My Psychic Advisor

(This article originally appeared in the November, 2005 issue of Deek)

The Romani (Rom) are an ethnic group numbering roughly one million in the United States. Known pejoratively as Gypsies, they are found all over the world. For the most part, the Rom remain separate from the world of the gadje (non-Romanies) with their own language, customs, social and political structure. Their disputes might be settled by the kris romani (Gypsy court); if they get in trouble, bail might be posted by the rom baro (Gypsy king); and their Saturday night might be spent listening to records by Django Reinhart (Gypsy guitarist ).

The Romani aren’t from Romania, although plenty have settled there and many of them continued on to the United States. Nor are they from Egypt (the origin of the word “gypsy”), though they have settled there in the past as well. According to the most recent evidence, the Romani are believed to have left Northern India in the 11th century in retreat from the advance of Islam. And most Rom are not con artists and criminals, just like most Italians aren’t Tony Soprano. But this doesn’t mean you won’t find a hurtful Rom stereotype out there in the flesh, if you go looking for it. And I found one, Tuesday night at The Psychic Shop.

The Psychic Shop is a renovated storefront on East Carson Street. When Tina answered the phone that evening, it sounded like she had dozed off while watching Love Story. A few minutes later, when she opened the door for me, she was quite chipper, and downright charming with her fuzzy slippers and light (think “Natasha” from Rocky and Bullwinkle) eastern European accent.

She waved me into the darkened room, hermetically sealed from the street, where my mind was immediately put at ease by the new age music, incense and laid-back vibe of the place. It was not unlike being at a new age book store devoid of books. There was relatively little clutter, a table full of candles, and what appeared to be a large King James Bible, open to the centerfold. If human nature doesn’t change, if history is the same experiences cycling endlessly through different environments, than this is the Ikea Age equivalent of the old fortune teller’s tent: a whole other world constructed out of synthetic textiles, thermo-seal windows, machine-spun tapestries and a Bose Wave Radio.

She asked me to sit at a desk, flanked by two (presumably facsimile) mummies, while we began the reading under the watchful gaze of a large Sphinx tapestry in the back of the room.

A psychic reading is a dance, an interaction: the confidence swindle is never anything that is done to you, it is something that you and the swindler do together. The reading is a process, not unlike falling in love or being sold a used car.

The basis of the reading is a technique known as the “cold reading.” Equal parts empathy, neurolinguistic programming and bullshit, the Reader talks the Client in circles, picking their brain for information, then feeding it back as mystical revelation.

Tina started with Tarot cards. She instructed me to hold my question in my mind as I shuffled and cut the deck. She then placed the cards on the table in what is known, in Tarot lingo, as a Ten Card Spread: ten cards that succinctly sum up my predicament and the factors (physical, spiritual, vegetable) that have lead up to it. Once we have seen the problem for what it is, I can look to the future — with my psychic advisor — and learn how to get myself out of this mess!

As the reading progressed, Tina made a few stabs at sussing out my private life — she asked me about people I didn’t work for, and about relationships that didn’t exist. On one occasion, she asked me about a fair-haired, fair-eyed authority figure, maybe an employer, a male, who likes the outdoors. I assured her that I didn’t know anyone fitting that description. She pressed on: was it a friend, a family member?

“That kind of sounds like my old boss,” I offered.

“Were you two close?” she asked.

“Yeah, we’re friends.” “Oh, that must be it.”

You see, in order for the reading (or the fraud) to work, you have to be a willing accomplice. In fact, the interaction between the Reader and the Client is similar to psychotherapy, except that the tools of the reading are not used to help the client gain insight into their predicament; they are used by the reader to establish bona fides in the mind of the Client, “proof” that the psychic will then use to sell the client on continued — and costly — advice.

And the advice that she offered, in general, was pretty much of the Hallmark Card variety, full of “you can do it” and “hang in there,” but a little more wordy (confusing). For instance, she offered this nugget of wisdom regarding my current life situation: “There’s been stumbling blocks in your path of life and you’re not going as fast as you want because there’s been stumbling blocks and you’re trying to reach out for something… this is a relationship, you either made a commitment and you’re sorry you made it or you were gonna make it and something happened that it did not turn out as well as you expected it and it has left you in a bad place because that hurts.”

Her Hallmark-isms, however, always contained a darker, more paranoid aspect: “You weren’t mentally the way you should be because you have been having too many negative energies and you’ve been feeding off negative people…”

Here she began to describe the person who is draining me of my “energy.” This person, she says, she cannot see exactly he or she is, yet; but this person is out there, and they’re hurting me. Causing untold pain, suffering and anguish in my life. She doesn’t describe the person as malevolent as much as confused… and it could be anybody! A “friend” or loved on who is conflicted and maybe doesn’t even realize how they’re affecting me. That this evil may be unaware what it is doing is what makes the whole thing so insidious.

“I would like to do a larger reading with you. Really look at your past, past lives, see what this problem, where your energy is being drained. We go into your inner past life to find out if you got a bad karma, if the aura is broken… I can give you candles, bath salts, meditations to repair your aura. The basic kit, I will make it for you to your specific needs, I charge $250.00.”

At this point, I break off the encounter. Had I continued I could look forward to more spells, more revelations, more chakras and karmas and much more money spent.

The Psychic Reader and Advisor is selling something very attractive: certainty in an uncertain world. But the “Psychic” is to spirituality what the Stripper is to Marriage; they offer an illusion, nothing more. It is like hiring someone to blacktop the driveway but coming home to find the gravel painted navy blue. And I must admit, the reading left me somewhat depressed. My evening with Tina really brought into focus how there are no easy answers in life, a thought which can be quite sobering when you live in a time obsessed with the easy answer.