Book review: Psychics, Healers & Mediums: A Journalist, a Road Trip, and Voices from the Other Side
Curious about professional intuitives? Skeptical? This book is a fun ride through the world of the metaphysical by a journalist who goes deep with about 10 top psychics, healers and mediums.
Psychics, Healers & Mediums: A Journalist, a Road Trip, and Voices from the Other Side by Jenniffer Weigel is part diary, part travel memoir but mostly a deeper dive into the minds of about ten of the country’s leading psychics, energy healers, intuitives and mediums.
Author Weigel’s credentials as a journalist, Emmy-award winning former TV reporter and anchor make this book both credible and highly entertaining as she goes behind the scenes with the intuitive professionals she interviews, organized in a chapter by chapter basis. She weaves a fun tale as she goes on the road to interview these professionals, even getting readings from them and asking her own personal questions. Weigel also conducts interviews on her own established podcast.
There are some big names in this book. Fans of the Lifetime network reality show “Seatbelt Psychic,” will know medium Thomas John. Colorado-based medium Rebecca Rosen, who also had a show on the Lifetime network several years ago called “The Last Goodbye,” will be familiar to many readers. Others include author, psychiatrist and empath specialist Judith Orloff, M.D.; channeler and scholar Paul Selig; and medical intuitive and author Caroline Myss.
Asking questions in the here and now
The book is written in the first person, with Weigel as the lead character, and there’s a definite story arc as the author generously shares her personal life and spiritual journey with the reader. It’s this personalized context—while pulling off detailed reporting on the intuitive professional’s background, specialties and viewpoints—which make this book rich with content. There is a lot of depth to the answers in the book from Weigel’s compelling questions. For example, she asks Midwest-based psychic Echo Bodine about her own angel guides, and if a person’s free will can derail later what a psychic says what might happen to someone.
Again, while the book is entertaining, Weigel is not afraid to go deep. For example, in Chapter Six, she asks Paul Selig in her interview with him about belief systems and how they might impact our ability to manifest, and Selig gives a considered answer about our personal “frames” or “constructs,” as our outlook or mindset which shapes us. We see what we want to see, and what we are in agreement with.
Selig goes on to share the opinion of his guides on this topic of manifesting when he says: “We’ve gotten a little too smug in the new age to think it’s all about us or ‘it’s about me and my stuff and I’m creating my own reality.’ We’re in a shared reality and a shared construct so if you can see it on the other side of the world, you’re in agreement to it on some level of consciousness.”
In the end, Weigel achieves her purpose of investigating the world of mediums, psychics and healers to report on it so that others could avoid wasting their time and money. Grief is a leading reason why people seek out readings from mediums and psychics. Weigel was led to explore this world of professionals after her own early intuitive experience as a kid and later as an adult, years after the death of her father. Generally, and as the profiles in this book with mediums suggest, people find relief and comfort after hearing from their loved ones on the other side.
While the book is not a step-by-step guide on how to evaluate a so-called professional in this sometimes questionable field, Weigel gives readers an idea of how to know a psychic’s talents are real, and not based on Googling you to get answers. In many cases, psychics are reporting information that cannot be found on the web or through other means. And like life itself and one’s personal journey, choosing to hire or engage a psychic, medium or healer who puts their shingle out there, so to speak, is what you make of it.
Audiences for Psychics, Healers & Mediums
The book is for the curious and “healthy skeptics,” as Weigel herself described in an interview with her local ABC station in Chicago.
Psychics, Healers & Mediums: A Journalist, a Road Trip, and Voices from the Other Side (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2017) would also make a great gift for those curious about psychics, mediums and the possibility of nontraditional healing, suited for the casual reader and those new to all of these subjects.
