Interview with Thom Nickels

Editor’s Note: The review of Thom Nickels’ book “From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami” was in the October issue and is online at Irish Edition.com. The following PART TWO is the interview. By Sabina Clarke SC: Many people feel there is something dark about psychics but the story of Arlene Ostapowicz refutes this—as she had a special devotion to St. Therese of Lisieux and the Sacred Heart. Did you get a reading from her? TN: Arlene became a close friend of mine after a long client-reader relationship. She studied metaphysics in England and taught world famous astrologer Jacqueline Bigar astrology. I was honored to give the eulogy at her funeral last year. Arlene wanted to promulgate devotion to the Holy Spirit and felt that the Church needed to do more in this regard. She never felt there was a disconnect between praying to the saints and giving psychic readings even though many Christians equate the word ‘psychic’ with the word ‘Satanic.’ She had an amazing talent to see into the future and she “converted” many skeptics. I miss her. SC: Regarding your reading with the clairaudient and charismatic Catholic Carolann Sano what about it struck you the most? TN: Carolann called herself a Charismatic Catholic, something I never quite understood. I don’t think jumping around at Mass like you’re taming snakes has any place in Catholicism. Charismatic Catholic services remind me of Flannery O’Connor’s religious revival stories set in the South. There’s a section on Charismatic Catholics in the book. Carolann was talented. She had a great feeling for people. When she worked for PAN AM in 1988 she consoled friends and family of those who lost their lives in the December terrorist bombing of Pan AM Flight 103. SC: After your own experience with past life regression do you believe in reincarnation and would you be willing to be regressed again? TN: When it comes to reincarnation, I put more weight behind the famous “scientific” studies of reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson than the stories that come through via hypnosis. Stevenson examined the stories and ‘memories’ of children who talked of their real parents in far off lands, or detailed descriptions of streets where these children said they lived in these previous lives. This gave researchers solid landmarks and people that could be verified. In many cases, the children having these memories were correct. Edgar Cayce was an orthodox Presbyterian minister when he began to do trance induced “health” readings for clients when suddenly he was getting past life information. This shocked him tremendously because it went against his conservative Christian beliefs, but he later came to accept it. When I was 23 and agnostic, I had my own experiences in this realm but that’s a story for another time. I’m skeptical of past life regression, however. When I was hypnotized I never really felt hypnotized the way you see people being hypnotized in movies. The so called scenes from a past life that I was “seeing” felt more like the creative stuff of the imagination that go into creating a work of fiction. I’d be willing to be hypnotized again but I’m a tough subject, very tough. SC: Did you ever meet Ira Einhorn? TN: I never met Ira Einhorn but we both wrote for the same underground newspaper, The Distant Drummer. Ira was proof that if you were a genius at self-promotion you could fool almost anybody, especially politicians and wealthy CEOs with money to give away. SC: As a teenager your reading tastes were pretty eclectic and offbeat-as if you were always searching for more in the mystic realm-for example “The Autobiography of a Yogi” by Yogannada Paramahansa who visited the Catholic stigmatic Therese Neumann. TN: When Yogannada asked Therese Neumann, the famous German stigmatic, if he could have a private audience with her in order to observe her sufferings of The Passion, Neumann said she was happy to “receive a man of God.” Her acceptance of Yogannada speaks volumes and on some level seems problematic. Yet in Yogannada’s book there are many stories of Hindu mystics and saints levitating and performing miracles. I explained this to a priest friend and he cautioned that the devil loves to assume a ‘body of light’ because he is a master at performing “tricks.” When Yogannada died his body remained incorrupt in the style of many Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saints. It even exuded a kind of perfume. It still bothers me on some level that Neumann failed to convert the internationally famous yogi. SC: Your architectural critique on local historic churches is quite sophisticated and Detailed—is that a strong interest of yours? TN: As a child I visited the 1963 New York World’s Fair with my parents where we toured the Vatican Pavilion and the adjoining Chapel of the Good Shepard, a futuristic Catholic Church with no statues or icons, just massive white walls and large stained glass windows. A table (Julia Child’s table) stood in place of a high altar, and the effect was shocking to me. Though just a boy, I remember feeling terrified for the future of the Church. Not far from this modernist disaster was a small log cabin Russian Orthodox chapel with a jewel like iconostasis and the magnificent icon of Our Lady of Kazan. I’d never seen an Orthodox Church before and was so impressed with its startling traditional look that I kept going back to this chapel to see it again. So much of Catholic Church architecture has been ruined in the name of modernism: all that blank grey and white space, the Spartan emptiness of it all. Advocates of these ugly spaces like to say that the plainness has a Cistercian appeal when really the end result is an observer asking: Is this a Catholic Church or a Baptist church? Happily, there’s now an architectural reform of the reform going on, spearheaded by Architect Duncan Strock of South Bend, IN who has been described as “a one-man phenomenon who has changed the landscape of American Catholic church design.” SC: Of all the religious cults you have studied which one interests you the most? TN: The Mormons have always fascinated me with that Church’s epic stories of an angel appearing to Joseph Smith telling him where to dig for golden plates, the ugly stories of persecution and the group’s cross country wagon train to Salt Lake City ending in the “miracle” of the seagulls and locusts. It’s certainly the most American of religions. Christian Science actually contains some nuggets of truth pertaining to the power of the mind (and faith) over the ill-health of the body. Of course, Christian Science goes way too far in its avoidance of conventional medicine. SC: What religious cult that you investigated do you feel is the most dangerous cult? TN: Scientology is dangerous because it is not really a religion as such but a financial scheme posing as a religion. The Church of the Process, which was popular in the 1970s, was dangerous at that time. Process missionaries, so called worshippers of Satan, canvassed Suburban Station in downtown Philadelphia in the 1970s. They wore long black capes and handed out little tracts like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The New Age movement seems fairly benign but ultimately it has helped create an impossible divide between religion and spirituality. Religion is spirituality with rules but many people want a free form spirituality where you become your own god and make your own rules. SC: What religious cult did you experience as the most harmless? TN: That would be Hare Krishna. Joining Hare Krishna was more of a countercultural rite of passage for many spiritually inclined young people (mostly men) in the 1960s and 70s. Hare Krishna has a strict moral code: no sex before marriage, no divorce, no birth control, no homosexuality, no masturbation. Marriages are for life. It was amazing that so many hippies went from free love communes (“Love the one you’re with”) to shaving their heads and adopting this lifestyle. Few stayed, however. They did the ‘monk thing’ for a year or two then returned to the world. SC: I was surprised to find out that in 1874 Philadelphia attracted many mediums TN: There was a strong Messianic impulse in the United States then. Séances were common and there were many Spiritualist organizations in the city. SC: Your encounters with the homeless seem easy and effortless. You seem to have great empathy for them and know their stories. TN: I’ve written two books about the homeless, “How to Do a Bad Thing Well: Looking for Johnny Bobbitt and The Perils of Homelessness” (with Richard T. Edwards). These books record many of their stories. The homeless come to Philadelphia from all over the country, mostly for the cheap drugs. Most have addiction issues. I have seen several people turn their lives around in remarkable ways. Reporters Note: Thom Nickels is a widely published Philadelphia journalist and author of 15 books – his latest book From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami…Religious Cults in Philadelphia is the subject of this interview. He is now a regular writer for the Irish Edition and also writes for the Philadelphia Free Press and City Journal, New York.