Interview With Mary Bishop

Mary Bishop has made a life out of providing comfort to others and her absolute conviction that there is life after death comes from several profound experiences of her own.  Brought up in a Christian family in the South East of England, Mary attended church but always found that the strict doctrine and sense of ‘fear’ attached to organised religion was counterintuitive.  So, as a very spiritual person and with a sense of ‘something more’ she eventually decided to pursue other paths. 

Mary said: “I was brought up in the Christian faith, my Mum was in the Salvation Army and we would go to Sunday School, but I remember at five years old, the Sunday School teacher telling me about Jesus being crucified with nails through his hands and feet and that didn’t go down well with me as I didn’t understand why. I felt the church teachings were lacking, there was no warmth there, and there was nothing that resonated with me. Then, from the age of six when I used to close my eyes when I was in bed, I would see this huge tidal wave and it used to terrify me as I didn’t know what it was all about.  We did go to the seaside but I had never seen a tidal wave on the TV or in any books. Years later, I realised that this was one of my reincarnation experiences where I had been paralysed with fear on the beach as a cyclone brought in this tidal wave drowning me. I still  get a catch in my throat now when I see huge waves on screen.” 

Mary left school and started working in a solicitor’s office, and it was there that she would make a friend who would share her spiritual journey, and introduce her to a profound life path.  Mary said: “I was in my thirties when a friend of mine introduced me to the Tarot, and from there I developed clairvoyance, which is inner seeing and I also developed mediumship.  My mediumship started when I was working at a festival and had been working all weekend with loud music going on a little distance away.  I was so tired by then that I couldn’t read the Tarot cards, and I had all these people queuing to have a reading!  But then suddenly people from the spiritual realm started appearing in my inner vision and when one girl sat down and said ‘my friend died in a car accident’ and I asked ‘Was her name Susan?’ she just gasped as it was correct!  A guy turned up and I kept seeing gymnastics parallel bars, and I kept saying to him ‘I see these 2 parallel bars’. When he said ‘My identical twin died at birth’ it made sense that the message given was about 2 identical people.  So sometimes, actual events are shown to me or I see symbols like the bars which I have to try and interpret.”

Mary’s work in mediumship continued from that day, and during the 1990s, she worked at the London Mind Body and Spirit exhibitions alongside well-known author and psychic, Sasha Fenton.  In 2001, she moved to Auckland, New Zealand and taught her own Tarot and Intuitive courses as well as teaching Tarot at college evening classes. Her work in the country was well-received and she was a regular newspaper columnist in Auckland. 

In 2016,  she released ‘Alchemy of the Soul – Learning to Dance With Your Own Divinity’, a heartfelt memoir which tracks her journey learning spirituality through some of her life’s toughest moments.  The book is far from simply a memoir though, and includes Mary’s own Soul Growth Meditations,  available on YouTube, which can help others with healing, forgiveness and cosmic ordering. 

Mary’s second book, ‘What am I Doing Here? A Journey Through Gaia’, is a fictional story which serves as an introduction to the major Tarot cards. 

As her journey continued, Mary would finally find the answer to her childhood tidal wave visions years later, when she began experimenting with Past Life Regression Therapy.  The subject of Karma and Reincarnation forms the basis of ‘What Goes Around Comes Around, A Story of Karma and Reincarnation from Versailles to Brighton’, Mary’s latest book, as she felt this was a subject that she had not yet covered and wanted to share with her readers. Mary said: “The friend who introduced me to Tarot, who I have known since I was in my 20s, trained as a regressionist therapist and practised on me! During these regressions, I discovered that whatever gender I am, doesn’t make any difference because ultimately you are your soul. Whatever is presented to you is how you react to it and in a lot of my regressions, I have realised that from all my obstacles and difficulties, I can learn and grow at soul level. I have had some very interesting ones, and what has been so lovely is that I have had these regressions and then looked up on the internet and verified the facts I had seen in them! I was in Holland in one regression and I was told that there was a war coming. I saw the people, how they dressed and saw the soldiers in uniform and I heard the date of 1640. So I looked it up online and discovered that in 1640  there was a war near Holland and the soldiers were wearing the same uniforms I had seen. 

In my very first regression, my husband died in an accident with a threshing machine.  I’d never heard of a threshing machine but apparently, they do exist! In that regression,  I was just a very simple-minded girl who had been left at the doors of a monastery as an unwanted baby. I felt this was authentic because if you were making it up you wouldn’t choose to be a simple-minded girl! When you regress, the life that you see is usually relevant to your current life, so it’s all about learning self-awareness and growing.” 

Since returning to the UK in 2005, Mary has continued to give readings and has also practised in the United States. She also participates in a local psychic group, experiencing dramatic events while clearing ghosts from people’s houses. 

And speaking about why she chose to write all of her experiences down in her books, as in her career, Mary’s heart is in an altruistic place: “I realised one day that when I die no one would know about it, so I decided to put it in my books. If one day someone picks up one of my books they might get help from it, and they can see that I have lived through that situation that they are living through and I’ve come through the other side.”