Meria Heller is worried about the weather.
"Mother earth is talking and no one is listening," said the 53-year-old woman. She doesn't find it surprising that it's snowing in the Midwest during October, while here in Phoenix it's still hitting 90 degrees every day. Standing within the rock-constructed medicine wheel that is the centerpiece of her backyard and masking her eyes from the sun's rays, she says, "The weather's going to be strange for a while."
Heller, a grandmother of three, is a self-proclaimed visionary.
"I don't like the word 'psychic,'" she said. "'Psychic' brings up a lot of connotations I don't fit."
Heller doesn't wear a turban, nor does she have a crystal strapped to her forehead. Rather, she prefers t-shirts and jeans. Inside her home, there are no star maps, voodoo dolls, beaded curtains or crystal balls. Instead, you'll find a leather couch and an obvious penchant for southwest décor.
In fact, the only thing that gives Heller's spiritual inclinations away is her backyard. Outside, the cement walls have been muralized with an incandescent desert landscape. A circle of 13 stones accented by several Native American statuettes — part of the aforementioned medicine wheel — dominate the dirt terrain. A site used for meditation, the circle represents infinity and the continuous cycle of life.
Currently, Heller is teaching a medicine wheel course at Paradise Valley Community College. In addition to doing private readings, Heller devotes most of her time to the daily Internet radio show that she hosts. "The Meria Heller Show" revolves around what she terms "the real news."
"Most of what you see on the evening news is bullshit," she said in her New York accent. "I've had the top political minds in the country (on my show). The ones who aren't kissing the ass of the administration — the fringe folks, as they're called."
Spokeswoman for the underdog, outsider and defector, Heller has made it her mission to reach the masses with her prophecies. You see, it's not so much the weather that Meria Heller is worried about — it's the global climate.
Hocus Pocus
There's a scene in Peewee's Big Adventure in which a distraught Peewee, desperately seeking his missing bicycle, visits a psychic.
Wandering a dark alley on a rainy night, Peewee is drawn into Madam Ruby's shop by the red neon palm glowing in her window. Following Peewee's anxious pounds on her door, a bejeweled woman wearing a scarf wrapped about her head emerges from the establishment.
"For $20 I can tell you a lot of things," she tells him. "For $30 I can tell you more. And for $50 I can tell you everything."
"Tell me why I'm here first," Peewee demands.
Using her psychic intuition, Madam Ruby replies, "You're here because you want something."
"Yes!" Peewee shouts, and produces a fistful of crumpled cash and loose change. Meanwhile, Madam Ruby snatches his wallet. Flipping through picture after picture of Peewee's bicycle contained therein, she pretends to gaze into her crystal ball.
"I see…a bicycle!" she proclaims
"Where is it? Can you see it? Where is it?" he begs.
"The Alamo—in the basement."
And so begins Peewee's misguided adventure.
"It's bullshit," Heller said. "Most people go to a psychic when they have problems. If they're happy, they don't think about psychics. If you're there to take advantage of that, it's fraud.
"If I sat here and told you about yourself, and told you stuff you know, which anyone who can read body language can do, what good is that for you?"
Heller claims she is unpopular in the psychic community because she exposes imposters. She said there are several ways to detect a psychic fraud, including outlandish costumes and bizarre names. If psychics don't advertise their last names, Heller said, they are not to be trusted.
"If they have a name that sounds like it doesn't even come from this world, start running," she said. "They're madam this or sister that. And you know what? They're all a bunch of wackos."
Tempe's own Miss Rita takes a more humanistic approach to the lack of clairvoyance in the psychic community.
"It's just like it is in any field," she said. "There are some who are legit and there are some who are not."
Miss Rita has been reading the palms of ASU students for 35 years. Operating out of the picturesque house on University Drive, Miss Rita is famous for the visions seen within her crystal ball.
"I read for the Gin Blossoms," she said. "I told them they would be successful." Although that success wasn't lasting, the Gin Blossoms certainly did have their 15-minutes of fame, even mentioning Miss Rita in one of their songs.
In addition to her crystal ball, Miss Rita will use Tarot cards or palm reading during a session, depending on the customer's request.
"People can be taught Tarot cards, but the palm is something you can't learn," she said. "Every palm is different."
Conversely, Heller doesn't usually employ any outside tools during a reading. Although she trusts in the accuracy of Tarot cards, she considers any psychic prop to be merely a "focal point."
Both Heller and Miss Rita perform what Heller terms "psychometry." That is, the practice of holding an object belonging to a person and deriving premonitions from that object about its owner.
"If you feel worse after you see a psychic, don't ever go back," Heller said.
She feels the purpose of psychic readings is to provide people with positive guidance. If a psychic talks of curses or spells during a session, and tries to charge outrageous fees for their removal, a customer is probably being scammed. Heller encourages people to press charges if they feel a psychic has taken advantage of them.
A psychic is born
"I feel that my gift is from God," Miss Rita said of her telepathic abilities. She first discovered her powers as a young girl — around 8 or 9 years old.
"I was afraid of it," she said. "I didn't know what it was at that time. But my grandmother taught me about it, and not to be afraid of it."
Miss Rita claims "the gift" is in her family, and that her grandmother was also a psychic.
Heller also realized her abilities at a young age.
"I just knew things that other people didn't know — and I didn't know other people didn't know," she said. "If my mom had some friends come over, and I was just this little kid, I would know everything that was going on in their minds. If they were thinking bad things, I would call them on it. If they were messing around with someone else's husband, in my little girl words, I would kind of nail them on it.
"After I started giving out my feelings to people as a little kid, I started getting the shit smacked out of me — getting my face smacked and sent sailing across the room. I realized maybe this isn't such a good thing. I learned to keep my mouth shut for while."
Heller said her powers started to resurface around the time she was 18, but out of a desire to be "normal," she repressed them. She said that at age 29, after giving birth to her first son, her powers came back so strongly that she could no longer ignore them. That's when she decided to hone her abilities for professional gain.
Back in New York, the police sometimes employed Heller for guidance. Heller didn't take well to that line of work.
"I don't like working with the police," she said. "It's usually ugly cases that I don't want to see. I don't want to know about some kid that's missing because I'm liable to flash on the kid being murdered."
Heller admits that her telepathy often makes people uncomfortable. She urges them not to worry.
"A lot of people have the misconception that I'm constantly 'on' — that I always have this psychic wave coming from my head and I can read your thoughts and all that," she said. "The way I explain to people that I don't do that is this: Would you walk into someone's house without knocking first?
"And, on a practical level," she added with a smile, "if you're not paying me to do it, why would I want to?"
A look into the future
"My feeling is yes, we could very easily find ourselves in a third world war," Heller said matter-of-factly. "I'd like to share what I know and my experience with the next generation."
While she didn't predict the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center per se, Heller had a disturbing prophecy following the Supreme Court's decision to end the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election.
"I knew we were in the deepest trouble America has ever been in," she said. "(On my radio show) I said 'God has left America, and we will be in a war in no time.'"
Heller believes that Americans are misguided in their patriotism and that war with Afghanistan is a horrific mistake. With an arch of her eyebrow, Heller asserted that the fall of the twin towers is part of an intricate conspiracy.
"Yeah, it got everyone in America 'rah rah' behind the flag, and 'rah rah' behind the war," she said. "Well, who are we at war with? I haven't seen any proof. Why are we bombing Afghanistan? Because it's the direct root to the oil in the Caspian Sea?"
Sinking into her aqua-colored leather couch, the animated New Yorker grows solemn, knowing the unpopularity of her beliefs. "I don't want to get nailed to a cross," she said. "I don't think that's my mission in this life."
Miss Rita's views on the Sept. 11 tragedy couldn't be more contrary.
"All the countries will come together," she said. "It's made people realize what they have, and be thankful for their families."
Heller will allow no time to sit back and be thankful. This "political, spiritual and environmental activist" wants to lead the youth of America into revolution. She claims that revolution by the people will be America's only salvation.
"I'd like to present the truth about what's going on in our country right now to the college campuses, sort of like the way Martin Luther King used to do," she said.
Martin Luther King had a dream. Meria Heller has many dreams from which she claims she can predict the future. A charismatic woman from New York, born with a "gift" and completely self-taught, Heller is, after all, a "visionary."
"I'm just me," Heller said. "No degree. I don't think Jesus or Buddha had a degree, but they did OK."
