David Wells is best known in the UK as the clairvoyant medium from Living TV’s hit show Most Haunted. There he demonstrates extraordinary clarity of perception, which often dumbfounds the show’s ‘professional sceptic’. David Well's Complete Guide to Developing Your Psychic Skills is not really about ghost hunting though, it is about your personal spiritual development and the awakening of your psychic potential that goes along with it.

I met David at the Quest Festival in Devon UK this year and took part in two of his workshops, one on Past Lives and the other on the Tarot. I was delighted to find that he is every bit as affable and approachable as he appears on TV, perhaps more so as he has a great sense of humour too. I can see why this man has his own devoted band of followers- the ‘Wells Angels’. What I was pleasantly surprised by was his depth of spiritual knowledge- though I had previously suspected he had studied more deeply than many mediums from the way he spiritually protects himself and the Most Haunted crew when they open a séance.

David’s book is a lovely blend between personal anecdote, case studies & user friendly information and teachings. It is suitable both for the absolute beginner and those of us who’ve travelled some way on our paths as he takes the reader step by step through simple and safe exercises, all the time deepening the awareness of self. Personally I love his instruction to put the kettle on & have a cuppa and a biscuit at the end of each visualisation. He really understands the need to keep our human feet firmly on the ground whilst we explore our spiritual selves.

David leads us along the path of his own spiritual development in this book, starting with astrology, moving into meditation, then an understanding of the chakra system, into past lives, spirit guides, the tarot and numerology. Finally he advises taking the skills that we’ve learned and combining them to make them more powerful. For example he suggests taking astrological and numerological knowledge and applying this to the tarot to gain a deeper understanding of the cards.

David’s approach to each of these subjects is from a perspective of how they can help you with your personal growth, rather than for telling fortunes. I loved the way he suggested working individually through visualisation with each tarot card to gain a closer intuitive understanding of what it is about, rather than looking it up in books. In his tarot workshop we were grouped according to our Life Path Number to explore a card from the Major Arcana. I have a Life Path number of 11, which can be reduced down to 2, giving me the Priestess card to look at. I obtained some very useful guidance by visiting her in tarot visualisation, which was then repeated by a clairvoyant independently less than an hour later. I do like rapid conformation!

I also need to look at card 11- Strength, as 11 is one of the Master numbers. Interestingly I had another Master number in my make up that I’ve only discovered through the exercise in David’s book- my Personality number is 55. I knew of 11, 22 and 33 as Master numbers and the meanings of these are discussed in the book, but I was unaware that the Master numbers continue to 99, albeit cropping up more rarely. I’ll be off to research the meaning of this one! I just checked a word count for this article & got 777 (before typing this bit). I think ‘upstairs’ are having a little numerological joke with me as David’s workshop was also on 07/07/07- spooky!

My only real beef with the book is the word ‘Complete’ in its title. I feel similarly about any book which claims to be ‘Complete’ as this suggests there is nothing more to know. However this is a wonderful starting place for anyone wanting to ‘open up’; it is a good introduction to a safe and intuitive way of working. There is so much more to learn about each and every one of these subjects, but if you follow David’s advice you will be able to intuit the next step of your path for yourself.

At time of writing this book is available through Amazon.co.uk, but not Amazon.com: