Beyond the senses: author Kerry Ward discusses her new publication This Book Will Make You Psychic

The word psychic is very rich and often brings up ideas of mediums having dramatic visions or conducting seances. What does the word psychic mean for you personally?
I think it's a way of interacting with the world and perceiving the world. I believe that everybody has a psychic fingerprint just like they have a personality, values, character and humour. It's part of your factory settings. Psychic senses are very prevalent in childhood and then adulting just kind of thrashes the life out of it. 

It's funny you use the word dramatic. It’s the same with my tarot stuff – TV and movies make it look a certain way, very cinematic, complete experiences. You meet a ghost, she gives you a message, it turns out it's your grandma. That is not how it is for most people, it's almost just an extension of your normal senses. One of them is particularly strong, or you might get fleeting, random weird stuff happening that adult life gets you to push back down again.

It's easy to be cynical, and it's safe to be cynical. I'm cynical. So, something happens and you just ignore it. And then it's time to take the rubbish out again and pay the bills, and you just never really spend time asking, ‘What are these funny little eerie experiences?’ and I think that's what the psychic is. It's not witchcraft, it's not divination, it's not demonic – not for me anyway. It is just an extension of your personality and it's absolutely wonderful to reclaim this lost part of you. It is like revisiting your inner child. 

Tell us a little about your background. Was there a key moment in your life that you started noticing these senses?
My mum always said that I was born weird. From being a tiny little tot – witches, goblins, fairies, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle  – you name it, I was into it. I had tarot cards very early on. But, and this is why the book is for people like me who love magic but have never felt it's happened for them – even though I’m a professional tarot reader, I've never felt that I was the magic tool. I thought it was my cards. 

About three years ago I went on a holiday and at the end of the trip my friend said, ‘Kerry, you do loads of spooky stuff’, and she reeled off these weird little things that had happened. Her belief in me, made me re-evaluate and think, ‘Why not? Maybe I do have something and it just doesn't look how it does on the telly.’ 

All the psychic books I've ever had, they list all the types - clairvoyancy, clairtangency, clairgustancy - and I thought that’s not me, but it's much more nuanced and random than that. 

So I'd sort of written it all off, and then I opened up to it again. My dad had died as well, and I do believe grief is the one thing in life that will kick you out of ordinary reality into a very liminal space where you're almost watching life through a window. Everyone else is going about their business and you're in this weird space, searching for connection, and thinking ‘Where could you have gone, how can you not be here?’

All that merged together to make me decide to explore further, and that's kind of how the book is set out, to take you through a similar journey I’ve been on – trying out different things and trying to find your own psychic fingerprint and having belief in it. Taking it seriously. Crushing the inner critic and naysayer, because it is so easy to just write it all off. 

Do you believe psychic abilities are something anyone can tap into? And what stumbling blocks do you think people tend to come up against when they’re trying to develop these kinds of abilities?
I think everyone is born with a psychic fingerprint and ability, and it's just part of your sensory perceptions of the world and some will be stronger than others. But if people lose a particular sense, others make up for it, so we know that our senses are reactive and adaptable, and they’re different in different people. 

I think adulting doesn't really encourage this sort of thing and it’s hard to have time. People stumble with it because of the cinematic, dramatic presentation. I have discarded my own experiences because they weren't as exciting or interesting or obvious as others.

Then you also get a lot of gatekeeping with highfalutin teachers that make it quite obscure, with ceremonies, cleansing, purging etc, which is fine if that appeals to people, but for many it's not practical. 

And then, I think the missing link is what I laid out in the third section of the book… So first we've got to believe it – take it seriously. Then we receive – which is trying all the exercises to see what works. Then to perceive is the bit that you bring to it – you ask, ‘What does this mean to me?’ You may not answer that today, but you join the dots. This is where your intuition comes into the driving seat and takes those outside triggers and makes some kind of story or narrative from it.

This kind of subject can be quite esoteric and we often think of psychic abilities as being a special gift reserved for a small few, but the book contains lots of activities, creativity and journaling to open up the senses. And did you put a lot of your own practice into the book?
I would say, I am one of the mainstream mystics. I'm not a gatekeeper. I'm not archaic, esoteric, ceremonial, or ritualistic. I'm very basic, friendly, playful and light and practical focused. I like to make things accessible. It's just how my mind works, because if it's not simple, I won't remember it. So, activity is important because you only learn by doing, and you're only going to discover what your fingerprint is by trying out these things and keeping what suits and discarding what doesn't. It’s about adapting it to your own life; everybody’s psychic adventure should be totally unique and come from themselves – how they perceive the world and interact with it.

There’s a really nice element of mindfulness and noticing in the exercises, what benefits do you find in connecting with the senses in this way?
Connecting the senses slows you down and makes you take in your environment. It can make the most mundane of activities, such as going shopping, interesting. If you add a psychic adventure element to it - ‘I'm going shopping, but send me a sign. What do I need to know? What have I missed?’

If you prime your radar to notice something, it will spark. Humans are pattern creators, and the patterns create stories and meaning. Meaning creates comfort and assurance - this is right or this is how I'm thinking about my life and my world and my day. Just paying attention, pausing, and giving yourself permission to join the dots between random things that you've seen, and believe that they mean something to you on this day, in this moment.

And it is fun to see the world as a more playful, interesting realm, with hidden layers. It is just a bit more whimsical. Since the Industrial Revolution we have lost connection with natural light, sound and the rhythms of nature, and it’s getting worse. They just want us all in boxes; go to work, pay the bills, come home, hook into Netflix or whatever. We’re more like battery hens - we're not free range anymore. So I guess it's a bit of a rebellion against modern urban life. 

The book encourages readers to understand and trust their intuition. Where is the line for you as to what is a psychic signal and what is coincidence?
When I was writing the book, I got in a right tiz with asking what is intuition, and what is a psychic experience? What's the difference? Are they the same? 

I think intuition is your inner voice – it's instinct, wisdom and it is often protective. Whereas psychic experiences, I think, are an external trigger. Something happens from the outside in that may awaken intuition and the two may then join and merge. I think, if you notice it, it's meant for you. But coincidences are sort of psychic experiences – maybe the purpose was to create a little chink.

What I do recommend people do, and what I do now, is discard nothing and record everything. I take pictures and videos, and I write stuff down, because I don’t think psychic experiences come to you complete or all in one moment. They can go on for weeks and months and decades and there can be long periods of time where it's dormant and nothing's happening. 

And then something will happen again. If you've kept photos and notes, you can start to build these amazing psychic adventures. It's like a never-ending thing. Just as your personality changes, as you get older, I think my psychic fingerprint will as well and the way that I create psychic adventures for myself and what I make of them, what I interpret from them.

There’s a mention of Wollaton Hall in the book. Can you talk about your connection to the hall?
Well, I'm a bit obsessed with the hall. My mum's house overlooks the park, so I grew up there. My sister once saw a monk at the bottom of the garden – and of course, Lenton Priory was on the other side of the park, where the monks all got hung, drawn and quartered by Henry VIII. The stones from the Priory were purportedly used in the foundations of Wollaton Hall. And we had the Wollaton Gnomes, which was just near the bottom of my garden. 

I did my work experience at Wollaton Hall, and I volunteered at the Industrial Museum for about seven years, and I’ve just finished a six-year voluntary thing helping restore the taxidermy 

So I go there about twice a week and have my psychic adventures walking around the park, taking pictures, filming and just breathing. There are parts of it that feel like a time slip.

I’ll be putting on a psychic workshop there in November; it’s something I have put together for the Waterstones’ Women in Horror weekend in October. I thought if I've learnt the damn thing, I may as well do it again, so what better location.

Kerry Ward’s psychic workshops run at Waterstones Nottingham on Friday 30 October and at Wollaton Hall on Sunday 15 November. Her book This Book Will Make You Psychic is available to buy now. 

@mytarotbella