I hate
fortune tellers. This feeling isn't mild, amused scepticism, but fierce
antipathy, and comes from Indian upbringing. Back in India, fortune-tellers are
not innocent fair-ground amusements. They are serious and powerful people, jyotishtis, seers who can divine the fates
on account of their spiritual attainment. Conveniently, these seers can also
intervene with the fates on a client's behalf, to prevent dark and dire events that
have been foretold from coming to pass.
The conversation between the seer and the client develops along the lines "I see the possibility of a glorious future...but...I also see terrible dangers...the divinity x needs to be appeased with sop y ...to protect your loved ones from these dangers...". Sop y generally contributes to the jyotishti's well-being. The client gradually learns to be dependent on the seer and loses autonomy, as he wins her over with honest trifles and betrays her in matters of the deepest consequence. Divination becomes an extortion racket, reinforced by the Stockholm syndrome.
The conversation between the seer and the client develops along the lines "I see the possibility of a glorious future...but...I also see terrible dangers...the divinity x needs to be appeased with sop y ...to protect your loved ones from these dangers...". Sop y generally contributes to the jyotishti's well-being. The client gradually learns to be dependent on the seer and loses autonomy, as he wins her over with honest trifles and betrays her in matters of the deepest consequence. Divination becomes an extortion racket, reinforced by the Stockholm syndrome.
I find the
extortion practiced by jyotishtis more distressing than the simple violent extortion practiced by gangland bosses
or cops on the beat. These "god men"
are preying on the sacred, on faith, on hope - on human faculties that could be so life-enhancing if they were not abused. So, in my moral hierarchy, fortune-tellers,
psychics, seers, astrologers, soothsayers and their ilk fall below common or
garden charlatans like Bernie Madoff or Adam Stanford. They sit closer to JRR Tolkien's
Grima Wormtongue, whose murmurs and whispers rob Lord Theoden of Rohan of his
vitality, or JK Rowling's dementors, killers who do their business not through
violence but by robbing their victims of the will to live.
This attitude is why I was
surprised to find myself warming to a psychic I came across while flipping through a back issue of the New Yorker.
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| Peri Lyons |
This is Peri Lyons, "the most
expensive psychic in New York". She plays by certain rules. Rule #1 is "readings by Peri Lyons are for entertainment purposes
only". Also, she only does "good stuff... I very rarely
get "bad" stuff. Either I'm way too positive for that,
or my spirit guides are really chicken." Those rules take the whole extortion
racket out of the equation, thank God. But what I liked, rather than just
didn't hate, was her psychic method.
Peri Lyons does not read the stars, or the entrails of
animals, or ancient palm leaves or any such thing. She practices "radical
empathy". If I've understood what that means, she does with her clients what a method actor
does with a character. She gets into the skin of her subject, experiences what
they experience, uses that insight to tell her subjects about themselves, and
about any self-fulfilling beliefs that she senses. This is not in any way a
mysterious or other-worldly faculty. I routinely do this as a sports fan, tuning
into the players' psyche, trying to sense their commitment, intensity and confidence.
A good psychic just does this tuning-in very well.
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| Courtney Love |
One of Peri Lyons' good friends and client is Courtney Love,
who, apparently, "doesn't do soothsayers". I have a hunch that for Courtney Love, the psychic service that matters is just plain empathy,
rather than any sort of forecasting.
Peri Lyons also
runs a popular class called "How To Be a Psychic Without Even Trying". Maybe Paul the Octopus was one
of her graduates.
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| Paul, the psychic octopus |
