Karen Coffey is tiny, but she packs a huge wallop psychically. Her clear eyes do not look away when she speaks to you. When I encountered her in her shop, Pyewacket in Vineyard Haven, I immediately felt the connection of a person who spoke from somewhere outside of her own ego.

Psychics, and there are quite a number of them on Martha’s Vineyard, are exceptional seers. In Karen’s case she has acknowledged this insight since childhood. Born into a very Catholic family, both her mother and grandmother were gifted in the connection to a higher truth and communication on a spiritual level. Much was communicated between the three women and their other female relatives without words, somethings were felt rather than spoken.

When Karen went to kindergarten she came face to face with other children who although saying one thing she could sense were feeling something very different in their hearts. After her first day in school she vowed she would never return — she didn’t like the duplicity she encountered. Throughout her school years and into her adult life she always questioned her abilities — were they real, was what she felt or knew viable in this world?

On one occasion she was at a party where all the lights suddenly went out. Everyone got very quiet, except for Karen who knew what had happened: “Someone hit a telephone pole and they were killed,” she said. “Oh, Mouse, how would you know?” replied her friends, but she knew. And she was sadly correct.

The avenue of choice for Karen was the tarot deck. Psychics often use the tools of the physical world: cards, coins, the palm, a pendant — they seem to carry more weight than just the spoken word when someone can actually see something physical. Karen began using cards in 1968 and to this day still keeps her original deck close at hand, although she uses a new deck for current readings.

In 1993 she traveled to Florida with her husband, Daniel P. Koch, and young son, Daniel Devereaux Koch, and decided to test her skill and knowledge. She set up a table, spread out her tarot cards in a place where there were lots of pedestrians and cyclists, and decided to do 100 readings to test her abilities. Many people stopped at her table, and in the end her profession was born. She has kept a notebook of comments people have sent her after receiving a reading, confirmations of what she has foretold.

She reminds me that the person doing the reading is ímerely a conduit for information coming into this world from another place. Karen Coffey is the voice that others cannot hear.

She also is the only licensed psychic reader in Vineyard Haven; many people come to her to help clarify where they are currently in their lives, and what their future holds.

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Arlan Wise is perhaps the grande dame of astrology on the Vineyard. Her interest in astrological signs began when she was a child — she sought out the signs of her friends and noted them in a small red diary, which her mother found and sent to her when she was an adult.

When her children were born, Arlan had their charts done and then knew for certain that astrology was her calling. “I studied and studied and studied!” she exclaimed.

Astrology was around long before Christ arrived on the Temple steps — the stars are eternal — and in the bible there are many references. The Hebrew saying mazeltov literally means “good stars.”

The ancients used the lunar calendar, based on the stars, to celebrate holidays and we still see this in the Eastern calendar — there is no fixed date for the Greek or Russian celebration of Christmas; the stars and where they are in the heavens determine when this particular holiday will happen, and others as well.

“People glaze over when you tell them you are an astrologer and will reply, ‘I don’t believe in astrology.’ Do you believe in electricity? I find that much more mysterious,” said Arlan.

“We are currently at the lowest point in the social status of astrologers. It used to be that they worked in the courts, advised the kings and set the times for battles. How we got to the funny pages I’m not quite sure,” she laughed. Astrology was used into the 1930s, especially in Hollywood, but declined in the 1940s and 50s. “Nancy Regan had no qualms about calling in an astrologer, for her it was the norm,” she said, adding:

“Doing astrology for the common people, the mundane astrology, is fairly recent. I have a friend who is studying the use of astrology in colonial America — it’s all there, even the Rev. Cotton Mather, one of the hell and brimstone preachers of colonial times, used to do charts.” A Boston cleric in the early 1700s, Cotton Mather was educated at Harvard.

So what constitutes a good reading? “If people leave feeling full and satisfied, or say ‘I never thought of that before,’ I’ve opened their minds. It’s then you know you have done a good job,” Arlan said.

For her, astrology is much more a science, a language, a tool used to understand the self and open new doors. “You get better at this as you get older,” she said. Well-versed in the history and use of astrology, Arlan is a past president and currently vice president of the Organization of Professional Astrologers.

So what about the future of Martha’s Vineyard? Arlan has read the trusted Banks history books which she said cites no specific date for when the Island came into being, only the different towns. But she offered this: “Big changes are happening. Pluto moves into the sign of Capricorn where it will be until 2024/25. Pluto is the force of transformation; it undermines; mythologically he is Lord of the underworld, and therefore has that force for change. Pluto has moved into Capricorn which is structure, which is our governments, which is our corporations, which is our establishment and all of that is being undermined, it’s changing. íIf people have been downsized they will be looking for the little things they can do; they won’t want to go back to large corporations.

“What we are seeing on the Vineyard is keeping it local which is again Pluto in Capricorn. Break it down, have your own organization. There will be huge transformations with everything including the earth, the tides and beach erosion.”

Looking ahead in general, she said: “2012 is no big deal astrologically. Be kind, be nice to each other, be open-minded and pay attention to astrology.”

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I met Kathy Gibbs on a trip to Peru when the late Barbara Ivacek shepherded a small group to Machu Picchu and into the Sacred Valley high in the Andes mountains.

Kathy had been interested in astrology for years, and Barbara prodded her to go further, study more and use her insight in reading the stars.

“I’ve been interested in astrology since my kids were little, but I wish I had had more awareness of it before then; it would have given me self-knowledge and helped me understand the people in my life better. That’s what I like about astrology, it brings acceptance and understanding about who I am and who they are,” Kathy said.

During an evening astrology class in Boston, she volunteered her chart to be used for teaching. To her amazement, the instructor hit on some key things in her personality that there was no reason for this person to know. “My life was in the midst of huge changes and these perfect strangers were able to tell me, by looking at my chart for half an hour, what was going on in my life. It was freeing; it allowed me to be less judgmental, to be kinder to myself,” Kathy said.

She now has two certifications and is working on a third. “People ask, why are you getting another certification? And I always reply, I have Saturn on my mid-heaven,” she laughed. “I just love the gifts astrology brings to us. If I’m getting something wrong it’s not the astrology, it’s me. We have the perfect tool; it’s the human factor that sometimes errs.”

Kathy describes herself as more of an intuitive than a psychic. She said she works with astrology because she is structured. “Astrology has been around for thousands and thousands of years; for me it’s very tangible, a very scientific thing,” she said.

Her prediction for the future?

“We are just leaving the age of Pisces which we have been in for the past 2,000 years and are now going into the Age of Aquarius . . . Pisces is concerned with the spiritual, also it is otherworldly, creative . . . Moving into Aquarius, the energy is electric; we are moving into the age of technology . . . Aquarius has cutting-edge energy. The other part is the concern with humanity, the bigger picture, not the individual, it’s what’s good for the whole group. We are at the beginning of a new age, we are in that transitional time, the dark of the moon time.”

Wendy Arnell Brophy is a freelance writer and former Vineyard resident who lives in Framingham. For a reading with Karen Coffey, call 508-696-7766 or visit psychictarotmv.com. For a monthly moon sign astrology reading with Arlan Wise, go to her Web site at arlanwise.com. For a reading with Kathy Gibbs, call 508-693-8024. The writer cites others of of interest, including: Cynthia Pareja, who heals the spirit with sound (508-627-4087); David Merritt, who is a psychic (508-693-7355); Katherine Finch, who is a Feng Shui practitioner (508-627-4806).