“Merry meet,” is how you are greeted when you enter The Awareness Shop.
They have been supplying the Wiccan community with candles, oils, jewelry, crystals and readings since 1993.
As a way to give back to the community, the shop hosts a psychic fair on the last Saturday of every month to give everyone an opportunity to experience psychic readings at a discount.
Lisa Stewarts, psychic and owner of The Awareness Shop, has been holding this event for 22 years. Stewarts has always felt very close to nature and the cycles of the moon. For her, she felt that becoming a psychic reader was her destiny.
Nine psychic and expert tarot card readers, interviewed and hired by Stewarts, channeled over 300 people on Saturday, Feb. 27. The shop was completely booked with appointments by 3 p.m.
“You don’t wake up one day and decide, ‘Oh, I’m going to become a nun,’” Stewarts said. “It kind of happens over time and chooses you.”
Pia Mitchetti, an alumnus of SUNY New Paltz, attended the event because she had some ‘unresolved issues.’ She met with Hannah, an older reader, in the back corner of the shop.
As soon as Mitchetti sat down, Hannah sensed a lot of pain in her. Hannah flipped over tarot cards from her deck.
“She told me what I should be focused on,” Mitchetti said. “She told me that I need to make myself happy.”
These were the words Mitchetti wanted to hear.
Mitchetti agreed that you start to believe in psychic readers when a stranger tells you the things you want or need to hear.
In the back of the shop, Amy Cunningham, a sculpture MFA in their final semester, was performing Reiki on a member of the community.
Reiki is a non-physical healing energy made up of life force energy that is spiritually guided through the body.
Cunningham had always been interested in Reiki. When she wandered in the shop with a friend one day, she talked to Stewarts and was informed on upcoming classes and decided to try one.
After completing training, Cunningham became a Reiki master and was certified to practice and teach on her own.
“What I really like about Reiki is that I’m not the healer,” Cunningham said. “I’m just acting as a conduit to send energy to help the person’s body naturally heal itself.”
Performing Reiki not only affects the recipient but the healer as well. Healers may receive messages, feelings or sense pain from their patients, Cunningham said. She will feel inclined to work more on a specific area of the body if she senses something.
After the session is complete, Cunningham and her patient will discuss what each of them felt.
“It’s a very relaxing experience – I usually feel the energy running through my body,” Cunningham said. “Each person usually feels warmth and relaxation, even if it’s only a little bit.”
Stewarts was amazed with the turnout and was sad to have to turn some people away. However, all were encouraged to take a look around and shop.
“I would say probably 80 percent of the goods that we sell are made by us or for us,” Stewarts said. “My husband hand-pours the candles we sell.”
They also commissioned a local artist to make statues of their god and goddess, Cernunnos and Cerridwen, which are available for purchasing.
Each Saturday of the month they have something different – a goddess workshop for women happens on the first Saturday of every month, a medium comes in once a month, they have a workshop on hypnosis and past-life regression and the last Saturday of every month is the psychic fair.
“I truly think it’s the Age of Aquarius,” Stewarts said. “I think more people want to be connected to spirit or they want to make educated decisions.”