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Text © 2014, 2019, 2021 Shawn Robbins and Leanna Greenaway

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Portions of this book were excerpted from Wiccapedia (2014), The Crystal Witch (2019), and The Witch’s Way (2019) by Shawn Robbins and Leanna Greenaway

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To the seekers and believers, the explorers of the universe, and beyond—you are the light illuminating a world of mystery.

—Shawn Robbins

For Mamma Witch, who has shared so much spiritual knowledge with me over the years, and helped guide me through life’s journey. I owe everything to you.

—Leanna Greenaway

Introduction

Believe it or not, everyone possesses psychic ability. Some might describe it as a good intuition, while others see it as a sixth sense. Whether you are a witchy-poo type or not, we are all born with an inner knowing. Have you ever had a bad feeling about something, but you ignore the warning signs and do the complete opposite? Often you will be proved right and end up saying to yourself, “I know I shouldn’t have done that,” or “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.”

Many witches believe these messages are given to us by our guides in the spirit world when it’s necessary for them to intervene. We could be heading into a situation that isn’t favorable or wander down the wrong path on our earthly journey. At times like these, our spirit helpers will speak directly to our subconscious, so in effect, we might get an odd feeling or have a compulsion to take a different route. It’s like a little seed they plant in our mind or a gentle whisper in our ear.

When they want to steer us away from danger or direct us on the path that is chosen for us, they will communicate with us when we are sleeping so that we awake in a different frame of mind. They prefer to correspond with us when we are in a sleep state because when a human being sleeps, their subconscious is on an altered vibration. This makes it easier for them to connect with us. Clairvoyants and mediums can attain this altered state by achieving a positive meditation or relaxation.

We are all made up of energy, and most of the time, we can tap into and read another person’s vibration. We might get a great feeling around certain people and a sinking or a sense of dread around others. Often in life, we are drawn to those folks who possess energy similar to our own, and this is why we choose to spend our lives surrounded by them. Just make sure that if those warning bells ever start to ring, you take notice!

Opening yourself up to your psychic abilities isn’t easy. It can take many years to perfect, and even then, you will occasionally ignore the warning signs and end up in a situation that isn’t pleasant. What many people don’t realize is that spellcraft can really help in opening up any psychic blocks, leaving you free to receive information from the spiritual plane. If you are already psychic and perform types of divination regularly, you might be better at one practice than another. For example one of us (Leanna) is very adept at reading tarot cards and does well with psychometry, but struggles with the crystal ball, while the other (Shawn) is very adept at seeing into the future, but struggles with finding lost objects or pets. By working some witchcraft into your daily regime, you can strengthen certain abilities which enable you to tune into the task at hand. This book will hopefully give you lots of information to get you started on your journey. You can use so many tools as a crutch to harness your psychic energy, from pendulums to crystals and scrying mirrors to palmistry. Once you become skillful in one field, you can use try and practice with another. The more you work that psychic muscle, the better you will get at it, giving you the confidence to make your predictions with ease.

Chapter 1

Psychic Intuition and ESP

HAVE YOU EVER WISHED THAT YOU COULD SIT RIGHT where you are, in your comfy chair with a nice cup of tea, and know what’s going on with your friends or family who are hundreds of miles away? Some Wiccans actually have the power to home in on the energy of distant places and events, and actually see them, through a skill known as clairvoyance. Others hear voices or impressions through clairaudience or feel energies through clairsentience. These kinds of ESP communications are far more interesting than telephoning your sister who lives down the street, and they’re easy to achieve when you know how.

Even though we are talking about deliberately homing in on people or events that are close to your heart, many Wiccan seers can receive images, sounds, and feelings that they don’t necessarily ask for, and often can’t control, about people they don’t know at all. For these Wiccans (Shawn included), this power can feel like a curse as well as a blessing. First, you can become very burdened with impressions you don’t always understand; second, since most ordinary people tend to be skeptical, it is not always easy to get them to heed any warnings you might give them based on your insight.

This is not to say that we seers don’t value and appreciate our gifts. We just have to learn to hone them, control them as best we can, and know when and how to put them to good use.

PSYCHICS AND SEERS THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Although their methods vary, those with fully developed clairvoyant abilities are able to open their minds and tap into psychic energies to see, hear, or know what others seemingly cannot. A psychic person often gets an overwhelming feeling that something is about to happen or they might receive these messages in a dream. A seer will physically see a vision either behind their closed eyes or in a divining object such as a crystal ball or a mirror.

The term psychic comes from the Greek word psychikos, meaning “of the soul.” In fact, somewhere in your schooling, you probably read or heard about the Delphic oracle, the famed priestess at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, who would deliver predictions that purportedly came straight from Apollo. Was this telepathy? Clairaudience? We will never know . . . but we do know that the Greeks put a lot of trust in these revelations and looked to such oracles to deliver news from the future on a regular basis.

However, historical ESP isn’t limited to the ancient Greeks. The Bible is filled with prophets warning the masses of things to come. Some people listened, some ignored them, and some became true believers when these visions came to fruition. Some believe that religious prophets throughout history received messages from a divine source; others believe that such people were actually receiving messages from the other side. It is possible that these gifted people were receiving some kind of spiritual message that was invisible and inaudible to others. Therefore, it is quite conceivable they possessed some kind of intuitive skill that enabled them to see and hear what wasn’t apparent on the physical plane. Joan of Arc can be seen as an example: although Christians view her visions as divine prophecies, she wouldn’t have been seeing anything without a heightened state of awareness, which can certainly be categorized as ESP.

Nostradamus (1503–66), perhaps the most famous seer in history, began his professional life as a physician in France. After his wife and child died of the plague, he fell apart, to be reborn as a teller of the future. He is, of course, the author of the famed book The Prophecies, which his followers believe has predicted everything from the assassination of Lincoln to the rise of Hitler to 9/11. Some people question whether Nostradamus was clairvoyant or a prophet. There’s no real scholarly answer to this. As far as I’m concerned, prophets are seers, so I would say that he was both.

One famous modern-day American seer was Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), also known as “the sleeping prophet,” since many of his visions came to him while he was resting quietly in a trance-like state. When someone with a problem asked Cayce for guidance, the seer would lie down and put himself into a trance and then report his findings to an assistant who was taking notes at his side. Cayce, who believed firmly that the subconscious mind held information not available to the conscious mind, claimed not to remember his visions or what he had told his assistant, but the accuracy of some of his predictions gained him a large following of supporters.

In 1972, researchers Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ conducted a series of studies on remote viewing at the Stanford Research Institute designed to determine whether seers could give precise information about distant locations or persons. Puthoff and Targ chose random locations and then asked the seers to tune in to those spots and either verbally describe or sketch what they were seeing. Three men (including the famed psychic Uri Geller) were determined to have clairvoyant skills. Of course, some skeptics grumbled and called the experiment a farce, but that is nothing new.

EXTRASENSORY EXPERIENCES

Within each and every one of us is a power far greater than anyone can imagine. This is called a sixth sense, and although everybody has it, not everyone knows how to access it. Think about a time when you just knew what the outcome of an event would be, without a question in your mind. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you were leaning on your intuition. Most of us have natural skills of premonition, but many ignore these visceral feelings, opting to rely on logic and reasoning instead. Those people who have mastered the art of tapping into the sixth sense have a natural ability to recognize otherworldly energies around them.

Just like animals, we are all born with a natural ability to detect when a situation feels “off.” For example, we rarely see wild animals in the path of a tsunami; they usually sense something is amiss and make for higher ground.

This sense of premonition tends to be socialized out of humans, starting from an early age. Little children can innately identify spirits, primarily because they are not long from the spirit realm and often have a guide close by. For kids, it is natural to state, “I see Grandma on the couch,” when Grandma died more than a year ago, but most ordinary families discourage this kind of behavior and put it down to the child being eccentric. Children learn very quickly to suppress these abilities, and over time, because they don’t use it, they lose it.

ESP, or extrasensory perception, is a wide-ranging term often used when talking about a sixth sense. Many other phenomena comprise the sixth sense, too, such as any heightened feelings relating to our other five senses. Here are some of the different kinds of gifts that are involved, and the various energies that people (including you) may be sensitive to:

Clairvoyance

This is the ability to see energies, events, or entities that aren’t visible to most people. Mediums often experience clairvoyance when the spirits of those who have passed on appear during a divination, or when they can envision something that happened to you in the past—or something that is going to happen in the future. Clairvoyants receive visions either while in a state of meditation, while asleep, or while they’re going about their daily business.

Clairalience

Psychic information relayed by scent is clairalience. This is different than a memory being sparked by a smell—we all have a strong connection to certain scents from childhood or strong emotional experiences. Clairalience involves more of a “phantom” scent—something that only the intended recipient can detect. For example, some people experiencing hauntings will say they smell something putrid or, conversely, that they smell perfume or something similarly singular to a nearby spirit. A psychic who helps with police investigations may smell orange blossoms, indicating that the subjects of a manhunt are hiding out in an orange grove. Or, more commonly, you may catch a whiff of your long-dead grandfather’s cologne or cigar smoke, indicating that his spirit is nearby.

Clairaudience

Clairaudience is the ability to hear psychic communications, though it’s not like hearing a low vibration or a high-pitched dog whistle. These may be the voices of spirit guides or messages from spirits who have passed. Some of the voices may not make sense without more information. Why are you hearing an old woman’s voice whenever your friend Mary is visiting? It could be her grandmother who recently passed away.

Claircognizance

Claircognizants don’t hear or see images, and yet they know things that they couldn’t possibly have learned through everyday means. For example, a claircognizant may be able to tell you who your great-great-great-grandfather was, even though he’s never heard the man’s name before and has no background on your family history. The claircognizant himself doesn’t know how this information found its way into his consciousness; it just pops out of his mouth.

Clairsentience or Clairempathy

Clairsentients can assess and feel the energetic fields around people and other beings—animals, plants, or anything with a life force—and shift those energies if need be. People who have this ability very intensely are known as empaths, and they must learn to protect their spiritual space, as it is very easy to become inundated by pain, fear, anxiety, or other negative emotions. Most of us can easily sympathize with other people, but empaths feel the exact same happiness or pain as another person, or even an animal. People with empathetic powers must be careful not to absorb the energies of everyone around them, as this can be overwhelming and, at times, depressing. Psychics with these abilities must sometimes take time away from other people in order to protect and restore their own energy.

Mediumship

There is a difference between ESP and mediumship. All mediums have ESP, but not all people with ESP can communicate with the deceased and so are not mediums. Some mediums’ ability to talk with spirits occurs from childhood; others say they became aware of their skill later in life. Mediums can often see, smell, hear, and feel deceased people and spirits of all forms. People who have true mediumistic gifts are rare. Some profess to have the ability when in fact they might just have a conglomeration of the capabilities listed here. See Chapter 13 for more helpful information.

Precognition

This involves having knowledge of an incident before it happens, whether through a vision or a dream. This is a little different from a premonition, which is the feeling that something good or bad is about to happen. A precognitive soul is someone who says, “Don’t get on that train—it’s going to derail!” Premonition is more like “I have an uneasy feeling about your upcoming trip.” People with precognition have predicted global disasters, plane crashes, and even future presidents.

Telepathy

Telepathy is communicating or sharing visions or feelings with someone without speaking. This is not the same as catching your best friend’s eye in a crowded setting and knowing that you’re both amused by the same thing. Telepathy is knowing that your brother is distressed, even though you live across the country and haven’t spoken to him in a while. See pages 26–29.

THE GIFT OF CLAIRVOYANCE: SHAWN’S STORY

Since I was a child, I have the gift of clairvoyance—a skill that has not always been welcome in my life. Let me tell you my story.

My grandmother, an unusual and lovely woman, sat me down one day when I was very young and said, “Shawn, you know you’re different, don’t you?” I knew that I was, even at that age, but still, because I had no words to describe how I felt or how exactly I was different from other kids, I asked what she meant. She told me I was clairvoyant, explaining, “You know things others don’t. You can see things before they happen. You can read what other people are thinking, can’t you?”

She was right. I could do all of those things, at least sometimes, but being so young, I thought that everybody could! This was the first time my gifts were laid out on the table before me, so to speak, and I had to acknowledge and accept them as something that set me apart from my friends, something that I had and they didn’t.

Just a couple of weeks after this conversation with my grandma, I was playing with my friends when I heard her voice saying good-bye to me, telling me that she’d be seeing me in heaven. You can imagine how upsetting this would be for anyone, let alone a little girl! I ran to my mother and asked what had happened to my grandmother, and I learned that she had been admitted to the hospital. By the end of the day, we got the call that Grandma had passed away.

This is just one of hundreds of messages I’ve received since my childhood, and that time it was very precise. Other times, though, I’ve gotten false alarms. I once believed that someone I knew was going to die in a horrible car accident, and I cried and cried and cried all through the day. I found out later that night that she had arrived home safe and sound, and then I had to face the fact that my premonitions weren’t always correct. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this; I didn’t know if I had been flat-out wrong or if I had misinterpreted what I saw, but I was, of course, relieved that she was unharmed.

This kind of misguided intuition can often happen with psychics. Most people have deep-seated fears for their loved ones at one time or another, but when you have the “gift” it is hard to differentiate between your fear and a real message. The psychic wires can get crossed, and then it’s easy to lose faith in your ability.

How to Relay Difficult Messages

If you have psychic abilities, what should you do when you see something scary or negative in a person’s future? Is it helpful to tell the person, or is that something you should keep to yourself? On the one hand, if you can tell the person about something they can prevent—like getting hit by a bus—it may be wise to give a warning. On the other hand, if you see long-term illness or extreme sadness, it becomes a little more complicated. Should you tell, or should you sit there smiling, as if everything were hunky-dory?

We are believers in telling the truth, no matter what, but you also have to remember that you are not God and you won’t wake up psychic every morning. You have to be tactful and choose your wording very carefully. Also, sometimes the messages we get can be vague or jumbled up, so it’s not always the case that you can clearly see your friend or loved one becoming seriously ill or being hit by a bus. Often, you’ll just get a message that your friend may need to see a doctor for some reason or that they may experience back pain—nothing too scary to foretell—but later you’ll discover how accurate you were when you hear that your friend slipped on ice, hurt their back, and had to see the doctor.

So in the event that you have negative news to report, always be sensitive, and think before you speak. Give a warning without terrifying the life out of your friend, and remember these truths:

• We all have free will. Just because you are seeing something in the future that could happen, it doesn’t mean that it will happen. The future is changing all the time, based on our actions and the actions of other people. It’s like the Butterfly Effect—one small incident can set off a chain reaction of other incidents, so nothing is ever really set in stone.

• The trials in our lives lead us to acquire greater strength and open new doors. Although it does not seem like a good thing at the time, something that seems like a huge tragedy right now—the end of a marriage, the loss of a job—might just be the beginning of a new future. Always give hope and tell people they are learning valuable lessons and being guided by their angels.

• When someone comes to you with a big problem and they have nowhere else to turn, help keep their feet on the ground by telling them that the Divine Creator never gives people anything they can’t cope with. Instill your strength into them and encourage them with new ideas.

When you’re working with your own skills, it’s important to remember that your feelings, and the visions and sound impressions you receive, don’t make things happen. Nothing you see, hear, or sense will be your fault. People with powers of ESP sometimes feel very guilty when their negative premonitions come to pass. Sometimes you can warn people, sometimes you can’t, and often they won’t listen. So take things as they come, use your best judgment as to sharing the information, and then learn to let it go.

Telling What You See

Through years of practice and repetition, I’ve learned how to “call up” visions for other people. If someone comes to me for advice on a particular issue, I can focus enough to “see” what’s going to happen.

For example, if a woman came to me asking whether she should keep seeing a certain man, I would close my eyes and enter into a deep meditative or trance-like state while focusing on the question. A date might pop into my mind, in which case I would tell her to mark her calendar and look for something significant to happen; or it might be a location such as a restaurant, in which case I would probably advise her that it could be the site of a significant night on the town with her gentleman friend; or I might actually see a proposal or a breakup.

Like Edgar Cayce, I tend not to remember the trances or what happened during them. A clairvoyant’s subconscious mind tends to block out our encounters and leave us with a sense of amnesia. This may be a defense mechanism to keep us from getting overly spooked by things that are unexplained. But I’m always happy to assist whenever and wherever I can, and once you come to develop your ability, I know you will be too!

Clairvoyance and Crime Solving

For all the skepticism surrounding ESP, every now and then you’ll hear that a police agency has turned to a clairvoyant for help in cracking a case. Often this is in connection with a missing person, but sometimes a seer will come into a violent crime scene as well.

Seers, whether they consider themselves clairsentient or not, can use, and actually depend on, the energy from the target (in this case, the missing person or the perpetrator) or the crime scene itself to glean valuable information. When I’ve helped the police solve crimes, I have gone directly into the crime scene. It gives off vibrations that help me to envision what went on there and who might be responsible.

When someone commits an act of violence, they leave behind a heap of negative energy. This is kind of like leaving DNA behind, but the authorities can’t dust for energy and bag it up like other evidence. If I can connect with that energy, I can get a read on who this person might be, what their current energetic state might be (are they scared? still angry? dead?), and even where they might be. (Do I see or feel a cold, wet, dark place? Might they be in a boathouse or a shipyard?) This is really a form of clairsentience leading me into clairvoyance.

Likewise, when a person has gone missing, it is helpful for the seer to either go to the scene of the abduction (if it’s known) or turn to psychometry and to physically hold something that belongs to the person. The item, whatever it is, will help the seer connect to the missing person’s current state of energy and perhaps receive a vision of where the person is now.

It is frustrating when skeptics say, “Oh, anyone could give such a vague description of a place!” First, it’s better information than any non-seer could provide; second, a vague description is still better than nothing at all, and it does provide some direction for the authorities.

Most seers genuinely want to share their ability to help; most are not out to get famous or to score their own reality shows. They’ve been born with a skill that can feel like a blessing and a curse, and they want the blessings to far outweigh any negativity they’ve had to deal with. A number of years ago I worked in the government-funded CIA Stargate Project during the Cold War. I trained psychics who, like me, had extraordinary extrasensory perception (ESP). I felt my call to duty had changed from being a prophet of doom to saving the world from harm. We were schooled in the art of remote viewing, receiving training in how to enter the alpha state.

The alpha state is a higher, trancelike state of being achieved through the power of the mind, where the sixth sense is enhanced and psychic abilities reach higher awareness. Entering the alpha state was a skill held by many of the mystics of yesteryear. We hope to enable you to trust and believe in yourself, open your heart and soul, and use your newfound psychic gifts for the betterment of humankind.

Developing Clairvoyance with Your Third Eye

Let’s say that you suspect you have clairvoyant abilities. How can you develop them? Is there a school for seers? There actually are seminars for sharpening this skill, but you can also try to do it in the privacy of your own home.

Experts in the field will tell you that clairvoyance is the result of having a clear, open “third eye.” A little background may be needed if you aren’t familiar with the term: the third eye is part of the body’s chakra system. The sixth chakra, the location of the third eye, is in the middle of the forehead (though it might be higher or lower on some people); it is related to intuition and a higher understanding of the world.

The first thing you can do to improve your clairvoyance is to make sure that your third eye chakra is clear. This can be done through a special meditation for which you’ll need a blue crystal or a gemstone.

MATERIALS

A blue crystal or a gemstone such as azurite, lapis lazuli, or kyanite

1 or more tealight candles

Soothing music

RITUAL

Dim the lights, light the candles, and start playing the music. Now lie down and place the blue crystal or stone on your forehead. Breathe deeply—inhale through the nose as deeply as you can, then blow out through the mouth. Breathe in and out this way for 30 to 60 seconds. Start to focus on the area where the crystal is. Imagine the crystal opening up that space. Maybe you’ll feel a warming or tingling sensation.

When you’re feeling like the space is wide open, make sure you are still breathing deeply. Unfocus your mind and see whatever comes to you. You don’t have to know what the vision is about; you can interpret that part later. For the time being, just be with the vision for the moment.

Here’s where you can also try to develop clairaudient capabilities. While you’re in your deep meditative state, take some time to focus on your ears as well. See if you can hear anything coming to you from the other side.

Blue Mood

To enhance your powers of clairvoyance when you practice, always wear a piece of the royal blue stone lapis lazuli (for example, as part of a necklace or a ring) next to your skin. It can also be worn outside of practice to attract visionary vibrations. Once you get into the swing of tapping into your own clairvoyance, visions of forthcoming events will pop into your mind sporadically. Although at first these visions will just seem like your imagination running away with you, you’ll gain more confidence in your capabilities once they start coming true.

PSYCHOMETRY: TOUCH ME, FEEL ME, READ ME

Psychometry is one form of ESP that some Wiccans use, and one that many people find especially intriguing. It’s the ability to hold an object that belongs to someone else and get a “read” on that person. On pages 20–21, we discussed psychics helping to solve crimes. In such cases, we’ll often be asked to hold something that belongs to a missing person or a suspect in the hope that we’ll pick up a sensation or emotion that will be helpful in the investigation.

It’s quite possible that you’ve experienced psychometry yourself without realizing it.

Have you ever worn a piece of vintage clothing or jewelry and felt anxious or just “off” somehow? It wasn’t because the crinoline was scratching you or the diamond was blinding you; it was probably because the person who wore it before you had the same sense of nervousness. Cloth and metal are “absorbent” elements; clothes and jewelry act like psychic sponges and can soak up vibrations from their wearers. These vibrations—happy or unhappy energies, depending on the owner—often hang around for centuries, so antique objects especially are pervaded with them.

Now, this might send you heading for the hills, but the vibrations can be especially strong if the clothing or jewelry was worn by someone who was dying (or who actually died) while wearing it. This is true only if the person was not at peace about passing to the next plane, though. Clothing and accessories that come from people who are ready to move on are usually cloaked in a sense of serenity and peace.

You should never pass down engagement or wedding rings or wedding gowns to your children or grandchildren if you got divorced or were unhappy in your marriage. It’s asking for trouble!

You can also use psychometry to get a good first impression of a person. Have you ever read the Stephen King book The Dead Zone, which was also made into a film and later a television show? The main character, Johnny Smith, has the ability to touch people and see their future. For him, this usually involves a vision of a fiery death, a nuclear war, or involvement in a heinous crime—but don’t let that turn you off. It’s far more common to use psychometry to get a general feel for someone or for your surroundings than to visualize a dramatic disaster.

So how do you put this psychic sense to work?

1. Practice with a friend. When you meet up for lunch or a shopping date, ask her not to tell you anything about how her day has gone so far, then take her hand as though you’re going to shake it. Close your eyes and focus on the energy you’re picking up.

2. Let your senses really speak to you. Are you picking up a chill? Does your head suddenly ache? Are you feeling warm suddenly?

3. Interpret these feelings. For example, is it possible your friend just got over the flu? Remember that feelings don’t have to be literal, although you certainly could receive something pretty straightforward. You might also receive a sense of general discomfort, which is harder to interpret but definitely gives you an idea of what’s going on with your friend.

As you hone this skill, you can use it to help you gain insight during business dealings and personal interactions. Simply shaking hands with a colleague or associate can give you a heads-up as to what the other person is all about! Find out if your neighbor is on the up-and-up. Know with one (innocent) touch if your blind date is worth your trouble. You can do all this with one hand tied behind your back—you just need the other hand free to do some investigating.

BRAIN TELEGRAMS AND TELEPATHIC MESSAGES

Fans of the Star Wars movies know that the Jedi had some serious mind skills going on, namely, in the form of telepathy—sending and receiving thought waves. Some people call this reading minds, others call it communicating without speaking. Whatever you call it, telepathy is awfully convenient, especially if you’re in a crowded room and you don’t feel like shouting.

We’ve all had our telepathic moments. Maybe you’ve been talking with a friend and known exactly what she was going to say before she opened her mouth, or maybe you’ve both said the same thing at the same time. This is the result of being on the same thought wavelength. As you already know, this is easily achieved with some people (your best friends or loved ones, for example), but not so easily with others (your standoffish boss).

Since you can use telepathy to your advantage, especially in the case of a boss or coworker you just can’t relate to, it is an important skill to have in your psychic toolbox. To learn to send and receive telepathic messages, you’re going to need a willing and open-minded friend, preferably one you’ve shared mind waves with in the past. Once you get the hang of using brainwaves, you’ll be able to work on your own. For now, get together with that friend and follow these steps:

1. Relax. Regular meditation and visualization (discussed later in this chapter and in other chapters) are essential to warming up your telepathic tendencies. There are parts of your brain that need to be open to the possibilities that surround you; if they’re closed, you can forget about picking up or sending messages through the ether. So before you begin, allow time for you and your lovely assistant to sit back and chill your minds for ten or fifteen minutes.

2. Decide which of you will be the sender and which will be the receiver. For the sake of this discussion, you’re going to be the sender.

3. When you’re both relaxed, visualize an image that you want to send. Let’s say you’re transmitting the thought of a basketball. Really make it real in your mind: the perfect roundness, the knobby, rubbery material, even the smell. It’s best to start with an image instead of a thought, because an image is one compact package that isn’t subject to getting lost in translation, the way a phrase might be. When you perfect your skill, you’ll be able to send and receive thoughts as well.

4. Picture a tube running between your brain and your friend’s. Now, send that basketball down the tube. Hold the picture clearly and steadily in your mind as your friend retrieves the image.

This technique takes practice to perfect. Even though you and your pal might be similarly minded, you haven’t been purposely accessing these parts of your minds up to this point. So be patient, pour one glass of wine if you like, and have fun with it! (Drinking more than one glass can dull your senses.)

Once you really get the hang of telegraphing with the mind, put it to use when you need it most: in your yearly review at work (send the message “I’m a great worker, and you need to pay me more!”); on a hot date (try “Notice how beautiful and smart I am!”); or even when you take your car in for service (something along the lines of “You are going to be honest and not overcharge me for this work!”). Try to put it to use in as many everyday situations as you can and just wait for the benefits to come back to you. Keep in mind, though, that negative or dishonest thoughts should never be telegraphed—this can invite negative energy and create bad karma.