According to the historical tradiations of card reading in my culture, they don’t work properly when you try to read them for yourself. The old women say an interpreter or at least another body handling the cards is needed like a match must be raised to a candle for illumination. Whether the reader acts as a catalyst or a filter for the magic, depends on your opinion (and also whether or not you believe in magic to begin with). If you find reading your own cards helpful, by all means continue. If you want to know what the historical tradiation passed down through many generations of card readers in my family is, my answer is, “According to the old women, reading your own cards is bad luck and shouldn’t be done. The energy doesn’t focus properly and becomes dangerous.”
Depends on what you came looking for. I will do readings for people that think they “know” cards, but generally speaking it’s a hassle, sort of like why doctors say other doctors are the worse patients. As for as prestacking the decks, the cards are; in the case of entertainment readings merely props; and in the case of counseling readings tools for communications. In and of themselves the cards are nothing more than pretty pictures.
Are you going to outlaw reading the christian bible? Many of it’s passages allude to predicting the future. A great many christians (and historians and professors of the humanities) will oppose this.
You are basically offering two different excuses for what you do:
#1) Other groups, notably religions, treat their adherents in a similar manner as you treat your clients.
#2) If people are stupid and/or gullible enough to believe in nonsense then they deserve to be deceived.
Excuse #1 seems to contradict your repeated statements that you have a clear conscience. You show clear disapproval for the devious and self-serving behavior you ascribe to various groups, notably churches. So when you mirror your own behavior with theirs, are you not in effect, accusing yourself of the same brand of mendacity and selfishness you so loathe in others? Maybe I’m mistaken and you think these churches are behaving honorably. Or maybe you think your behavior is really different than theirs. Can you clarify?
Excuse #2 is more honest I think but no more honorable. It is certainly a common system of belief as evidenced by the others in this thread who agree with that notion. Essentially you are saying that if people can be taken advantage of then it is ok to go ahead and take advantage of them. It is sort of a survival of the fittest brand of morality. It is the type of moral code that people stick to until they are taken advantage of by a person more fit than themselves, then they suddenly appeal to a different moral paradigm altogether.
Since this is an “ask the” thread, I’ll stop ranting and do more asking, and these questions can also be answered by the others in this thread approving of preying on the stupid, such as Fuzzypickles. Does this moral code extend to other areas of superiority? If someone is physically weaker than you, rather than intellectually or emotionally weaker, is it ok to physically dominate them? Is it just certain intellectual or emotional faults that render a person fair game for suckering? Is it ok to sucker mentally handicapped people? Children under the age of 13? Compared to my auto mechanic I am an idiot when it comes to engine repair. Is it morally ok for him to rip me off? I’m not incapable of learning auto repair after all, if I wanted to dedicate the time to do so. So it is my own fault for not educating myself, right?
What is the intent of your heart when fortune telling?QUOTE]
To earn a living in a way that helps or at least entertains people. Actually entertaining is often simply another way of helping someone.
More times than I can count starting in Junior High. In that instance, my mother threatened a law-suit against the school and the school board unless it was stopped. The principal read the Bill of Rights to everybody and told the local “christian” youth that the same constitution that protected their right to read a bible or pray on campus protected my right to read cards and palms. Fundie ministers are always trying something. I learned how to get rid of them when one was praying on the street in front of the shop. I walked out offered him a blessing ceremony for free since he looked really troubled.
Nope. Not unless it comes from a uniformed officer saying, “Escaped serial killer Jesus Doe has been sighted in this neighborhood. Lock all your doors and windows.” As for as Jesus the symbolic founder of Christianity, Roma love the myth of Jesus. He’s the one that supposedly gave us the right to steal. That legend is that when Jesus was crucified it was with only 3 nails instead of 4 because a Rom thief took the fourth nail. Jesus dying on the cross realized that because of this outcast thief the Romans couldn’t drive a nail through his heart, so on the cross said Rom could steal forever from christians and it wasn’t a sin. Because of prejudice against the Roma people, the early christians refused to write this down in the bible, but we perceived the truth in our oral legends through the centuries. (wink, wink)
My position is that I help people. I don’t exploit them. Does your doctor “prey” on you when he or she recommends that you exercise more and eat less junk food and you pay him or her for the appointment? My qualifications as a counselor are as good if not better than many pastoral counselors who charge fees or request “donations”. I mention mainstream religious institutions in this because I do believe they exploit people for fun and profit and from my point of view they are liars. However, I am not campaigning to have the churches shut down. I will respect their right to exist under the First Amendment, but I expect them to extend that same right to me.
I want to try to move the discussion in a bit of a different direction. I understand that your occupation relies on keen observation and rather broad “predictions.” One of the few times my wife had a reading at a festival she was told that they saw an umbrella related to her profession. Of course she was impressed that since she worked for an insurance company, and Travellers symbol is an umbrella it was impressive. Of course if she worked outside and sometimes needed an umbrella, or if the restaurant had outdoor seating and they had umbrellas, or if there was jargon in her industry that refers to “umbrella accounts” (as does my industry) they would all apply.
They could also see that she was at the time a mid 30’s woman… wearing a wedding band… healthy looking… nicely dressed… etc. and guess some things about her lifestyle. She told her she had children (I wasn’t far away with the stroller and the second running around), but she insisted she had three children… one girl and two boys. At the time we had one girl and one boy, but we didn’t know yet that she was pregnant and it turned out to be a boy. Any clue what she picked up on, or is it something like what my Dad did? He was an OB in a small town and had a reputation of picking the sex of the child at the first confirmation of the pregnancy. He told me later that he alternated between boy and girl each year, and if it was right he made a big deal of it at the delivery (or ultrasound later in his career) and if not he said nothing.
Can you share any of the “trade secrets” of the kind of things you look for. I’m sure many hide the rings and you are very keen in recognizing tan lines or indentations etc. Any others that may not be so obvious.
My downtown shop where the clients are mostly poor and to a certain extent the true die hard believers, it’s $20.00 for a reading that can last up to 30 minutes (and frequently does). There is also a lot of money made through the selling of products like charms, teas, sweets, etc. And some people come to the downtown shop only to buy merchandise because they like the products I carry and think its the best place in the neighborhood to get gifts. At my uptown shop, it’s $20.00 for a quick 5 minute fortune, $75.00 for a 50-minute counselor’s hour. And there is a lot of money also made in merchandise sales. Yes, the products at the uptown shop are higher than than the products at the downtown shop and some of them are the same items.
Any type of profiling clue is used. The police have a term the call the “joint body.” It’s a muscular build up coupled with a way of walking and observing the surroundings only seen on convicts that have done hard time. The only build and eye movement that is similiar occurs with military men (Rangers, Special Forces, etc.). In fact, sometimes it’s virtually identical. The main way to tell the difference is posture. Amerian Military men always display good posture unless they’ve been P.O.Ws. Ex-convicts have a slouch. Foreign military men or foreign military veterans sometimes have the slouch, particular those from the former Soviet Union, but former Yugoslavian vets won’t unless they’ve been P.O.Ws.
First, ZPG, thanks for your patience in answering the many questions in this thread and staying despite the bit of “dump on the fortune-teller” instead of “ask the fortune-teller.”
Now, my questions:
I like the TV show “The Mentalist” (the actors are cute!) and I realize that TV heroes are always super-comptent at their job compared to ordinary mortals. If you watch the show, how much of Patrick Jane’s tricks as mentalist do you find credible that he could pull off, and how many are in your opinion pure fantasy of the writers?
How do you regard “psychics” like Sylvia van Browne (spelling?) or Alison or similar, who have been blasted by Randi and others for being vultures preying on families of lost people?
You said you help the police with their investigations not with the fictional way of telling them that the “body is near the letter ‘T’”, but by phoning a detective after getting real information from the client itself.
When discussing fake psychics, it’s often mentioned that too many badly educated cops and detectives believe in and accept the help of psychics. How do the detectives you work with regard this - are they glad that your atmosphere makes criminals relax and spill their secrets? Do the detectives believe that supernatural powers gave you the information? Do they wish for more fortune-tellers with your ethics of passing information on to them, or do they believe psychics? Do they see a difference between psychics talking to spirits and what you are doing?
Considering the stupid things people piss their money away on (I just read a recipe for a cheesecake made with gelatin! and one of the ingredients was “10 - 20 year old balsamic vinegar” ! And dumb people were asking, where in the grocery store do I pick up this vinegar? ! probably don’t know how much it costs!) - considering this, $20 for a reading sounds reasonable to me and if you want to do it, go ahead!
I’ve had my astrological chart done, my palm read, cards read - none of it applied to anything in my life, talk about entertainment purposes only! I have several sets of pretty Tarot cards - the Aquarius deck and the retro-Housewives deck which I like to look at more than anything. On occasion I’ll attempt a reading for a friend, referring back to my tarot for dummies book. The card meanings can be jiggered any which way, for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outcomes. Though I tried to put a positive spin on it (as she was going through a bad, bad time) - her new boyfriend was represented by a card indicating he was a secretive, two-faced fraud. I TOLD her he was full of secrets, to concentrate on making a new life for herself and not to rely on him to make it all better. Turned out he was secretly gay, in debt way over his head, and thought if he could make himself central to her miserable life that she would be dumb enough to hand over chunks of her fast-fading nest egg to pay off his cell phone, cable bill, etc. The point being, a stopped clock is right twice a day. … As for turning in criminals, girl, you go for it! If nothing else about your fortune-telling is going to get a pass from the critics, this should! (of course it won’t because they’re the same ones who rail against surveillance cameras in public places - freedom for all!)
Do you have a mostly positive or mostly negative opinion of humanity? A few times during this thread, I’ve seen you make comments that seem to indicate you think people are mostly stupid or lazy and unwilling to take good advice. I’m just wondering if you’re jaded about people.
How much of your readings are “spin” that you can direct a specific way? For example, if you’re at a party and don’t want to ruin the mood, you mentioned you might stack the deck to make the card readings have a favorable outcome for the environment. Do you do anything else like this to make sure someone doesn’t get a “bad” reading? Like maybe stretch the meaning of a card or claim a reading meant something it didn’t actually mean, in order to suit the particular person you’re reading for?
It’s more that she made a wrong prediction, but you figured out a way that she was right. It’s startlingly common. The psychic says all sorts of things, and the mark fills in the blanks, and suddenly that wrong prediction becomes a correct prediction. “I see an older man in your life, his name starts with D…” “Well there’s my uncle Bob, his middle name starts with D! That must be it!”.
I haven’t seen the Mentalist. If it’s on Hula, I’ll try to catch an episode and report back.
I agree with Randi on the behavior of many televison psychics. In a missing person case a psychic from the local area may be very useful because they hear things that others do not. There are probably some petty criminals and people on the margins of the community among their customers. These are the people that nobody sees, but they see a lot. The detectives and other law enforcement officers I have worked with don’t believe the supernatural gave me any information. They know it is because people will talk to me, including the friends and families of criminals and sometimes the criminals themselves. Though I do have one police friend that sees something supernatural in my work. He says god (and his god is the christian god by the way) gave me the ability to talk to scumbags, so that he could solve crimes.
I don’t suppose I’m anymore jaded about people than anyone that has to work with the public everyday. Ask a few social workers how they feel about their cases sometimes and they’ll say they have days when the movie Idiocracy seems like a prophecy.
As far as spin goes, a reading is all in the interpretation. There are so many possible meanings of cards and signs, no stretching is required.
How long does it take to learn these skills? Are they usually learned on an apprenticeship system?
How do other fortune-tellers get along? Do you compete viciously for business? What kinds of things do the less reputable fortune tellers do?
What advice does your grandmother give you that could make you a better fortune teller? In general, what kinds of things do you do to improve your job performance?
Can you gives us a walk-through of a typical day in the office?
As for opinions, I don’t believe in much of anything, but I sometimes pull out a deck of tarot cards because I find that they encourage me to think about my problems and help me realize stuff that I already know. Kind of like how whenever you flip a coin to make a decision, you suddenly know what you want the result to be. I also make a point of getting my fortune told in the local fashion when I travel. It’s a way of participating in a very old and interesting tradition.
Finally, for all of you naysayers, how many of you are working jobs that are 100% dedicated to making people’s lives better? Most jobs involve parting people from their money one way or another. I don’t see how implying you are psychic is much different than implying that drinking Pepsi will make me cool.