Inner Peace: Finding my grandfather in a silver dollar

By Jessica Bryan

“Bring something special with you next week,” she said. “We are going to do an exercise in ‘Sacred Psychometry.’”

The teacher of our mediumship class was referring to the metaphysical practice of holding an inanimate object and clairvoyantly “reading,” or “divining,” the energy in it, including the history of events or people associated with the object. This type of clairvoyance is based on the idea that the energy and feelings of people and the events they experienced are imprinted on objects once held by them. Even clothing, furniture, and buildings can absorb energies and thoughts from the people and animals that have been around them.

Joseph R. Buchanan, an American physiologist, first used the term “Psychometry” in 1842. He believed memories from the past are entombed in present physical reality.

Some people who are clairvoyant (or psychic) are able to experience visions and receive information from an object. Who held the object? Who treasured it? What did the object mean to the previous owner? Emotions seem to be the strongest vibrations to be experienced when reading an object or physical location. For example, when a clairvoyant medium senses, sees, or hears a spirit speak in a “haunted house,” they are sensing imprinted energies from the people who previously lived in the house, especially if dramatic events occurred there.

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The following week at mediumship class, the teacher passed a basket around and asked us to put our objects into it. Then she passed it around a second time with instructions to take something out of the basket and hold it while we meditated.

I choose a lovely turquoise and gold earring. Going into meditation, almost immediately I had a vision of the previous owner of the earring. She was a tall, graceful woman with flowing yellow hair and bright blue eyes. She told me she had died from cancer at a young age, and that before she died she had given her treasured turquoise earrings to her sister. She said she missed her sister, but that her “life” on the “other side” was blissful.

One of the other students in the circle began to cry softly as I spoke about my vision. Then she said, “Yes, that’s my sister. That’s how she looked. She gave me her earrings before she died.”

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More recently, I had a personal experience of Sacred Psychometry. My friend Anne’s brother had gone into assisted living and she needed to travel to Idaho to clean his house and dispose of his belongings. It seems he was something of a “pack rat” and the house and property were a huge mess. There were old cars and boats in the yard, and all the walls inside the house were covered with pinned-up photos of trains and vintage automobiles that had been torn from old calendars.

There were also glass jars all over the house filled with coins, mostly pennies. Then, one night while we were working in the living room, Anne discovered an entire cupboard with silver coins, flatware, and other items made of silver.

I was sitting on the couch going through a box of silver dollars, when one dated 1922 “jumped out at me.” As I held it in my hand, the coin seemed to melt into my palm and I felt a rush of love and familiarity flow into me. It was like meeting an old friend and I could not let go of the silver dollar.

Later I thought of my paternal grandfather, whom I met only once for less than a week when I was 5 years old and living in Chicago. The old man smelled of tobacco and his nails were curved around the tips of his fingers, and he tapped them on the table making rhythmic sounds. He carried a silver dollar in his pocket that was stained yellow, as were his fingers, from smoking a pipe. He wore a brown and green cap that matched his tweedy jacket (clothes, I realized, which were related to his Scottish ancestry — my ancestry).

My grandfather was fascinating to the 5-year-old child I was. He took the silver dollar out of his pocket and showed me how to spin it on the table like a children’s toy top. These are the only memories of have of him, and they were almost completely faded — until I held that silver dollar in my hand at the house of Anne’s brother in Idaho.

After returning home, my feelings about the silver dollar did not fade. If anything, they got stronger, and I was flooded with feelings about the grandfather I had known for such a short time and then lost. The relationship between him and his son, my father, had been broken, and I never knew why.

Even now, weeks later, when I hold the silver coin in my hand it feels like my grandfather is in the room greeting me with love and affection, and perhaps a bit of sadness because of his family’s history.

I believe the silver dollar I discovered in Idaho — more than 700 miles from my home in Oregon — is the same silver dollar my grandfather spun on our kitchen table in Chicago 68 years ago! It might sound crazy, but the feeling is so strong I cannot deny my experience.

Later, someone looked up this particular silver dollar by date and told me it had been minted in Philadelphia, which is where my father and grandfather were born. How did it make its way from Philadelphia to Idaho, only to meet me there even though I now live in Oregon?

Truly, there are many amazing possibilities here on Planet Earth if we are open to receiving them!

Jessica Bryan is an author, book editor and spiritual medium. She does clairvoyant readings and a type of energy healing from the Philippines called “Magnetic Healing.” Jessica lives in Ashland.