Photo by Tom Butler on Unsplash
I couldn’t make it up if I tried
If I could forget, I and a great many others would try.
But I can’t and I won’t.
It's already hard enough for black psychic mediums to get Hollywood attention, let alone local support in some places owing to the practice of overlooking diversity and upholding racial carryovers from the 20th century amid the so-called awakening of masses.
But in all honesty, I paid for my suffering from the start.
I called months before a local psychic and metaphysical fest was set to happen in order to offer my diverse services much like the year before where really thanks to an influential friend who believes in the presence of full diversity among psychics, mediums, and healers, I was offered an opportunity to vend and be apart (at least) as a healer.
However, the next year after leaving several messages trying to plan ahead and confirm if I would be apart again so that I could properly advertise I got a text the week before that they would “love” to have me.
Yet, little did I know what I was in for.
While I was among the only two Karuna Reiki female masters of color vending and offering healing services, being also a psychic medium several other mediums decided to try to create a platform at the festival since the event planners could/would not decide if they wanted such an event inclusion.
I halfway doubted if the platform was really going to happen given that the event planners were more interested in the loud rock, belly dancers, and their being heard in their own private sessions.
However it happened and three female mediums, myself included amassed a crowd in the corner and one after the other we each conducted readings of the attending audience members.
Admittedly I was the only black psychic medium. I got up and began what became my first platform experience. Almost immediately it seemed one of the event planners in charge ran to the back of the audience and much like a chastising teacher looked at me with piercing eyes and mouthed the words, “bring it down” while likewise gesturing with their hands bringing their finger to their lips for me to bring it to a whisper.
I am well aware that my voice projects. I mean isn’t that the role of a medium, to be heard? I was also without a microphone. Knowing the performance element at hand, however, mentally I moved fast so as not to alert the audience to my overseer in the back. I merely observed and kept it moving knowing full well that this was a festival not a library and to add the crowd was growing with people interested in what I was offering.
This person, however, once again came back behind the crowd one other time glaring at me with that you have more one more time type look, but again I remained focused on appeasing the still growing audience.
When it was all said and done the entire crowd converged on me congratulating me and telling me how for many that was such a phenomenal experience and asking for my card. In fact, one woman even more blown away, she demanded an on the spot reading which I halfway believed I could handle, not having conducted a reading like that, but I did successfully for her and her kids without her children even being there. My gifts far exceed what many have seen in most psychic medium healers.
Once done for the day and the weekend, myself and my healing partner we started packing up our vending materials, tables, and tools.
Right as we finished one of the primary event planners and store owners comes skipping over to us smiling and says without hesitation, “you know I tell you” while just laughing “if I had a tube of socks I would have just shoved it down your throat to get you shut up; you were just so loud.” All the while smiling and giggling.
Everyone standing around that heard was in utter shock. Myself even more!
I was so thrown off by the laughing that preceded such a distasteful comment that all I could say was “Good luck with that” as I walked off quickly, knowing full well then and there that I was DONE and that I would never step foot in that festival, that place nor would I pay ever again for my own torment just to be a part as a diverse inclusion and mere mistreated afterthought.
Trying to save face the person ran over saying, “you are not going to give me a hug?”
I gave a limp noodle hug and walked off.
This was over two years ago and I still shudder thinking how rare of a gifted talent I am and that even with this gift no one and no human deserves that series of mistreatment.
When experiences like this are allowed, when the planners act out racialized mistreatment in a series of ways, it normalizes the racial harm, separation, division, while perpetuating exclusion. And most of it all, it shows others that it is the racial way to be.
Who wants to pay to be chastised, laughed at, and dogged out in front of others just to be apart? I kept the story close because the festival is popular and because I often keep my sufferings silent assuming most will not care; especially when it comes to new age/awakening stuff because most time racially I am alone.
But, and I care!
I care that it happened and that it will likely continue to happen to the next and the next, because they can, because they have power, and because they have a great following who likely would not care about this incident.
Race and the new age is not new, its mere old vestiges of race and racial behaviors from the 20th century that have spilled over into the new that makes this event planner believe that any of this was right. It was harmful, it was toxic, unprofessional, unbecoming, and disgustingly racial.
May the future of awakening/new age/metaphysical/psychic medium healings, platforms, festivals, concerts, and retreats collectively be far more intentionally diverse, inclusive and way more attentive to the racial wrongdoings of others and move instead towards an unwillingness to accept the racial mistreatment of others for a good laugh or a good time. Racism and racial wrongdoings happen all the time, even in the name of awakening. And it's just not cool!
Do better racially and the future will be far more optimal for everyone!
In Truth,
TheCosmicDoc
thecosmicdoc@gmail.com
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