About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, International Psychic Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

This Week’s Episode

In the studio today is none other than Psychic Medium & Astrologer, Mark The MidWest Medium.  Mark explains how mediumship and astrology have changed over the decades and why they will continue to evolve as time rolls forward.  In this episode, Mark speaks about the importance of focussing on your strengths and not on your weaknesses; he’ll tell you why vulnerability works in your favour as a medium; and how your own suffering helps your compassion.  If you’ve always wondered about spirit guides or telepathy or how to read auras – Mark covers it all!  This is an episode absolutely jam-packed with information from the brilliant mind and gentle soul of this incredibly knowledgeable gentleman.

Thanks for listening.

Why not share it now

Or ask a question over on Psychic Matters! Podcast Facebook page

Thanks for listening.

Why not share it now

Or ask a question over on Psychic Matters! Podcast Facebook page

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody! My name is Ann Théato and welcome to the Psychic Matters Podcast – episode number 15. 

In the studio today is none other than Psychic Medium & Astrologer, Mark The MidWest Medium.  Mark explains how mediumship and astrology have changed over the decades and why they will continue to evolve as time rolls forward. 

In order to grow and evolve as mediums today and going into the future, we have to have a balance of understanding what Medium’s used to do, as well as doing our way, our unique way. How do we evolve? We have to be ourselves. We have to be ourselves and really take time to understand how we receive communication and also self-awareness with the human being.  Not every medium is destined to do this for a career or to teach it and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s millions of mediums on the Earth.

In this episode, Mark speaks about the importance of focussing on your strengths and not on your weaknesses; he’ll tell you why your vulnerability works in your favour as a medium; and how your own suffering helps your compassion.  If you’ve always wondered about spirit guides or telepathy or how to read auras – Mark covers it all!  This is an episode absolutely jam-packed with information from the brilliant mind and gentle soul of this incredibly knowledgeable gentleman.

Ready?  Let’s go!

[expand title=”Read More…” swaptitle=” “]

Ann
In the Psychic Matters studio today I’m joined by Psychic Medium and Astrologer, Mark the Midwest Medium. Mark, welcome to Psychic Matters!

Mark
Thank you for having me, such a pleasure to be here Ann.

Ann
Mark let me hand over to you and you can tell people who you are, what you do, where you come from and the type of work that you do.

Mark
So, I’m a Medium, a Psychic and an Astrologer.  My journey kind of professional began in 2002.  I am located in the Chicagoland area in the United States.  Hence the name Midwest because that region is considered the Midwest of the United States.  I started my career oddly enough, doing palm reading, I can’t say it went very well.  In fact, the person that was supposedly going to hire me, felt I looked too young because at that time I was 22.  All of a sudden, the colours in her aura popped for me, which was the first time I had ever seen colours in the aura, and she told me immediately that she had to hire me.  So I believe that was like a defining moment where I said maybe I can do this for a living and maybe I can have my passion be a career.

Ann
And what was that like?  Sorry to interrupt you just at the beginning but you say that the colours of her aura popped for you. What did that look like? How did that feel? How did you sense that?

Mark
It was incredible because I didn’t believe in the aura at all. I had seen a book on it, and I said this is hogwash. To my surprise, when I get there to do a reading, to audition basically for a job, at my young age and I had to look about 16, to be there, to be rejected, and then the colours appeared to me, they were so vivid and they were so real, it was as if they were in the room with me. I mean I saw them clairvoyantly objectively. I saw orange and purple on this woman’s aura. And she said two weeks prior to this, a psychic came in here and said my aura was purple and orange.  You are hired. I was, I mean I was freaked out.  I was amazed, I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t believe first of all auras are real, second of all you can actually see the colours and third that yeah, in fact that I think this is going to be something that I can do to make some sort of living with and it was certainly something I had passion for. But between 2002 in 2011 there just wasn’t really many opportunities to sustain an income to live off of. So I did normal jobs. I even eventually got into clinical psych for a short brief time, but I did everything in this sort of line of work. I did, like, the phones, I did chats, I did stores, you know, centres, I’ve done platform, I’ve been on radio, television, you name it.  They are all very different.  They all have their own set of challenges. I think out of everything mediumship is really my number one passion. Astrology is second place and I do love astrology but if I have to pick one it’s definitely the mediumship, but I can say this and I’m sure many people who are listening can relate, anytime you use some sort of tool to help you it does strengthen your insights as a medium and I do feel like  Astrology has helped me as a Medium. And it also has opened me up to understand life a lot more as well. That is kind of a short very brief summary of who I am and what I’m doing.

Ann
Gosh that’s amazing.  Let’s talk about your training so where did you train how did you learn all of these different faculties and skills?

Mark
Mostly on my own. So literally for the palm reading for instance, I just picked it because I didn’t have cards. That’s literally, you know, somebody said why don’t you get a job because we think you have ability. Which was another psychic. I wasn’t formally trained, I just saw a book, I saw a line, I go, oh, that’s what a line on a palm is, I guess I’ll read it.  And I did. I was never trained on the aura.  No-one ever told me first of all that you could see the colours like that. So it was freakish.  And then you know, as time went on, eventually I got to, like, a place in my life where I said maybe I want to take it a little bit more seriously and try to push this.  The mediumship too, I really wasn’t trained. I had opportunities to sit in some circles here and there. I even gotten sort of friends with like a psychic store, where I was lucky to get a fortunate break. But I was really on my own. I was kind of on my own, I called it a baptism by fire. Not many people do, like, go from nothing to professional just like that, it just doesn’t happen. But I didn’t really have a choice. There was no classes. I mean today you have a lot of options and believe me do that.  I teach now and I tell my students to please take the classes because it was a lot of heartbreak if you don’t have formal training it’s a lot of bumps, they call it the hard knocks of life, well you ‘ain’t kidding! Because it’s rough to have no training and no help and no real guidance and then sit in front of strangers who are very sceptical and you know, not really go easy on you, it’s not a real fun experience.  You want some sort of gentle of guidance along your way.

Ann
How did you keep going and not get discouraged?

Mark
Well I was here and there, I was discouraged. I did meet other professionals that were psychics and mediums, that were, I mean there wasn’t a lot of them that were able to say you do have ability keep going. And some of them would basically kind of chat with me informally.  Most of my help though, for my struggles, I got read.  So I would pay for readings.  And I would say I would like this type of style I would like that type of style.  Not a lot of people do that though. Especially today.  A lot of my students say I’ve never had a reading.  I go, you should get a tonne of readings from a tonne of different people from all around the world, and then you can see, oh I do that, or I don’t do that. Or that’s me, that’s not me, and you can compare and contrast and really that’s kind of how I moulded myself as a reader, because you can be a psychic and a medium but it’s different than actually presenting readings because you have to have certain organisation to your methodology, presentation, you have to put your clients interests and their emotional needs, all that stuff you know, it takes a while.  I kind of got my understanding of what a reading was, the structure and all that, just by being read from other people. That’s honestly that.  But later on, I had other mediums, and there’s a lot of them. So I can’t name them all because they’ll get mad at me if I don’t name them and they said, oh, you know,  keep going basically you can do it and so… that’s really all you need. I feel like you just have this acknowledgment that somebody is listening it’s really the best gift you can give them.

Ann
It sounds to me like you have always had a great faith in your own ability to do the job in the first place.

Mark
Well yes, so, if we, really that started at three years old.  So when I was three.  I remember it, I’ll never forget this, hopefully I’ll never forget it. I remember I was three years old taking a nap. It was 5 O’clock at night, it was winter and just when it gets dark, and I a sat up on my bed, I looked out to my father’s room and there was my grandmother and she was in spirit. I was like, uh, totally captivated, completely captivated.  I saw her objectively clairvoyantly as if she was in the room. But she was about a room over, so she wasn’t in my room but right at the foot of my Dad’s bed.

Ann
Like she was really there, in person, in flesh and blood.

Mark
As if she was a real person, flesh and blood. So, I was like oh my gosh, it was strange because I remember at three years old saying that she was not verbally talking but she’s talking. Now I know that to be telepathy.  Now I know that to be clairsentience as well, the feelings but also with the thoughts of telepathy and clairsentience with the feelings that she was giving me.  Because her jokes, like, she was giving me humour, I couldn’t formulate this.  I was just happy, and I was laughing, and I look back and go oh my gosh my grandmother at three years old was training me in mediumship. Of course I went to my parents and said this is happening and they kind of said, we don’t think so. So, I was kind of on my own. I was always on my own with us.

Ann
Did they say we don’t think so because, oh bless you, you have got a good imagination or was it because they didn’t want you to talk about this kind of thing?

Mark
It was imagination mostly. I have family members that don’t believe that it is possible for mediumship to exist.  My father, really, I think it was like it’s too good to be true.  And so, you know. He was kind of a tough guy.  He was an iron worker.  He had a really rough job. And he just said that is not possible.  He believed in ghosts, but he could not believe that his family and loved ones would ever visit and he be able to talk to.  And he had his own evidence that he never shared with me about, you know, things appearing, apports that is the word I was looking for and stuff like that and he never would share it with his siblings, and I found out later. I’m like, oh my gosh my dad had a lot of evidence of the spirit world and never gave it away to me.  But I would hear her at 8 years old stomping upstairs, boom boom boom boom like someone was stomping on the floor above us.  Because we had three stories.  And I would tell all my family members, I would say, don’t you hear this?  Don’t you hear the stomping?  It’s like someone is like, trying to kick their foot through the ceiling into the…  that’s how loud it was.  And they were like, we don’t hear anything.  And I was like what?  How is that possible that I’m not just kind of hearing it, I’m hearing it Then I realised that my clairaudience was kind of jacked up at that moment because I was a kid and I didn’t really use it.  I say like this ability, if you don’t really use it, it kind of builds, builds, builds, builds, and then it erupts!  And then you have this amazing stuff and then it gets sort of like a tank of water, it gets used up and so it builds up again and bam! So I had those moments and I distinctly remember how I was different because at 8 years old they broke the sound barrier.  There was a jet that flew so fast it broke the sound barrier.  I heard that as if someone was yelling in my ear, I mean it was real loud.  I said to my parents, I repeated their entire conversation – they were in the kitchen I was in the living room, so I was using my ability that way and they were like how does he hear us we are whispering. And secondly, they said why did you drop that box on the floor?  And I said, I didn’t drop a box on the floor, it was the sound barrier that was being broken by a jet that was you know, miles, away, we are talking hundreds of miles away or whatever.  And they sad, no it sounded like you dropped the box.  So I realised, oh my gosh, their level of hearing the sound barrier is like, a tenth of what I heard.  So my clairaudience could hear in the physical world and then I could hear them as if I am in the room, two rooms over, them whispering as if I am right next to them.  It was freakish but that was the discerning moment I go, okay.  Here is an example of something in real life – breaking the sound barrier – where I hear it like it’s gonna hurt my hearing and ruin my hearing, it was so loud, where they are hearing it like as if somebody accidentally dropped a little box on the floor.  So then I go okay maybe I am a little different than these people. 

Ann
Wow, at 8 years old.

Mark
At 8 years old.  Then it would quiet down, like most teens it kind of quiets down and then it came back again about 18 and then again at 20 I was read by a famous psychic detective, his name is Bill Ward.

Ann
Bill Ward.

Mark
I didn’t know it.  I just, something came over me to go to him.  Something came, but I don’t know why.  It was just a knowing you know.  He read me and predicted so many things that at the time I thought were ridiculous.  He said that I would get into martial arts which I thought was kind of dumb.  He said that I would specifically get into Tae Kwondo.  He said that I would get into Buddhism, that I would learn how to meditate, quieten my mind, and that I was psychic.  And I said none of that is true.  I only want to party and forget about this world.  That’s all I wanted to do at the time.  And here we are two years later, I’m into Taekwondo, learning Buddhism, learning how to meditate and I got my psychic job two years later.  I mean, I was, it was amazing you know.  But I learned so much from that reading.  I did understand and look at his presentation.  I did see how he organised.  I didn’t like some of the things he did and I loved the other things he did.  So just from that one sitting it was pretty much you know, was 80% of what I needed basically for the rest of my life.  And it was like, some of those old school readers, and I don’t know if you have had a lot of readings from them, but they go for broke.  They swing for the fences.  It might sound crazy and wild to people, but they just throw it out.  And that was something that really gave me courage. Today, mediums will just play it safe.  They will hunt for evidence, right?  They only want to read if they know for sure if it is going to be an awesome reading or awesome evidence if it is generic, they wont even attempt it.  And that’s not how it was. When it was old school, it was like, whatever is coming out of our mouths as an old school reader from 50 years ago or whatever, they always believed it was magnificent it was immaculate no matter what it was.  They had blind trust and I have always kept that, and I try to give it to new mediums today.  Just have blind trust that whatever comes out of your mouth, it’s golden, it’s divine.

Ann
You do have to give what you get don’t you?  You can’t censor it in your mind and filter it through and say I’m not going to say that because it sounds ridiculous.  And I learned that the hard way.

Mark
And you have to be okay with generic too.  But they are not.  If you look at a lot of mediums, especially, we have social media and a lot of different ways to see mediums around the world.  When they are doing contacts, they will have one communicator and there is a lot of great evidence.  But they may bring in another spirit or two and it is just an acknowledgment, but this is breakthrough stuff for a lot of mediums but they don’t get that.  If they bring in an uncle, they think, oh, I gotta get a hundred pieces of evidence to define this uncle, even though my main spirit communicator was grandmother.  It’s like you could just, maybe the uncle just wanted to say hi and an acknowledgement.  It happens all the time.  Then you know, bring in another one. And then maybe grandma has more evidence to say.  But that’s a big struggle and I feel like, if anything, if anything if classes are out there, they should be trying to just, it should be confidence and being okay with generic, because spirits are people, you know? They are still people.  They have a decision and choices if they want to give generic or amazing evidence.

Ann
You have to be fearless as a medium, don’t you? You have to just be completely fearless and trust. Don’t trust the human beings, you trust the spirit world.

Mark
Absolutely, I mean, what is, that’s brilliant because what is a no anyway? You know if I say to you, if I describe to you a relative and you say no to it, how do I know that’s a real no? Maybe the sitter, the person receiving a reading, doesn’t know or forgot and it’s not really a true no. Trust the spirit first and the person being read last.

Ann
Yes exactly, I remember giving this mediumship reading I was doing a Demonstration of Mediumship, I think in America you call it a Gallery Reading is that right?

Mark
We still call it Demonstration, we are starting to steal your stuff, so.

Ann
And I remember I was in Billericay; I was in Tony Stockwell’s Soul Space and I was training with him on one of his mentorship programmes.  And the person I had in the spirit world, I said I’ve got a hunter here, I can see him walking across the ice and he has animal skins and he is dressed in animal skins and I looked out of the audience and all I could see was a sea of white people sort of middle-class working class people, and I was like how on earth is this ever going to fit anybody but I had to just keep going with it, and sure enough it was taken, it was placed, I was able to give much more information than that, but it just goes to show, if I had seen that person and thought in my mind, I am not going to give that out, then I would have failed the spirit world.

Mark
Absolutely. Absolutely.  And sometimes it is like that. I will say this, especially during a gallery demonstration like you were just talking about. It’s like mediums walk into a room that has no light, completely black, and we are expected to walk around and act as if we know what we’re doing 100%. And I say it’s like doing a tightrope walking without a net – we don’t get a net. We go out there, you don’t know what’s gonna happen, on the fly and it is fearless absolutely.

Ann
And it’s only one doing it I think, practicing and continuing to do it, that you trust the spirit world more and more and more because I’ve got a background as an actor, and I know if I step out on a stage, I know that script backwards. I know exactly what I’m doing, what I’m about to say, all the feelings I am going to generate, so you know what you’re doing.   Or a musician will know the song, the lyrics.  A stand-up comedian will know his routine, but as a medium we stand up there so vulnerable, we don’t know anything.

Mark
Vulnerable because we don’t know anything, which is really freakish, right?  The second thing is, that unlike, well kind of like comedians because there’s that scepticism and even audience members for comedians, they sometimes don’t believe the comedian is going to be funny either when they come out. So I actually think it’s a good analogy that you’re using because I studied a lot of comedians to see parallels between mediumship and stand-up comedians and there’s an awful lot.  The brilliant Jerry Seinfeld said he doesn’t let anyone introduce him by giving all these wonderful adjectives you know, like “Jerry’s great, he’s wonderful, he’ll make you laugh,” he doesn’t let them do that.  Same with mediums.  Try not to let people introduce you to say how great you are because when you do that, and even with comedians, the audience will fold their arms and go, okay prove it to us.  So Jerry will run, literally run out on stage before someone can overdo it by introducing him and going and saying how fantastic he is.  He will run onto stage and get right into his act because he knows. Because we are in control and so is the comedian.  We dictate it.  I always say you have to trust the spirit world, but I like to think of it as I have more confidence than the spirit world.  That’s how I approach it.  I tell my students you have to believe so blindly you have to have more confidence than the spirit world has, because some of those spirit communicators are still making up their mind.  They are still deciding I don’t know if I want to use Ann or Mark tonight.  Maybe I can do this, maybe I can’t.  Maybe there are clairs I can use those, maybe I can’t, maybe the frame of reference, I don’t even know what I want to say, should I apologise… all these things, so if you kind of have this positive confidence for them that you can do this, come closer, I got you, I got your back, and I will represent you whether you want to go on and give fantastic evidence or if you just want an acknowledgment, I’ll honour both, that is really the thoughts that I send out to them, and no matter what the audience is saying, even if they say no to something, my thought back to the spirit is, don’t worry, don’t let that throw you,  I got you and they keep going.  So I always say that we need to have more confidence than not just the audience but the spirit world too.

Ann
And how do you teach your student mediums to deal with a no?

Mark
First of all I think organisation and structure of how you are presenting the evidence is critical to understand what a no is.  If you give out a hundred things to describe a grandfather and somebody says no, what are they saying no to? Are they saying no to the colour pants he wore? Did they say no to the shoes he was wearing, or his hair colour or his glasses? So I try to get them not to just go on a serve treadmill of evidence and bombard somebody.  You either go one by one or a few things, and that way you can kind of see and navigate through those no’s.  But first, we don’t always know what a no is when we are getting it and I always say mediumship isn’t perfect. If I describe you today or a spirit today and let’s say nine out of 10 things were absolutely correct and they were super detailed but one thing doesn’t make sense, don’t throw it out. Don’t say you know, like, if I’m a Carpenter but I wore blue shoes my whole life and I did headstands before I got into work that’s pretty unique evidence. But if I said his car was red but it was really brown, are you really gonna throw it away – that’s not my grandfather he drove a brown car.  We got to use your common sense to it’s not perfect and so, I always check in.  We call that checking in – does that make sense?  Not for me or the spirit but for the recipient.  Because I know it’s all meant to be whatever I’m giving because I still want them to be with me and not be over-inundated with all this information as well.  So there is a lot to the no’s I think organisation is one and secondly don’t let it throw you just keep kind of going and see where you are at. 

Ann
Do you still see your grandmother?

Mark
That’s a great question. Oddly enough she came through to me last night. 

Ann
No way.

Mark
Yes, so it’s funny, I’m sure she is connecting with you right now for you to ask me that, to tell me that, and this morning too.  So I know she is in this room.  She comes through a lot in readings. She loves using mediums.  She also was a reader. 

Ann
Was she?  Herself?  She was?

Mark
She was. She read cards and she read tea leaves.  And, but she only did it you know, for family and friends and I was never told that. I was told that only maybe nine months ago. So I went my whole life, nearly 4 decades, without not knowing she was a reader. I had mediums tell me, and she verified it herself from the spirit world but I had no one living to verify that stuff, I just had to rely on my ability for, in the communication from her to say that. I don’t see her objectively clairvoyantly like I did when I was three.  That doesn’t happen.

Ann
So when you say you feel she is here now, how does that feel for you?

Mark
For me, her personality was one of the first things.  We call that clairsentience where you can feel on a mediumistic or psychic level and I can get that.  Her laughter, I can see her smile, she sends me thoughts telepathically, all this simultaneously as we are talking, as I am talking to you, she is doing this right now.  I feel like she put a drop into your head for you to ask that.  I don’t see her clairvoyantly like I did before, but I do see different spirits like that.  Even ones that I’m doing a gallery for, I will see them like they are in the room.  We call that objective clairvoyance. Spirits, they won’t always.  If you have multiple clairs as a medium they are not always going to use the same clairs you know, that’s another big myth.  There are some mediums that will only have maybe one sense, like clairvoyance. While others will express six senses, you know, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognisance, clairalliance, clairgustance.

Ann
That’s a lot of things to say for people that don’t understand what the clairs are.  Can you explain that for those people that may not know 

Mark
So there are at least six senses, there may be more senses mediumistically, that the spirit world could potentially use.  To see is clairvoyance, so when we see symbology in our mind’s eye or actually see a spirit, that would be clairvoyance.  Clairaudience is to hear, internally, externally, subjectively, objectively.  To feel, some people feel medical ailments, some people feel the personality, some actually feel energy, that is clairsentience.  Clairalliance is to smell. When you are smelling perfume or cigarettes from the spirit world that would be clairalliance.  Clairgustance is to taste and in fact, the first time I knew I had clairgustance, I was invited to do a paranormal ghost hunt in all these mansions, and they took me into a room, and I tasted pennies. And it felt like that. And I go there was six homicides. Because to me blood tastes like pennies, that copper feel.  And they said to me absolutely young man, how did you know there was six murders here? And I go, you know, if I was to explain it to you, we would be here all night.  So, then last of course is claircognisance which is, if I believe there is one clair that we might possibly have, which I can’t prove that, it’s just theory, it could be claircognisance.  I know there is a lot of people who want to say it is clairsentience, but I know mediums who are not clairsentient, so it is not that.  Claircognisance is to know.  And I think under that umbrella, we have modern day, New Age and all these other people who call themselves Channelers.  I really think that is claircognisance.  Also telepathy is served under that umbrella, claircognisance, it’s just a kind of a more defined, more psychic versus mediumistic with that.  But you do use telepathy with mediumship too.  That’s a lot but again, we shouldn’t be training mediums to forcibly say you can get all these.  We want to focus on medium’s strengths, not their weaknesses. In a lot of classes that I see they are trying to force mediums to be something they are not.  Instead of let’s look at what they do, let’s look at their strengths, and how do we further unfold them.  There are some clairaudient mediums but not everyone is clairaudient.  Some of your clairs might be here for a year and then get quiet for other years, you know.  And it’s not right or wrong.  Just because someone doesn’t have six clairs for their mediumship, doesn’t mean they are worse or an inferior medium to another one, it’s just the spirit world needs many many mediums.  It needs us.  Your unique story is what they need to say hello again.

Ann
That’s interesting.  Because some of my senses, some of my clairs come in, and then I don’t use them for ages and then I might use another one like maybe I might taste something one day, I might smell something in another reading, I might clearly know something absolutely without shadow of a doubt.  So it does depend on circumstances, who you are reading for and.. 

Mark
It depends on you, it depends on them, circumstances and the spirit communicator. Yes. So that’s a lot. And I think new mediums that I talk to you they think it’s just them. And that’s such a shame. Because then they have no peace. They feel oh, I didn’t get it, not just the clair but maybe the particular piece of evidence wasn’t as strong as they wanted to.  But how do we know that’s not the will from the spirit communicator? 

Ann
Yes you can’t impose your own will and give the information you want to give. You have to work with your spirit person and be in a position of receiving the information.

Mark
Yes and you know, that’s brilliant in realising they are still people.  So I try to get a new mediums not to have this habit of going, I failed. Because what’s the spirit world? The spirit world is listening, you’re like, woah, Mark or Ann said that wasn’t a good reading, maybe I don’t want to use mediums any more.  Now you’ve put off some spirit communicators who thought, oh man, I gave it my best. I’ll give it my best and they said the evidence wasn’t good, maybe I don’t want to try again now. So I say whatever it is, no matter if it’s short, long, unique, or generic, whatever name you want to give it, please just realize that this is a miracle. You know, if we put the intent that this it’s a spirit who is in its invisible world in heaven saying hello to somebody here, that’s a miracle. You know. I mean, I always say too, imagine if you passed away, didn’t know mediums were real, go over to the other side and someone says, Hey Ann, did you know you can talk to the Earth again? I mean, you would say what? No way. No, not true. Yeah look, crazy Mark and crazy Ann you can go say hello to them and they’ll be able to talk to my niece or to my granddaughter again. So that’s pretty special.

Ann
lt is, it’s really special and that’s beautifully put as well. So how do you think in terms of how mediumship is evolving and changing, what are we doing now, what did we do before and what does the future hold for mediumship do you think? 

Mark
Well a lot. So, I, it’s taken me a long time to realise this, but we can’t do everything that the old mediums did, but we can’t get rid of what they did either.  In order to grow and evolve as mediums today and going into the future, we have to have a balance of understanding what Medium’s used to do, as well as doing our way, our unique way. How do we evolve? We have to be ourselves. We have to be ourselves and really take time to understand how we receive communication and also self-awareness with the human being.  Not every medium is destined to do this for a career or to teach it and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s millions of mediums on the Earth.  I saw a study or a poll once and they said there was one and a half to 2, million mediums on the Earth currently.  That’s a lot, but they’re not all meant to go on to be on a platform or demonstrating in front of audiences and that’s the thing. You know, so the most important thing is self-development, we call it self-awareness. Every medium throughout history, this is why history is so important, in every corner of this world, if they found a medium in their family, it doesn’t matter where they are on the Earth, they would put them somewhere like reclusion or something like that.  And why? So they can get quiet.  Why is quiet so important? Well it teaches you to listen and as a medium you have to listen cos it doesn’t work any other way, right? Secondly, understand them as human beings, their shadow self.  Their insecurities, what they don’t like, if you’re not good at drawing or painting or if you’re not a good singer there is nothing wrong with that.  You need that. Because it strengthens your strengths.  We understand what we love by what we don’t love.  You know, so suffering helps compassion.  Every medium throughout history has told us this. But I felt that when I came into this line of work that wasn’t being promoted. It was all about what could I do, and this is a power, and this is great but there was no self-awareness, there was no self-development, there was none of that, it was just kind of using the ability and that was it.  But that’s nice but it won’t sustain you for the long-haul.  So self-awareness, self-development, knowing yourself, what is your passions, what are your hobbies what are you looking for in relationships, what are you doing for your health, and being okay with the fact that you’re not perfect and whatever you are not good at in your life whether it was math or if it was fixing cars or whatever it was, you remember those things because it really helps you to really look at things.  Especially as a medium you have this ability; you are basically part of a miracle.  Who cares what you are bad at?  Who cares? You don’t see an opera singer or even your analogy of actors or stand-up comedians beating themselves up at night if they can’t do math or if they can’t wash the dishes as good as their partner, or whatever these other things are that we all as human beings do.   I mean, we really are, if we are really getting involved in mediumship, we have to go back to really getting quiet with ourselves every single day.  Whether that’s going out in nature or going into your room and getting quiet, they should be there to understand the human need and then have Spirit be able to talk to you too. Because the human and the divine, have to agree.  They can’t be “I’m doing this because my spirit guides’ told me to go on the platform”.  No, that’s not true.  It has to be you, the human being that says I want to be a platform medium because I love it, because it speaks to me.  Not because it will make me money, not because it’s a competition because you just will, you will be in a roadblock for the rest of your life if you do those things for motivation.  So self-awareness, developing and transmuting the shadow self, then figuring out how different and how unique you are as a medium. If you stay true to those things, we will continue to evolve. 

Ann
What do you think the future holds for mediumship then Mark? 

Mark
I think it holds this sort of bridge between, not just sceptics and cynics with mediums but I think mediumship will start to evolve in a way where it’s less about the fire and all that.  There’s a little bit more substance.  There’s a little bit more about the compassion and how it can help and how to inspire people and less about the secret passwords and less about what was their favourite hobby in eighth grade and give me the lottery numbers, a little bit less about that stuff.  More about, you know, more about the education, the realistic expectations about mediumship that it’s not perfect.  That it can be very helpful not only to help you over grief but also to inspire people to also be themselves.  Because even if you are getting a reading and you are not a medium, being a part of that process is inspirational, that you might want to go on to be a writer, or you might want to go on to be a chef or whatever that is.   That is the unique thing I think about being a medium is that you are vulnerable like you mentioned earlier on the platform.  And some audience members will say, you know, I don’t know where I stand on this mediumship thing, but you were able to do what you do on your talent and now I want to do my thing.  I want to be an actor or I want to be a chef or a I want to be a painter. I didn’t have that before, I didn’t have that inspiration but seeing you go out there and doing it because you love it, regardless of the haters, that is inspiring to me.  And I really think mediumship is about inspiration.  I know not a lot of mediums believe that.  They believe it is to prove that life continues.  I think that is second I really do.  I don’t think mediumship is about proving to the world that communication between the two worlds is real.  I think it is about inspiriting people.  Inspiring them to be unique and be themselves.

Ann
See I find that fascinating.  Because, I often think, if we truly can communicate with the spirit world, which I a hundred million percent believe we can, surely there has to be more we can do with this skill then just give messages from Grandma.  There must be something far more important and vital that we can bring to the world through this unique communication, two-way communication.  And when you talk about inspiration and how we can be inspired here whatever our career, whatever our job, I think you are onto something there Mark.

Mark
And it shows you, you’re right.  I mean, it’s not about the evidence and the messages and how I wore green shoelaces when I was seven years old and only the medium would know that.  It’s not really that.  Why is, you know, grandma communicating with you?  I have a sibling that says, well, I never met that relative and I say to that sibling, I say if I was in the spirit world and I had a grandson or granddaughter, I would move heaven and earth, I would move heaven and earth to say hello, no matter what, even if I didn’t meet them.  I know I would, maybe you are different.  But you are not over there so when you get over there it’s a little different. If you are over there on the other side, and you go, I can help the Earth again using this medium, to show them I still care, that means, that picture is, we are supposed to care.  If they are on the other side, which we all kind of say is this wonderful place, and they still think about us, what does that mean?  The big picture is, we really are supposed to get along, that is the true inspiration, that this planet has to be humanitarians at some point.  We have to get closer to that.  And I think that the other component to being a medium is being a humanitarian.  And I really do think if you look at history of all the interventions from the spirit world, going back to Joan of Arc, even in World War I, World War II, there was intervention from the spirit world to mediums because it matters, this world matters.  What we are doing in this lifetime matters. I was taught and told from the books and from other professional psychics when I first got in, that life for mediums and psychics, this is just like school, that’s all it is.  And they were very adamant about never reincarnating because they said this life and physical world, it’s just school. It’s not school.  It is school, you can learn, right?  But this is important.  It’s not just oh I’m here and I’m just waiting out my time and then I’m going back to heaven and that’s it. If they are intervening, if they are using us as mediums, that has to mean that this life matters. Much more than just, let’s just get through it, you know.  It was such a heart breaking thing for me to hear from others reading books, it’s in books from you know, some other psychics that came before me and there ones and I get it but you’re right, I mean the inspiration to do what you want to do, play out your passions and your strengths, but also try to love one another or at least get along.  I think that is really why they intervene on a big global macro level; I think that is really the true intervention there.

Ann
That is beautifully put.  So talk to us Mark, about Astrology because you mention that that is your second love, your second passion, tell us about that.  I don’t know, I know a little bit about astrology but I don’t really know about it so tell us how that works for you and what your passion and why you are so passionate about it.

Mark
Well I think for many of us, me included, maybe even you, astrology was something I thought I vaguely understood but it really never made a lot of sense and then one day, another medium said, you know, you are really going to have to just let your spirit guide your life. So I said OK I’ll do that. I’ll let my spirit guide my life. My spirit, the divine me.  All of a sudden astrology made sense and all of a sudden, I started to channel astrology, where I would get a lot of insights, a lot of things that you learn, it’s very unconventional stuff that I found in astrology. Astrology is just another way to understand our lives. Astrology is the clock. Our lives really are symbolic through mythologies and astrology shows how these mythologies will play out in a very unique way specifically in different areas of our life.  Mythology of Jupiter or the sun or Venus and what area of life of these things are going to play out and how and how much or how little. It’s an algorithm I always say that astrology is an algorithm because it’s the job of the astrologer to figure out what is the code for Ann what is the code for Mark? What is going to make them the happiest? What is their relationships going to be like? What is the struggle? So astrology, like mediumship, has to evolve, just like the mythologies have to evolve. We have to involve all these things and mediumship has changed dramatically. The planets are not the same as they used to be. In fact there are a lot of planets such as Saturn and Pluto that were looked out and looked at as very maleficent specially especially in ancient times, it was like bad Pluto, bad, destruction. Pluto still can destroy but it’s for our highest good. It changes.  You know tarot you have that Death card, the Tower card, and we go oh my God it’s scary, now we know it is change, right?  So there is an evolution.  And astrology, just like mediumship, it is whatever the level of consciousness that the astrology brings to the chart.  Mediumship, your level of being a humanitarian, if you can get there, or at least try to, it will really strengthen your mediumship. And really strengthen the communication there. Same thing with the astrology. If you can kind of do some self-awareness, work on yourself and incorporate a little bit of that compassion with astrology, looking at things objectively, not subjectively to say let’s look at this from a higher source because they say the greatest form of intelligence is to observe without judging.  I think that is God, right?  So, if you are looking at circumstances in your life – a flat tyre.  Is a flat tyre bad? Maybe, and maybe it will cost you money, but maybe it saved you some heartbreak. Maybe it stopped you from going into traffic that was another collision or something else.  That’s how we have to approach astrology too.  We look at Pluto and Saturn, oh they’re bad. No they’re not. Saturn defines things.  They say Saturn is going to make it depressing or sad wherever it is, say it’s in your tenth house which is career.  Oh, Mark is going to have a sad career – that’s what they used to say before in ancient times.  Now we know is, no, Saturn defines things, it reduces things to get you specific.  This is what I want to do. I want to be specific in career. I don’t want to be a painter I want to paint door handles. It’s definingit, and that’s what Saturn does. But before we had a different level of consciousness.  Same with mediumship. If you go back hundreds if not thousands of years, they had a different level of consciousness. In Tarot, I’m sure a lot of your audiences, listening that do tarot, it’s changed a little bit. You know, how we do that. Mediumship has changed and so astrology has to too. It’s this constant evolution. I have no idea what it’s going to be like 1000 years from now, astrology, but it’s going to be a lot more intricate. We are really new to using asteroids – that’s a new thing in the last half century or so, so that’s a really new thing to broaden it because honestly, scientifically, we have only known asteroids over the last couple of centuries as well, a lot sooner than, they are a lot newer to us than the planets are, recognising them, naming them and all that. There is in, in mythologies and asteroids, is out of this world. We give names of gods and goddesses through Roman and Greek and Egyptian to asteroids but we also give names because whoever found and discovered the asteroids, would name them after their kids or their romantic partner, and they still, you can put those in charts and mean something to the person getting read.  So, I mean it’s wild, it’s endless, just like mediumship is endless, astrology truly is endless of where it could take us into understand ourselves and at the same time it’s not perfect.  We call these things occult, it means secrets, it doesn’t mean you are going to get all the secrets, it just means secrets, so it’s not easy, even for us who can see the unseeable, we are not going to see everything and it doesn’t matter.  What we see as mediums and astrologers is good enough to get us where the person needs to be.

Ann
If somebody then, for instance me, and probably many listening, want to delve into and explore astrology, it seems to me like such a vast topic, I wouldn’t even know where to begin and also I feel a bit disheartened even looking into it because it seems so lost what’s the point? I’ll never learn it all. So where do we start? How do we get to know more about astrology ourselves?

Mark
I have a different approach.  I say start wherever you think it’s fun.  Wherever that is.  If it is the sun or if it’s the planets, start there.  What brought you into astrology in the first place?  What was fun about it?  So if you are like, well I thought it was cool that, you know, Jupiter and Pluto mean something, then start there.  Dive into that, you know, through your own research, through your own education, and you know, explore that and that might take you to the other stuff. Start where your heart is because that will be sort of this driving force to figuring out all the other stuff but don’t start where somebody else is telling you, because it will never go right. Start where you are interested in and then it will grow. Just like mediumship, you know, if you are clairvoyant you don’t start with clairaudience, right?  Because if the spirit world appeared before you, you saw it.  So you wouldn’t say, I can’t hear you, you would say wow, I can see grandmother, I can see grandfather.  Same with astrology.  Wow I thought that was cool that the sun means confidence, and it’s our goals and it’s our driving force, it’s who we are becoming, that’s cool.  Or my mum will always say, I’m so attracted to the moon.  -Look at the moon, study the moon, why do you like it?  What is it about it?  Just explore that and that might take you further down the rabbit hole to further understand it.  But if you do it somebody else’s way and start where they started, that’s where the frustration comes in.

Ann
That is so great, then it seems like a chore, you’re like, oh but the way that you put it there, you’re like, of course, that seems so simple, why didn’t I even think about that?

Mark
Listen, I was never this wise, so don’t… this is all… like I said, my career as a psychic medium and astrologer is baptism by fire so it was all about learning on the fly.

Ann
Before we go, I want to ask you one more question and then I want you to give everybody an exercise, if you would. The question I want to ask you, is your grandmother who is present here, I sense her as well throughout this podcast.  When she comes around, do you look upon her as one of your guides now or is she just a helpful family member?

Mark
She gave that to you didn’t she? 

Ann
Yes, she asked me to ask that ages ago, I was waiting.

Mark
We’ve double linked, Ann, during this podcast.  Because she told me she gave that to you. Interestingly enough, another medium brought her through and it was a renowned medium and said I believe your grandmother is not just family but she wants to act like a guide as well. So she wants to actually be both. So this is a great question because again, starting out, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I had read these books and they would say Mark, spirit guides cannot be family.  They are spirit guides and they are so awesome and unbelievable they are spirit gods and your grandparents can’t be spirit guides, all this stuff and like these rules, right.  And then you get down to it, and you realise, what is a guide? A guide is to help, right? To be of some help.  Is there spirits that are higher evolved in their consciousness – yes.  But, could you have a relative that does want to, to some degree be a spirit guide?  Yes. Is it as common as people think? Probably not, I mean there is a lot of readings where I have done, where they are like, can’t my grandmother be..?  And she’s like, well she’s around you guiding you or helping you but here’s the thing.  Do we or would we really want to ask all of our loved ones about relationships and romance.  Would we really have the vulnerability and would we really trust them? Because we remember Uncle or grandmother and we never asked them about our romantic lives when they were alive.  Are now we going to do that when they pass on? That vulnerability is not quite there.  When you have a spirit guide however, who never shared a life, in this life at least with you, right?  You don’t have that problem.  You can be vulnerable, very vulnerable.  So, although it’s nice that there are higher evolves on these spirits that we call spirit guides and all that and they do have a more philosophy and insights probably on a deeper level but I really think it’s about vulnerability that I can go and ask about career if I wanted to or romance with someone who doesn’t have any family ties to me. Because I won’t ask Uncle or the grandmother while they are alive about some of these questions.  I am really not going to have such an easy time doing that while they are passed on but, because we have double linked, this particular grandmother wants to do that for both of us so.

Ann
Wow amazing. Thank you, Grandmother.  What did you call her, Granny? How did you call her?  What was your name for her?

Mark
Well she passed away when I was three, so I didn’t really have any name for her. When I see her, I just kind of, I don’t give her a name at all, I never really have, I just kind of smile and say, hey that’s you.  Really.  So, that’s an interesting.. yeah, I never have addressed her as, her formal name is Esther.  But I never call her by Grandmother Esther or any name.  I just kind of go, it’s you.  I know her by the soul.

Ann
Yes, it’s the feeling of her, the knowing of her.  So, Mark, would you set an exercise, can I ask you to set an exercise for people to try at home? Because at the beginning you talked about seeing people’s auras. 

Mark.
This is a good one. So, I say try to think of a person right now, those of you at home listening.  Pick a family member or someone close to you that you think you can’t, you can’t see their aura, you know, think of that person.  Just, if it’s mom, if it’s dad, if it’s uncle, if it’s brother, sister or romantic partner, just put that word in your head and think of that person.  And just as you said, oh I can’t see their aura, right.  Now visually in your mind or say out loud their name and whatever colour comes to you initially, just keep it.  So, just say the word mom or soozie or Mike or whatever it is and whatever colour comes in just keep it right away, even if it’s just a split second just go with it. Now some of you that just listened to this saw it, and some of you did not see it.  Some of the felt it, some of you know it.  Some of you are like well I didn’t see the colour but if I say well what did you think?  What does your gut say?  Oh it’s green – then it’s green.  Some of the people close to you, you won’t be able to see their colours because they are too close to you.  So even though some out there are listening and they can see colours in the aura clairvoyantly, there is a lot of audience members that can’t see colours clairvoyantly and they just claircognisly no-coloured people.  There are a lot of psychics out there and mediums that just use clairsentience and claircognisance to read the colours.  You can feel colours.  I know it is strange to say that.  They say I feel red in somebody’s aura, they do, what can you say?  They just feel it – clairsentience.  And some of those people who feel colour, are just as remarkable, if not more remarkable than those that can see it.  So that’s a huge misconception about the aura, that you have to see it.  And there’s a lot of times where I don’t see, feel, or know the colour of somebody’s aura. I don’t need the colours to know how to read them, but it is a nice little add-on, you know? So that’s a really good exercise, especially for somebody close to you that you will say I can’t get any colour for this person. Just get their name and instantly if you felt, know, or see the colour, go with it, write it down.  And then the second part to that is sit with that. If you got green, whether you knew it, as a thought, felt it as green, or saw it as green, write down on a piece of paper and just three minutes, five minutes, whatever it is just sit with it for a short period of time and what does that mean to you? To you.  Not what the book says. Forget the book. Colours are not universal. A lot of people write colours are universal, really?  Because here in America, white is used to celebrate and it’s a positive but if you go overseas they use white as grieving, they use it for funerals and wakes, so, we do have this contrast, we don’t always agree on colours.  Green to Ann is not green to Mark.  And that is important because your spirit gave you that colour.  If Ann gets a reading today and someone says, Oh Ann’s aura is blue, and then Mark comes along and says no, it’s red, it doesn’t mean one was wrong.  Colours are not universal and this is very controversial but it’s true because my spirit and my soul gave me that colour for Ann.  But another person’s soul and spirit saw something else and you have to be both right and I’m sure that there is because they can offer unique interest for Ann that could go on to be very helpful for her as well.

Ann
That’s fabulous thank you so much and I’m sure people will be trying that all over the world, that’s fabulous mark. Tell us where you can be found on the Internet. If people want to have a reading with you, they want to get their astrological chart read by you, so tell us what you’re offering, whether you have courses coming up.

Mark
So I’m always teaching and I’m teaching right now and I usually teach every single month, you know, 12 months out of the year.  I teach beginning mediumship, advanced levels, even professional levels of mediumship and psychic development.  I will be teaching astrology at some point.  So all the stuff can be found on my website at www.markthemidwestmedium.com.  My email address is on the website so you can contact me there.  I do offer a lot of different types of readings as well, all through Skype for anyone around the world. There are psychic and mediumship readings that I offer, services.  I offer a lot of different types of astrology readings as well. So if you are willing and able, please contact me there. My passion is demonstrating mediumship, so, um, you know, that’s what I really love to do.  Whether it is in front of an audience, in person or that it is virtually or whatever it is.

Ann
And I know Mark also that you have just been on television.  Tell us about that.

Mark
So yes, I was just on VH1’s Black Ink Crew Chicago, it’s broadcast worldwide, that aired July 13^th 2020.  It was an amazing experience They treated me as a medium with a lot of respect. 

Ann
That’s good to hear. That’s great to hear.

Mark
Yes that was one of the things that I just kept saying to myself.  People were asking me, like, what am I thinking?  The only thing I thought of the whole time was, I can’t believe how well I am being treated.  You know but as a medium I wasn’t told anything. It was called a double-blind, or I call it a double-blind reading where the person doesn’t know me and I don’t know them and that’s usually how we do readings anyways but to then have to go and perform that and illustrate that and then it being broadcast to millions of people around the world, it’s a different level of stress.

Ann
It was a fantastic reading, I have to say, your work was beautiful to watch it was incredible.

Mark
Thank you I really appreciate that. It’s funny too, because you know as a medium I have been through a lot and I’ve done a lot of different types of readings where it’s, you know, virtual, or in front of an audience, so I’m used to different things being thrown at me and you never can prepare, like, there’s no prep, you just go, right? And you just trust yourself. As soon as you sit down your mouth opens to explain it and all your worries go away. I mean, they said to me do you want our help at all?  Like to tell her anything? And I said no I’ve got this. I will tell her what to say and what not to say and all I said is, I just need a yes, no, or I don’t know , all I want from you that’s it, nothing more don’t tell me anything else and I tried to get my students to do that as well when I teach, because you are not helping the medium when you tell them. If they tell you yes, my father was a carpenter in 1975.  Now I am the medium and I can’t use that.  I can’t say that now. So you’re not helping when people are giving a lot of validation it doesn’t help the medium. New mediums believe they go, can I get validation? I just need to know the rest of the story, and I say no.  I don’t teach that way.  But some mediums will say, I want to know the rest of the story I want to know this person I just bought through, and I say no you don’t because next week or the week after that Spirit might come through again and give you more information and now you don’t have to worry about it.  You know, so when I was there, I mean I can’t be more grateful than I am I mean I really am so grateful that they treated me with respect and that is the thing that I will never forget, because there are other occasions where I was asked to do television and I didn’t feel totally the respect was quite there and I didn’t do it because of that. This was an occasion where it was just totally fair, completely fair and that’s all I asked. I said just give me a fair shot here I don’t want anything else. If you get if you give me fairness then this will be great for both, for all of us, and I felt like the post product of that reading illustrated that it was even keel, and it was fair by both parties, I felt. That was the illustration then of course, you know it was an honour. These people did not believe in me. I mean, not in a bad way.  You know, they didn’t know who I was. So, they were like oh my gosh, like, then, they didn’t think, like, I was a scam artist or anything they just didn’t know, so to see them, like, oh my gosh, there is another world out there because of what you were able to give us today and how we are going to thank you, Mark? Just do you that’s how you can thank me.

Ann
It’s a beautiful gift to give to somebody. 

Mark.
Absolutely.

Ann
And also, Mark, you have got a YouTube channel.

Mark
Yes I love my YouTube channel.  It’s my baby. So my YouTube channel, there’s quite a few things on there.  There’s a big astrology, sort of, resource there that I do weekly videos about the current astrology affecting everybody. It’s not sun sign astrology.  This is, we call this mundane astrology.  What I’m talking about affects everybody on the planet.  So I want to bring astrology to the modern age, where it actually can be used to sort of help us and guide us to some degree. But I also have other videos about mediumship there too. And I have created a series of about a dozen videos and it’s called learn mediumship from Mark and I did this because I channelled one day.  I said if I wanted to leave something behind, I would want someone who couldn’t afford a penny to pay for a class, to not be left behind, whether they’re in a Third World country or wherever they are, because I hear that sometimes. That, you know, I don’t have any money and all that and I’m like well, I have something now that nobody can complain about and say that they have no help and hopefully that will be there you know, forever on YouTube and all that but I believe that when I made those twelve videos or so that they were designed to be good enough for anybody who thinks they can communicate with invisible world, to have somehow enough of a nudge and they can go on and maybe unfold on their own.  That’s really, I call it my baby because I absolutely love it.  But I really wanted to give back in some sort of way so the other mediums out there maybe 20 or 30 or 100 years from now will go oh my god, this crazy Mark left behind some videos and I didn’t think anybody cared but it looks like he cared to some degree now I’m not alone with us.

Ann
Yeah that’s fantastic and it’s a brilliant resource for people to go to and they can learn so much from you.

Mark
Thank you so much.

Ann
Yeah, it’s great. Mark thank you so much for coming on Psychic Matters you have shared so much information here with everybody and been so generous and kind and fascinating to talk to you.   Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Mark
Thank you, Ann, I really appreciate this.  I’m so grateful so thank you for having me on here.

Ann
It’s a pleasure.

Well, that was Psychic Medium and Astrologer, Mark The MidWest Medium, doing some incredible work out there in the world.  All the links and resources mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes– plus a full transcription, and those are over on my website www.anntheato.com so head there and you can pick everything up.

I have a training course you might want to join – starting this Sunday 16^th August 2020 – For those of you interested in learning with me online – it’s called How to Build A Strong Psychic Foundation – check it out on my website – it’s £100 – it’s a 4-week short course, couple of hours a week, it’s easy to fit into your schedule – there will be a short talk from me, then plenty of exciting psychic exercises to try out with other students from across the world and time for plenty of feedback and Q&A, so do consider joining me – as I say all details are on my website www.anntheato.com and for those of you listening in the future, who might have missed out on this – keep an eye on ye olde website where I will be announcing all my online courses and I hope that you will consider joining me on one of those.

It just remains for me to say a very big thank you to all of you, I really appreciate you, and thank you so very much for listening.

Have a fantastic couple of weeks everybody, try out the exercise that Mark gave, about feeling and seeing other people’s auras – and let us both know how you got on, over on the Psychic Matters Group Facebook Page.

Until next time… my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to PSYCHIC MATTERS! 

[/expand]