I was raised a Catholic and our family laughs when you say that. We are catholic when we’re born, when we get married, when we die, and at Easter. That’s about it.

What I remember is the Catechism. When I was a kid the Catechism was in Latin and the nuns wore black habits. It was surreal.

Religion didn’t set well with me. It didn’t register with me and it didn’t reverberate. I just couldn’t embrace it.

As I got older I studied a number of different religions. I just could not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I couldn’t believe in many of the Bible stories; I just couldn’t do it.

So I studied and I searched.

My mom is Native American, so I found myself doing private spiritual… not rituals… I’d have to call them prayers. When my friend Jim died, for example, I wrote a letter to him. I told him that he was 29 years old and that we were supposed to have our entire lives together. I told him that there were many things I wanted to spend time doing. I felt I had taken our friendship for granted because we were young and we had our whole lives ahead of us.

So I wrote this letter and I placed it inside an abalone shell with some sage and I went to the top of the hill and burned it. I sent off this message of friendship to the universe.

A few years later a friend of mine arranged a reading for me with a psychic. During the reading the psychic said that my friend was coming through. The medium said that Jim knew that I was wearing his ring and that he had gotten my letter.
That was huge for me.

My grandmother died. She has since been seen and spoken to people twice. Within my family that was not unusual. She communicated to my aunt and uncle who are the least spiritual, most conservative people.

My aunt and uncle were on their huge yacht. They were trapped in a storm. They were sailing down the coast and they were trying to decide whether to continue on down to Mexico or turn around and come back. It was so rough, my aunt was actually tied to the built-in cabinetry. My uncle was always kind of macho. He should have had a crew, but he didn’t.

So there they were on the ocean surrounded by huge canyons of waves. They could have died and at one point they thought they were going to die.

Then they turn around inside the cabin and there was my grandmother saying: “Virgie, Virgie! What are you doing here? Go home!”

They looked at each other and then she was gone.

My uncle told me that when you see your dead mother-in-law and she tells you to go home, you turn the boat around!

On another occasion they were driving. They looked at one another and then they looked in the back seat and they both saw her again.

Now let me tell you that these are not spiritual people at all. Their conservative republicans who just don’t believe…

There are a number of stories like this in my family. I’ve always been a little bit psychic. My mother has it and I got it from her.
One day about four years ago I performed a ritual. There was someone I needed to see; someone I needed closure with. But they had moved away and were no longer in the area. I was heartbroken. I wanted some closure. I had no way of getting a hold of them; I didn’t know where they were.

So the next day I was going to drive to Sonoma to pick up a friend and bring him back. I got up and I was drumming my fingers and pacing. Now I usually drive like hell but that day I drove slowly. I crept over Highway 17 and Highway 80. I don’t know why I had been nervous all morning. It felt like I had been waiting for something.

So I’m rolling down the highway and look over to my left and there he was, the person who I wanted to see right next to me in the truck. Not only is he in the pickup truck, his sister is driving so he is in the passenger seat.

He looked up at me and his jaw dropped. He and I once had a relationship. In fact it was the relationship that ended the 25 year relationship I had with Tony. We had a deep conviction. But at one point he started wanting to see other people. That was difficult because I knew it before he told me.

I used to surprise the hell out of him because even before he told me I would tell him: “that guy called, didn’t he?”

He would say: “what guy?”

I told him the guy who wore the business suit and had the business cards. He asked me how I knew it and I told him that I could see the business card in my mind’s eye.

I told him that I knew that he was going to hook up with this guy and he was flabbergasted, stunned.

He and I had a horrible falling out. When I saw him on the highway and motioned to him to roll down the window. There was something I had to say and I said: "Merry Christmas."

He looked over at me and said "Merry Christmas" also.

If you have a prayer answered there is nothing more moving than being acknowledged by something larger than yourself.

I began to think that I needed to research this stuff. So I went to a pagan bookstore and began flipping through some books. I read about a ritual very similar to one I had done. It was called a full-moon ritual. The night I had performed my ritual there was a full moon and I had no idea. I had done it instinctively.

So I started studying Wicca, and I met these witches. Now there’s a lot of bad connotations to witches and paganism, but it’s basically just the old folk religion. It comes from the pre-Christian era. And like I said I never believed in the divinity of Christ.

I had friends who became Buddhists and other things and it never clicked with me. But this clicked with me.

So I started studying these traditions. And the first thing that you learn is harm no one. The idea of casting a spell has such a negative connotation but it really comes from the media and movies and television.

People see the pentagram and they think of devil worshipers but that’s mostly for stupid suburban kids dressing in black. The five pinnacles of the star are like this: four of them are for the elements and the fifth one, the top one, is for spirituality.

I’ve been studying and taking classes for about two years. I’ve met some fascinating people, brilliant people. It is possible to create your own reality, focus your own will.

I wanted to get into this artist’s loft, but there was a line a mile long. Everyone told me it would be at least two years before I could get in.

They liked me and they put me at the head of the list, but they also told me it could be another year before another loft opened up. So I went home, went to my altar and did some stuff. The next day I got a phone call. The woman who was ahead of me was afraid to sign the lease and canceled her option.

I learned later from some of my instructors that you have to be very specific about what you ask for. You can’t wish anything negative for anyone. I ended up getting the space.

One time I went into a pagan bookstore called The Sacred Grove. The woman behind the counter told me to let me know if I needed help with anything. Now this woman was very conscious of her cat. She had an amazing cat named Q, after the character on Star Trek.

At one point she told me that the big dog of mine was going to have to go outside. She heard panting but I didn’t have a big dog. The door was closed and we were in a big empty store. There was no dog present. She looked me up and down and said: “you know, I’m not going to forget you!”

I met some other people in town. There was a gay men’s group called the Radical Faeries from the nineteen sixties. It was a group of the guys who did pagan rituals and Native American rituals. It was kind of a political social group, and they have groups all over the country. They invited me to join their group.

I started performing rituals with them. They have a mish-mosh of stuff that they do. Every dark moon the Faeries have something called the heart circle. I hosted my own heart circle. And I used a small brass statue as a totem. Whoever holds the totem has the floor and can speak. You speak from your heart.

When it was my turn to share I told my group that I was two days away from leaving my partner of 25 years. I told them I was scared and I didn’t know if I was making the right decision or not. But I was committed to pushing ahead. It’s amazing you get the closest friendships when people speak from the heart.

The spirituality is deep in my life. Before this, the main concern of my friends and me was what were we going to buy next? It was all about what we owned. I had no spirituality; it was just shallow. My life was empty. Once I found myself walking through Florence and I was just miserable. I had no affection in my life, no romance in my life. I had no depth.