“New Agers can often be a precious breed of born-again goody-goodies. They are unbelievably delusional about their own spirituality, fully believing they’re the reincarnation of Julius Caesar or Cleopatra” (Karl Wiggins)

New York City in the 1990’s was in a period of reinvention; the city was exiting the Yuppie domination of the 80’s, where money had its own language and the Gordon Gekko mantra of “Greed is Good” permeated the business and social strata.  It was a time that bore witness to Rudy Guiliani transforming a seedy Times Square into a family-oriented version of a Disney adventure, and law and order were once again welcomed, setting the pace for the new decade.   And for those who were disoriented by the change, there was the New Age to provide comfort; a neopagan pantheon within the grit of the city that offered spiritual guidance, ancient wisdom and sage advice, all by virtue of a fortuitously positioned tarot card. 

I was lost to myself in the 90’s as I descended from the whirlwind that embodied the 80’s, a time when charting a course for the new decade of my life should have felt natural and orbital but instead presented as disjointed and muddled.  I was seeking answers with a twist – enough weightiness to gain my trust and formulate next steps, with a dose of rabbit pulling from a hat to shoo away the mundane. 

I took full advantage of every metaphysical discipline being offered.  I became a Reiki Level II practitioner, studying the Japanese symbols that are believed to transfer energic healing to a body all through the hovering of a hand, but instead put me into a state of ‘Convergence Insufficiency,’ as if were watching Albert Einstein write mathematical formulas on a chalkboard while having ingested magic mushrooms.  I was familiar with the city’s popular psychics and mediums by first name and was a frequent customer of the “Gypsy Tea Room” on Lexington Ave., where 20-minute card readings were the Jiffy Lube of Fortune-telling.   I submitted myself for a past life regression session with a well-known hypnotherapist who was lauded and pricey, only to discover that one of my past lives played out like an episode of “Little House on the Prairie,” a “Pioneers Gone Wild” version.

I was a smart woman being led by a twit of an alter ego.  That is, until a middle eastern snake charmer roused me out of a fantastical slumber and changed it all through a close call with the insane. For anonymity, I’ll call this man “Dali,” although if he’s still alive in 2026, he’s older than a sequoia redwood.  Dali taught a metaphysical healing course involving “rays,” from what Universe I couldn’t say.  He promised that these rays, colored and numbered, possessed unique healing powers transmitted from other-worldly beings, and if memory serves, My Favorite Martian may have been among them. 

The real danger emerged when I allowed Dali to come into my family circle as my mother was hospitalized, in the late stages of her cancer journey.  Dali had pledged to impart his special powers onto her body so that she would rebound in a magnificent way.  In a scene that will forever be scorched in my brain and painfully lodged in my conscience, Dali entered her hospital room, called her “Mother” with an exclamation point, and started to flap his arms around her bed like an overweight Pterodactyl searching for a lizard egg. After one flap too many, he abruptly finished his prehistoric dance, as if he had become bored reading the subtitles of a foreign film.  My mother passed shortly thereafter.  It was, and remains, a grotesque reminder of the charlatans who walk among us and prey on the vulnerable and distressed.  

I’m grateful to say these days I’m embedded in my faith and trust in the Lord, which provides all the comfort, stability and answers I seek.  I still believe there’s much to learn throughout the cosmos and science, and the supernatural remains operational in the business of awe. But I know better than to think it’s found in the flip of a card, the natal chart of a birth sign, or even an escaped mental patient who charges hundreds of dollars as they attempt to convince you that the color orange shooting from your middle finger is the answer to all infirmity.

Seek the truth and it will appear.