The Myth of Fortune Telling

ball, dressed like a Romani (“gypsy” is actually a highly offensive term), who grabs your hand to get a better look at your palm. In some cases, there are still people out there who dress the part, especially at medieval type-faires, but that image is extremely outdated and probably offensive.

There are so many ideas that surround “fortune telling” that, at best, only show half the truth. I have yet to meet someone who can accurately read a crystal ball, although that is a real type of divination. Palmistry, reading tarot cards (or other cards), and tea leaf reading are the other common forms of divination pictured under the “Fortune Telling” headline and those are still in use today (I myself read the latter two and did once read palms for a town fair fundraiser). But there are other kinds of divination as well. While there isn’t time to go into all of them, pendulum work is pretty easy to get into (just don’t get it confused with the fake scrying done by the Halliwell sisters on “Charmed”): a crystal on a string held above your hand when you ask yes or no questions is all it takes. Well, that’s super simplified, but it doesn’t take much skill for a person to initially start working this type of divination. 

The event that started the Salem Witch Trials was also a form of divination, although whether it would actually work I don’t know, but imagine using divination as a fun game and getting in trouble because of religion. Our western religions (Judeo-Christian mostly) are seemingly against this sort of thing as well. After all, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch” is a pretty well known line from that best-selling Bible isn’t it? While I can’t speak to everyone about religion without getting in trouble, I will say that the misconceptions around fortune telling are what lends it to being an enemy of the church, so to speak. It’s the idea that someone other than G-d or his chosen speaker - priest, rabbi, who have you - that makes it dangerous. I mean, poor Anne Hutchinson was basically accused of being a witch in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding bible study sessions for women in her home - that she led! Clearly, anything that lets the scripture out of the control of men (and the right men at that) is considered dangerous, so imagine a woman (and the stereotype is always a woman, right?) who can “tell the future”.

And that’s the other thing, even removed from religion, the stigma of danger is still there. Having too much information can be dangerous and you might even change the outcome if you know what’s going to happen. Additionally, because people just don’t understand the art of fortune telling (and it is an art), it’s mysterious and therefore dangerous. In more modern times, while this stigma remains, the danger has been replaced, more or less, by fun. It’s still mysterious, but let’s have fun with it - and that’s how I got drawn in! There’s no reason to not have fun with fortune telling, but you also don’t want to think of it as just a game either.

So what’s the truth? To me, the easiest way to explain what fortune telling really is, and by extension, what I actually do is this: fortune telling, or divination, is using the present moment to predict the path that a person is on and what one possible outcome of that path could be. In other words, we’re not actually telling you what will happen in the future. Sure, sometimes we do, but if you go to 2 different fortune tellers an hour apart you will get 2 vastly different readings. Why? Well, in my mind this is in part because you are in a different head space for each reading. Similarly, each of the fortune tellers come from a different place with different life experiences and are bringing what they know into the readings they do. Or, you know, at least one of them could be a scam artist. Yes, sadly, those are still out there too. I wish I could tell you how to avoid them, but you just have to use your gut instinct.

When I do a reading for someone I try to put their energy into the cards. I can’t explain how I do this, but part of the reading, whether consciously or not, is based on body language, facial expressions, and things like that as well. You have to be able to read people in order to read cards, tea leaves, etc. From there, I let the symbols of the cards or leaves guide me. Some readers hear messages from spirit guides, I don’t and can’t speak to that personally, but I do try to let instinct and intuition take over. Each symbol can have multiple meanings. For example, the color red can be cheerful, but also anger. So, I have to figure out which way the symbol should be interpreted for the sitter, at that time, in that situation and if my intuition shouts at me - I pay attention and use that interpretation.

Anyone can learn how to “tell fortunes,” read divination. In some ways, all the mystery that has been put upon this art is ridiculous - except for one thing. When reading tarot cards, for example, how do the cards appear when they do and in the order they do to give a helpful reading? That is still a mystery and proves that there is still some (harmless) magic out there in the world!