Interpolation: Experiencing the Law of Threefold Return

As I’ve said already, I don’t think ‘threefold’ need be taken to mean that what you send out once will come back to you three separate times. Perhaps it might mean three times as powerfully? I’m not sure that applies, either. I have preferred to regard it more indefinitely, as coming back multiplied.  Now that I examine it in the light of my own experience, I’m not even sure that’s true.

A theory occurs to me. Three is considered a magic number. Perhaps ‘threefold’ indicates only that it will return to you augmented by magic. That certainly is true in my experience. I’ll tell you just one of several stories (breaking the rule to keep silent, since these events are many years past) –

When Andrew (my third husband) and I lived at the end of a long, winding country road with only one exit, some new neighbours moved into a rental property a couple of houses down. They had big, threatening dogs which ran out to chase away passers-by. Other neighbours up our end of the road very soon stopped their kids from riding their bikes past that house – which severely limited how far they could ride. Similarly, we all became reluctant to go for walks past the place. The dogs weren’t always roaming free, but there seemed no pattern to that. However, adults sometimes risked it if all seemed quiet. The people renting the house made no attempt to get to know any of us, or be friendly in the slightest way.

One day when I was away in town, Andrew decided to go for a little walk. That was a mistake! When he passed that house, the three large dogs ran out at him. He was not a young man; perhaps if he’d been quicker to retreat… But they attacked; he was knocked over and bitten on the leg by one dog while the others danced around him, barking. He yelled out, and eventually a woman came out of the house and stood laughing at him for a little while. 

‘Call your dogs off!’ he yelled, and so then she did. She offered him no help to get up, just kept laughing as she watched him limp off the property, but at least she did control the dogs so that he could do so.

He was bleeding. I was out and had taken our car. He went to the neighbour on the other side of us, a guy who had always been friendly and helpful. Randall disinfected and bandaged Andrew’s leg, but also insisted on taking him into town to the hospital for proper medical attention and then to the police station to report the incident.

I was so furious about the whole thing, I promptly did a banishing spell to get rid of those people from our hitherto peaceful neighbourhood. It was not a thing I did lightly, or often. I took spell casting seriously, particularly a spell of that kind. But it was easy to feel it was justified in this case.

Next thing we knew, only a few days later, the unfriendly neighbours and their dogs had suddenly gone.

We soon heard on the grapevine that the police had  visited the house to follow up on the report about the unrestrained dogs attacking Andrew, and had immediately recognised the woman as 'wanted.' They arrested her on the spot, also ensuring the dogs were restrained. The two men who also lived there promptly decamped. They not only took the dogs and all their possessions; they also trashed the house – among other things, smearing excrement all over the walls. The poor owner, who lived a little way distant, hired Randall and his wife to do the horrible task of cleaning it up; so it was from them we heard about the state the place had been left in.

Sure enough, Andrew and I soon afterwards received unexpected notice from our own landlord that he wanted his house back. Oops! The law of return!

But we were given options. The trashed house, only two doors down from where we lived, had been cleaned up and the landlord wanted new tenants. He knew us, because when we first moved in he was still living in the house he owned. Randall told him our situation, and he immediately invited us to rent his place. 

It was tempting – hardly a move at all, in a place we enjoyed. But a couple of things gave us pause. The house was heated in winter by a wood fire. This meant chopping and carting the wood, and Andrew and I were both getting a bit elderly by then. And it was not nearly as spacious and comfortable a home as the one we’d been living in: not so suitable for the Reiki seminars I often held.

Also, we’d been getting slightly disenchanted with where were living. It was an unpaved road; I could have swept a dozen times a day and not dealt with the dust blowing into the house. And it was a somewhat inconvenient distance from town, which was where we needed to do all our shopping, attend medical appointments, make library visits, etc. 

When we received notice, via a note left in our letter box, we were on our way to a Sunday morning market in town where we had a regular stall (Andrew offering Reiki treatments and Indian head massage, and me Tarot / psychic readings). After we set up our stall, a friend wandered past and asked how we were. We told her we’d just got notice to vacate the house. It happened that she worked in the office of a real estate agent.

‘Let me have a look tomorrow and see if we’ve got anything suitable,’ she said.

The following morning I was running a Tarot class in town, at the home of one of the students. While I was out, Andrew got a call from our friend to say a place had just come onto their books, not even advertised yet, which sounded ideal for us, but we’d have to be quick to look at it. But there was no public transport from where we lived, and I had the car!

He told me afterwards that he walked out to our front gate, ‘just knowing’ that he would get a lift into town. Sure enough, in a minute one of our neighbours drove past and picked him up, delivering him to the address where I was teaching just as the class was finishing up. We picked up our friend from the real estate office, and went to see a place that completely outshone all the advantages of where we’d been living. 

It was in the hills too, but in a different direction closer to town, and even more scenically beautiful than where we were. (And the roads were made!) The rental property was a house on a horse stud. The place and the horses were owned by a couple who lived on the Gold Coast and had a business there, so they didn’t want to move yet, even though they spent weekends and all their spare time visiting to look after the horses. At least one would come to let the horses out into the paddocks every morning and put them back in the stables at night. They told us they had planned to race them, but then found out the racing industry is not very kind to horses, so kept them as glorified pets. They were very devoted, but didn’t yet wish to occupy the house on the land. They didn’t need us to have anything to do with the horses, just to live in the house so that it and the garden immediately around it were cared for. 

AND it had a huge front room, converted from a garage, which was ideal for running Reiki classes! 

We had a wonderful life there for the next five years, and they even allowed us to have two cats when a friend had to move home and couldn’t keep them with her. (They were barely beyond kittenhood then, and became our ‘fur kids,’ living with us the rest of their lives into cat old age.)

So yes, the law of return applied: I did a banishing spell and those nasty neighbours were very soon gone; then almost immediately Andrew and I were turfed out of our home in turn. But it cannot have been a bad thing for those people to be moved away from a lovely neighbourhood they were tainting and harming. Certainly I did my spell in a spirit of protection for the neighbourhood rather than rancour against the people concerned. I can’t say I was feeling kindly to them either – I was outraged at what happened to Andrew – but I didn’t want them harmed, just gone. Anything else, like one of  them being arrested, they brought upon themselves. 

We weren’t thrilled when eventually our new landlords also wanted their house back, five years later, but we came to realise that all our moves – always initiated by others, not ourselves – had a larger purpose, related to our 

tasks in this life.

(I used to say, if anyone ever asked who I worked for:

‘I work for the Universe, and the pay is good.’)

16. Learning About Magic

 

Some of the things Ridge taught me, I learned by example. For instance, since becoming a psychic reader myself (a story I’ll tell you later), one of my methods of reading for people has been to clasp their right hand in mine, close my eyes and tell them what then comes into my mind – as Ridge habitually did when reading for me. (I find it effective; so do my clients. But it required a huge degree of trust when I started, to actually open up like that and then to say what I got.)

Some other things he didn’t exactly teach me, so much as acquaint me with the fact that they were possible. For example, when I came to encounter hands-on energy healing, I already knew that it existed and could work, having witnessed him use it on our dog Suey. I wasn’t afraid of it, nor dismissive of it, which I might otherwise have been. (Many people are.) Since then I’ve received hands-on healings myself, from gifted practitioners whose treatments I found helpful; and there came a time when I was guided to learn Reiki (another story to tell in more detail later). I went on to become a Reiki Master, i.e. qualified to teach it myself, and have worked with it for around four decades now.

Mostly, he responded with personal anecdotes to my fascinated questions about how he became a magician and what sort of things he did in that capacity. 

It was immediately clear that it was an absolute commitment on his part, something he took seriously – not just a game, or hobby, or passing interest, and certainly not a way to deceive people for his own advantage, nor big-note himself. It wasn’t a thing he would normally mention to people at all, but our renewed friendship had soon come to include discussion of things decidedly out of the ordinary, such as my ghostly visitors. He probably had good intuition as to who he could and couldn’t tell. I think, too, it must have been clear that I had a genuine curiosity and a thirst to learn; I wasn’t just a sensation-seeker. By the same token, I wasn't going to go around gossiping about him.

I wasn't seeking to learn as a student; such a notion didn’t occur to me. I saw myself as an interested friend, wanting to understand what his life was like now, as well as to explore a mysterious topic.

He told me he was a Hermetic magician, meaning one who was a follower and pupil of the Egyptian god Thoth (who was equated – by both scholars and magicians – with the Greek Hermes). There were written teachings which Ridge had been studying, known as The Emerald Tablets, purportedly authored by Thoth. Ridge did not regard himself as in any way slavish, but rather as a respectful friend to the deity – considerably less learned in the matters Thoth had to teach him, but of equal value as an autonomous being. 

To me it was as if he opened up my perception to a whole world I had been completely unaware of until then. (Not quite true, but since my early childhood I had suppressed and forgotten a lot.) 

How did Ridge come across the knowledge of all this other-worldly stuff in the first place? Well, he had recently made a new friend: a man who was a witch. Ridge opened up to him about his clairvoyance. This man introduced Ridge to various of his magically-inclined cronies, including one who was both a powerful clairvoyant and a trained Hermetic magician. One story about this magician concerned his having been charged with ‘fortune telling,’ still illegal in Australia at that time. He was required to attend court to face the charge. One reason fortune telling was illegal was that it was assumed to be deceptive, undertaken in order to gain money by ‘false pretences.’ The story goes that the accused defended himself on the grounds that he wasn’t faking it, and proceeded to tell several people in the court room, including the policeman giving evidence and the judge himself, what they’d had for breakfast that morning, in detail so accurate that his case was thrown out. 

A great story! Was it true? I don’t know, but Ridge certainly believed it, and by then he had had a lot to do with the accused man (and with others who confirmed the tale), so presumably he had reasons for being so convinced. 

Finding himself among like-minded people from whom he didn’t need to hide part of himself, Ridge embarked eagerly on a program to correct his ignorance and develop his gifts. He was drawn more to ceremonial magic than to witchcraft. (A quick and easy way to differentiate is to say that ceremonial magic is more formal and structured; witchcraft is more earthy and organic. However, it’s a generalisation: there are similarities and overlaps.) So began his intensive studies in magic, and his personal relationship with Thoth. 

At that time, as I've said, I had no notion of becoming either a witch or magician myself; the whole realm of magic seemed to have no personal application to me, being rather a source of interest and curiosity just because it was so foreign – like learning about a different country you think you might love to visit but have no interest in migrating to. When my mum was visiting us, she too was interested, in that same kind of way. Ridge didn’t have all the long talks with her that he did with me on my own, but he was still able to be entertaining on the subject. (I realise with hindsight that he gave me more specific and more private details – he must have been teaching me purposefully, even while not letting on that that was what he was doing.)

He actually took Mum and me to his home one day, to show us his magic room. I wonder now if I should I call it a temple. Probably, yet I don't recall him using that term. It was one small room in the townhouse he was renting. (All the rooms were small.) It was pretty much empty. What was striking about it was the circle of thick white rope taking up most of the floor. There was just enough room to choose to stand outside the circle – which is what we all did, as he made it clear that entering to stand within the circle was not to be done without his permission. In that inner space, he told us, various kinds of magic happened. He didn’t, on that occasion, go into detail about this; merely mentioned ‘ritual,’ which to us was a fairly vague term. We felt honoured to have been shown the room. It was not something he allowed many to see. The rope, though usually left in place, could be lifted and hidden away if necessary (for things like landlord’s inspection, I imagined).

Eventually he told me (but not Mum!) that he sometimes worked with demons – that he could summon them into the circle, which trapped them, and they would then have to do his bidding until he freed them again. This shocked me! In all the years since, it’s not a thing I myself have ever done or ever wanted to. He explained that magicians had to be able to work with both ‘light’ and ‘dark’ energies: that both are necessary in order to maintain balance. I can comprehend that; I just don’t choose to act on it in that specific way. 

I think we only have to look at Nature to see that it’s obvious we need both day and night, heat and cold, and so on. In similar vein, I think it’s important to love and integrate one’s own ‘shadow’ in the psychological sense. For whatever reason, we do seem to need the extremes, and need to balance them. So I think that if some being exists, even what we call a demon, it probably has a right to exist. It’s not up to me to judge it, trap it, coerce it or hurt it – unless in self-defence. 

(When it comes to self-defence, protection seems to me easier and more efficient than attack. So I do set up magical protections around myself, my home, my pets, my loved ones – whether against natural events such as severe storms, or against intentional malevolence from a human or other source. It’s completely matter-of-course by now, second nature. I tend to believe that I’m not a very fearful person these days, but if I stop to think about it I have to laugh at myself. I might fairly be considered VERY fearful. The reason I don’t feel afraid is that I have such a heck of a lot of protection around me at all times!)

It was from Ridge that I first heard about the four basic precepts for working with magic: ‘To know, to will, to dare, to remain silent.’ As I understand it, this means: 1) You need to know what you’re doing, undertaking enough study to understand in detail how magic works, and more specifically the particular magic you’re proposing to do; you don’t just go in blithely, based on a mere scrap of information. 2) You need to have and maintain a strongly focused intention. One definition of magic is that it’s an attempt to shape reality by conscious intention. 3) Be brave enough to do whatever it takes and face whatever consequences. 4) Talking about it weakens and dissipates the energy. Furthermore, it could be dangerous! In ancient times you were likely to be tortured and killed, even for suspicion of using magic. Even now … in my lifetime, I have known of people losing their marriages, their jobs, and access to their children, for the same reason.

He also explained that what you put out will return to you. Again, it’s an energy thing, just the way things work: a natural law. That’s another good reason to be very mindful about trying to work magic. You might not like its after-effects on you! Witches call this the rule of three, or ‘law of threefold return,’ on the theory that what you send out will come back to you multiplied by three. That’s usually a bit hard to measure; also there’s no saying when it will come back to you (though I find it’s usually quick). The important thing is that it will come back. By now I have had many occasions to observe this law in action. (It doesn’t apply to cases of unintentional hurt. Those might of course have consequences too, but it’s not the same dynamic.)

These are widely known precepts in magical circles, in both ceremonial magic and witchcraft; since those days, I have encountered them repeatedly. I think they weren’t unknown then (in the 1980s) either. But at that time I personally had never come across them before.

15. Hobnobbing with a Magician, Healer and Clairvoyant

(all the same person)

For the next couple of years, I got used to having Ridge in my life as a frequent visitor, almost a member of the family, as he continued to ‘pop in’ for informal visits. Bill was a generous and hospitable soul, and Ridge had been a convivial neighbour in the past. We knew he was largely on his own, being estranged from his ex-wife and not seeing his sons as often as he wished. 

He shared his magical experiences with me more than with Bill, who was less open to such things, but he didn’t conceal that aspect of himself from any of us. He was an interesting conversationalist on many other topics, too, outside of the magical realm.

And he was grateful, and sought to return the favours. For instance, he developed the habit of resting his hands on our gentle German Shepherd, Suey, for several minutes at a time whenever he visited, saying that he could sense she needed healing. My mid-teen kids used to scoff at this when Ridge wasn’t around, though they were polite when he was actually there. They didn’t believe in magic. Bill and I kept more open minds. Mine was  more open than Bill’s, but I still wasn’t quite sure whether to buy this story. I believed Ridge believed it, but I thought he could have been kidding himself.

Several years later, when for some time Ridge hadn't been around to keep attending to her, Suey suddenly collapsed without warning. Only my son David and I were home. A young man already, and muscular from a holiday job on a building site, David picked her up in his arms and  placed her in the back of the car to go to the vet. The vet discovered a cancer, one which he said had evidently been unusually slow-growing for its type. He was unable to save her at this stage, so it was a euthanasia situation, but I was grateful in retrospect to Ridge. She had not appeared to be ill or in pain before her collapse. With hindsight, I believe he both eased her symptoms and gave her extra years of life. A gift to us as well, who loved her. 

He continued to talk to me about his magical practices, explaining them when necessary, as I was completely ignorant on that score. It was much later that I realised he was in fact my teacher, these casual-seeming chats also acting as lessons for me. This wasn’t author Colin Wilson speculating, on the basis of carefully gathered evidence, as to what might be; but a practising magician, a friend and crony of other magicians and also witches, describing what actually happened and how it came about.

He made it clear he believed in reincarnation, and karma. He told me that the reason he was helping me now was because he had to, because I had helped him in a previous life; that was how it worked. He was shown a scenario, which he described to me, of a battle scene: some people storming the walls of a city while others tried to fight them off. (I got glimpses of it myself as he spoke, but whether they matched what he was seeing, I never enquired.) I saved Ridge’s life (whoever he was in that lifetime – and whoever I was) by pulling him away just in time as someone tried to stab him. (I think I was a man too, then.) 

He still did readings for me now and again, with his Tarot cards, and/or holding my hand, closing his eyes and ‘tuning in’ to whatever he was given in answer to my questions. Bill became somewhat intrigued, and once requested the explanation of a strangely vivid dream he had. He had described the dream to me after he woke that morning, and I recognised it as having the quality of some dreams of mine which I categorised as special and different – not ordinary, sifting-through-the-day’s-detritus dreaming. Mine were either prophetic, in which case what they prophesied (not necessarily anything dramatic) would happen in due course. Others I strongly believed to be past-life recall, though that of course is harder to verify. They were vivid, detailed, coherent, and carried a feeling of significance (hard to describe). 

Bill’s dream had been about the sudden death of our sons! Ridge explained that it didn’t mean our sons in this life, but it used their images as a sort of code or shorthand to indicate Bill’s sons in a previous life. And at this juncture I have to confess that I can’t remember what the actual point of the dream was supposed to be! Sorry – it was over 40 years ago, and it wasn’t my dream. I do know it wasn’t a bad message anyway; maybe just a bit of karma to be worked off in that form rather than in a lived experience; or perhaps a warning to behave a bit differently in this life so that a similar situation would not lead to a similar outcome. (I'm guessing, on the basis of my present understanding.)

My mum, widowed by then, came for a long visit one year, over the Christmas holiday period. She enjoyed talking with Ridge, and he occasionally read the cards for her, which fascinated her. She and my stepfather had been deeply and happily in love. Ridge once told me that my stepfather in spirit was still focused on her, longing to be reunited. But he wouldn’t tell Mum herself, and advised me not to. I thought she would get comfort from hearing it, but he said no, ‘the anguish would be too great.’ For the time she had left to live here on earth, she needed to learn to adapt and go on.

Just before Christmas, Bill (who, you will remember, was an abalone diver) experienced the fate every diver dreads: he got ‘the bends’ (described by Wikipedia as decompression sickness or DCS, ‘a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompression … Since bubbles can form in or migrate to any part of the body, DCS can produce many symptoms, and its effects may vary from joint pain and rashes to paralysis and death. DCS often causes air bubbles to settle in major joints like knees or elbows, causing individuals to bend over in excruciating pain.’) He recognised what had happened to him, and went to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, where there was a small decompression chamber. 

But it was Christmas Eve! The hospital was very short-staffed. It’s quite possible the people on duty didn’t properly understand the condition or its treatment. He spent several hours in the chamber and was sent home, still feeling weak and uncomfortable. But none of us knew what he was supposed to feel like after treatment; it had never happened to him before.

Ridge, who lived just around the corner, was spending the evening with us. My brother Denis was there too, staying a few days because Mum was with us (and we had enough spare rooms). Ridge soon became worried about Bill, and kept muttering to me that something wasn’t right; I should try and get him more treatment. Eventually I became worried enough myself to tell Bill what Ridge was saying. Ridge followed this up by asking if Bill knew any doctors who specialised in this kind of thing, whom he could call. I realise now that he would have been given a strong suggestion from his guides that Bill would know someone. And sure enough, Bill did. He had become fairly prominent in the new abalone diving industry by then, and as a spokesman for the local fishing industry in general. He was interested in medical research into aspects of diving, including the bends, and had had conversations with a particular specialist who was very involved in this research. 

‘Phone him!’ Mum, Ridge and I all urged. So, even though it was a public holiday, he did, and left a brief message on the man’s answer machine as to what had been happening to him. Five minutes later the guy called back. Bill answered, had a brief talk, then came to tell the rest of us what had transpired (no speaker phones in homes back then).

‘Nissen!’ the very no-nonense doctor had yelled without preamble. ‘Get your arse up to Geelong! NOW!’ 

He asked if there was someone who could drive Bill. My brother volunteered. The doctor (a well-known and important person in public life) had asked to be phoned back with the number plate of the car Bill would be travelling in. He arranged for police clearance all the way from our suburb to the city of Geelong (about 75k to the southwest of Melbourne) and ordered my brother to drive as fast as he safely could. At Geelong there was a centre for medical research into diving, which included a huge decompression chamber. Bill ended up spending nearly a week there, closely monitored the whole time by especially-trained medical staff. We all drove to visit him a couple of times, and to bring him home when he was pronounced cured. So this was another time I was very grateful to Ridge! Indeed we all were. 

And here I must distinguish between his various gifts. With Suey, and later with Bill, no magic was involved (as far as I know). It was Ridge’s clairvoyance which enabled him to know that something was wrong and needed addressing. And in the case of Suey, he helped her with his healing abilities, via a ‘laying on of hands.’ I have learned a number of healing modalities myself since then, and now know this to be a form of what’s called energy healing. I suspect it came naturally to Ridge. I never heard of his having undertaken any healing courses. (It may have been, specifically, ‘spiritual healing,’ in which healers – including doctors – who have ‘passed over’ are understood to work through the hands of a living healer when called upon. But we didn’t discuss it enough for me to be certain about that.)

He bragged a bit about being able to use telepathy. Which he could. But he wasn’t always well able to demonstrate it! I have a rebellious personality. One time I had popped down the street to get something from the shops while Ridge was at our place having a yarn with Bill and my mum, when I heard his voice in my head quite clearly, saying, ‘Come home now!’ I didn’t get any sense of anything being wrong at home, and I was in a mood to dig my heels in rather than answer a peremptory summons. 

I continued shopping and arrived back home in my own good time. Sure enough, he said he had mentally called me to come home, so as to demonstrate his telepathy to the others present. When I didn’t return immediately, he decided I hadn’t picked up the message, so I must not be very telepathic myself. I don’t know how much anyone believed me when I claimed that I had heard him, but just chose not to return home yet (I don't know how many people believed his claims  either! It wasn't a very successful demonstration)  – but eventually, when I stopped to think about it, I was thrilled to realise that, obviously, I was telepathic too.

Interpolation: Communications with the Dead

The Goodbye Messages

John wasn't the first person to reach out to me from beyond the grave. (Strictly speaking he wasn't one of them at all: I reached out to him, via the mediumship of Ridge. He, I believe, reached out to me on the night he chose to die, while was still alive.)

There was my Nana, when I was four, which I wrote about in Chapter 2. As I grew older, I came to believe that had only been in my imagination, as my adults tended to explain many of my experiences. By now, I'm open to the possibility that it was a real communication. 

I was 40 the next time, and while there might be various explanations for what I experienced, imagination is not one of them. It was a very physical experience, felt bodily.

I had a dear friend who had had a troubled life from childhood. Not that there was anything victim-ish about her. She was a strong, vibrant, strikingly beautiful woman. When I knew her, she was a wife and mother with three young daughters of primary school age. My husband, Bill, got to know her husband through the fishing industry. Her daughters were close in age to my sons. We saw each other at work-related events, and the two families became friendly and began to socialise. She and I also developed a fond, sisterly friendship in our own right, and occasionally went out together just the two of us, for an afternoon drink and chat. She trusted me more than most people, I think.

The marriage wasn’t very happy, and eventually they separated, taking it in turns to have the children. We didn’t see each other in person for a few weeks, as she got settled into a different suburb, but I expected we would soon.

I woke up earlier than usual one morning, perhaps at first light, to find myself full of what I could only describe as ‘a white feeling.’ It included both peace and happiness. It was gentle, deep, and full of a kind of quiet wonder. The idea of Fran came very much into my mind, in a happy, unworried kind of way. 

Only a few hours later, her husband phoned to give us the news that she had died in the very early hours of that morning in a car crash, ‘under the influence’ and speeding.

Many of us believed it was what’s called a subconscious suicide, i.e. not consciously planned to end the person’s life, but in response to a very strong underlying wish to ‘end it all.’ And yes, I was very shocked and sad despite the early morning visitation, but I had no doubt she had come to say goodbye, and even to assure me that she was now finally at peace.

This doesn’t always happen when people close to me pass on, but there have been a few more occasions.

I was always very close to my dad’s younger sister, my Aunty Kathleen, known as Katy, but had not seen her for some time (for geographical reasons mainly) when she died. Even our affectionate correspondence had lapsed. (In those days, letter writing was how most people kept in touch.) In Katy’s final years she had that dreadful condition, motor neurone disease. 

I was visiting my Mum in Tasmania, when one evening the white curtain over a small (closed) window I happened to be looking at started fluttering gaily with no obvious cause. At the same time I suddenly had a strong mental image of my aunty, smiling at me in a fond, slightly teasing way that she had. Simultaneously, I felt a sense of delight and freedom. Sure enough, it was not long later that Mum received a call to say that Katy had died. (She and Mum were very fond of each other, and had stayed good friends even after my parents’ divorce.)

There have been several other such instances over the years. The most recent was my dear friend Dallas, a man I met in the same prison workshops where I met John. He was not one who had what I later identified as a criminal mindset (though everyone soon gets a prison mindset); it was a heroin addiction which put him there. This was a strictly platonic friendship, but a close, confidential, and loyal one. We had many interests and values in common, and after he was released our friendship continued. He worked for my husband, Bill, for a brief time, while he was getting back on his feet Outside. We later became friends, too, with the lovely life partner he found, visited her and their newborn son in hospital after the birth, and so on. Eventually we moved geographically distant from each other, but ended up as facebook friends, and used to chat a bit behind the scenes. He kicked the addiction before the baby was born, with the help of methadone, and had a long, happy and useful life after his time in prison. We always loved each other dearly.

He read my Pentridge memoir in first draft, in 2023, and told me it was good. Soon afterwards he became ill with what was first thought to be cancer, but turned out to be severe respiratory problems. He recovered somewhat, but his wife had some years earlier become an invalid, so could not care for him. His daughter eventually found him a home which could accommodate the fact that he needed to be hooked up to a breathing apparatus. He celebrated his 73rd birthday there, with balloons, feasting, and his loving family. The photo on facebook looked happy. I believed he had recovered from his illness, albeit with lingering consequences. I was looking forward to sending him the completed and published Pentridge book and its companion volumes of poetry. 

One night I woke briefly from a very deep sleep, to become aware that someone disembodied was standing in the open door to my bedroom. I knew this was someone who had come to say goodbye, someone tall, male, and kindly disposed towards me – but I couldn’t wake up enough to register more than that. I guess I made some kind of acknowledgment, just in the fact that I registered his presence. (And that’s OK; I know he would not have needed anything from me. It was more that he wanted to give me the farewell I would need.) Next day, I had the (to me unexpected) news of his death, and knew immediately who my visitor had been.

The Unknown Supplicants

In the course of my life, I eventually completed studies in a number of energy healing modalities, and received other kinds of spiritual development training, including past life regression and energy clearing – which I’ll deal with in forthcoming chapters of my narrative. Fairly early in this developmental period, I told the Universe, as a commitment, that my energy was available to be used for the good, as and if required. I've been taken up on that in various ways.

At a certain point – by which time I was comfortable with such happenings – I started being approached by spirits who were 'earthbound,' unable to move on, and wanted to use me as a conduit to do so. I knew this by sensing or feeling their presence, and got an immediate knowing of their purpose. (I didn’t enquire into and wasn’t told their personal details.) I found I didn’t have to do much to have this happen. Just having the intention seemed to work. I could feel them moving via my energy. (I don’t understand the details and could not really describe them. I am mainly clairsentient – knowing by feeling – and claircognisant – getting an ‘inner knowing – and that’s how I received this particular knowledge too. )

In the end, this was happening so often that I became quite blasé about it. Finally it became a nuisance, as they crowded around me more and more often. I do have other things to do with my life! I was happy to be of service, but not for such a large proportion of my time. I don’t know that I ever asked for relief, but I did become rather grudging, and would sometimes respond to requests with an impatient, ‘Wait!’ or ‘Not now!’

I think we are only given what tasks we are willing to shoulder. Anyway, the spirits gradually stopped coming to me for help to find their way home. I know I am not the only person who can do this service, and I did do it faithfully for a number of years, so I don’t feel guilty. 

 Other People's Loved Ones

I have also had brief contact with particular spirits on behalf of other people. For decades now, I've worked as a psychic medium, putting people who asked for it in touch with their late loved ones. In that case, I reach out to look for them, sending out a sort of call with my energy and intention. 

This work was given to me; people just started asking, so I decided to see if I could – and I could. Any training I had came from Spirit. My clients do confirm that what I am getting is recognisable as the person they are seeking. I always double check, describing bit by bit what / who I am getting. I don't want to waste anyone's time with the wrong connection!

Though perhaps 'wrong' can be 'right.' One lass wanted to get in touch with her beloved grandmother, who had just died. I started describing the woman I was seeing mental images of. After a short while, the client said, 'That's my other grandmother, who died when I was little.'

I'll address this particular form of communing with the dead – how it came about and how it developed – in my chronological narrative, 

14. Up Close and Personal

 

Ridge continued to visit often. He became a close family friend over the following months and years. 

Immediately after John’s death, I kept wanting him to act as a go-between (or what I would now call a psychic medium) to find out what was happening to John in the spirit world, and to carry messages between us. There weren’t many. I was given understand that John had other things going on now, and could not give his whole attention to me. (As to what those things were, that remained largely unexplained; not for those still in this life to engage with, I gathered.) 

But he did answer some questions. When I asked if he was willing for me to bring out a book of his poems – after his notebooks and typescripts arrived in the post shortly after his death (his mates in prison, as I learned later, having taken it upon themselves to smuggle them out out to me for that purpose) – I was surprised that John in the spirit world didn’t care. Ridge passed on the reply that such earthly matters were no longer important to him, despite having been of great concern while was alive.  He didn’t mind if I did or didn’t publish his poems. It was we, his friends who were left alive, with our connection to the living man, for whom it mattered. The guys in the prison knew I would feel as passionately about that as they did.

(I obtained permission from his family, subject to their approval of the final manuscript, but in the end I didn’t go ahead. His best work had already appeared, only a short time before, in the Pentridge anthology, Blood from Stone.)

Sometimes Ridge was given information without my asking – though perhaps my thoughts and emotional energy were conveying a wish to know, which was picked up on. One time, Ridge was flooded with a feeling of intense joy, to convey John’s reaction to my loving him: ‘Joy to the point of tears,’ he told me. This, I understood, was what John felt while he was alive, and also continued at the soul level after his death. A strong sense of it was conveyed to me, emotionally and physically, as Ridge gave me that message. It was the most precious communication I could have received! 

Ridge was also a trained hypnotist. One afternoon he suggested that he might be able to put me into more direct contact with Jon via that method. 

I didn’t think I could be hypnotised (some people, apparently, can’t). The  psychiatrist I saw in my twenties was a qualified hypnotherapist too, and when I was pregnant with my first child and told him how terrified I was of childbirth, he offered to try and hypnotise me to reduce the fear. After some time of my remaining wide awake, he told me I was evidently resistant to hypnosis so it was no use continuing. (I got through childbirth the same way I did other fearful things I couldn’t avoid: you get yourself there and begin, and then there’s no choice but to go on through to the end as best you can – even if inch by inch and trembling all the way as with rock climbing, or screaming and swearing loudly while in childbirth.)

I agreed to let Ridge try, though. He said it might work better if I lay down on the sofa and close my eyes, so I did. I didn’t think that I was losing consciousness at all, but then I saw what seems to be a vision John, as I had known him, standing in a field of flowers. He looked up and saw me, and walked towards me, smiling. He seemed serene, well, and welcoming. Then the vision faded, and I came to, feeling reassured and deeply peaceful. Afterwards I realised that the clothes I saw him wearing were not the prison clothes (jeans and t-shirts) which I had alway seen him in before. (He was wearing dark brown trousers and a white shirt with the top two buttons undone. Not that I was paying much attention to anything but his face.) When I did realise this, it seemed to me some kind of evidence that I wasn’t ‘just imagining’ this brief but comforting contact.

None of these happenings prevented my many months of deep grieving, but they surely kept me from plunging into absolute despair.

It seemed quite soon that Ridge told me John had, for the first time, sought him out with a message, on the previous night. Before that, he had responded to my communications via Ridge, but did not initiate any. This message was that he needed to ‘move on now’ and would not be available for such communications any more. Ridge didn’t know exactly why, only that there was work for John to do in the spirit realm, and he needed to give that his attention now. Not that he would be cut himself off from those he still loved in this realm, but there wouldn’t be the close, continual focus any more.