The word psychic is so charged in our society and when I become emperor that’s all going to change.
So much of what people think of as a psychic involves this very ridiculous image of a man or a woman in a circus-like setting, with all the Gypsy attire, the crystal ball, the incense burning, heavy jewelry, assorted tapestries, and of course, a cat. And hey, I’m not going to knock a truly talented professional who happens to enjoy using that set up as a way of giving their clients a fully, well, “entertaining” experience. Heck, I’m a sex therapist by training, and I know that setting the mood can be worth its weight in gold.
But all that drama – that’s never been my style. Mine is a professional pants suit, a cup of coffee, a warm smile, a solid handshake, and great lighting. Much like the black clothing worn by stage crew in a theatrical production, it’s my desire to use that professional simplicity to keep my workplace focused, warm, and non-distracting, and to make sure that once I begin, all of my attention is focused on my client (when I’m doing psychic readings) or their loved ones in spirit (when I’m doing mediumship sessions). Less is more.
Still, this doesn’t change the fact that our beloved search engines get far more hits for “psychic mediums” than “spiritual mediums,” so if you want to be found in this profession and you’re hip to the internet and social media, you can’t easily avoid the word psychic. And the thing is, nor should you.
“Psychic,” taken out of the popular assumptions, is a word that comes from the Greek “psȳchikós,” meaning “of the soul, spirit, or mind”, and generally we use it to describe knowledge that comes from the soul or the spirit. “Intuitive,” on the other hand, is a word used to convey the idea of having spontaneous knowledge that comes from a non-logical source, perhaps attributed to our unconscious mind or our animal instincts rather than the soul or the spirit. So when people ask me what’s the difference between “using their intuition” and “being psychic,” I’d say that in general, not much, because they are really two concepts used to describe an information-generating process that ultimately produces the same results. The difference is in the answer to the question, “How could I have possibly known that (non-logical) information?” and whether that answer incorporates the concept of a spirit/soul or not. So, same results, same human capacity – but a different explanation for why that non-logical knowledge occurs again and again.
At this point in my professional work, I’m using the term psychic medium because it conveys both of the services I offer, psychic work (focusing on the client) and mediumship (focusing on the client’s loved ones in spirit), and it also reminds us that while all mediums are psychic, not all psychics are mediums. That is to say, all mediums need to use their psychic channels of perception (clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience, etc.) to work, but not every psychic has developed their mediumship facilities yet. However, sometimes when I teach or work in corporate environments, I prefer to use the idea of “intuitive development,” because at the end of the day, my clients and students don’t actually need to have a belief in the soul or the spirit to get the same results from the work as I do using the word “psychic”.
So yes, I want to reclaim psychic for the word it is. But maybe not before explaining to you that I also have two rescue felines, and one of them happens to be a black cat named Merlin. And I didn’t even pick his name.
On Reclaiming the Word Psychic
