Elizabeth Oldfield speaks with philosopher and spiritual mentor Dr Kate Tomas. 02/10/2024

What is Sacred to you? Dr Kate Tomas answers

Elizabeth 

Hello and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about the deep values of the people shaping our common life. My guests come from a huge range of political, metaphysical and professional perspectives. And I’m delighted that my guest today is Dr Kate Tomas, who is a philosopher and spiritual mentor. Kate, thank you so much for being here.

Dr Kate Tomas 

Such a pleasure. I’m excited!

Elizabeth 

We are going to go deep fast, which I think you will be okay with! And I’m going to ask you, what are your sacred values? What are the things that you want to be defining your life, that you’re trying to live by?

Dr Kate Tomas 

So I love this question, and it took me a little while to try and reduce what my sacred values were to two or three, because I think that most of how I try to live my life, or rather, how I do live my life is governed really by these things. So I take the sacred really seriously. And as a magical practitioner, as a witch, the sacred is something that governs pretty much all parts of my day. I don’t even know how to describe whether these are things, or these are beings or these are relationships, but I think that I understand the sacred as being those things that we value above all else, and that are somehow connected to the Divine. And so, for me, the things that I think are most directly related to the Divine are desire. I hold desire as really sacred, and I hold relationships as really sacred. And I don’t mean, in fact, I rarely mean just romantic relationships. I mean relationships as crucibles for transformation, for change, and relationships that connect us to what I believe is the truth of reality, which is that we are all deeply connected. So for me, desire is very sacred, relationships, engaging with each other, engaging with other beings, with other spiritual beings, material beings, those are very sacred. And then when it comes to values: honesty, integrity and kindness kind of show up for me as being the guiding principles of my life and my work.

Elizabeth 

Yes. And can you think of a time where one of those or several of them have been, I guess, challenged. I often find that we’re not always sure what our sacred values are, until we get to a fork in the road and we’re tempted to compromise on them right where – where there’s a choice to be made. And we can either choose for them or we can choose against them and we don’t always choose for them. I definitely don’t always choose for mine. Have you had moments in your life, decisions you’ve had to make, where those values have guided you in some way?

Dr Kate Tomas

Yes, absolutely. One of the most important ways of enaging with the world and related are connected deeply to these things that I consider sacred. And I suppose, from what I’ve experienced myself and in terms of the people that I work with, is that those qualities, the sense of desire being sacred and relationships being sacred, are challenged most often when it comes to our relationship with ourself. And of course, our relationship with ourself, I absolutely, fundamentally believe this, is what governs every, every part of our experience with the world. And so, when I think about moments in my life where that concern that fork in the road, wondering, am I going to make the ‘right’ decision in alignment with my values, it’s always going to come down to my relationship to self.  Desire, for example, when I talk about desire as being sacred, I don’t mean wanting a material thing, although that could be part of it. But more, I think that the relationship to self is mediated by desire. I’m going to use God language here, I mean, my PhD is from Christian theology, so I’m kind of heavily influenced by the Judeo–Christian tradition for good and ill. But, you know, I think that our desires are sacred in that they are divinely given to us in order for us to establish stronger and better relationship with ourselves, and when we follow those desires, those true desires, we’re able to show up and manifest the tiny shard of the Divine that is ourselves. And I think that’s our only job. I think that’s our only responsibility on this earth, honestly, everything comes from that. I think that’s the point of having values, isn’t it? They’re sort of guidelines to keep us within the road of I mean, we could talk about destiny, which is distinct from fate, of course, but within the sort of guidelines of our lives. Whenever I’m I find myself in a situation where I’m having to really rely and come back to like, what is sacred to me? How can I make this decision so that is in alignment with my integrity and authenticity? It will always come down to my relationship to self, and ultimately, my relationship to my desire. What is it that I want? What is the ultimate experience that I’m trying to achieve here? And that gives me the ability to make a decision that otherwise might have been quite difficult. 

Elizabeth

It’s so interesting. It’s making me think about the way the different, the great wisdom parts, the different spiritual traditions, think about desire. And I certainly have found that part of my growing up of my soul, has been learning to distinguish between, you should call them deep desires. You know, in my language, the desires of my soul, right? Which are for a relationship, relationship with God, relationship with others, relationship with the Earth, those things that move me into connection. That’s my definition of fully aliveness. And then these more transient passing things which feel like desire, but actually might be ways that I’m trying to numb, or escape, or consume. These kind of more cravey, passing things that don’t actually satisfy. How do you, in your life, learn to distinguish between those two different types of desire? 

Dr Kate Tomas

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that the desires that emerge as part of our conditioning, as human beings that live in a culture with other humans, and at the moment we’re living through, under, perhaps we could say, a late–stage colonial capitalism. And so, a lot of the desires that we’re encouraged to have, are going to be in support of sustaining those structures of oppression. And I have these desires! This isn’t me saying I don’t have these desires. But you know, if I have a desire for a particular pair of shoes, for example, I would recognize that as a desire that is true and authentic to me, but it’s also conditioned and cultivated in some way by structures that are trying to contain me and disconnect me, oftentimes from the truth of our existence, which is that we’re all connected and part of the same. And then I think there are those other desires, as you describe, that I would describe as deeper desires, which are the sacred desires. And I think that sacred desires will always be ultimately in service of unity, community, and connection, and experiencing that, right? So I think deeper desires versus, surface level desires. When I say surface level, I’m going to use astrology speak, because it’s one of the languages that’s very important to me. But, you know, I have sun in Taurus, Scorpio ascendant, which, for those people that know anything about astrology, will know that the people that have sun in Taurus are considered to be quite materialistic. They’re considered to really love luxury and beauty. Now my desire for a particular pair of shoes might actually feel quite important and deep to me, even though I can rationalize and say, oh, you know, this is just capitalism working its consumerist magic on me to make me want something. But when I investigate that desire, what I can often find is that at the core of that seemingly ‘surface level’ desire for a pair of shoes is actually a desire to be seen in a particular way. And underneath that desire, if I investigate it, is a desire to be connected, and to be seen authentically as a part of myself, to be seen so that I can be in relationship and community with others. So sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn’t buy the shoes. But the point is that I’ve gained clarity about what I really want and that desire, that true, deep desire will always, I believe, and I think this is just universally the case, will always lead to community, connection and unity.

The ideas in Kate’s childhood

Elizabeth

Yes, thank you. We’re going to come back to all of that, there’s so much I want to dig in to with you. But first, I want to just get a sense of where you’ve come from. You know, how did Kate Tomas emerge? Could you give us a little word picture of your childhood, maybe the years before you were 10, what were the big ideas in the air that were forming you? 

Dr Kate Tomas 

So I had quite a difficult, traumatic even, childhood, and a huge amount of it was connected to being sort of geographically nomadic, obviously under the age of 10, without any choice about it. And so most of the experiences that I had, have shaped me. And I don’t feel that this was necessarily a bad thing, it just is what it is, we’re connected to deeply desiring, anchoring and rooting. But also, I am autistic. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was in my late 30s, but now looking back, I can see my childhood and just think, oh my goodness. Like, it’s so obvious, I would have been immediately flagged and diagnosed if I were a child now, but of course, this was like the 80s, so that didn’t happen. And so a large part of my experience as a child was just complete confusion as to why people weren’t being honest, and when I was being honest as I perceived it, just telling the truth about things, or perceiving things in a particular way, and then communicating that with the intention of clearing up misunderstandings, or, maybe people just didn’t know or understand this thing, would be met with punishment and ostracization. 

So, most of my early childhood experiences and the big ideas that shaped me were really around justice, confusion around truth, but also, I was what some people would term ‘psychic’. I’m not a great fan of the term for a bunch of reasons I’m very happy to talk about. But I had a particular experience of the world, which meant that I had access to an awful lot of extra information that most people didn’t. And I was receiving all of this extra information in the form of, I would describe them now as intuitions, I just had knowledge of things that I didn’t get logically. I would see particular beings, spiritual beings, I would describe them as now. I saw the links and the connections between ideas visibly, almost materially and I was so confused about why other people didn’t, and then even more confused when I was trying to tell them about these connections and explain to them in a genuine way why, that got me in a lot of trouble. And I think when I was a child, I was also just a bit obsessive, as a lot of autistic people are, but particularly around environmentalism and animal rights. I just had these very deep relationships with animals and the natural world that was just completely like, integrated. I didn’t understand this distinction and separation between humans and animals in terms of, you know, eating animals, for example. I think I must have been, like, 4 or 5, when I realized that what was being fed to me was, was an animal, and I was obsessed and loved animals so much. So, this was just absolutely, world–shatteringly awful for me. And then completely confused, like, why can’t people see that we are all connected, and that, if we’re harming the natural earth, we’re harming ourselves. And it’s a sort of naivety, it might be understood as, but I think naivety is very beautiful. But it was a very intense experience of not really understanding why how I experienced the world wasn’t the same as other people, and, more importantly, why when I was trying to share that, it would be met with persecution and not very much has changed. You know, I’m 43 and I’m still absolutely being persecuted, as many others are, for being a witch and naming these things that everybody knows exists.

Being a psychic in an atheist household 

Elizabeth 

I’m sorry that it was such a difficult period for you. Am I right in thinking that there wasn’t any kind of spiritual or religious kind of familiarity amongst your parents, your wider family? 

Dr Kate Tomas 

So, so my kind of ancestral religious background is Jewish and Catholic, but neither of my parents were religious. In fact, they were both sort of dogmatic atheists and had quite strong reactions to their own religious upbringing, which meant that, obviously religion was just something that was considered manipulative, and harmful, and oppressive, and of course, it can absolutely be that. But then what was thrown into that bundle was any form of spirituality or anything, I don’t know that they would have used this language, but I would now understand my parents as materialists. So ultimately, anything that wasn’t empirically evidenced was considered invalid. And so, 90% of my experience was absolutely not empirically evidential, not yet. I mean now, because I’ve refined my skill and I know how to navigate the world, I can call up evidence for these things, but as a seven–year–old, that was just absolutely not a possibility for me. And so yes, the relationship to spirituality and the relationship to religion was very much one of, I would say, taboo, almost. It was denigrated, and people who were religious were very much looked down on. They were considered to be anti–intellectual. They were considered to be weak in some particular way because, why would you need some sort of cosmology? Again, my parents wouldn’t have had this language, I don’t think, but it was really quite oppressive. And I think particularly because my experience of being in the world, I would not have understood it, and I didn’t understand it as spiritual or in any way religious, until at least the age of 13 or 14. I just was having these experiences, and I didn’t know that they were taboo until I would try and express them, and then it would be shut down or ridiculed. So, I learned very early on that it wasn’t very safe to explore or ask questions or explain or talk about the experiences that I was having. And this followed me all the way through my life, and it’s still very much, a kind of factor that I’m aware of when I do my work, which means that in order to do my work, in order to be in the world and be who I am, I actually have to move through trauma responses that have come I think not just my childhood. I think this is an ancestral cultural history. But certainly, my lived experience as a child was, if you identify or you have any sort of interest, or express any concern with the spiritual, you would just be ridiculed and considered anti–intellectual and not very smart. And being smart was really the only thing that was important in my family. Yeah, 

Elizabeth 

I’m going do something which may or not be possible. And I know this because sometimes people ask it of me, and it’s not always possible. But one of the divides that I think exists that I’m really interested in, and I need to get up this binary way of thinking. But one of the differences that exist, and people probably sit on a spectrum, is those of us who have mystical, ecstatic, spiritual experiences, that’s how I became a Christian. I prayed, “God if you’re there, would you show me?”, And then I had a like out cold on the floor spiritual experience. And I still have intense, ecstatic spiritual experiences. And similarly, lots of people think I’m a complete weirdo and I’m just caring less and less about that as I go right. My husband is a philosopher, and he talks about being educated into imbecility! We’re also nerds. Lots of my friends have what I would think of as very left hemispheric forms of formation, or just temperamentally, even if they’re not hostile to the idea in the way that you experienced, it is just not something they seem able to access nor understand. Could you just describe maybe the earliest experience, or one of your experiences? What do you actually mean when you say that? What happens? 

Can you describe your spiritual experiences? 

Dr Kate Tomas 

For me as a child, it would be quite literally that I would have a vision. I would be lying in bed, and an angel would arrive at the end of the bed. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have been able to understand it. I didn’t describe it as an angel then, but it was a being that was made of light, literally, I visually saw this. This wasn’t in my mind. Although, of course, there’s a bigger question between what’s what! But I saw a being of light appear at the end of my bed when I was very sick one day. I must have been 4 or 5 years old. I don’t remember what was going on in my life at that time, I just think I was about this age. And a communication between that bright light and me occurred, and that communication was just instantly soothing. I don’t know how else to describe it, other than everything that I was concerned about or worried about, which as a four–year–old or a five–year–old, but that was very connected to everything was quite an intense experience of anxiety just living was just gone. And I felt a sense of peace that I can’t really adequately explain. You know, it’s William James’s definition of the holy or religious experience specifically, is that it’s ineffable, which means it’s impossible to communicate adequately. Language is not possible. And when we look at, you know, the testimonies of people, but particularly women, who have been labeled as mystics throughout history, and this was my PhD, so it’s an obvious area of expertise and interest for me, we see that everybody has this same, it’s what you’re describing as well, which is that there is not language that is adequate to communicate the experience. It is totally ineffable. But I can do as good as I can. So, these sorts of experiences would be like that, I would see something and have a knowing that that experience or that being was good, without being able to be more accurate than that – just goodness. I would now describe it as holy, or even maybe sacred, and that the purpose of that communication was to soothe me, and it worked. That wouldn’t get me in trouble, that would just get me ridiculed or told that I was having a fever dream because I had a temperature or whatever. But I knew, for me, it was meaningful.

Another experience would be if my mother was having a falling out with one of her friends, I would know all of the details about that without her having said anything about it. I knew the intricate details of the falling out, and more importantly, what she had done, that she wasn’t able to acknowledge or see. And I would, at eight years old, walk down the stairs and have this download, this information – not really a big fan of the download analogy, but it’s as good as we can get with this sort of thing. I just knew everything, I saw everything, and then I would say, “The reason she’s not talking to you is because you did this thing.” Obviously, I would not do that now because of questions of consent, and also, I don’t want to get involved in anybody’s business that’s not paying me a lot of money to get involved in their business! But that’s the sort of thing, a whole variety of different experiences. You know, it wasn’t just sort of one medium, I suppose it was, I would have, ecstatic experiences, one off kind of spiritual experiences where a being would show themselves to me and communicate something. Another time, I saw the Earth move as if it were breathing, and it was shown to me that it was breathing because it was alive, and this was a being. So literally I would be in a field on a school trip, and we were, casting these circles… It’s funny casting circles now as a witch means a very different thing. This was unusual, but it was like a big day out, and you have these plastic rings, and you’d throw the rings down on a patch of grass, and then you’d crowd around the ring, and then count what insects and plants and flowers would be in that ring. And while we were doing this, I quite literally had one of these experiences where the Earth started to breathe. And then I saw that all of the animals, and all of the plants, and everything that was there was living within and on, just as we are living within and on this, that this being that is very much alive, and was able to communicate with me, and I was able to understand and communicate with them. And then I would be like, “Did you see this?” And, of course, nobody saw it because, you know, it was an experience that I had. But it’s very difficult to communicate the power of that. It gives you an experience that enriches and strengthens your understanding of your relationship to everything. So, coming back to the first thing that we were talking about, the sense of desires and relationships being sacred. I believe relationships are everything. You know, how we relate to ourselves is the primary relationship, and it’s through that relationship that we are capable and able to relate to other beings. And most of my spiritual experiences, and later on, they became religious experiences were connected to having I guess I would describe it as a privileged relationship to the world and other beings.

Out of the frying pan into the fire: Leaving home at 15

Elizabeth 

Thank you. You ended up having to leave home at 15. I can imagine that was pretty difficult. 

Dr Kate Tomas 

Yeah, I went from the frying pan into the fire, although at the time, I felt like I had no option, no choice. So, I did leave home at 15 and I immediately entered a relationship with a man who was 20 years older than me. So now, of course, I look back, and after 20 years of therapy, can see, this was actually a really abusive relationship that had, at the center of it, grooming. And yet, at the time for myself, I felt and understood myself to be completely in control and in charge. This was a decision and a choice that I made. It was a calculated decision. I needed to get out of the house that I was in, the environment that I was in, and it improved my circumstances. And actually, it did. I’m very fascinated by this multiplicity of perspectives, I don’t think that there is a single view on anything. That doesn’t mean that there’s no truth, but I think that truth is multifaceted and, depending on one’s capacity to hold multiple perspectives at the same time, we have greater access to truth. I can now look back and say it was both true that that was a very abusive relationship where I was groomed by a pedophile, and at the same time, I was absolutely aware of a facet of this where I was choosing to get out of the situation I was in and improve my situation incrementally. Yeah, I think with this, with all things, obviously we can’t change what has happened, but we do have the capacity to make meaning. And I think that one of the things that I work an awful lot on for myself, but also with the people that I work with, and all of the work that I do, and the teaching that I do, it’s focused on actively making meaning. What do we want the meaning to be? I don’t think meaning is given. I think that’s part of what it is to be human, is that we make meaning. And I think it’s very important that we intentionally and consciously make meaning. And so, for me, that period of my life, I met him when I was 14, and he was 34 I think. That has been an integral part of what has shaped my perspective and my experience, but it was also something that I’ve managed to make very meaningful in a very positive way. I mean, it’s no longer just a source of trauma and suffering for me. 

What does it mean to work as a psychic? 

Elizabeth 

And during that time, and we can drill into this word psychic, but I’ve certainly heard you describe yourself as “working as a psychic.” Could you say a bit about what that means? 

Dr Kate Tomas 

So, I started when I was 17, taking money for access to this extra information that I received. So, like the example of coming down the stairs and my mum being upset that she’s broken this friendship and being able to see precisely what it was and where she’s not taking responsibility and what needs to be done to remedy it. I have that ability, and have refined that ability because I believe that intuition is a faculty… I was going to say, ‘of the mind’. But again, the philosopher in me is like, I don’t know if we can separate the mind. I’m not really a Cartesian, so I don’t believe in this sort of duality, let’s say, between body and mind. But yes, I think that working as a psychic now I would say, means having a very refined intuitive faculty. That, for me, means that I can access information that most other people cannot, and most of the time, that information is going to be in service of liberation. And so that might be liberation for the person in that particular circumstance or situation that they’re in, or it might be liberation collectively, I think in the best examples, it’s both.

Now, when I say intuition as a faculty, I think that everybody has the capacity to be intuitive. I think intuition is something that is intrinsic, let’s say to being a being, to being not just a human. I think my cats are very intuitive. I think plants are very intuitive, anything that is a being. And again, I’m an animist. That means I think everything’s a being, including the speaker, microphone and computer. But we can talk about that maybe another time. But I think that intuition is integral to what it is to be, and I think that it’s possible to cultivate, just as it’s possible to cultivate a talent or a propensity towards art or music, I have a lot of clients that are like incredible musicians or incredible writers or incredible actors or incredible artists in some way. And it’s not just that they have been ‘gifted’ a particular ability. They may have a sort of proclivity towards music, art, whatever, but they’ve also refined that. They’ve practiced, they’ve increased their skill set. They’ve intentionally used their brain and their brain plasticity to refine and become really good at that thing that they have a proclivity towards. And for me, that’s intutition. I mean, I hold quite an apparently controversial view on intuition, which is that I think that most of the time, a refined intuition is actually a trauma response. So that is to say, it started as a survival mechanism. And I can certainly only speak for myself, I believe this totally to be true for me, that I came into this world with a natural connection, greater, stronger connection to, let’s say that the universe, than maybe others. But it was the need to survive that pushed me to refine that and develop an intuition so that I could stay safe. And I think that for a lot of people that work as professional intuitives and psychics, and I’ve certainly found this to be the case in terms of all the people that I know, and people that come to me for readings who are also psychics, this is the case. That there is some kind of need that developed the intuitive faculty to survive. And so psychic work for me is, I think, my ability to access and use that intuitive faculty to gather extra information and then, the other part of being effective and good psychic, is your capacity to communicate that in a way that the person that that needs it can understand. 

Can you describe the psychic industry?

Elizabeth

Thinking about what we mean by ‘psychic’ as being a highly developed intuitive sense is really helpful for translating for someone like me. A lot of the time, when I’m coming to interview someone, I have a set of associations about their world that I know are faulty, which is why I want to talk to them and understand better. But probably for some of the audience as well, certainly my kind of base level as someone who really knows nothing about this world, associations with psychics are this kind of like regional town theater, come and fill the rows and people go. And my immediate story that I tell about it is that many of the people in that world are a bit exploitative, because people are coming to them with desperation. I hope this is not offensive.

Dr Kate Tomas

I’ve heard it all!

Elizabeth

Okay good, this was my working model. Could you say a little bit about the wider industry or field, where you think wisdom is, where there are risks and threats to it. If we’re all trying to grow up our souls in wisdom, where does it help and where doesn’t it?

Dr Kate Tomas 

Yeah, I mean, I’ve got so much to say about this. So, one thing is, I think that this image that you’ve drawn is really accurate. I think that is how a lot of people view it, and the associations that they have with the work and with word psychic, and why I have so much hesitation about using it. But also, I think that there’s something very powerful in reclaiming it for a collection of reasons. So the first is, I think what you’re describing is actually probably more connected to mediumship. So, there’s a distinction between psychic and psychic medium. Mediumship is specifically connecting, or using this intuitive ability, or let’s say, this privileged connection to a source of knowledge and wisdom that is not logical – let’s just have that as our working model for a psychic. A psychic medium uses that privileged connection to connect to dead people, right? People who have, the term is ‘passed over’, the concept being that there is a second life, another life, where it’s possible for us to communicate with the dead. I have always had huge resistance and big difficulties with that and avoided mediumship at great expense to me in lots of ways. And yet, I have also had multiple experiences of dead people communicating to me, or at least, on the surface, that’s what it seemed like. You know, very specific, detailed information about people I didn’t know, who were dead, like bombarding me, often at night, often when I’m asleep, or when I’m on my own, to deliver a message to a specific person, and most of the time, a person I do not know and have nothing to do with. So as somebody who was, ethically and to some extent culturally, was very against this whole concept, I can say, hand on heart, I thought it was all exploitative. You know, like Victorian style, penny arcade bullshit. And yet, it’s also been my very lived experience, that despite holding those views and actively rejecting and refusing and telling myself this is insane, this isn’t happening, I can’t do it, it has happened. The other thing that I think is important to note is, we see this shift in the 19th century towards a real fascination with the development of spiritualism. So, in the history of psychic work, healing work and intuition, we have a real pushback against the Industrial Revolution and the scientific explosion, and that inevitably, in all cultures across the board, there is always a sort of swing of the pendulum. And what we see in Victorian England is this swing against the scientific method and materialism and empiricism. And also, what emerges from that is this idea of the psychic medium holding court in churches, of course, we get the spiritualist church emerged where that’s literally what happens. And so an important piece about this is, so much I believe, of our prejudice against, and I say this as somebody who held this prejudice and to some extent still does because it’s deeply ingrained, is also a form of classism. Because what we see in the development of spiritualism, and particularly the growth of psychic mediums, is the development of a group, a class of people who had no structural power, who had no access to education. These are often people who were literally pushed into factory work. There was no general education, there was no philosophical training, there was no way for them to learn or gain access to power, structurally. And there is an emergence, we see, of these same people gaining access to power, and it’s the same sort of phenomena that we see with mystics vis a vis the Church and their relationship with the structures of power that like to contain relationship to God, relationship to the Divine, relationship to privileged information. And I think that a huge amount of the denigration, rejection, ridicule, and ultimately, negative connotations that are connected to spiritualism and psychic acts is ultimately a form of invalidating a form of knowledge that people who had no access to structures of power had. So I think there’s that. 

Now, the other thing I have to say about this is, with psychic work the point about it is that it is non–rational, right? This is not a form of knowing. I don’t tell my clients the things I tell them because I know that if you invest X amount of money in this stock, it’s going to result in that outcome because I know anything about the stock, or because I know anything about anything, I’m not accessing this information using the rational faculty. I’m accessing this information using a totally different faculty, which is not considered valid under contemporary culture. And the whole history of what is considered a ‘valid’ way of knowing and a valid form of knowledge is fascinating and very interconnected with oppression, it’s interconnected with classism and deeply connected to misogyny. So, in essence, what I would say is, I think the negative connotations around psychics, and specifically psychic mediumship, is bound up with keeping people in their place, and specifically the way in which post–enlightenment intellectual culture has dominated. It’s been said there are only certain forms of knowing that are valid, and there are only certain knowers that are valid, and those forms of knowing that are valid are rationality, empirical information, the scientific method. Though the way you actually investigate the scientific method is entirely intuitive, but that’s another conversation. There’ll be some great people that talk about that, that you might really love, and know of. And the knowers that are valid are going to be white men. And so, if you don’t fall in any of those categories, and particularly if you are not a man and you are not using a form of knowledge that is considered valuable, you will be denigrated. You will be ridiculed, and you will be suppressed. So, you know, I think that the negative connotations of psychic work are intricately connected to socio–economic oppression and ultimately, the enlightenment and colonialism. 

Elizabeth 

I think there’s an interesting parallel here, I’m finding this all very thought provoking and quite challenging, because one of the things I write about in my book is my charismatic form of Christian expression has played a similar role in the history of the church, right? Both inside and outside of the church, expressions of enthusiasm, that’s what enthusiasm used to mean, these emotional, embodied forms of religious practice and theos (filled with God) were embarrassing. They were outside the mainstream and not in the center. And it is traditionally that these kind of Pentecostal, charismatic expressions of faith are most common amongst the poor and still brown people and women. And part of my conversion story around that, and then attempting to be an atheist for a while, and then coming back to what felt like a more kind of austere, rational form of Christian practice, and then right back round to like, no, I want to pray in tongues and lie on the floor and have a cry! And I no longer ashamed of that, partly through the work of Iain McGilchrist and my understanding of different epistemologies, different forms of knowing. But I wanted to do pick up one thread for the listener, because you’ve talked about stocks, and what they won’t necessarily yet know is that you move from this quite hand to mouth existence, having left home really young, charging by the hour as a psychic, to this very successful business as an industrial intuitive advising Fortune 500 companies. I know, it’s a lot, there’s a memoir in there! But could you just join the dots, how did you move from that to this completely different world of using your skills.

Dr Kate Tomas 

Yeah, so, so I went through a period of time where I was, as you say, hand to mouth, and working entirely just with individuals. So I moved to Glastonbury in Somerset, which is the sort of epicenter for spiritual pilgrimage of all traditions, actually fascinatingly, but certainly the sort of center of the home of the new age, we could say. And I was very drawn there, I couldn’t really explain it or understand it. I felt very conflicted about it, because I didn’t fit in at all. And I still do not fit in in Glastonbury, I’m kind of infamous, as not the Glastonbury person. But I was there for seven years, very successfully, but was still doing this sort of one to one readings with individuals. And ultimately, what happened was I was very good at what I did, and so word of mouth spread, and I started seeing all sorts of people. So people would come in from all over the world to have a session with me. And this is when I was really, like, 19 or 20 years old, I was young. And a collection of those people would be people that had businesses, and often would be in very senior positions with very big businesses. And of course, and I say of course, because I was so naive, I was 20, maybe 21 years old I was a child, and also a bit of an idiot! And I was charging £25 for an hour of my time, I would be giving them so much value, and they saw that. And basically, what happened is that they sort of plucked me out of that and were like, okay, how can we use this? How can we use this? They didn’t care. This is the thing that I think I would like everybody to understand about industrial intuition, is that most of the concern and the anxiety about the epistemological validity of psychic work is really held by the middle classes, right? It really is. It’s like those of us who have sort of enough understanding of knowledge, and philosophy, and natural science to kind of have questions, but not enough of an education or an understanding to actually deeply question why we think we know what we think we know. And most of the people that are making the most money in the world, and I say this with absolute confidence, because I know them, they are using any form of extra information that they can. They don’t care where and how I get the information. They’re not even interested in why or how I know these things. They care about the bottom line. And so when I realized this and discovered this, I’ve never been somebody that has been trying to prove my value, and I never will be. I went through a period of time where I felt very concerned, I suppose, and I still have this, about whether I am giving enough? That’s a different kind of question. But in terms of like, was it valuable? I wasn’t trying to ever prove to somebody that intuitive information was valuable, because it just evidently was. And so I had these clients that then wanted to work with me to find out how they could use me as a resource. And so for a period of time, and by the way, I basically don’t do this anymore for a collection of political reasons, and also I don’t need to, I would work with large corporations, with their board of directors. So I would have one member on the C suite, so that’s the top level of management. I would need to work with somebody who had directorial control, i.e., they have the capacity to make decisions and choices. And I would sit with them. They would be my handler, and then I would do my work. That is to say, I would close my eyes and access the cloud, bring it down into the knife, and give them data. That’s how it really, ultimately would be. And then they would use that data, and then they would make more money. And so, yes, I did that for over a over a decade, and I think I definitely didn’t charge enough money, that’s one thing I would say! I know that I’m responsible for making millions of pounds for people. And you know, part of the reason that I don’t do this anymore… I mean, occasionally, if there is a circumstance or a situation or a client that I feel like is absolutely aligned politically with me, that I feel is really good and excited about it, then absolutely I will. But it’s very boring work. It’s not very satisfying. It doesn’t feel meaningful to me. It ultimately is just stoking the fires of capitalist industry. I did it because I needed to. But I mean, it’s so dull, and I’m intelligent and creative, and I didn’t want to do that with my life. And I wasn’t even being paid sufficiently. I was, I think at the time, I was being paid, like £5000 a day, or something silly like that. 

Elizabeth 

Skating over the silliness or otherwise of that figure, this is blowing my mind a little bit, because presumably, within that company, your handler would come back and say, ‘Kate says these three things.’ Presumably, internally, there was a bit of like, ‘well, what if we put £100,000 in marketing towards this pair of shoes and she’s wrong?’ In my experience of working with businesses, people, even if it’s made up, they want an argument for the why. How does that work?

Dr Kate Tomas 

So, my attitude is very much like, that’s not my problem, right? 

Elizabeth 

So, they got to that point before calling you in?

Dr Kate Tomas 

Exactly. In my experience, I think there’s two things that happen. With small businesses, I think what you’re describing is very much true, which is that there is this kind of terror, but also you just start small. So, £100,000 pounds to a true multinational, global business is really nothing that’s like the salary of an intern that they don’t even know exists. Like, really, we’re looking at scales here of income that are mind blowing and depressing. But they wouldn’t start with investing £100,000, they would start really small, and then it would just be evidential. So, it’s simply like payment on results. I would only get rehired if it ended up being correct and accurate, and nobody is correct 100% of the time. But if you’re hitting 80 to 85% accuracy rates, then that is f*cking amazing in business. If you’re hitting 52% accuracy rates, they’re going to hire you and they’re going to hire you again. But I think that one of the things that I did quite well… And when I say something ridiculous like £5,000 a day, yes, £5,000 pounds a day is a very good day rate, but not if a company has a turnover of £10 billion. 

Elizabeth

Yes, not as proportion of their budget.

Dr Kate Tomas

Right! And if my piece of information on that full eight–hour day of very labor intensive, even if boring work, resulted in them making an extra million pounds then, yeah, £5,000 pounds is a ridiculous amount for me to be charging. This is the thing, I suppose, going back to what I consider sacred and the whole point, I suppose, of our conversation. Money is not sacred. Validation is not sacred. Fame is absolutely the opposite of sacrality and all those things, I have had all those things, but that’s not what gives me meaning or joy. And what do I want to do with my life? I want to make art, and I want to make happiness, and I want to spend time with people I love, and I want to eat and cook good food, and I want to listen to music, and I want to be in the sun, and I want to dance, and I want to choose what I wear in this form of play. And it’s just the opposite of that. So, it was ultimately quite boring work that was necessary, and I’m glad that I did it. It kind of got me out of various different financial holes at different times. And I met wonderful people who I’m still good friends with. I’m still friends with the first person that hired me at a big, global brand, we email regularly and have lunch when we’re in the same city. But, you know, it’s not something that I think is meaningful, God knows it’s not sacred.

Why are young women drawn to astrology and tarot? 

Elizabeth 

So, I realize my reaction to that figure is much more about my formation in the not–for–profit sector and my naivety about that world, which is why it’s helpful to hear about it. And I want to talk to you specifically about astrology and tarot, and I may be being just very naive to even attempt to talk about them both at the same time. I used to run a religion think tank, I did religion programming for the BBC, and the spiritual landscape has changed so rapidly in the last 15 years. And it’s not that people weren’t using tarot cards or interested in astrology before then, but the mainstreaming, particularly amongst younger women, of these traditions as sources of insight, and knowledge, and wisdom, has gone through the roof. And for those of us who don’t know much about it, I can just sort of look on a bit baffled. Could you say a little bit about your journey, like what drew you to these, you talk about them as languages that you speak, what are you seeing in them, and why are they part of your practice?

Dr Kate Tomas 

So, I had a very negative connotation with both astrology and tarot up until, really, the age of 16, because of my upbringing. I was scared of tarot, one of the ways in which forms of oppression work, of course, is to disenfranchise us from our natural intuition and our natural source of access. But it’s also to demonize, literally, to associate with the devil, those tools, or practices, that are associated with people who are not considered valid, knowers that are that are disenfranchised in so many ways already. And I think that tarot and astrology suffer heavily from that. I first encountered tarot directly when I was 16, and I had a formative experience where I had a dream. I would always have very vivid dreams. I was in Glastonbury at the time, so the first time that I’d ever visited the town, and I didn’t really know anything about it, and I dreamt. And in this dream, I walked out of the bed & breakfast that I was staying in, walked down the road, turned down another alley, and went up some stairs and had a tarot reading. And this was a dream of mine, and I woke up with this knowledge that this is real, you have to go and do that. And it’s very difficult to communicate, it’s the inevitable mystical experience again, like I just knew I had to do this. There wasn’t really a question about it. I don’t really feel like it was a voluntary thing. So I did. I got dressed, walked downstairs, walked down the road, found the place, and it was very hidden away. It wasn’t on the high street, it wasn’t an obvious place, you know, I hadn’t been there before. I walked up the stairs, and this woman was there, and she says, “Oh, I’ve been expecting you, I put the heater on.”, and I was like, “What do you mean you’ve been expecting me?” And at 16, you know, I was obnoxious, I think, as most 16–year–olds are, but certainly coming from this sort of atheist, materialist background where I was like, “Oh, this is all bullshit, it’s just exploitative!” I really held that. It’s like a comportment towards anything that’s not validated, of mistrust. I still find this truly depressing. And one of the ways that people are very traumatized, and that trauma shows up is just like, if the primary lens that one sees the world through is a fear of being exploited and a lens of mistrust, then my God, your life is so stunted. It’s so disabling. Anyway, I had that, and so I was eye–rolling a little bit, but also found myself there and I was compelled, and there was a part of me that was freaked out because, “Oh my God, what just happened? I had this dream.” I didn’t see the woman in the dream, I just had the dream of the journey to her. Anyway, I walked in, she opens the door. She hadn’t turned the heater on, and she’s like, “Sit down.” And I go, and I sit down in a chair. And she’s like, “That’s not your chair, that’s my chair!” And I was like, “Oh, okay, sorry.” and sat in the other chair. She’s like, “Oh, but you are, you are meant to be a reader. You are meant to be a tarot reader.” And again, and I was like, eye roll, whatever. But also, part of me was like, am I? Because I don’t know what I am, but it’s still not normal! You know, give me something, anything you can tell me, please. And then she proceeded to give me a Tarot reading and it was really amazing, and also so very sad in many ways. Because I was 16, I was in this abusive relationship and would be in that abusive relationship until that man died. There’s a lot of written misinformation about me apparently having four husbands. I’ve never been married four times, but my first long term partner died of cancer when I was 22 and it was horrific. And I was with him until I was 22. Basically, she didn’t tell me this, but she described in an awful amount of accuracy who I was and what I would go on to experience and the primary struggles of my life, all of which, alas, have turned out be absolutely accurate. But the tarot was the thing that I left with a sense of, oh, my God, this is something. And the images on the cards that she used, in fact, I have the same cards right now here with me [shows cards]. This is the deck because I immediately went out and went to a shop and bought the same deck of cards, and then I taught myself how to read the tarot. 

So, I love the Tarot. As you said, you know, I describe it as a language that I speak. I speak it fluently. I feel very passionate about it, and, you know, could talk endlessly about it, but in essence, I think a helpful way to think of the Tarot is it’s a symbolic book that is unbound. Okay, so you have 72 pages to this book, and each page contains a whole collection of symbolism that offers access to true knowledge and also describes archetypal experiences. So, the Tarot is made up of two decks, the major and the minor arcana, and these are often shuffled together and mixed up. In the Major Arcana, there are 21 cards, and each one of those cards describes an archetypal experience. So, you know, the idea of archetypes, obviously, is from Jung and the Tarot predates Jung by many hundreds of years. Nobody really knows where the Tarot emerged from, but we think, in the 13th century in Central Europe, maybe Italy, maybe Marseille, depending on who you read. Some people claim it’s ancient Egyptian, but I think that there’s less evidence for that, and that’s more a sort of Orientalist colonial view on, you know, the mystic East. But ultimately, Tarot in its pages, and if you think about it as a book that is, you know, unbound… This is my view on this. Everybody has a different view, although I think this is the most cohesive and useful way of understanding. Is that as you’re shuffling, as the person engaging with the cards and being in communication and in relationship with this being, that is the Tarot deck. The Tarot deck, I understand as a being, you’re holding an intention to have wisdom revealed to you about your present moment, what is happening right now that I need to know about? And so, as you shuffle, these different pages that tell different stories that illustrate certain experiences get ordered in particular way. And then when you turn the cards over, and the classic spread is called the Celtic cross, it’s a 10–card spread generally. And each position of each card correlates with a particular meaning. So, the first card will be you, the querant, what is the card that represents you? The second card will be the crossing card, what is the primary challenge that you, in this moment, are dealing with? And then the card above it would be, what is the energy, the environment that you’re in? The third the fourth card beneath it, what are the unconscious drivers? And so on, so that each card, as you lay the cards down in a particular position, with a particular intention, reveals more information, some of which you will know and recognize. Every tarot reading will be wildly accurate in certain ways, even if you’re doing what I call a flat reading, which is just simply reading the cards without the extra intuition. But you will get your life reflected back to you in that present moment. And so, it’s such a powerful tool for cultivation of relationship to the self, deeper self–knowledge. And then, you know, coming back to that fundamental belief I hold, which is that it’s only through deep relationship to the self that we have the capacity to understand anything else. So, I think it’s an incredibly powerful, very meaningful tool, and it doesn’t have to be associated or connected with any spiritual being. So, for example, it’s not that you have to come from a particular religion, or you have to hold a particular cosmology. Jung writes an awful lot about the Tarot, which might be very accessible for people that are sort of cautious or anxious about it from religious perspectives. It’s like when you hold a glass onto some choppy water, it’s like you can see what’s going on underneath, that is how I view the Tarot. It’s a tool that allows a deepening of understanding of what is happening for you in that moment, and then, depending on how skilled and refined your interpretations are of the symbolism, you can get extremely detailed, incredibly accurate imagery, clarity and wisdom from it. 

Elizabeth 

You used this great phrase earlier, which I also really like, about meaning making. You know, humans are meaning making creatures. Charles Taylor says we are storied selves, right? We are constantly trying to locate ourselves in a story. Like, where am I? Am I in crisis? Am I in calm? Am I on a hero’s journey? Do I need to just tough through this valley of the shadow of death to come into the sunny uplands, we can’t help it. It’s one of the things I find my faith gives me is this ability to locate myself in a bigger story that I play a part in, but is not just about me, right? It’s this larger narrative as someone who became a Christian, then was not, and now am again I have a complex relationship with it. I think everyone should know the tensions in their own tradition, right? And I certainly know the tensions in mine. But for Christian listeners and others just interested in the spiritual landscape, what do you think is happening whereby you know two or three generations ago that meaning making would have happened in religious traditions, right? It would have happened in congregations. People would have gone to church to try and locate themselves in a bigger story and understand themselves. And now they’re not, and they are increasingly, drawing on these esoteric forms of knowledge, what’s your diagnosis for why that’s happening?

Dr Kate Tomas 

I think that as we become more connected in other ways, and most notably, obviously the internet being a big piece of it. But also, general global travel. As the world becomes smaller, as the sort of mycelium of technology and the network increases, I think that where previously religious communities, specifically Christian communities, had the monopoly on spiritual experience and particularly access to the mycelium of connection, spirituality and deeper meaning, that’s not the case anymore. I think it’s really as simple as that is that. When we’re looking back, a large part of the PhD was looking at ways in which women mystics all the way from the 10th century up until contemporary times, are treated by the Catholic Church, but also their religious communities generally. And what we see is that in the 10th century, people who are now considered doctors of the church, who were doctors of the church, and were also burnt at the state by the same church, by the way! Classic, all that tension within the tradition where they would have been doing what I’m doing. So that is to say, I don’t think it’s anything specifically to do with Christianity. I don’t think it’s anything to do specifically with religion as such, rather that it is to do with structured, hierarchical, dogmatic forms of connection to the Divine, literally just not holding up anymore.

Instagram Spiritual Influencer

Elizabeth 

There’s so much I’d like to talk to you about, but I want to honour your time. So, I’m going to end with a question about these new forms of spiritual leadership of which you represent a part, and you seem like someone who could tolerate a lot of frankness, which is why I wanted to talk to you. Gosh, you give me so many thoughts. So, the fundamental question is, how do you carry the responsibility of people leaving behind these traditional forms of religious leadership? As we know, they have fragilities and fail us, but also have systems and processes that, by and large, at different times and spaces can be protected against those. There are forms of accountability, oversight, seminary, and training. And this sense of which, being a spiritual leader is a high calling, and you need to take it seriously, and you need to get trained, and then you need to remain in structures that will help you carry that power well. When people are moving out of those religious traditions into this more… I wanted to say it feels like the Wild West, and the Wild West had lots of good stuff about it as well, right? But when I came to first, thought about writing my book, which is trying to translate the Christian tradition to those who don’t know much about it. I said to a friend of mine, “If I become an Instagram spiritual influencer, will you shoot me in the head?” Which is one of my judgier moments, which I repent of, and the reason I feel safe talking to you about this because I have also heard you query some of the ethics of this world. How do you carry the responsibility of people looking to you for wisdom in an age where you don’t get priested, you have to do these kinds of apprenticeships in the kind of knowledge that you’ve had?

Dr Kate Tomas 

That’s a great question, and I care very much about this. I think I’ve got two things to say, I suppose. The first is, oh my goodness, having been involved in seminarian training and being very deeply involved in it for many years, not just through academic theology, but socially being connected to many priests and many priests in training, and actually being involved in the training of priests for a very short period of time. But nonetheless, I can say it’s a very bad system. It’s not just that it’s a very bad system, it is a fundamentally flawed system. And so, although there is this ideal of going through a process of discernment of vocation and clarifying.  The fundamental problem I believe, and I can only speak about the Church of England and the Catholic Church because those are my areas of expertise and experience, is they’re ultimately still governed and dominated by the structures of oppression that cause all the problems in the world, and that is to say patriarchy, capitalism, and specifically colonialism. And so, I have to say I just do not hold any respect for such training. So that’s the first thing. And I think that the danger of it is that it has got this facade of structure, and organizing, and integrity, and there is no integrity in it. And this isn’t going to be particularly controversial, because long ago, I have been exiled from these communities and banned from Catholic conferences. And, you know, it’s kind of funny to me but I have to say, it’s not to say that there aren’t good people doing good work with true integrity in there, absolutely there are I know them, they’re friends of mine. However, the structures are concerned with maintaining power. And I say that with complete confidence, part of the work that I did academically was on exposing this and exploring this. The training of priests is really the maintenance of power and the maintenance of hierarchy.

The second part of this is to say, I think the solution is, I do not have any interest in replicating structures of oppression and hierarchical organizations and anything like that. And so, the way that we do that is we redistribute power, and we constantly need to be empowering the individual, other people and through community. And it’s very difficult, and it’s I struggle with it. The amount of responsibility that people want to give to me is overwhelming, and it has been a cause of incredible suffering for me because, like I’ve said, I just want to hang out and paint pictures and cook food and spend time with people that I love, and make music and art and be in the sun. And yet, I also know that I have a very heavy responsibility when I’m in a particular position of getting access to information and then giving it to people. So, the solution, I believe, fundamentally, will always be community, access to community and redistribution of power. So, any power that I have, like doing this podcast, why am I doing this podcast and not somebody else? Well, for a whole collection of reasons that are deeply connected to my privilege, my access, my visibility, my whiteness, my education. It’s not that these are bad things, necessarily. Some of those are bad things. But it’s not that it’s bad, it’s that we have a responsibility when we have access, or we have a platform, or we have power, and we’ll talk about the platform, because that’s the question, to use that platform to redistribute power as much as possible. So, for example, the work that I do now, having gone through this whole process of not wanting to be a psychic. I didn’t want to do any of this crazy work. This is not the life that I chose for myself at all. I chose this life, I think maybe at the age of 35 so that’s like eight years ago. But this is the life that I’ve got now it’s like, this is how we make the best of it. But, but I think the point about the platform is we need to focus on community, and we need to focus on redistribution. I don’t want to hold power, but the power that is given to me because of my proximity to structures of power. There’s two different types of power: there’s structural power, and there’s authentic power. And I have a lot of structural power because of my proximity to oppressive structures of power. I’m white, I’m cisgendered, I’m highly educated, I have a lot of connections to conventional forms of beauty, despite what a lot of people on Reddit say! And I can laugh about it, because I know this. I know that these are my strengths and my association and connection to those quite oppressive forms of power. That power is stolen from people who don’t occupy that proximity. And so, my responsibility is to use that power that is given to me, whether I want it or not, I’ve got to use it in the service of redistributing that power to those people who have been disenfranchised, from whom it’s been stolen. All of my concern and my work is focused on creating space, holding space for true, authentic community to happen, where other people that are not in the position that I’m in, can be empowered, get a strength and a sense of relationship to themselves, so then they can do what I’m doing, and it goes on.  

Elizabeth 

Dr Kate Thomas, thank you so much for being my guest today on The Sacred. 

Dr Kate Tomas 

Oh, it was such a pleasure, and I enjoyed every moment. Thank you.

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