I am back today with another book review, and while I overall enjoyed most of Naturally Psychic: Awaken Your Intuitive Abilities by Karen Harrison, there was one thing that left a pretty sour taste in my mouth and dropped my overall star rating.
First and foremost, this is a release of the original publication from 2013. While I have not read the original 2013 printing, it doesn't appear much, if anything, has changed since the first printing. This is slightly disappointing because I think a group of sensitivity readers could have caught a couple of the issues I had. However, let's start with what I did like, because there was a lot of information here that was great!
Harrison opens with an introduction explaining her views on intuition, psychic abilities, and the like, mentioning that she is of the mind that diving into the future can be used to alter it; that your future is not set in stone. "If the likely outcome that is sensed psychically could not be altered or diverted, I don't think there would be much use in knowing about it." I agree, although sometimes it's okay to let things unfold as the Universe has intended, even if they are upsetting. There are lessons to be learned during struggle, grief, and hard times, often valuable ones.
Each chapter then focuses on different ways to access and hone your psychic abilities, including the clairs, contacting spirits, accessing past lives, dreaming, automatic writing, and psychometry. While Harrison suggests working through each chapter and its exercises in order, you don't necessarily have to. Yes, the skills are built upon previous chapters and exercises, so it's beneficial to work through them in order, but each chapter also stands on its own. Much of the information and skills are repeated in each chapter (which is slightly annoying when you are reading it straight through in one sitting), but it's certainly helpful for those reading chapters as needed.
Harrison references a lot of science throughout, including electromagnetic energy, ley lines, homing animals, beta, alpha, thetic, and delta states, and dreaming cycles. While science cannot currently explain psychic abilities, there may very well come a time when we can. Because the brain uses electrical and magnetic impulses, why couldn't it sense things outside of it that are also sending such impulses out into the world?
The first two chapters are reminiscent of other beginner psychic books, covering the skills necessary to develop your intuition. These include cleansing, grounding, centering, energy balls, sensing auras, energy shields, and space clearing. There is nothing really new here that hasn't been presented before, so if you are already familiar with basic psychic techniques or have built your intuition, these chapters would not be particularly useful to you. She does, however, define your "inner voice" in a more inclusive light in chapter 2, creating a definition that is more neurodivergent friendly. Harrison states your inner voice can be a literal voice, as well as images, colors, a sense of knowing, dreams, scents, tastes, or even feelings in a specific part of your body. She states, "Everybody is a born psychic," and all you have to do is develop it like any other skill. What I found particularly helpful was Harrison's suggestion of acknowledging your inner voice each time you receive information. This is done to strengthen your intuition, and I can see how that works on multiple levels. First, it is a way to say thank you to that part of you or the guide responsible for aiding you. Second, even if it's all "just in your head," you are tricking your mind into doing what you want it to do. Either way, it is a powerful tool!
My favorite two chapters by far were chapter 4 on spirit guides and chapter 10 on psychic etiquette. If you are interested in hedge riding, astral travel, or working with spirits, Harrison offers excellent information and exercises on contacting spirit guides of all shapes and sizes. She includes warning signs that the entity you have encountered may not actually be your guide, but a spirit attempting to deceive and use you. This is extremely helpful and valuable information any budding hedge witch should know, especially when it comes to cleansing and ridding yourself of entities. As for guides, Harrison offers exercises to contact ancestral guides, ascended masters, teacher/mentors, and angelic guides. She does not cover animal guides until chapter 9 and takes a different approach to animal guides than I do. Her focus with animal guides most includes pets and potentially familiars. I will warn you that chapter 9 includes animal death and grief, so go into that chapter prepared.
Okay...so what bothered me so much that I dropped my rating? It's one big thing surrounded by a couple of little things. These little things include the blue font, which would be very difficult for someone who is visually impaired to read, the use of karma and karmic debt, and the lack of discussion of potential cultural appropriation. Harrison does a great job including multiple different cultures and faiths to ensure she is meeting a broad audience, but I believe she should have included a mention that some practices are closed or partially closed and therefore not open to everyone to use willy-nilly. The biggest issue, however, was Harrison's retelling of her own past life.
In her story, Harrison describes having a vivid dream one night in which she was watching her past self sneak through a house at night. She describes herself as a black man with "knotty hair" who is stealing from the slave owner's home and is later shot in the face with a shotgun. Reading this was incredibly disturbing, and the word choices were....a choice. I cannot believe that she or Weiser allowed such blatantly racist language to be published. Like...were there no sensitivity readers? White woman to white woman, I would have kept this story to myself, Karen. I understand she may have thought she was connecting with her readers on a personal level, but it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I struggled to read the last three chapters objectively. This is such a shame because up until this point, I was planning on fully endorsing Naturally Psychic.
On one hand, I still want to recommend Naturally Psychic: Awaken Your Intuitive Abilities by Karen Harrison because most of the book was just fine. For some of you, her story may not bother you or have any bearing on whether or not you purchase the book. That is perfectly fine. Personally, there is nothing so groundbreaking here that you can't find it somewhere else. The choice is entirely yours.
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