The Sensing Exercise

FOREWORD

BY PHAEDRA BONEWITS

Cat Gina Cole is my best friend. We met around 2014, a couple of years after I moved to Oregon. Poor health had kept me isolated, but once I met Cat, she introduced me to people, got me rides, and generally made sure I was included in local Pagan things. We wound up doing a lot of work together for a public Pagan group here in the Rogue Valley of Southwestern Oregon.

Our deep friendship may be surprising considering how different our talents and experiences are. She is from the rural Rogue Valley and learned a lot from mystics in her family. I am from Chicago and learned a lot through formal trainings and apprenticeships. We’re an odd couple: city mouse and country mouse, homegrown Witchcraft and fancy learned stuff. But we mesh well enough to colead a coven.

Now here is where I embarrass myself. I knew Cat taught classes and took private students, but I had assumed she was teaching your basic Wicca 101, same as so many other people do. Same as I have done. But sometimes when she talked about this student or that, the direction she was going and even the language she used left me a little confused. Hey, I know I should know what she’s talking about, right?

Alas, no.

It wasn’t until I helped her format a manuscript that I really got a grasp on her curriculum.

I discovered that Cat takes on what a lot of people assume can’t be taught: psychism, aka psychic skills. I haven’t come across a lot of people who teach foundational psychic skills. Trance, yes, but things like the clair senses, not so much. Maybe it’s because there’s an idea that you are either psychic or not (nope, we’ve

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