Just wondering what your experience was like. What made you go? Was it helpful or interesting at all?
Thanks!
No, but my mother has. A friend of hers was convinced this psychic was for real, so she paid for my mom to have a reading. There’s a tape of it around somewhere. Mom says she was impressed by what the psychic had to say about her past, but absolutely none of her predictions for the future panned out.
I keep telling the kids we’ll go get a reading one day just for kicks: “Ah, very interesting…I see that you think I am full of something brown and sticky…”
That quote would be the psychic talking to me, not the other way round!
It is my personal opinion that most (98.75%) of the people who charge for “psychic readings” are full of shit. I have been to several (never paid, has to do with the circle in which I have always run) and my experience is that they read body language. If you want to know if that is what the person is doing, be aware of your body language and do not answer any questions. A psychic should not have to ask “do you know someone with the first name of john or joe or that starts with a j?”
I am a psychic’s worst nightmare. I refuse to give any verbal or non-verbal clues. I refuse to answer questions and I make sure that my mannerisms are not those that I normally have.
While it is my personal experience that some people do have a knack for knowing things they should not know – those people are few and far between and normally do not charge for their services, since they know that it is at best a sporadic ability.
A long time ago my wife went to a Tarot card reader a few times. She got the usual cold reading treatment with some ambiguous predictions and a few lucky hits. I told my wife it was BS and she said she knew that but she got some kind of entertainment value out of and it helped her think. She eventually just got bored with it.
Ironically, after her last reading, she said the Tarot lady had told her that her husband was a really smart guy with a lot of “wisdom and insight.” After I heard that, I was like “Hey, maybe there’s something to this stuff after all.”
My wife was like, “No, you were right. It’s all B.S.”
You’re off by 1.25%.
My Mom went to one, once I think, about 7 years ago.
She predicted that my sister would have twins.
I had twins instead (very unexpectedly) (sis still doesn’t have kids).
Kinda cool, huh!
If I was in the mood to play, I’d go find that psychic.
I strongly agree with that.
/hijack
I have a knack for reading people, based on body language. When I’m doing portraits I can tell which children are avid readers, which ones love sports, which ones are popular and which ones love horses. Those are the four main categories. 
I drew one kid last Christmas who’ll be reading Kerouac and Sartre at midnight in a few years, I’ll wager (he was cool).
But with adults, I absolutely cannot guess their occupation, I’ve only tried a few times and been completely off, so I don’t even ask.
OTOH, I can tell a LOT about married people based on their body language. That’s why I NEVER draw them simultaneously. ::shudder:: Some stuff you don’t WANT to know.
I’ve been to a couple, and had a couple of tarot readings. I don’t think at any moment that they are legitimate or accurate, but to me it’s fun. It does give me a chance to think–whether or not I agree with the assessment, at least I’m considering myself, my past, my future. Then I go home and forget all about it.
I bought a deck of Tarot cards once on a whim, and while I was flipping through it at the mall a girl came by and asked if I could give her a reading. I figured “What the hell?” and invited her to sit down. Went through the reading, placing cards and using the definitions in the instruction booklet combined with copious amounts of taurine fecal matter to suitably impress the girl that I knew what I was doing, and that Tarot cards were legit. What a maroon.
The one thing I did figure out from playing around with the cards is that they’re useful for giving you a different perspective on whatever issue you’re thinking about; most of the time you only think of an issue in a few specific ways, but by using the cards you’re effectively forcing yourself to examine aspects outside of those you might normally look at.
I’m not saying psychic’s don’t exist, but I would look at most readings as opportunities for a new perspective rather than as a legit practice.
I visitied a psychic once, she roped me while I was waiting for a bus. We walked a couple of blocks to her place of business, she went through her spiel and price list. Everything she offered was at least twice as much as I could afford.
Not much of a psychic, if you ask me…
I’m aware of how psychics work and how to expose them as frauds. However, this is somehing this I’ve never heard someone call bullshit on. The ones I’ve seen on TV (the only place I’ve seen them, actually) are always telling people what happened in the past and the people are agreeing with the ‘hits’. Hell, they already know that stuff, it happened to them. Why doesn’t anyone ever say, “Hey, I already know what happened ten years ago. Tell me what’s going to happen next week.”
I have not. At a local fair, I wanted to go to one for fun, but the woman I was with talked me out of it.
Actually, this is part of what makes me such a pain in the ass. I do call them on it. “Hey, you’re supposed to be ‘telling my future’ not my past. What is going to happen tomorrow?”
I went to a psychic once. Just saw the big palm sign and went in on a whim. She told me I had money issues and my mother was against me. (Gee, that wouldn’t apply to anyone else on the whole planet!) Then she “saw” two men in my life, one with light hair. But I should marry the man with dark hair. (Uh huh. Sure. So where were these men on Friday nights, hmmmm?) I was not impressed. As I was leaving, she said she could “cleanse my black tinged aura” for an extra $100 and some big candles. I said thanks but no thanks and went back to work and laughed about it with my office mate.
Years later, my office mate pointed out that I married my dark haired husband after dating a light haired man. Spooky! :dubious: I would have been more impressed if she told me that my mother-in-law would hate me and would probably live forever.
I’ve gone to two psychics for entertainment. Both were very good and guessed lots of things correctly. The first one was also a good person. I asked her a question and she realized that her answer could potentially have an impact on an important decision I was going to make, and she broke character and told me that I shouldn’t be looking to her for answers. I wasn’t, of course, but she thought I was and she realized that the consequences could be very bad so she dropped the act. She didn’t give me my money back, but at least she has some ethics.
My friend used to go to a psychic. The only reason she doesn’t anymore is because they totally ripped her off (I could go into it but it really has nothing to do with their profession, just the fact that they are complete scammers and live down to the reputation of the Romanian gypsies they claimed to be descended from, and that may have been the truth) but she really believed in her.
She let the woman charge her for charms and magic, believing it would bring her boyfriend back to her and get rid of bad energy etc. My friend is quite superstitious though, so even when she knew the woman was scamming her and using her, she wouldn’t just stop taking her calls (she was friends with the daughter, who also did readings and I got roped into some of the drama) believing if she did they would cast a curse on her.
I don’t know what brought the final break, more she distanced herself and eventually they stopped calling her. But that’s my only experience with a psychic. They never pulled anything on me, but I think they realized I was not quite so credulous or without my own defenses.
I have not gone to a psychic, but I have had some people convinced that I am psychic. I can do tarot readings (never for money), and am fairly good at them. I never make claims of supernatural abilities and actively deny that there is anything mystical about the reading. Nevertheless, people do believe because they want to believe.
Going to a psychic can be useful because it is getting an outside perspective on your life, or at least prompting you to think about your life in a different way. Unfortunately many, many psychics are con-artists, not in that they purport abilities which are seemingly and or actually impossible, but in that they will con marks out of their money given half a chance, money far beyond reasonable fees for their services.
I went to a few fortune-tellers back in Seoul. There was only one that ever impressed me. She said that I was destined to follow a scholarly path in a foreign land and that I would have a passionate love affair at the age of 24 but that I wouldn’t marry until my late 20s. Well, here I am, a humanities MA student in the US, and as it happens I did have a wild fling when I was 24. :dubious: It could be that she hazarded some lucky guesses, I suppose, but it’s still weird. We’ll see if the marriage thing pans out.
I did tarot card readings in high school for my credulous peers (not for pay). I agree that tarot cards help you consider other perspectives, but I don’t believe there’s anything mystical about them.
I’ve done it a couple of times, when I had some spare cash and on a lark. Just to get my cards read.
I usually just read the tarot for myself, as has been mentioned I find it helps to nudge your perspective a bit and maybe help you clarify your thoughts on something. I’ve also done readings for friends and never for cash. It was an interesting summer evening.
The next person to post hasn’t been to a psychic.