Light and Dark: Astrologer Patricia St. James

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Patricia St. James is late to our interview.  She was caught in Los Angeles traffic after seeing a physical therapist.  She has been having back problems from a car accident a few months back.  It was a hit and run.  Probably because of her age (she’s an elder), the guy assumed she was frail and sped off after slamming into her.

“Thank goodness I’m a psychic person,” she says in a whispery, childlike voice, one slow and determined, each word carefully chosen (it kind of reminds me of the psychic lady in Poltergeist, if that gives you a better idea).  “Because I found his car a week later.”

Busted.

We get to talking.  I want to know all about her past.  In her seventies, she is the oldest person I’ve spoken to, and she trained herself prior to the New Age Movement that made this subject matter more palatable to the masses.  Being raised in an extremely closed-minded and abusive family environment sent her on a path of seeking.  She had been so severely punished for her “knowing” that by the time she was fifteen, she had investigated every known religion looking to understand her own abilities and find a home for herself.  The “blind faith” of mainstream religions just didn’t work for her, so she abandoned them and went to the fringe instead.  She says her God has answers; answers she found in metaphysics.

She’s known primarily as an astrologer,a successful one who has done plenty of TV and radio. She tells me astrology, tarot and numerology just confirm things she already knows intuitively.  They’re just back-up.

She tells me with total certainty that we all have destiny paths, ones she can sense and also see in astrological charts, and that things are mostly fated.  We have some latitude insofar as the choices we make. We can choose to be kind.  We can choose to be conscientious.  We can choose to have a good attitude, to have a nice day when we wake up in a bad mood. Day to day, we make plenty of decisions, but things like breast cancer, for instance, are points of fate. She says it has been written; most things have.

Wait, I say, the guy ODing somewhere is following his life path?

Yes, she says, he is.  She quotes the Stones: “Just as every cop is a criminal/Every sinner a saint.”  Each person has within them the unlimited potential for both the wonderful and the base, the light and the dark, she says, and don’t ever forget that.

Later when I’m watching Boardwalk Empire, someone will question the conflicted and sociopathic Jimmy as to why he is the way he is, and he will reply, “I am what time and circumstance have made of me.”  I will think to myself that the theme is repeating itself.

I ask her about young souls vs. old souls.  Does she think people who walk criminal paths are younger souls? Her “no” is so intense and immediate that I feel terrible for asking the question.  The life path a person is on has nothing to do with the maturity of their soul.  An old soul is just as capable of being a drug addict or a criminal as a young one.  On the other hand, she says many people walking around are like 3 year olds throwing constant tantrums.  These younger souls cannot discern good from bad, and aren’t interested in seeking knowledge with regard to their destiny paths.  Their lack of curiosity and willingness to accept things at face value is the true mark of  young soul, not the outside issues that are beyond our scope.

Our life path is decided by a combination of factors, such as lessons we need to learn and karma.  This is why we should have the utmost compassion for people walking very difficult roads. This is perhaps the most profound thing I take from Patricia, this sense that we are all capable of many things, that we are cogs in a machine, all with a purpose.  Her take is that understanding what’s in store for us can help ease the pain of what we cannot control, and can lead us to make better decisions about the things we can.

This perspective makes it impossible to dismiss someone as a loser or a douche bag, to minimize their experiences, and instead forces us to examine the nuances and circumstances that have led to certain behaviors.  We come into the world with a soul that has been informed by all of its lifetimes, and is further molded by experience in this life, but we can all be reduced and diminished by pain and struggle.

The rest of what she says falls in with what most of the psychics have told me: the other side is an amazing place.  She has experienced tremendous love and kindness there.  We have guides and angels.  She, like Fahrusha, believes these are likely inter-dimensional beings.  She also believes in soul mates, but says not everybody has one, and that if you meet them, you will know it.  Again, she speaks of Earth as school; kindergarten, actually.  When we die, we go to grade school, high school and so on.  We experience love, peace, harmony.  People who have been abused or abusive are loved until they again have the potential to be loving and generous. This is the resting period between lives.  She believes in past lives because she does past life regressions and has come up with verifiable names and dates.  She doesn’t hesitate.  That, she knows is true.

Patricia St. James has filled me up with sadness and compassion about the human condition we are all managing.  In her ethereal yet somehow edgy way, she has schooled me about judgment, and humbled me, too.  Patricia has reminded me of the simple and apparent truth that we are all connected.

Patricia St. James can be contacted at patriciastjames.com.

Earth School, with Astrologer Karen Thorne

I love Karen Thorne.  I don’t know whether it’s her intellectual savvy, or the fact that her daughter is an amazing actress (Callie Thorne of Rescue Me and Burn Notice), or the way she conceptualizes, drawing references from a hundred fascinating sources.  Whatever it is, something about her makes me want to scramble onto her lap, and have her explain the universe to me.

She obliges in short order, although without the scrambling.  That would just be inappropriate.

Karen got her start as an astrologer in Boston in the sixties.  Being accosted by spirits in the dead of night, she had been waking her terrified roommate (granddaughter of Estee Lauder)  with her screams for weeks.  After hearing about a psychic of high repute, she decided to go and see her, so that the woman could tell her how to stop seeing these disturbing things.  When she got there, the woman informed her that not only would she not be getting rid of any spirits, but that Karen was to become her pupil, and join her every Friday night to learn astrology and self-protection, among other things.

The woman turned out to be famed astrologer, Isabel Hickey, the American answer to Madame Blavatsky.  With the beatnik movement in full swing, Karen spent her time with beat poets, writers, and explorers of all kinds, as she developed her craft.  Eventually she joined a group of astrologers from MIT, who took a more scientific approach, and with whom Hickey followers had some hostility.  By blending the two vastly different techniques, Karen was able to create her own hybrid version of astrology, which is what she practices today.

She will never give a reading without a chart in front of her.  Every psychic has the modality that works for them, and for her, the chart is the gateway that makes sense.  The chart tells a story, and as the reading progresses she will see images in it, hear voices, and feel things that relate to the client.

Karen reading for novelist Gigi Lavangier

Karen tells me that there are seven astral planes, and that the lowest of these is the one that we generally have access to. It is filled with useless spirits and information that can make a lot of noise.  The major difference between a psychic and crazy person is the ability to sift through that information to find what is relevant to a particular person or situation.  Other than that, she believes it is much the same experience.  For her part, she calls on Jesus to protect her, to eject all spirits and information that are not of the highest quality so that she can impart only truth.  At first, being non-denominational, this made her uncomfortable.  Despite any reservations, Isabel Hickey told her to go straight to the highest level, and Jesus is it.  She says she might be surrounded by ten spirits, and when she invokes him, eight disappear, and she is left with the two who have purpose in the matter at hand.  Now she’s used to it, of course, and calls on him with ease.

Since she sees spirits, I want to know whether she differentiates  between a spirit, a guide, or an angel. A spirit, Karen explains, is a being that is not occupying a physical body.  Guides, ghosts, and even people who are astrally projecting (sometimes without even knowing it) are included in the mix.  Those in distress or who are having strong thoughts about her will often appear, or she will hear them calling to her, and the manifestation is really no different in either case.  She cautions psychics against going into the world without proper training.  You can be inundated with information that ultimately means nothing, and it can be taxing and confusing.

According to Karen, we actually live in heaven.  There, we have our favorite dog, our favorite blankie, our room and our family.  When we prepare to take on an earthly form, we do so in the same way as when we leave home and go to college.  We are excited and a little afraid, too, since we’ll have to forget everything we know when we get there. We meet with a guidance counselor, decide on a major, and areas of emphasis.  We also have certain things from past lives that have to be corrected and balanced out.  The opportunity to do all of these things, to learn all of these lessons is built into our charts.   Jung says that when we enter our body, we are fulfilling a contract we have made with space and time, that we cross the river of forgetfulness when we are born, and step into our chart.

Sometimes we are bad students, of course, and lose focus.  Karen says we all come in ready to work, but just as in school some kids don’t come back after Christmas break, so it is in life; people quit, drop out.  She says there is no worse punishment than the disappointment we experience when our life is over, and we realize the opportunities we squandered, the lessons we failed to learn.  Lessons can be learned in two ways: one is the “pedestrian way”, where we learn through experience.  The other is through realization and understanding.  A shift in consciousness can clear a lot of karma, and make way for rapid growth.

Every person on earth begins with a divine mission.  Karen loves to steer people toward it, and help them to better understand themselves.  In some cases, people can complete one mission and begin a whole new one part way through their lives while still occupying the same body.  There is usually a pluto aspect that presents in these cases, indicating a completion followed by a new beginning.

We begin the first day of this life at the same point of progression  we had achieved on the last day of our last life.  This accounts for a scenario where three children are born into the same dysfunctional family, and yet only one comes out on top.  It’s evolution, development of the soul.  Some of us are PhDs, and some of us are kindergarteners, I guess.

On love and soul mates, she says we’re here to work, all of us, and that we have soul mates, and are occasionally permitted a life of joy with them, but really it’s not about that.  Sometimes they’re just around to teach us. She says if you work at a factory to make parts for airplanes, but you come in high heels and obsess over sex, you’re sort of missing the point. So it is with relationships.  In unhealthy relationships, she says there is balancing at play.  Maybe in your last life, you died under someone’s thumb, and now you’re here to right that wrong. In such a case, the situation can be damaging and stressful.  Once you extricate yourself from it, her philosophy is not to be too hard on yourself.  If you wish you had been stronger, and you didn’t do exactly as you hoped, remember this: if you survived it, you won.

You can’t worry about those things too much.  It’s just school, after all.

Karen Thorne has been a highly respected practicing astrologer and psychic for many years.  She writes horoscopes for Gotham City and Hamptons Magazines.  Being a gemini, the dual sign, she has 2 houses, 2 cars, 2 dogs, 2 daughters, writes 2 horoscopes, went to 2 colleges, and had 2 husbands.  Her daughter Lily is a writer, videographer, and documentary film maker, and Callie is an actor. She has a global clientele, including actors, musicians, writers, therapists and politicians, most notably Bill Clinton, and John Kerry.  She currently lives in the west village and can be reached at http://www.karenthorne.com.

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