An ad from Kathleen Lloyd at Art-a-Whirl. Photo by Maxine Whitely.
“Say your name three times,” I was commanded as soon as I sat down. Kathleen Lloyd and Suzette (not her real name; she requested not to remain anonymous) are psychics and tarot card readers. I found them in the Grain Belt Bottling House, a new Art-a-Whirl location. They sat quietly, waiting for someone to step up and talk to them. When someone finally did, a whole horde followed, afraid to be the first, but eager to get advice.
Immediately after my introduction, Suzette had a read on me. “First of all, you’ve got to slow down,” she said, ever so knowingly. “You’re someone I’d ask to paint my porch but I wouldn’t want to paint my living room.”
I can’t pretend they didn’t nail it. Within 20 seconds of meeting me, they pegged me for the Type-A, hurried person I truly am, and managed to recite my future aspirations back to me verbatim. I was completely hooked. The women didn’t need tarot cards, a magic eight ball, or 21 questions to understand me; they just needed to tap into their intuition.
Suzette specializes in tarot card reading and Lloyd defines herself as a psychic consultant. While many brush those occupations off as hokey, their presence at one of Minneapolis’s largest art events indicates that some endorse it as a fine skill, honed through experience and study.
The two women ventured into the psychic world in completely different ways. Lloyd’s grandmother was her biggest influence—she was an ordained spiritual minister, and Lloyd spent a lot of time with her. She reports many instances that, looking back, indicate she had intuition all along. Whether it was seeing an angel at age six or watching a truck crash and finding out later it was her father, Lloyd believes that these experiences were spiritual messages as her skill manifested itself.
“My grandmother said when my hair was white, that I would be doing this the way the way she’s doing it,” says Lloyd. Now, as she has gotten older, she has harnessed her own skills as an intuitive, just like her grandmother promised.
Suzette says that Lloyd’s mentoring has helped her to embrace her own skills, although the foundation for intuition was always there. “I always knew I had a gift,” she notes. “I met her through her store, and just loved her immediately. Just felt like I met her before, in a former life or something.”
The women have known each other for 15 years now, but Suzette says the most important thing Lloyd taught her was “how to feel the difference between an eco [brain] message and a heart message. The heart messages are the real intuitive messages.”
The messages Suzette discusses are the ones that can inform women about questions of: who I am, how I see the world, and where I need their counsel and advice. “I’m like the bumper pads in a bowling alley and it’s our job as intuitives to put you back in the middle,” she says.
