Interview with Jacqueline Mathers - Medium

Interview with Jacqueline Mathers – Medium
Interviewed by Paul Dale Roberts, HPI General Manager, Ghostwriter, Paranormal Investigator
www.hpiparanormal.net
 
Question:  Tell me something personal about yourself, your family life, schools you went to? 
 
Answer:  I was born in Pennsylvania, but most of my life I have lived in Sacramento with the exception of brief periods in Arizona and the North Bay Area of California.  I am a mother, grandmother and I work in the field of education.  I attended private and public schools in the Sacramento area.
 
Question:  Why do you call yourself a medium?
 
Answer:  I am clairsentient and clairaudient.  I have the ability to feel.  I get confirmation through temperature changes or goose bumps.  I sometimes can pick up the physical pain someone is feeling.  As for clairaudience, it is the ability to hear psychic impressions or ‘confirmations’. The voice I hear is a young male, so I am thinking it is Saint Michael, my favorite angel.
 
Question:  Tell us about some of your paranormal experiences.
 
Answer:  I encountered something on 63rd Street at a home I bought back in the 90’s.  At the time, there was a television show on NBC called “The Other Side”. It was on every mid-morning Monday through Friday. My daughter had a “Tinkerbelle” wand that was battery operated but broken and unusable in her bedroom. This was the method of contact with this side.

This one day, I sit down to watch this show and the thing starts playing the musical tune programmed in it. Odd, I think, because I knew it had no power source, so I get up to go see what’s going on and it stops playing. OK, I think, I am hearing things. So, I go back into the living room with the kids. I start watching the show and it starts playing again. I go back into the room and I get this chilly feeling and the hairs on my arm start crawling. I say out loud, “Is this Grandma?”, for some reason thinking it was she who was trying to get in touch with me. No answer. I go back in the living room and just as my seat hits the couch cushion, it bleeps once. I go back into the room and I say, “OK, I don’t know who you are but this is my house now.” My daughter had followed me and asks me from the doorway who I was talking to. I just told her I was talking to myself out loud. I later found out a few things about the house and the prior owners. There had been a divorce and subsequently a suicide that had taken place somewhere else. Maybe it was their spirits’ way of ‘checking me out’ to see who the new residents were.

That was probably the one really big thing I have to share but in reality, I should think of all of them as ‘big things’. I have had lots of minor experiences and so has my daughters. We take it as being normal in our family. I know that one of my daughters will follow in my footsteps but she hasn’t begun to fully realize it yet.

Question:  How did you learn that you were a medium?

Answer: I have always ‘known’ things about people. It is the impressions I get from being in their presence. I was that precocious child that blurted out things at the most inappropriate times – how I now know what that can do to a parent as I had kids of my own!

The Dell Horoscope magazine was a steady read in my young years, kind of like other kids read the comic books. There were things we ‘just did’ around the house that I can now see from my training in Southern folklore that were of a hoodoo or rootwork nature. These are things more than just throwing salt over your shoulder. I was told my great grandmother was a Native American Herbal or Medicine Woman and belief in spirits were the norm for me. My mother became quite upset when I began my studies in Santeria. As much as I can figure, since my family hails from Southwestern Louisiana, it must have triggered some folkloric or voudou memories or there was a really unpleasant experience with that.


Question:  How do you help people?

Answer: When I do a tarot card reading with Obi divination, I give the client various levels of methodologies that they can apply or consider to rectify their personal issues they are experiencing. Depending on their problem and where their comfort level is in familiarity (due to their culture) I can either talk to you like a mother or big sister, whip you up a good luck mojo bag, or make an offering at the river to the Goddess Ochun for your love life. Obi divination is a binary system in order to get a “Yes” or “No” answer to questions being posed. In ritual, we use four pieces of fresh coconut, but you can also use cowrie shells, which I use with the tarot reading. It is really quite accurate when you pose the questions right.


Question:  You were telling me about the religion of Santeria, can you elaborate about your connection to this religion?

Answer: I was drawn to it after the birth of my last child. I kept wondering why the candle section of the neighborhood Luckys (a supermarket chain at the time) was cleaned out every weekend. It led me to Mr. Keys and his candle shop and from there, into the world of Santeria. Santeria is the synchronization of Catholicism and the indigenous African nature based belief system of Ifa and Lucumi. I am an aborisha; a practitioner that is not fully initiated. I have to do my final and largest initiation. I have been affiliated with the religion for over 13 years.

Question:  How can someone contact you?   Do you have a website?

Answer: I have several. For tarot readings, one can go to http://www.tarotbyjacqueline.com. I also write candle spells and other topics related to candles on a free informational site, http://www.free-candle-spells.com. I also offer spiritual supplies such as oils and more at another site at http://www.lucky13clover.com .

Question:  How can someone make an appointment with you for a reading?

Answer: They can e-mail me or call my number on the website. I do readings in my home for local clients, telephone readings for those living in the United States and I do written readings for international clients.

Question:  You have been experiencing ectoplasm phenomenon, can you explain?

Answer: The question about ectoplasm came about because I have done a reading for a woman twice now in the past four months and both times not only have I became extremely exhausted, but I get a feeling that I have to ‘work my own spirit’ and so I go out into the back yard and I sip a little white rum and smoke a cigar (both crucial to work in Santeria) and I can cough up a stream of clear-and-yet-foamy slime that I was jokingly calling ‘ectoplasm’. After watching a movie called “The Haunting in Connecticut”, it got me thinking about what it was and that is why I contacted H.P.I.


Question:  Are you going to any psychic fairs and if you are, which ones?

Answer: Out of respect of the other producers, I do not read at their local fairs anymore because I am also a producer of a metaphysical fair called the Holistic Healing Expo in Elk Grove, CA (http://www.holistichealingexpo.com). To read at their fair wouldn’t be ethical in my opinion, since everyone there that is also a vendor at my expo will want to come ‘talk shop’ with me. I do readings in the privacy of my home and also for clients who have a small get together in their homes. I also do telephone readings and reading reports for international clients.

Question:  What are your hobbies and recreational activities?

Answer: I LOVE to read when I get the chance to plant myself on the couch. I have varied interests in many subjects. I am still taking classes at our local community college, where I am also working with the cultural anthropology department with students who want to do field work in cultural studies in indigenous religions. I grow and harvest some of my herbs I use in the condition spiritual oils and baths I make for clients. I love to cook and I perform with a group here in Sacramento, Ebo Okokan, which is the only Afro-Cuban drum and dance group in the area. We do the traditional songs of the Orichas (pronounced or-ree-CHAS) who are the gods and goddesses of Santeria as well as congo and rhumba songs in Spanish.

Question: This ends the interview. Thank you.  Any last words of wisdom?

I was always told that the spirits or those that have passed on are on the other side of a two-way mirror – we can’t see them but they can see us. Ancestor reverence is crucial in African based religions because it is the fact that great-grandpapa met great-grandmama is why you are here today. Once passed over, their job is to guide their progeny. In many films, you will see ancestor reverence like the example in the movie “Soul Food”, where once Grandma passes on, Vanessa Williams makes sure there is a setting at the head of the table to invite her Spirit to join them in the feast. We make food offerings as well in Santeria. There is a saying that you pay homage to the egungun (the dead) before the Orichas. We have an altar set up for that very purpose. If you are lucky to connect with a spirit of an ancestor, ask them what you can do for them. Maybe they just want a glass of water, a cigarette, a chocolate or a shot of whiskey – something just to remember what it was like on this side. This is not too far from the Latino culture of the Day of the Dead where the family picnics at the cemetery and food, liquor and more are laid out for the deceased loved ones. Funny, but how true is it that there are a lot of similarities in cultures?