LEWISTON — Laurianne Anctil is leading her first class Friday evening on finding a soul mate and figuring out if you’re already with him or her — or them.

The Auburn woman recommends bringing a journal, maintaining an open mind and not panicking if divine numerology indicates your other isn’t really your other.

There are reasons for everything, she said.

In her 62 years, Anctil figures she’s had six soul mates, maybe seven.

The first appeared after she divorced her husband. One was a woman.

According to Anctil, the modern-day interpretation of soul mate is tilted. It doesn’t have to be about sex any more than it’s about one-and-only, she said.

“(It’s) a person that you have a special soul lesson to learn from,” someone you know — but forgot — from a past life, Anctil said. “When souls come into the world there’s a veil of forgetting that comes over us. … For one thing, we’ve had zillions of past lives. How could you live this life if you remembered? You couldn’t function.”

Anctil is hoping for a packed house at the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce.

The daughter of parents who worked in Lewiston’s mills and Auburn’s shoe shops, Anctil has lived in the Twin Cities her whole life. In the 1990s, around the time of her graduation from the University of Southern Maine with a bachelor’s degree in social and behavioral science, Anctil became interested in polarity, also known as energy work, and massage.

“Way back then, this sounded like weird stuff. Energy therapy, auras, chakras,” Anctil said.  She remembers thinking, “I’m not going to promote myself as a polarity therapist in Lewiston-Auburn, that will never get off the ground here.”

So, massage it was.

More recently, she’s branched out. She calls herself a “Psycho-Spiritual Transformation Therapist.”

She’s taught a variety of classes since 1994. Sacred yoga is coming up. Tantra was in June.

Anctil describes herself as a “passionate, romantic Leo,” who, when she found herself divorced at 45, “barely knew how to date.”

“My first soul mate I encountered on the Internet,” Anctil said.

Her number, using divine numerology, is 6. He was a 6. They fell for each other. Then he dropped the bomb: He was married but willing to leave his wife.

“I said no,” Anctil said. “Your heart attracts you to your soul mate, then you have to use your head.”

Workshop participants will find out their numbers, she said, as well as, if they want, their mates’ and what those numbers represent.

If your numbers don’t add up?

“Don’t worry about that,” Anctil said. “You’re going to find out why you’re attracted to each other, what you have to learn from each other. For one thing, your soul mate may not even be born yet.”

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, unexplained and intriguing in Maine. Send ideas, photos and tales from past lives to [email protected].

Go and do

Soul mates workshop

When: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, July 20

Fee: $100 (open to donations or bartering)

To register: 782-2309