her books were easy for me to pick up and enjoy. Stephen King had an uncanny view of the other world, seeing and depicting the supernatural in a way that resonated with my own mind, though he chose to look at the dark bits, the horror, the things that could go wrong. My life was filled with the supernatural, so I didn’t need to invite or invent trouble. I was fortunate to experience more kindness than gruesomeness from the netherworld.