HoroscopoDiario
By Guest Contributor: Mary du Plessis
I’ll begin by clarifying that I’m not a medium. I can’t intentionally channel the spirits of the dead or act as an interpreter between the living and the dead. I say Intentionally, because it does sometimes happen when I’m reading tarot.
The first time I connected with a spirit from beyond was about 10 years ago. Not long after posting my daily three-card-reading on my social media accounts, my niece sent a message asking me to call her. All she said was “I have questions”. Her first question was: “how does this work?” and she went on to explain that a close friend of hers was recently widowed. My reading that day contained phrasing and terminology that was exactly the way her friend’s husband would have spoken to her, and the message was related to something they discussed before he died. Both my niece and her friend were more than a little freaked out, but also intrigued. Ultimately, my niece’s friend was comforted by her deceased husband’s words, and their delivery through my reading brought her peace and clarity. I told my niece I wasn’t sure ‘how’ it worked, but ‘why’ it does was very clear.
Similar occurrences have happened sporadically throughout the years. Last Samhain I hosted a live session, specifically focusing on messages from the dead, for the living. I don’t have a process, I didn’t ‘see’ the people on either end (on the live broadcast, or the not-so-live) and I couldn’t provide a description of the person coming through. I simply conveyed the messages as they passed through me and every single one was right on point. How? I have no idea, but again, I know why.
The most profound example of unintentional mediumship was the first time I did a reading for a friend of a friend. Jennifer and I have never met in person, she’d never had a reading with me prior to this, and while we’ve interacted on social media for years, we don’t know each other. Jennifer contacted me a few months after her father died, because she was feeling rudderless and wanted to see what insight might be found in the cards. She opted for a reading delivered by email. It was Friday evening and we agreed I’d send it to her by the end of the weekend.
I’d planned to read Jennifer’s cards on Sunday morning. I didn’t have any plans for Saturday, other than catching up on some things at home. All the while I was puttering around the house, I could feel someone hovering just behind me, off to one side. As I said, I’m not a medium, but I was pretty sure it was Jennifer’s father. He wasn’t intrusive, but slowly grew more persistent as the day went on.
I finished my intended tasks by late Saturday afternoon and settled in on the couch to have a snack and watch TV. Jennifer’s father planted himself firmly next to the couch and politely, but insistently, directed me to my reading room. I knew at this point I was going to read Jennifer’s cards.
As I set up my reading table, I pulled a deck I never use for email readings (it doesn’t photograph well) and a blue reading cloth instead of my usual red or black cloths. Knowing that both the deck and cloth background weren’t going to photograph well, I laid the cards and grounded myself. Although I’d never done a reading in this manner before, I began to let Jennifer’s father speak through me. I channelled his words through the cards as I transcribed his message to her. When I was done, I felt him stand up, wish me well, and disappear.
In my email to Jennifer, I explained, as well as I could, about how the reading unfolded. How her father drew closer to me throughout the day until I read her cards, how I drew the blue deck and blue reading cloth, and how he said his goodbye when he left. The message made perfect sense to her, down to the phrasing and use of certain words. She also told me the significance of the color blue, and how it was connected to the blue suit he wore to her wedding, which tore just before the ceremony and how it became a running joke that wove itself into part of the fabric of the day for her. Blue fabric.
Jennifer and I stayed in contact and one morning I got a message from her that said she’d had a dream the night before, telling her that she needed to “tell me about the land”, so she was parking the information in case it became important later.
I knew her family owned a section of acreage that was once part of a larger family parcel. Her parents built a weekend house there and they gathered there regularly. I asked her to give me a few specifics about the area, thinking there might be something needed to appease land spirits, and gave her some general advice about connecting with the land.
Things snowballed quickly from there as a quick Ancestry search (I’m a long-time amateur genealogist) turned up several generations and many ancestors from both sides of her family on that land, and the surrounding area. As is usually the case, not everything I uncovered was pleasant, but the stories and family histories were well documented. Jennifer knew her grandparents and had vague memories of a great-grandparent or two. I provided a few newspaper articles and other bits of information that didn’t just pique her interest, it lit a flame inside of her, connecting her with her ancestors and the land she loved, but could never explain why. Within a few months, she’d explored several old cemeteries and located more generations from both her mother and her father’s family.
I was careful to only share a small part of what I discovered because, as I’d hoped, Jennifer took the few names and dates I provided and set out on her own family journey. She told me this was an unexpected gift, something she’d never even thought about before. And now she felt like she truly belonged to her family land and understood her role as its custodian and caretaker.
I may be an unintentional medium, but when it happens, I know to roll with it. You never know whose ancestors may need you to deliver a message and while you may not know how, you’ll almost certainly discover why.
