One Time At Medium Camp.

Eleven years ago, I won a mentorship with James Van Praagh.

For those of you who don't know, he's an internationally famous spiritual medium who's also a best selling author, producer, TV personality and screenwriter.

He was a Co-Executive Producer on The Ghost Whisperer and often brought it up in class. At the time I entered the contest for the mentorship, I was in a place where I wanted to understand more about what was happening to me personally as a channel and of course in regards to the esoteric realm. I was searching for validation on some of the things that I was seeing, feeling, hearing beyond books.

I also wanted to be work on my delivery. Sometimes in session, my words failed me.

I didn’t always deliver the way that the TV shows did which was coined “evidential mediumship”. The jewelry the deceased wore, a favorite shirt, the way they parted their hair. TV shows looked one way but my delivery was and still is often in reference to relationships and what the dead were are actually saying to me, what I can ‘hear’ them say.

For example, I related to a grieving mother that her daughter was happy she was wearing her favorite pair sandals to our session (I pointed to the clients feet) and that she wanted her Mom to make the most of all of her wardrobe. 

Other phantasmagoric spiritual things were ramping up at that time. Deities and Angels were showing up frequently. I had an experience with three light beings in my bedroom one night that presented themselves as “Pledian”. I mostly wanted to know I wasn’t the only one. I thought for sure I needed world famous medium validation.

JVP & I had four, one on one internet sessions. One in which I would perform a reading for him. He was not easy on me. He actually pissed me off quite a few times to be honest. During his reading, Edgar Cayce, a renowned spiritualist medium, healer who would trance diagnose and treat people - was the first energy I picked up on. I was floored! His response ‘So what!

He always comes.’

Who else is here?

After reading my biography, JVP said he had a huge problem with the paranormal work I did. He insisted "it wasn’t real" and that I "stop it right away"if I wanted anyone to take me seriously. Gulp.

At that time and up until that point, that work, the equipment, those digital files the voice recordings- was how I knew I wasn’t mentally insane! The crews who would share the experiences with me as we would go through them together, we couldn't all be mad. Was he kidding me? I mean I know we just met. Was this his sense of humor? I was utterly dumbfounded he had the gall to tell me that it wasn’t real. Was I hallucinating the past decade? Which parts of what we were doing then - which parts were real?

Was Edgar Casey less real or valid as spirit because he "always comes through?"

Then, two weeks after having telling me to cease with my PI work,

James was promoting a television special; a paranormal investigation at the

Winchester House in San Jose California.

What kind of bull$hit?... .^%$ .. $#@%nkn ...n^$#! Are you FKM?

After the online portion of the mentorship, I got to spend time at Omega Institute for being one of the chosen. JVP was nice at first when everyone was pouring in but day two, it was knives out.

He was so condescending to me in front of the entire group and more than once that students, plural, noticed and said something to me when the workshops were over.

I could feel myself, retreating into myself. I wanted to be alone and not speak to anyone. I looked to him to help me fly and he clipped my wings, repeatedly. I came home a bit defeated but poured myself into my work until I lost my friend to suicide two years later. Looking back I can't help but call out my experience as some capitalistic, patriarcal, mysoginistic, fuckery. I did however make some deep connections at OMEGA I keep to this day, sisters from another mister if you will. And my feminine rage toward anyone who is that condescending to someone else's gift is very real. He taught me HOW NOT to teach my own students

especially now at Magick school.

I never not want to lead from a place of love and understanding with people who are sighted or are open channels looking to find their voice, or their bearings between the worlds. This experience of course if one of the many reasons I started Magick School with a focus on collaboration, nurturing, and community care.

Not some hierarchy, pyramid scheme old school quackery. F THAT NOISE. Death to the patriarchy. Should had me sign an NDA. James. Anyway. Come to our next Magick School class: Intro To Astrology. Nicole Tomassini is a powerful, potent teacher of the cosmos.

I vetted her by getting a Chiron return reading and she and it was just the medicine

this mid life crisis mama needed. I have a better understand of what's going to go on and when to bob and and when to weave. Sign up at VenusRisingInc.com

XOXO - MG.

James Van Praagh to me felt like capitalist patriarchy trying to control my psychic experiences. My gifts were no longer my own. They had to fit into a certain box or they were not correct. It was so generic and so commercial. Evidential mediumship felt like fast food spirituality.  James was the Wizard of Oz trying to pull all the strings, and we were his lollipop guild buying into and promoting his branded version of spirituality.