In the mid-1990s, Atlanta, Georgia-based portrait painter Virginia Adair traveled the world over, interviewing 43 female psychics and healers randomly chosen from 15 countries as far apart as Indonesia and Argentina. Witnessing and hearing much that was amazing, Ms. Adair seeks to understand the phenomena from a scientific point of view, citing contemporary scientists and philosophers. She speculates whether the growing incidence of female paranormal power in our time signals the beginning of an evolutionary leap forward.

REVIEWS:

"Adair is a highly inquisitive interviewer who reveals many things unknown to the readers..."  Virginia Adair's book will appeal to many readers because of its intensive interviewing of 43 female psychics and healers chosen at random selection from 15 countries. The women come from different cultural backgrounds and have interesting approaches to the paranormal. Their value systems and paranormal abilities are highlighted and shared with the reader.  Adair is an honest interviewer, and she gives depth and substance to these interviews. A well-known artist, her paintings are in many institutions and private collections. She puts forward the highly valid idea that neuroscientists must become more involved in studies involving psychics and the paranormal.  In addition to the introduction, there are 46 chapters and an epilogue. Among the many fascinating chapters and topics are "Dunwoody, Georgia: A Psychic Sleuth for All Seasons," "Dr. Jean Houston and the Time Compression Effect," "Singapore, Malaysia: A Clairvoyant Who Seasons Intuition with Reason," "Pondicherry, India: At the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother," "New York, NY: A Modern-Day Ariadne Seeks to Lead Us Out of the Contemporary Labyrinth," among others.  The reader will discover new insights and information in this book. For those interested in the documentation of the return of female prophetic power, and the oracle, this will prove to be a fine reading adventure. Adair is a highly inquisitive interviewer who reveals many things unknown to the readers, and shares her findings in a well-written, concise, and enjoyable way. - Lee Prosser, <ghostvillage.com>. August 21, 2003.

"The threads of commonality speak volumes about the possibilities for humanity's future..."  What is women's intuition?  How can we learn to see into possible futures and manifest the destiny we most desire?  In this book, Virginia Adair explores these questions.  Adair interviewed 43 female psychics and healers from 15 different countries.  What do a healer from Indonesia, a psychic from New Orleans, an oracle from Argentina, and a mystic from India have in common?  The threads of commonality speak volumes about the possibilities for humanity's future and the raising of feminine energies in the 21st century.  To me, this book stated clearly that all life is connected by an invisible web, and that humility, compassion, and an unselfish desire to assist others can bring forth near-miraculous abilities in anyone.  Tomorrow will be a time when we will all use telepathy and become psychically advanced humans; those who work to develop these areas in themselves today are the vanguard.  Let's go! - Michael Peter Langevin, Magical Blend, Issue 82, November, 2002.

From all across America and around the world, the author, Virginia Adair, takes the reader along on her personal journey as she seeks out and interviews women psychics and healers from many countries and cultures about their "paranormal" and spiritual experiences, and of their personal beliefs and values. Join her as she strives to incorporate all of this fascinating testimony and insight into a worldview that may help to bridge the proverbial gap that exists between science and religion. Thoughtfully she examines the roles that may be played by personality traits, pondering too such phenomena as multiple personalities, hypnotism, brainwave frequencies of psychics and healers, as well as the claims of extraordinary phenomena like the Hindu "Kundalini" experience, out-of-body excursions, healings, psychokinesis, and a whole host of unexplained "paranormal" manifestations. - Brent Raynes, Alternate Perceptions Magazine Online, # 56, May 2002.

"A patterned tapestry of her own impressions..."...This is a valuable book for any psychical researcher to read....Toward the end of her book, Virginia Adair states, "I am aware that what I have produced here is a mere random sampling, only a handful of interviews with women alleged to be psychic."  Yet I feel this is Adair's illusion.  Adair has, in fact, produced a patterned tapestry of her own impressions, not a random sampling.  The "forces" and spirits which formed her adventures and misadventures did not produce a "random sampling."  Rather, Adair's book is a portrait of a certain level of expectation about female psychics.  Adair indicates why she feels that the mental potential of women oracles has been culturally undervalued or overlooked.  But she then makes somewhat the same mistake in focusing only on the basic potential situation of these lady oracles, as far as they would reveal this to a traveling stranger, rather than on the actual mental structure and belief systems of their oracular practices.  I look forward to Virginia Adair's next book and hope this review has been helpful to those who have attempted to study extrasensory perception by limited sensory means. - Eugenia Macer-Story, Paranoia Magazine, Issue 29, Spring, 2002. 

An eye-opening look at intercultural belief:  New Daughters Of The Oracle: The Return Of Female Prophetic Power In Our Time is drawn from Virginia Adair's worldwide trip to learn as much as she could about people, especially women, who profess to be psychic. Filled with condensed interviews, exotic practices, and human experience in such varied nations as Italy, England, Hong Kong, Greece, and much more.  Highly recommended for women's studies, metaphysical studies, and alternative medicine reading lists and reference collections, New Daughters Of The Oracle is an eye-opening look at the intercultural belief in human psychic powers and those who claim to practice this gift." - Midwest Book Review March, 2002. 

"The author invites us to join her in a round-the-world trip to satisfy her life-long curiosity about people who profess to be psychic.  Through her interviews with women psychics of various cultures, we learn their life histories, the nature and limitations of their paranormal abilities, and their value systems...one cannot help but be struck by the honesty of Virginia Adair's efforts to faithfully report her experiences, and to subscribe to her plea that neuroscientists become involved in bringing to bear the latest 'brain mapping' technologies--both in vivo and post mortem--to understand how people thought to have psychic abilities might differ from the norm." - Miles D. Storfer, Ph.D, president, FOUNDATION FOR BRAIN RESEARCH, author, Intelligence and Giftedness.

"A whirlwind tour of female psychics and healers around the world.  The quick portraits, encounters, and interviews are breezy and personal.  I'm not sure one can get an understanding of how psi works by asking psychics how they do it, any more than you can get an understanding of how science works by asking  scientists how they do it, but given a general lack of scientific interest in psi--which the author, a portrait painter, bemoans--it's a good start."  -  Patrick Huyghe, The Anomalist (Best Books  of 2001). 

"This is the kind of book most likely to impress the average, uncommitted reader that there is indeed more than meets the eye 'between heaven and earth.'  Ms. Adair's journey into the world of seers, psychics and what some people call the supernatural--which I consider perfectly natural and part of human experience--is an eye opener to the reality of the phenomena and experiences reported so faithfully by the author.  Reading her account is like an adventure into the most fascinating and challenging areas of human perception, questioning what lies Beyond, and answering many of the questions people keep asking about life itself, and its meaning.  I recommend this new book by Virginia Adair to anyone curious about the worlds of the mind and the psychic, and what lies ahead for all of us, because it looks at the subjects--and their practitioners--in an open-minded, unbiased, yet properly inquisitive way." - Professor Hans Holzer, Ph.D, parapsychologist, and author of 126 books including Ghosts and Life Beyond Life.

"The author globe-trots in search of the newest generation of  'daughters of the (Delphic) oracle.'  These 40-odd women do not sit over mephitic vapors issuing from a crevice in a Greek cavern, prophesying from an altered state of consciousness induced by the gas, but they all do seem to possess the same innate psychic abilities which the ancient pythoness would find amplified while atop the tripod of Delphos.  Because these abilities are 'paranormal' to the rest of us, the book deserves attention and study."  -  Robert C. Girard, president, ARCTURUS BOOKS.

The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, Fall, 2001. Virginia Adair is an extensively-traveled painter whose long-time, all-consuming interest has been female psychics. In her search for factors that psychics might share, in forty-three compact and highly-focused chapters, Mrs. Adair gives vignettes of what she has observed. Sometimes the psychics were telephoned in advance for interviews, and other times Mrs. Adair just appeared unannounced on their doorsteps. Each chapter tells the psychic's story and recalls what happened as it was experienced. Perhaps because Mrs. Adair is not a parapsychologist, she has the distinct advantage of remaining free of professional dogmas and sometimes restrictive "think alike" prohibitions. As a keen, perspicacious portrait painter who can see hidden relationships in light and shadow, she is capable of touching upon areas that might be overlooked by other disciplines, not fully considered, or a priori ridiculed or rejected. Thus, in New Daughters of the Oracle: The Return of Female Prophetic Power in Our Time, Mrs. Adair quickly captures the reader's attention by interviewing numerous acclaimed and grassroots-acknowledged successful female mediums, who have repeatedly demonstrated their talents with telepathy, trance states featuring communications from deceased personages, apports, spontaneous combustion, and spectacular episodes of precognition (of which several are documented). She also gives attention to psi in healing. In this vein, she presents examples that warrant careful scrutiny and detailed technical-medical surveillance.
      Although there are many instances of psychic "healing," where various afflictions have been supposedly relieved or "cured," there are still too few well-attested and studied cases that stand up to critical analysis. Mrs. Adair, thus, presents enough data to whet the reader's appetite, which hopefully broadens scientific interest and makes these recondite areas more accessible for research.
      In this, Virginia Adair is like the modern literary Dorothea Dix in zeroing in on the abilities of largely forgotten or ignored female sensitives. Encouragingly, she may attract the attention of the medical-academic establishment, for, indeed, her account of the middle-aged and celebrated ballerina warrants understanding; psychic Greta Woodrew directly "healed" the ballerina's extremely disabling, painful, recently surgically-operated-on knee, which was given a poor prognosis. The ballerina was told that she "would never be able to dance again." However, after the psychic "healing" event, the ballerina resumed her thriving career as a dancer. And another puzzling example involves a young man whose body allegedly had not been able to activate his colon in seventeen years. The young man's "healing" experience with psychic Gwennie Scott is reported chronologically and intermittently throughout the book. The young man had an enormous appetite, yet "his colon remained empty and all waste matter was eliminated through his urine." Unfortunately, many of these "cures" and "hearings" are next to impossible to validate, due to the emotional involvement of the patient and the healer-psychic, and the fact that the attending physicians must observe the rule, primum non nocere: viz., not to say or do anything that will undermine a patient's belief and confidence, which can lead to an undoing of the "miraculous" improvement.
     Yet, these technical problems can be appropriately managed - but best in professional journals and meetings. The residues that do emerge from these many reputed cases of "hearing," the ones with undeniable scientific bona fides, deserve intensive study and further investigation.
     Various challenges of dealing with patients who have their lives at stake because of health problems are often at opposite poles:  the need of the physician to know (research knowledge) versus the clinical well-being of the patient. This can be illustrated by citing the classic case of a ten-year-old girl who allegedly did not urinate or empty her bowels for an extended period of time. This case was studied and resolved almost five hundred years ago by Johann Weyer, the Father of Modern Psychiatry (Zilboorg, 1941). Mention can also be made of a young mother who was blind for many years, who had previous eye surgery and also successful brain surgery to remove a small tumor. One day, following a jocose prank at a children's party, she was hit in the face with teacakes and immediately experienced a reversal of total blindness in her right eye for six years. She states, "I suddenly could see perfectly out of my right eye."
     Not accepting these claims at face value, Mrs. Adair quotes unnamed specialists in orthopedic surgery, gastroenterology, radiology, and ophthalmology. None had any explanations for the alleged hearings; however, physicians are often put on the spot, and cannot say what they might wish to state from their experiences and education, lest they compromise the best interests of their patients.
     Of myriad medical conferences that I have attended throughout the years, I cannot think of one time when a "miraculous healing" case was presented. In respect for the advancement of knowledge, it would be helpful if events like the ones that Mrs. Adair mentions could be sufficiently documented for presentation to an appropriate medical meeting. If just a shred of these cases were verifiable in an accepted manner, it would indeed make researchers sit up, look agape, and better yet, set loose teams of medical scientists to seek out underlying mechanisms, anatomy, and psychodynamic and biological changes, to study and keep an open, critical mind and fully tally any "healing" claims in truth and reality.
     Although serious publications and popular media accounts are correctly full of reports of unscrupulous fraudulent mediums and their devious methods, they too seldom notice the numerous ethical sensitives who are frequently unknown to the world - and could be the lady next door who often in shyness or fear understates her accomplishments even when she is aware of the unusual happenings, or who will omit instances that would have given her fame.
     By immersing oneself in Virginia Adair's New Daughters of the Oracle: The Return of Female Prophetic Power in Our Time, one might awaken their own dormant psychic abilities that could lead to new experiences of awareness, meaning, and fulfillment. And researchers and scientists might find clues to the complex and unfathomable depths of dissociation, and how certain levels of consciousness can be split or, if accessed, can lead to a release of paranormal phenomena. Why some people have this pathway opened, whereas others in their dissociative states lead to various pathologies, is a critical question for psychiatry.
     In New Daughters of the Oracle: The Return of Female Prophetic Power in Our Time, Mrs. Adair expatiates upon the telesomatic reaction (a telepathically perceived physical-somatic pain of someone else), the role of free choice in instances of precognition, and ethics which are often personal and highly involved. She has collated the experiences, memories, and the subjective psychological and physical responses of sensitives from widely disparate cultures, ethnic, and religious, backgrounds. She explores beliefs and intuitions, and champions the need for the medical field to study the minds and bodies of these gifted people to see what might set them apart anatomically and physiologically, for example, how their PET scans and MRI’s might differ, and the congruities of their DNA arrangements and genetic-familial factors.
     For an exciting, intriguing read, explore New Daughters of the Oracle: The Return of Female Prophetic Power in Our Time, which introduces groups of extraordinary women who have mastered their arcane psychic craft and developed their intuitive skills to serve useful purposes in society, and through their feats have opened new research venues that urgently beckon exploration by teams of scientists. For those who have an overwhelming curiosity about psi physics and psychic mysteries, and often wonder how some people can seemingly perform "miracles" and have unique, widely varied exceptional abilities, they need to pay attention to their own possible past history of a head injury, loss of a loved one, the positive nurturance for psi, or the negative, traumatic, formative years which can be highly stressful, and their splitting anxiety provoking incidents; these elements, similar to those presented in Mrs. Adair's book, might be harbingers of one's own latent and barely recognized psychic talents. 
                                               - Berthold Schwarz, M.D. (Psych.) 

Luce e Ombra [Light and Shadow], Bologna, Italy, Anno 102, N. 1, January-March, 2002. Fondazione Biblioteca Bozzano-De Boni <http://www2.comune.bologna.it/bologna/fbibbdb>

Protagoniste del libro di Virginia Adair, una pittrice americana, sono donne dotate di particolari qualità a paranormali intervistate dall'artista in diversi paesi del mondo, dall'Inghilterra alla Turchia, dall'Italia all'India. Tra esse vi sono sia chiaroveggenti, sia guaritrici, sia sensitive in grado di raccontare la storia degli oggetti con cui vengono a contatto, cioè delle psicometre. La Adair ha raccolto queste testimonianze nel corso della sua vita. In gioventù le sue tre passioni erano i viaggi, la pittura e il paranormale. Le ha soddisfatte tutte. Infatti è pittrice—ed alcuni suoi lavori sono in collezioni private e istituzionali sia in America sia in Europa—, ha potuto viaggiare per il mondo grazie al lavoro di suo marito—e anche dopo che questi è andato in pensione, essendo anche lui un amante dei viaggi—ed ha avuto occasione di incontrare persone dotate di facoltà psichiche. Virginia ha limitato la sua ricerca alle sole donne, in quanto, soprattutto nell'antichità, le parole profetiche provenivano da sibille o donne attraverso le quali parlavano gli dei. Da ciò il titolo del libro Nuove Figlie dell'Oracolo.

L'idea dell'intervista è interessante, ma non originale, perché i cultori di queste tematiche conosceranno altri testi analoghi, non solo di autori stranieri. Tuttavia la Adair tratteggia con realismo pregi e difetti di queste donne, senza indulgere a sensazionalismi. Sarebbe stato meglio, a mio parere, dedicare più spazio ad ognuna di esse, raccontando un maggior numero di episodi significativi relativi alle loro facoltà. Avrebbe potuto limitare la cerchia di persone considerate, piuttosto che parlare di tutte loro (sono 43!) e tratteggiare la vicenda di ognuna in poche pagine. Posso comprendere che il desiderio dell'autrice sia stato presentare un sostanzioso campione di donne così dotate, ma credo sarebbe stato utile approfondire la conoscenza di alcune di esse, mentre di altre poteva essere fatto solo qualche accenno. Nonostante ciò, la lettura è piacevole e le protagoniste fanno spesso passare in secondo piano la loro personalità, convinte che le loro qualità siano un dono da elargire agli altri e non da usare per se stesse.

Se avere parlato di queste figlie dell'Oracolo in maniera talvolta superficiale e affrettata è un difetto, l'atteggiamento che assume la pittrice americana di fronte ad esse è un pregio. Infatti, pur dando credito alle parole delle sue interlocutrici, la Adair cerca di analizzare le capacità psichiche di queste donne, domandandosi se un giorno si riusciranno a scoprire le modalità della loro estrinsecazione, anche grazie ai progressi effettuati nelle scienze.

- Cecilia Magnanensi

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