I leave work in Hollywood and drive toward the ocean to the corner of Westwood and Olympic, just south of the UCLA campus, where Deseret Tavares’s psychic storefront sits wedged between a tailor shop and an antique store.
To kill time, I stroll the cramped gift shop that fronts Deseret’s reading room. The shop reeks of incense and scented candles, and shelves are filled with hundred-dollar crystals and various polished stones and gems that allegedly have “mystical” properties. There are books on Wicca and magic and psychic channeling. I find a shelf filled with “aura sprays” for every intended mood, including “Creativity & Flow,” “Divine Love,” and “Healing and Transformation.” It would all spook me out if it didn’t all seem so silly.
What the hell am I doing here? I mean…
✓ Church—totally conventional place to find God.
✓ Bible study—an earnest, informative pursuit.
✓ Exploring atheism—intellectually mandatory.
✓ Interviewing an actress about her near-death experience—spiritually enriching.
✓ Meditation—a wise, mindful practice.
✓ Tattoo-branding ceremony—a symbolic commitment to my spiritual values.
But coming to a self-proclaimed “witch” to have my cards and palms read as she channels ghosts is, for someone as analytical as me, firmly out of my comfort zone.
What if she tells me I am going to die tomorrow? What will happen if she casts a spell on me? What if I waste an hour being fed a basket of baloney?
Shortly after six o’clock, Deseret emerges from behind the cashier’s counter in slacks and a loose-fitting black blouse. “Come on back,” she says, gesturing to her office.
I shake her hand. It is soft and lotioned as beaded bracelets shake from her wrist. As I step inside the dark office, Deseret, a middle-aged brunette, closes the door and I take a seat on the other side of her solid wood desk that is littered with crystals and a stack of tarot cards.
“Have you ever been to India?” she asks.
“No.”
“You have to,” she says. “I have been many times. It’s where I’ve gotten a lot of the artifacts here. It is believed that Varanavata by the Ganges is the oldest city in the world. It was already the oldest city when Jesus walked the Earth. It is a very sacred place with over 2,200 temples all over the city. You see spirituality in every aspect of life. The streets are no wider than two people to walk side by side and you will see people chanting and meditating. In the Ganges they have ceremonies at sunrise and sundown and they clear the energy. They believe once you are buried or burned on the river your soul doesn’t return.”
“I have heard that,” I say. “But to be honest, I have always wondered why I need to go to some special geographic location to have a spiritual experience. One of the most profound spiritual experiences I ever had in my life came in a minor pro-hockey arena in Bakersfield in front of five thousand people. My current search is taking place in Hollywood. If it is about connecting with our souls, why does geography matter?”
Deseret sits with her hands folded on the desk, sitting rigid and listening to me. She cracks a smile. “Good question, Mr. Baker,” she says in a Colombian accent. “Because every place has a vibration and a hidden lesson for you. When you go on a spirit quest like you are on, you will go to different places and learn different things that all will teach a lesson.”
I arch my eyebrows and nod. That certainly has been the case for me so far, I tell her.
“I have had spiritual experiences in a church, in my living room, in my car and in places like India, Brazil, and Europe. You will find the same thing is true as you go on your journey of faith, I am sure of it.”
Deseret is much more articulate and intelligent than I had expected to find from a woman reading tarot cards in an office behind a shop hawking $22 aura sprays.
“As I told you on the phone, I am not very familiar with psychics,” I say. “What exactly is your gift and what can you help me with?”
“I use all six senses of the spiritual aspect. You use your eyes to see the physical aspect. But I can use my third eye—the spiritual aspect of your sight—to see different beings and places and communicate with them. I can travel from one dimension to another and communicate to beings not in this realm. We all can do this. The third eye allows you out of the box we live in. I can hear thoughts and messages telepathically. That allows me to communicate with my spirit guide to get answers. They live on spiritual realms and give you messages. They are similar to voices you hear inside your head that tell you maybe to wear your seat belt or don’t go to that meeting. It is a being that walks with you. They are teachers.”
“So are these like guardian angels?” I ask.
“The Church would call them that,” she says. “Some would call it the Holy Ghost. It is a guide assisting to help you through this. He walks with you and only you. Mine is different than yours.”
“So can I have a faith in your spirit world and believe in a spirit guide and be a Christian? I was raised Catholic and this kind of communication was shunned as the work of the devil.”
“This is true,” she says. “I was born Mormon and Catholic. I went to a Catholic church because in Colombia, where I was born, it was mandatory. I would go to church and the religious school and then head to the Mormon church where my father was a bishop. I had many different experiences. I would know things that others didn’t know. I would know passwords and things that were gonna happen or had happened. They thought I was a weird little kid who heard voices. I would say, ‘Don’t you hear the voice?’ They thought I was crazy.”
“Did you ever see a psychologist?”
“Yes, I did, and I thought something was wrong with me because I heard voices. They thought I was schizophrenic. But I wasn’t. It was very real. If my dad locked my bike I would hear the password to my bike and open it. He would say, ‘How did you open it?’ I’d say, ‘Well I heard the number.’ He’d be like, ‘How?’ I would just say, ‘I just heard it and followed the instructions.’ ”
“Who would tell you?”
“My spirit guide,” she says. “It is male. I have seen him and it is definitely a guy.”
“What does he look like?”
“He is very, very tall. He is dressed in a long gown down to the floor and has a turban that covers the side of his face. Like what Jesus used to wear, but a lot more slender and you can see his face. Every time I meditate and ask for him to show up, this is what he looks like and this is what shows up.”
As I am trying to process that the cute lady across from me has superhuman powers to talk to dead people, Deseret explains that it wasn’t until she was out of high school and took a channeling class that she learned she was a psychic medium and began giving readings to people, which eventually led to her gaining a celebrity following after moving to Los Angeles.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but what do all those oils and incense and sprays have to do with everything you just told me?”
“Everything on the planet has an energy pattern—from a rock to a bug to water. Everything has an energy source. When you work with oils you are working with the essence and energy of a plant. An essential oil in pure form is the pure extract from a plant, is the most powerful form of the plant. It is fifty thousand times stronger. Plants have a spirit. In the plant form, we call those elementals. You develop a relationship with the spirit that lives in the plant and you ask the elemental to help you out. Almost like talking to a spirit.”
I ask her about the large crystal and bottle of oil on the desk between us.
“This is amethyst and is a rutile crystal,” she says, holding it up in front of me. When I reach for it, she pulls it back. “No, no, no,” she says with a smile. “This is my crystal; for you to touch it would diminish its power. This kind of crystal is very special. It helps facilitate the chakras to the spiritual realm.”
I apologize to her. I feel like I have broken a psychic rule. But Deseret doesn’t seem too concerned and lifts up the tiny bottle.
“This is a potion that helps me channel and read when I want to be more open,” she explains. “It opens up my chakra. It is a mixture of different oils and herbs and you charge it with Reiki energy, the crystals are generators. They generate a certain energy, it transforms negative energy into love and also helps you with intuition.”
“Honestly, I have told people I was coming and they warned me it was bad luck to see a psychic. They believe you can influence people and push them in a direction. A lot of people have fear about this stuff.”
“When you walk into a place like this and your heart or stomach aches you shouldn’t walk in. Your spirit will tell you if it is the right place for you. Do you feel comfortable here?”
“Yeah, actually. I do.”
“Good,” she says with a grin. “You should. I am not one of those fake psychics. That is why I have a following.”
“How did you get to the point where you are now a celebrity psychic?”
“I had an out-of-body experience for three days at home, after watching a Depeche Mode video.”
I giggle. I think she is making a joke. But she isn’t.
“I am serious,” she says. “I was home in my apartment with my friend Amanda and she loves Depeche Mode. She had a video and I said I am going to sit down and watch the video with her, and we had a couple of glasses of wine and started watching the video. I realize in the video there is a dark spot, and that the dot started to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger! It got to the point where it was hypnotizing. It was really strange, and I hear my guide saying to follow the dot. I told my friend and she said I was crazy, she said I am tripping and asked what did I take. I tell her I had some wine and that’s it. She’s like, ‘You’re tripping.’ But I wasn’t. It was like a portal. It was like I was being hypnotized and I am traveling and I can’t feel my body.
“My guide comes in and it was the first time I had channeled. My guide starts to tell me the history of the universe and I am telling Amanda to record this, what I am saying, because I probably won’t remember. And he begins to tell me the history of the universe, how it was created and what I am supposed to do.
“He showed me a graph. He said that in the beginning it was all darkness. One speck of light, which is God, and the energy started to shift. And that dot was a nucleon, and from that nucleon came different little balls of energy that were born and eventually those balls of energy made this big piece of light and as we became our own gods that light produced different forms of light and eventually made the light bigger. I was like, ‘This is really strange; I don’t get it.’ I’m telling her all this and I was using this terminology that I never use and felt the spirit coming in and out of me, and she is like, ‘Why are you speaking weird?’ Even my voice sounded different.
“This was over three days.”
“You were in this state for three days? Did you sleep?”
“No! It was just in-and-out talking. I kept going in and out of this tunnel and seeing more things. I hadn’t talked to my mom in a while and I told my mom what was happening and she is like, ‘You’ve got to turn around. You’ve got to get out of the tunnel.’ So after three days, I turned around and came back and realized that this was my gift. I need to channel this spirit and help other people tap into their spiritual realm. And it just grew from there.”
“Depeche Mode did all this? That is so random.”
“I know, right? Apparently there is a vibration with the way that they play their music. It emits a vibration that opens up a portal.”
“What song was it?”
“It was a whole video! Like a DVD. It changed everything. Soon, I would do readings for people and blow them away with what I knew. Then I began doing them on local TV and I guess I just became known as a celebrity psychic. It just sort of happened. I didn’t really plan it that way.”
“So who are some of the celebrities you’ve worked with?”
“Well, my database is huge. I have done probably every regional Latin singer that has come through L.A. I have read Alejandro Fernandez, Jenny Herrera and her brother Gus Herrera. I used to be his personal psychic. In Hollywood, I have done Natalie Imbruglia, Halle Berry, and, as you already know, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.”
“You did them separate or together?”
“I did them together. This was a couple of years back. Brad gave a reading from me to Angelina as a birthday present.”
“They just showed up one day?”
“No.” She laughs. “Their assistant called the shop and says, ‘Would you do a reading in a limo?’ I was like, ‘Sure, I guess.’ She said, ‘OK, they are going to come and pick you up.’ I didn’t ask any questions. She gave me her name, but didn’t say who it was for. The limo driver was late and kept calling and saying, ‘We are almost there, we are almost there.’ I was getting hungry and it was two hours late and I was about to go home and then they finally arrived. I walk outside and Brad comes out and opens the door, and I am like. ‘That’s not him, it’s gotta be someone that looks like him.’ But I am being all cool because I am used to reading famous people. So I get inside the limo and he introduces me to her and he calls her ‘Angie,’ and I am like that cannot be her, either—she looks too skinny. I am tripping in my head. He tells me it is her birthday. By now, I have gotten a good look at her and I know for sure it is Angelina. She was surprised, had no idea this was gonna be happening, and she asked him how he found me and Brad said he asked a friend, who said I am the best psychic in L.A. Brad goes to Angelina, ‘I wouldn’t bring you to just anyone!’ ”
“Were you nervous?”
“Well, I had never met them, but on TV—it was actually E! News—I had predicted Brad and Angelina would get married. This was just after he left Jen Aniston. I was asked by the interviewer who Brad will be with after Jen, and I said it would be a dark-haired woman who is around him. Six months later, I am getting groceries and I see one of those magazines and there’s a picture of Brad and Angelina together!”
“Did they know you predicted this?” I ask.
“I don’t think so, but I didn’t ask.” Deseret shrugs.
“So you’re in the limo…”
“Yeah,” she says. “Just the three of us in the back. It was one of those long limos. It was weird. Because Brad said, ‘Can you read her first?’ So I take a piece of paper and I tell her to sign it. So she does. So she signs her name. I can read people’s signatures. It tells me a lot. But I also had my cards. So I read her and she is looking at me the entire time. She is very sweet and has an amazing soul. You could see the light come out of her and she said, ‘How do you know all these things?’ I tell her that I have been doing this for a while da-da-da and I give her my story of how I started. And you know what? Everything I said to her happened.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I don’t want to share everything with you; that wouldn’t be right.”
“I understand. But was this before she was diagnosed with breast cancer?”
“Yes, it was. I told her she was having surgery, but I didn’t touch much on that. She didn’t ask about her health. She just said, ‘What do you see?’ And I saw her having a surgery and told her that. I then read Brad and that was it. We drove around L.A. for about an hour. The driver took us back to my shop to drop me off. They gave me a hug, tipped me really well, and drove off.”
At this point, I’ve been sitting across from Deseret for a half an hour listening rapt to her storytelling. She is captivating and it’s easy to see why she often makes TV and radio appearances. But while hearing about Brangelina is interesting, I am here to find out what she sees in me. I want to find God, get answers, come to peace, I tell her. “So can you read me?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says, immediately sliding open a desk drawer so quickly as if she’s saying, I thought you’d never ask.
In a very precise, ritualistic manner, Deseret pulls out a deck of cards and places them in front of her, then she takes a crystal from another drawer and bangs it on the desk.
“Don’t touch this one,” she instructs me, placing it between us, explaining the crystal was given to her by a healer in Brazil who “charged” it especially for her.
Deseret places several shiny, black stones next to the crystal. “Sometimes I get information out of them and sometimes I don’t,” she explains. “But I pull them out when I channel.”
She puts on a pair of glasses and begins shuffling the deck of cards like a poker dealer. Each card has a design on it, but they are so worn and faded I can barely make out the images.
“These are tarot cards. They are very old. My deck tap dances and speaks and when I lay them on the table, a portal opens up. I get the information from the vibration of the cards.”
She stops shuffling and puts them into two piles. “I want you to pick a pile,” she says. “The stack that you pick is the stack I will flip over and read. The one that I flip over tells me a different story of your life. This is how I get a very accurate reading.”
I pick the one on the left and she shuffles that pile, banging them hard on the desk several times before each fan and laying them out in three piles between us.
She puts a piece of stationery and a pen on the desk in front of her. “Now I am going to need your full name as it appears on your birth certificate, and your birthday,” she says.
I tell her “Kenneth Joel Baker” and April 18, 1970, which she writes down on the paper.
“Pick one of those three piles,” she says.
I pick the middle one, which she inserts amid the other two stacks and begins aggressively shuffling, staring into my eyes as if in a trance. She shuffles and reshuffles the cards for about a minute. I just watch.
She then bangs the deck very hard on the desk three times and puts them down, fanning them open. As she is staring at the cards, she suddenly blurts in a tone lower than her normal voice, “It says that at this point in your path, in your life, you are becoming a lot stronger. You’re awakening three aspects of your life that you are not familiar with and you are confused. It’s almost like you are discovering gifts that you have hidden that you haven’t really tapped into.
“The cards are showing that on an emotional level you find yourself where you are not necessarily grounded or stable and you have to deal with your own fears and stabilize yourself in a spiritual aspect.
“This is saying you have a need on a spiritual aspect and you are trying to fulfill that need the best way you know how, which would be to react by doing something on a physical aspect. And the way you know how is to write a book and you will have a new project. And that is sort of like the logical part of yourself but in the spiritual realm what that says is that you have to start paying attention to this gift; it is time to start tapping into it, pay attention to your spiritual needs and the gifts that you have, work that muscle, make it strong so that you can understand it and open up a new door. What we usually call it is that you are going through a period of awakening.”
She keeps staring at the cards. “Hmm.” She looks up at me over the top of her glasses. “This is very interesting.”
“What?” I ask eagerly.
“This is actually very cool,” she says, glancing back at the cards. “It says that both aspects, the physical and the nonphysical, are not in harmony, are not in balance, so you are finally trying to balance it.”
I tell her I hadn’t done yoga in a few years, but recently began taking a class once a week. “Keep doing that,” she says. “This will be an important part of your journey.”
As she glances back at the cards she keeps talking. “It says that you are very analytical. And you are very ‘two plus two is four’ because that is what science says. It’s like, if it is not in front of you and doesn’t make sense in the way that you have been taught how, then you don’t understand it. But you are going to start seeing things in a three-dimensional level and understand what is behind all that. Does that make any sense?”
I nod yes. But I don’t say anything. I don’t want to tip her off and lead her. Skeptics say psychics are just gifted at being intuitive, that someone like Deseret is actually “reading” people—not cards.
She continues, “And this spirit quest you are on, I am seeing that the main thing is that it is a door, a gateway for you to start changing. It says that through that change there is a lot of healing that you will be doing.”
She adds, “Your cards look pretty good though. Usually it comes in with chaos energy and I don’t see that.”
Deseret gathers the cards and reshuffles them several times. As she handles the cards, mixing them up into random order, I ask her why some mediums use cards and some don’t. “You carry an energy and send it out to me,” she explains. “I disconnect from your energy field, and, rather connect with you directly, I come around to you the back way. I am not getting it from this, but from a portal that reads you, but not directly.”
“Are there things you can read from me directly?” I ask.
“Yes.” She places a blank piece of paper in front of me on the desk. “Sign that.”
“My name?”
“No, my name!” She giggles. “Of course, your name.”
So I do and slide the signed paper back to her.
She stares at it. Then looks me in the eye.
“You overanalyze everything,” she says. “It’s like it doesn’t even let you sleep. You’re constantly thinking about it. You judge yourself better than anyone else, to the point that it blocks you sometimes. It’s like too much. You can’t even sleep.”
“That’s interesting you say that,” I tell her.
“Why?” she asks.
“It is true. I have been having trouble sleeping.”
“Getting in touch with your inner spirit, what you are doing, will calm you. It should help.”
“It hasn’t yet really.”
“It will.”
She looks at the cards. “You are very detached though. It is hard to get you to emotionally commit yourself because you’re very methodical. It’s like everything has to add up and make sense in your head. You don’t want to let emotions drive it. You are driven by facts. Everything is organized in your head. Things have to meet certain criteria in order for you to proceed. You’re going to learn to follow your intuition more.”
“I have been meditating, trying to do at least ten minutes a day,” I tell her.
“Good,” she says. “That will open up your third eye.”
Deseret shuffles the cards again. She splays them out. “I see that you have slowed yourself down since you turned thirty-three. That’s when you really started to organize and put things in compartments.”
“That’s pretty interesting,” I reply. “That’s how old I was when my first child was born.”
Until that last comment about my changing at age thirty-three, I felt like a lot of what Deseret had said could be intuited from what I had told her or she could have looked up. Although I never shared the age of my oldest child, or how old I was when he was born, I suppose it could have been a hunch or a guess on her part, not necessarily a paranormal vision. Is she legit? I’m not sure. Some things are spot-on, yet a lot of her observations are rather generic and apply to anyone who is on a journey to become more spiritually minded, which I had told her about.
“Anything else you want to know?” she asks.
It’s been close to an hour since we began. I don’t want to take up any more of her time. But there is something, while I have her here. She is a fortune-teller, after all.
“Will I find the spiritual answers I am looking for?” I ask her.
“What the spirit is telling me is that you are on the right path,” she says. “But you have to turn off your mind. It is getting in the way. Doing this will open you up. Until then, it will be like you are banging your head against the wall. But when you finally trust your inner voice, your true self, your life will change entirely.”
I thank her for her time. She stands and shakes my hand. “It’s my pleasure,” she replies. “It’s what I do.”
“I know you said you wouldn’t charge me, but I want to pay you,” I say.
“No, no,” she says. “That’s not necessary.”
“But at least I want to pay you for your time.”
“Really, it’s OK. I just want you to find your spirit guide.”