Paragnostic falls from her faith

Previously published in VROUW Magazine.

I bumped into him in the stairwell. The old man with his drab face and tawdry brown rib trousers. The staircase was so narrow that I pressed my back against the banister to avoid touching him. As he passed me rakishly, I smelt a horrible smell of corpses. I woke up crying and cried, 'Mummy! The neighbour is dying!'

Two weeks later, the housing association emptied his flat and put his belongings in the bulk waste. Neighbour had died. So I had had a prophetic dream. It confirmed for the umpteenth time the psychic ability my grandmother said I possessed.

BREAKING

I grew up in a family where the paranormal played an important role. My paternal grandparents were convinced spiritualists and members of a spiritualist association (Harmonia) where séances were held with great regularity, which my father also attended at a young age. When my father got into a relationship with my mother - who herself comes from a down-to-earth family - he also wanted to introduce her to his faith and took her to a paranormal evening.

My mother was curious, so she placed a picture of her father on the big table. Sure enough, that photo was chosen from countless others by the psychic on duty. He told her that her father had a scar on his stomach and that one of her brothers had marriage problems. My mother was impressed. One of her brothers was indeed often quarrelling with his wife and back home, her father was indeed found to have a scar on his abdomen from an appendectomy. My mother was converted. She now also believed in the paranormal. For what this psychic had told her, he simply could not know!

So my mother also converted. And so later, as their daughter, I was also taught that ghosts exist, that after you die you go to the afterlife, that summoning ghosts is dangerous, that you can even get possessed and haunted by evil spirits. Of course, I swallowed everything whole. I didn't know any better. From childhood, I was confronted with this. At home, at parties and birthdays, at births and funerals. Where not actually. My grandmother regularly told me I was mediumistic. Clairvoyant. And if you are told this often enough as a child, you automatically start to believe it.

When I was 15, my grandmother taught me to lay and read tarot cards. Within six weeks, I knew all 78 cards by heart. Fifteen years later, I developed a tarot course to teach interested people the meanings of the cards as well. I put this course on my site and got one positive response after another. It resulted in my first booklet (The Tarot in Brief) and expanding my website into a home practice where I did tarot and photo readings for many people for ten years. And even house cleansings, aura readings and healings, because I had learnt that too by now.

Piskijker

Word of mouth went fast. More and more people - both friends and strangers - were ringing my doorbell for a consultation. My partner, on the other hand, had nothing at all to do with the paranormal. He left me alone but, when asked, did not hide what he thought of my paranormal experiences. And because his arguments sounded quite logical to me, I decided to write a piece and post it - to gauge reactions - on a popular forum.

I knew it! The criticism and accusations towards me were unrelenting. People not only claimed I was stupid for believing in such nonsense, but also accused me of fraud, quackery and someone even called me a "piss viewer". Excuse me? On the contrary, I thought I was doing a lot of good for a lot of people. And what about quackery? On the contrary, I always advised my clients to consult a doctor above all when they came to me with questions about physical complaints, illnesses or diseases.

But the hatred of psychics was apparently deep and while most of the "commenters" blanked unsubtly, there was one person who did bother to substantiate his response at length. His arguments struck me as very logical which immediately triggered me to delve more into the history of the paranormal. Its origin, rise and finally its demise. From then on, I had no doubts.

Sobering

Of course, the information I found on the internet was diametrically opposed to what I had believed all my life, but on the other hand, I found these theories a lot more credible than my family's explanation of the paranormal. Little by little, everything fell more and more into place and I began to understand better and better where the aversion to psychics came from. But then how had I been 'reading' people all this time if there was no clairvoyance involved?

I took a random photo from a magazine and looked at it intently. For the first time in my career as a psychic I analysed my own working methods. What was I looking at, what was I paying attention to, and how was I mapping someone's character just by looking at someone? How could it be that my dreams sometimes came out, how did I talk to deceased people and why did it seem the tarot (almost) always correct? The conclusion was sobering... Everything turned out to be based on faith, expectation, human knowledge and experience. And human intuition. Which, therefore, everyone possesses.

Voltreffer

But how did the psychic my parents visited at the time know about my mother's brother's marital problems and her father's scar? I am now of the opinion that it was a lucky hit. In the large families of the time, chances were that one of those children had relationship problems. A scar on the abdomen was also a common sight. And my prophetic dream? Of course, I was already afraid of this surly gentleman. He made an unhealthy impression and at least once as a child, consciously or unconsciously, I thought, 'That man will probably die soon.' And everything you think and see during the day is linked by your brain at night and processed in dreams.

Sometimes people ask me, "How come you don't believe in the paranormal at all anymore?" Frankly, I am amazed myself at how sober (and sceptical) I have become. My faith was worth so much to me all these years. I drew so much support and strength from it. But remarkably, now that I no longer believe any of that, I have more inner peace than ever. My parents, too, are at peace with it. They leave me the free choice at all times to believe in something or nothing, which I think shows the most pure and unconditional love that transcends any kind of religion.

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Creative psychology

My name is Nathalie Kriek. Although I worked as a psychic in my own practice for more than ten years and did the annual predictions for ParaVisie and Hart van Nederland for three consecutive years, I have completely abandoned my belief in the paranormal and now mainly explain my work as 'creative psychology'. I certainly do not claim that there is 'nothing' after this life, as no one can say this with certainty. I still hope there is 'something'. But although things sometimes happen that cannot be explained scientifically, this unfortunately still does not prove that there is an afterlife or life after death per se.

Well, creative psychology instead of psychic gift. How does that work in a tarot consultation? During a tarot consultation, my clients' subconscious reacts to the images and things I tell them, creating a clear insight into their personal situation. Remarkably, this works even better than when I was still under the assumption of being psychic. How I look at all this now, I am happy to tell you in the paranormal blog.

Source: WOMAN