Theme Analysis: Exploitation of the Past

Defining the Thematic Claim

In It Takes a Psychic, Jayne Castle argues that the past—whether embodied in artifacts, lost technology, or historical legacy—is perpetually vulnerable to exploitation by those who value power over ethics. The novel presents a world where Harmony’s colonial history and the mysterious Alien ruins are not merely subjects of scholarly fascination; they are resources to be mined, forged, and weaponized. The thematic claim is unambiguous: unscrupulous individuals and institutions systematically strip the past of its integrity, treating artifacts as commodities, vulnerable beings as research material, and dangerous Old World machines as tools for domination. This exploitation is not a remnant of a bygone era but an ongoing, adaptive corruption that threatens the present.

The narrative constructs a multi-layered critique. The aristocratic Antiquarian Society cloaks illegal experimentation in philanthropy. A secret project revives a machine linked to a failed rebellion. Forgery and theft intersect at the precise point where legitimate scholarship collides with black-market greed. Through Leona Griffin’s professional ethics and Oliver Rancourt’s shadowy retrieval mission, the novel asks what it means to protect history while acknowledging that even well-intentioned actors can bend rules when personal stakes are high. The theme’s complexity emerges in these gray zones, where preservation and exploitation blur into a single ambiguous act.

Pervasive Exploitation Across the Plot

The theme anchors itself early in the Antiquarian Society’s hidden laboratory. During the gala, Leona follows a pleading dust bunny into a concealed space where three of the creatures are caged as test subjects. The evidence is stark: a prestigious organization, one that funds Hollister University, is conducting unauthorized research on living beings. Leona’s immediate instinct is to free them, bypassing psi-locks with her talent. She thinks that even the university cannot “continue to accept money from the Society” once this is exposed. This incident establishes a pattern—exploitation thrives behind respectable facades. The Society’s members already dabble in the gray market, ignoring legal provenance for rare artifacts. The caged dust bunnies literalize the cost: innocent creatures made instruments of curiosity and profit. The scene sets up Leona’s ethical compass, but it also introduces the uneasy reality that institutions of learning and culture are complicit when they look away.

The revelation about Melody Palantine deepens the theme’s sinister reach. Melody has been hiding her multi-talent status, aware that “no one trusted triples” and they were “assumed to be dangerous.” Her secret project centers on the Vortex machine, an Old World device capable of enhancing human paranormal talent. The evidence shows that the version she has been working with “currently produced highly unstable human monsters who either self-destructed or had to be destroyed.” She is not merely toying with technology—she is exploiting the past to create weapons, using kidnapped children as test subjects. Melody frames her ambition as destiny, claiming descent from Vincent Lee Vance and intent on fulfilling his unfinished quest for control. Here, exploitation telescopes across generations: she hijacks Vance’s legacy, weaponizes a machine tied to historical catastrophe, and sacrifices vulnerable lives. The pyramid crystal becomes a pivotal link in this chain, its resonance with Leona’s own pendant suggesting a deeper, potentially manipulated history.

The artifact heist itself operates on a knife-edge between legitimate recovery and exploitation. Oliver’s foundation seeks to retrieve Pandora’s box, a twenty-first-century relic containing six human-engineered crystals. But the box holds a seventh object: the pyramid crystal, “palm-sized and cut in the shape of a pyramid,” sitting alone as if concealed. Oliver didn’t anticipate it. Leona senses it resonating with her own pendant—the crystal pendants that connect to “the dangerous secret that she and Molly and their parents had vowed to conceal.” The past here is layered: an Old World artifact built by human engineers, used in a mysterious project, then lost, stolen, and stuffed with a crystal tied to a family secret. Every party touching the box—the thief who stole it from the Rancourt Museum, the Society that displayed it, Leona who unlocks it—appropriates its value for different ends. Leona’s decision to keep the pyramid, facilitated by Roxy’s theft, complicates her moral high ground. She condemns the Society’s exploitation while quietly withholding an artifact for personal reasons. The plot refuses easy judgments.

Character and Symbolic Dimensions

Leona Griffin embodies the tension between scholarly respect for the past and the instinct to control it. As a para-archaeologist, she authenticates artifacts and declares that a blue amber necklace is “a reproduction,” a fake. She insists that powerful objects “should be in safekeeping. There were laws.” Yet she pockets the pyramid crystal without disclosure. Her double talent—para-archaeologist and locksmith—gives her the power to unlock almost anything, and that power tempts her to become a selective gatekeeper. She is acutely aware of the contradiction; she tells herself “people in her profession did not admire antiquities thieves,” but she repeatedly admires Oliver’s skill. Leona’s arc suggests that resisting exploitation requires constant vigilance, especially against one’s own rationalizations.

Oliver Rancourt operates in the gray zone where retrieval and theft blur. He is an illusion talent, a man comfortable in “the artifact gray market.” His foundation’s agenda remains opaque—he tells Leona, “Let’s discuss that some other time. It’s not important tonight.” His secrecy raises questions about whether his recovery missions truly serve preservation or another, more ambiguous purpose. His connection to Norton Thacker and his family’s museum suggests a lineage of collectors, inevitably entangled in contested provenance. Oliver’s protective stance toward Leona—“it was for your own good”—is a form of controlling the narrative, a softer echo of the Society’s paternalistic secrecy.

Charlotte Griffin and the matriarchal family presence remind readers that exploitation can also mean imposing expectations or silencing uncomfortable truths. The family secret, tied to the yellow crystals Leona and her sister wear, illustrates how the past’s exploitation can be intimate: a legacy passed down in silence, its full weight unknown even to those who carry it. The secret’s origin remains murky, but its effects are tangible—it pulls Leona into danger and forces decisions that test her professional identity.

The pyramid crystal functions as the novel’s central symbol of contested history. It is “Old World tech,” hidden inside a different artifact, resonating with a pendant that predates the story. Its power is “secured with an unusually elaborate psi-code,” suggesting deliberate concealment. Whoever placed it in Pandora’s box exploited the box’s legend and physical security to protect or hide the pyramid. The crystal’s yellow color links it visually and psionically to the Griffin pendants, creating a chain of resonance that connects present-day characters to a past they don’t fully understand. It is the past made physical, demanding to be unlocked, and every character who touches it risks becoming an exploiter.

Dust bunnies, though adorable, are constant targets. The Society cages them; Melody’s project likely treats them as disposable. Their cleverness—hijacking a theme park ride and demanding pizza as ransom—flips the exploitation narrative. They are not passive victims; they steal, negotiate, and vanish. They mirror Leona’s own subversive actions, suggesting that resistance to exploitation can be playful, chaotic, and effective.

The Vortex machine is the most overt weaponization of the past. It is “fundamentally Old World tech,” flawed but potent. Melody believes the original version, the one Vance used, can produce “a powerful and stable multi-talent.” Her willingness to test it on children—to break them in pursuit of personal power—marks the darkest extreme of the theme. The machine is not neutral; it carries the weight of Vance’s historical failure and its current subjects’ pain. Exploiting this past means repeating its atrocities.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel resists a simple binary where villains exploit and heroes preserve. Leona’s theft of the pyramid crystal is a direct exploitation of her access and talent—she uses the chaos of the raid to secure a personal artifact. Oliver’s foundation, ostensibly a recovery operation, is itself a private entity deciding which artifacts deserve public protection. The Antiquarian Society funds legitimate scholarship; its members are not cartoonish villains but wealthy dilettantes whose hobbies enable systemic harm. Melody is a product of a society that fears and marginalizes multi-talents; her psychosis is shaped by legitimate persecution.

This moral murkiness is the theme’s real strength. The past is not a static thing to be protected; it is an active force constantly reinterpreted and repurposed. The question the novel leaves hanging is whether any interaction with powerful history can be genuinely innocent. When Leona and Oliver secure the pyramid, are they saving it or simply redirecting its exploitation? The Covenant Marriage plotline even plays on this: a formal union that acknowledges psychic compatibility could be seen as honoring natural bonds, or as another institutional apparatus packaging intimacy for societal utility.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the Antiquarian Society’s behavior illustrate the theme of exploiting the past? The Society exploits artifacts through gray market acquisitions and exploits living creatures—dust bunnies—as test subjects in a hidden lab. Their philanthropic mask enables ongoing, institutionalized exploitation that benefits from historical and biological resources without ethical constraints.

2. In what ways does Leona Griffin both resist and participate in the exploitation of the past? Leona resists by freeing the caged dust bunnies, exposing a fake relic, and insisting artifacts belong in museums. She participates by covertly taking the pyramid crystal, rationalizing that its resonance with her family’s secret justifies keeping it from Oliver’s foundation and the Society.

3. What role does the Vortex machine play in Melody Palantine’s version of exploiting history? Melody exploits Vincent Lee Vance’s legacy and the Old World technology of Vortex to pursue power. She kidnaps children as test subjects, weaponizing the flawed machine to create enhanced talents, repeating and amplifying historical violence in pursuit of a perverted destiny.

4. How do the crystal pendants and the pyramid crystal symbolize the contested ownership of the past? The pendants connect Leona and her sister to an unspoken family secret, while the pyramid crystal, hidden inside Pandora’s box, resonates with that same lineage. Their psi-code locks and tuned frequencies represent history as encrypted, fought over, and impossible to fully control by any single party.

5. What contradictions challenge the idea that the past can be protected without exploitation? Oliver’s foundation operates in secrecy and uses gray market contacts, blurring recovery with self-interest. Leona’s theft of the pyramid undermines her ethical stance. The Society funds legitimate university programs. These contradictions suggest that engaging with powerful history inevitably reshapes it for present needs, raising doubts about purely preservationist ideals.