Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville, Wis.
Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville, Wis.
Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville, Wis.
Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville, Wis.
Janesville psychic Mary Summerbell gives a tarot card reading to an individual recently inside Earthsong Books & Gifts, located in Janesville.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
The inside of Nine Bells & Cat Tails, located at 421 E. Grand Ave. in Beloit. The shop offers a variety of psychic services and carries art from local artists.
ROCK COUNTY- When an individual thinks of a psychic, a specific image may immediately pop in your mind. Maybe it’s an older woman in eclectic clothing with a deck of cards, or maybe you immediately think a psychic is simply a witch who will put a spell on you, or even a curse.
In the Rock County area, specifically in Beloit and Janesville, there are many shops that offer psychic services, but what exactly does that entail? Will they cast a spell on you or speak with you about the future you’ve been wondering about?
Shops like Nine Bells & Cat Tails in Beloit and Earthsong Books & Gifts in Janesville offer a variety of psychic services and both want to educate customers on what they offer.
Karen Koyama always wanted to have her own shop, and now she technically has two.
Her shop, Nine Bells & Cat Tails, offers multiple psychic services including tarot card readings, “junk” readings, psychic art readings, mediumship reading, and energy readings. The shop has been open since 2018, but moved to its current location at 421 E. Grand Ave. in June 2020.
Koyama also owns the music academy Dolce Music Academy at the same location. The music academy offers piano, voice, brass lessons and more.
Koyama herself does tarot card reading, where the deck will guide the conversation and she gives advice based on what the deck says. Another reader at Nine Bells offers “junk” reading, where they take an object someone brings and give you a reading based on the energy they feel from the object.
Psychic art readings are a combination of psychic abilities and medium abilities. The psychic artist will draw a picture of a loved one that the customer is trying to connect with. Koyama describes the service as a three way conversation between psychic, customer, and the loved one who has passed.
Readers can be both psychics and mediums. A medium can communicate with an individual who has passed on. At the end of the conversation with the psychic artist the individual can keep the portrait.
“I always tell people when you get a reading it’s like getting advice,” Koyama said. “Just go there to get advice, just look at it like that.”
Growing up, Koyama was from a Buddhist family. Her dad’s side of the family is a “temple family,” and the family has had their temple for almost 37 years. Her grandfather was an elevated priest and a medium. Koyama’s mother would talk with her daughter about seeing people and feeling spirits around her.
“That was always talked about so it wasn’t weird to me,” Koyama said. “She openly talked about who she would see. That was my background.”
Something Koyama has seen that many of her customers have in common is many of them come from a background with religious trauma. They turn to the shop in their search for another spiritual practice or to see what else is out there.
Her main goal for her shop is education. The shop offers many classes on a variety of subjects like metaphysics, sigil magic, candle magic, introduction to divination, meditation and energy work. All classes are $10 except for belly dancing classes and advanced pendulum.
“We want people to know and understand and take away the stigma that different pagan-like belief systems have,” Koyama said. “Even witchcraft or Wicca or Buddhism falls under the pagan umbrella as well—All of the nontraditional practices or South African or Hispanic practices. We want to educate people so they’re not afraid of it.”
Koyama’s other goal with her shop was to have a place for local artists to house and sell their art to the community. Many of her friends are local artists and with help from artist Valerie Blake, she was able to have many different types of art in her shop during its first week of business.
The shop carries different types of antiques and knick knacks along with items like bracelets, crystals, spirit boards, pension boards and more. The shop does a lot of custom work for individuals who may want a custom bracelet or altar tile. The shop also provides henna, which is popular in the summertime, Koyama said.
More information can be found at ninebellsandcattails.com. The shop is open 11 a.m.—6 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday; noon—7 p.m. on Friday and from 10 a.m.—4 p.m. on Saturday.
Linda Caldean opened Earthsong Books and Gifts in 1989. Caldean was a travel nurse at the time and wanted a place where she could refer her patients to help them relax or ease their pain. The shop started by simply being a retail shop offering self-help books, guided meditations, wellness tapes, or video rentals on health and wellness.
“At the time, we were considered to be pioneers in the area because nobody else had what we had,” Caldean said.
As the business grew, Caldean wanted to branch out more and expanded to offering classes on meditation, yoga and tai chi. The store offered a resource center in their hallway of local massage therapists, acupuncturists and energy workers who offered reiki.
“I just started taking classes and I took a meditation class in Chicago. I took classes on guided imagery in Madison. I would go out and learn and you get hungry for more and I just started because they were offering classes everywhere.”
It wasn’t until Caldean met a woman named Judy who was a clairvoyant that she was introduced to the psychic world and after that meeting added that service to her shop. At the time Caldean and her team were very green and knew nothing about psychics, but they wanted to grow more and be open.
“Our basic philosophy is to honor and support all spiritual beliefs and philosophies,” Caldean said. “We’ve had some confusion in the past with other reporters that have come in and say, ‘Well, you have rosaries over here.’ We have tarot cards over there and Wicca and Native American Spirituality, Buddhism and basic Christianity. What we’re about is everybody has their own path to follow.”
One of the psychics at Earthsong is Mary Summerbell, who also considers herself simply an empath—one who can feel others’ feelings and emotions, as well as read energies. She is a tarot card reader. She began coming to Earthsong and volunteering in 1999.
“I believe we have all the information in the universe available to us,” Summerbell said. “By focusing clearly we can get that information. I would say I started my journey asking questions in the religion classroom.”
Summerbell first realized she had psychic abilities when she had a dream of her brother being engulfed in flames just two weeks before his death. The experience was scary for Summerbell and for a long time she did not tell anyone.
“I didn’t know, I thought everybody had the feeling I had or the perceptions,” Summer bells said. “Because I didn’t understand how anybody could navigate through life without those sensibilities.”
In her 20s, Summerbell met a solitary witch who showed her tarot cards which began her journey as a psychic. It wasn’t until Caldean invited her to be a reader at a psychic festival in 2006 that she began reading for money.
When Summerbell reads someone, she will often ask them what big question they have. She will them pull five or 10 cards. A five card spread represents: present, immediate past, distant past, immediate future and distant future. For example, if you ask about what your career will look like in the next five years, one card Summerbell pulls would signify your present career, immediate future, and so on.
“We also make sure our readers are positive and up-lifting. A reader should never say anything negative or scary, like, you’re going to die next year. If I get complaints from a reader, I address it very quickly. But it’s very rare. All our readers are very upbeat, positive, and very warm.”
More information about Earthsong can be found at earthsongbooksandgifts.com. The shop is located at 2214 Kennedy Road in Janesville.
ORFORDVILLE—The Sassy Farm Chicks Quilt Company host its Annual Airing of The Quilts Outdoor Quilt Exhibition on Sept. 17.
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