Conjures and Visions

I know this sounds like bragging, but my ranch is home to some of the finest buzzards in this part of Texas. They are fat, fine-feathered and well preened. I attribute this, in part, to the steady diet of pork I feed them, like the boar I shot this morning.

It was a couple of hours before sunrise and I was rolling down the hill into the river bottom, idling in neutral and riding the brake. It was another beautiful fall morning under a clear sky. The waning, red crescent moon was lit from below with its horns charging Venus while, close behind, Mercury chased Mars off the horizon.

The unlucky boar, however, lingered in my headlights. I put the truck in gear, killed the engine and quietly stepped out.

I braced my AR on the window frame and shot the pig in the right shoulder and lung. He let out a loud, startled squeal, then went down after a few steps. I pulled up, got out and shot him just below the ear. I thereby extinguished an untold number of future pigs and fed forty buzzards for two days.

Now, before and after this, I was listening to George Norry’s Coast to Coast and he had on a very interesting guest named Mama Starr Casas. She’s an “old style conjurer.” She is not a witch and she does not cast evil spells. Her signature skill is reading bones, possum bones. After the client breathes on the bones three times, she drops them on a deerskin mat and takes a “reading.” From this, she can tell your fortune, provide answers to problems and alert you to coming danger. If the bones tell her when and how you are going to die, she will not tell you unless your demise is preventable.

It reminded me of Steven Wright’s routine:

“I was lying in bed with my girlfriend the other night and she said, ‘If you could know how and when you were going to die, would you want to know?’ I said ‘No.’ She said ‘Never mind then.’”

Other services and products Starr provides are “removing crossed conditions, setting conjure vigils, spiritual foot washing, Jinx removing, money work, honey jars, conjure oils, and conjure vigil candles.” Her powers derive from communications with the spirits of her ancestors, but I didn’t really understand how that worked.

I took a look at Starr’s web page to find out more about the “money work” and to see if she had some current photos on there before I scheduled a “spiritual foot washing.” There are no photos, but under the “credentials” tab she notes that, if you come to her shop, “you will read things written by my brother who caught my mama burying my dad’s underwear tied in a knot behind our house.” Why, in God’s name, would her mama do that? And how is that a “credential”? She doesn’t say.

The charges for these fascinating services seem quite reasonable. Traditional Conjure Bone Readings are only $105.00. A mere pittance. If I could tell your future, you’d have to sell a kidney for what I would charge.

When Starr’s interview ended, I pulled out the iPhone my wife gave me a few months back to see if I could find an interesting podcast. I had a flip phone for many years, which was just fine with me, but now the boss insists on sending me texts rather than calling. After thirty some odd years, I think the sound of my voice is starting to get on her nerves.

Anyway, I’m glad I got the iPhone and now I’m into sending emojis to the boss. I like to send her the two with the big tongue hanging out and the guy with hearts for eyes. It’s my love language. She either ignores me completely or texts back “Yeah, whatever.” I ask her one morning if I had “over performed” the night before and she said, “No, you have ED.” I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?” She said, “Erectile Delusions.” I couldn’t think of any quick comeback so I just put my hat on and left the house.

Back to the iPhone. I scrolled through my many bookmarks and picked one I listen to occasionally. It’s an interview podcast and the guest was a guy named Mark Taylor. He, too, receives messages from spirits, specifically, Jesus and God. All the spirit talk was kind of giving me the heebie-jeebies but I listened anyway. I felt like I was experiencing a “crossed condition” and had somehow been influenced by an unseen hand to pick this particular podcast at precisely this exact time. There was no way this was a coincidence.

Mark published a book in 2017 (remember that date, 2017) called The Trump Prophecies and in the interview he said it was a best seller on Amazon. It is described as “an astonishing true story.” Well, it is astonishing.

As you might imagine, Mark’s experience began with a “miracle” and it sure sounds like one. It wasn’t raising the dead or anything, just a vision – but it was a doozy.

Mark’s vision came to him in 2011; I’ll walk you through it:

It was 1:00 AM, his wife just came to bed and he was awake. She said she couldn’t sleep and he “rolled over,” not on her, evidently, because he “immediately” fell asleep. And then – as he relates in the video, “I had a dream…er…uh, vision.” Right. “Dreams” are like what I have – crazy, jumbled, disturbing images of meaningless, fragmented synapses that didn’t quite make the last connection. A “vision,” on the other hand, is often a message from God, like the one Mark had.

Mark “came out of his body,” went to his knees on the floor of his bedroom, and began writing on the carpet with his right index finger from which light was projecting. He was speaking “in tongues” and there was a cloud in front of him and one to his right. He never says what he wrote on the carpet, but he did note he was “writing in cursive.”

During this experience he was terrified and “felt like God was going to vaporize him.” (I’ve worried about that my self a few times) At the end of his “vision” he “came back into his body,” woke up, looked at the clock and it was “exactly 1:33.” Exactly.

He didn’t know what the dream, I mean vision, meant, but he and his wife both recognized it was a message from God. His wife said his voice “sounded different” while he related the vision. He likened this to the changes that occurred to Moses when he met God on the mountain and considered the voice difference proof he had been in the presence of God.

Mark was mystified by the vision but, as luck would have it, he was “attending an Apostolic church at the time” and had some friends who were…well, before I tell you what they were, realize there are some occupations/professions/certifications of which you may not be aware but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist and require a rigorous credentialing process. Okay, so the friends were…uhm…uh, “certified dream interpreters.” Certified. Bona fide. Verified.

I didn’t know there was such a thing but, come to find out, certifications are available – now get this – on line. Yeah. You probably thought this specialty would require intensive classroom and laboratory work, but not so. One institution of higher learning that offers these valuable certificates is The Institute for Dream Studies where you can discover “how to add riches to your professional and personal life.” A Level One certification cost $995, and there are two higher levels to which one may attain. I couldn’t find any information on the web site about the nature of the “riches” I could add to my life – like, is it dollars or just knowing I helped a stranger – so I hesitate to enroll.

Would be fun though wouldn’t it? My practice would be limited to interpreting the dreams of youngish, physically fit women struggling with same sex attraction. My Feng Shui is closely aligned with this personality type because I’ve about half-assed self identified as a lesbian since my early twenties when I came out as a cunning linguist. I would only do an interpretation by Skype and require the client wear whatever she had on while dreaming. Be okay if she’d had a few drinks too.

All right, enough of my visions, let’s get back to Mark’s.

Mark’s certified friends told him the meaning of the vision was this:

The cloud in front of him was (guess first, who was it?)…God. The one to his right was (if you guessed Jesus, your wrong)…Mark’s angel.

Speaking in tongues meant God had “anointed” him.

Writing on the carpet meant what he wrote would affect his walk and the walk of others. Makes sense. He was writing “on the carpet” which is where people walk. I may have been able to interpret that element.

In spite of this certified interpretation, mysteries remained. Like, what, what, did he write on the carpet? We’ll let Mark tell us in his own words from his best selling book where he takes us back to April, 2011 when he was in his “cream colored living room” (?) watching Trump on TV:

“The vision I had of me writing on my bedroom floor remained largely unlocked at this time, [I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think he meant “largely locked.” Seems like if it was largely “unlocked” the cat would already be out of the bag.] so any concepts of my communing with the Holy Spirit as a messenger of the Lord’s for the nation was obsolete… But then it happened, the moment that altered the course of my life…”

I’ll jump in here and cut to the chase because Mark gets a bit chatty when he puts pen to paper – God told him Trump would be president.

You heard that right, in 2011 mind you, God told Mark that Trump would be president.

Oh, yeah, there’s just one thing, one small thing I left out. Mark said Trump was going to be president in 2012.

What was the date I ask you to remember? 2017, when the book was published. You may have already connected the dots and ask yourself, “Wait a minute, if he said in 2011 Trump would be elected in 2012, wouldn’t the people he told about the prophesy have called bullshit on it?”

Well, yeah. He didn’t tell many people though, and, a true man of God is not dissuaded by a failed prophecy. Heck, Jesus’ return has been prophesied for two thousand years and people still believe it. Let me quickly add though, if Jesus does come back, I’ll be in the front pew of the nearest church the first Sunday following the rapture.

Even though the prophecy seemed to be false, it was actually true; Mark just got the date wrong. I know, I know, at first blush it seems like the whole thing hinged on getting the date right, but visions are not quite so simple.

Now, and please follow me carefully, Mark got the date wrong because he was misinterpreting (stay with me) the name of a horse. Yes. The name of a horse. Who was the horse? I’ll Have Another. This sounds wacky, but the Lord works in mysterious – some might say eccentric – ways. So Mark had somehow, somewhere, predicted that I’ll Have Another would win the Triple Crown in 2012 and this was, in Mark’s inspired mind, connected with Trump winning in 2012.

Well, the horse won the Derby and Preakness but was injured and didn’t run in Belmont. Trump didn’t run anywhere. Mark was shocked, shocked, that Yaveh had apparently rinky dooed him around and no doubt embarrassed the hell out of his dream interpretation team. He went back to the Lord in prayer and asked “God did I get this wrong.” Do you know what? He hadn’t. He misinterpreted the name of I’ll Have Another. Mark thought it meant “I’ll (Yaveh) have another president,” but it actually meant “I’ll have another four years to fill up my wrath.”

You see, God was using the horse race as a metaphor for the presidential race. This much is obvious to the casual interpreter, the tricky part was the horse’s name, which I think Mark adequately explained as the reason for his screw up.

Personally, I think it’s a slippery slope for the Almighty to get tangled up with horse racing. I’m not being critical, just sayin.

So Mark is selling books and getting lots of interviews in 2017 for saying Trump would be the president in 2012. I guess people believe his story about correcting the date and not understanding the horse’s name. I’m not really spiritually sensitive so it’s hard for me to tell if Mark is just scamming the gullible or if he’s the real deal. I have to go to prayer over this one.

Mark does seem very sincere and how could anyone lie about receiving a vision from God? If I lied about having a vision from God, I would be afraid he would vaporize me at…oh…wait…