...to think that clairvoyants/tarot readers etc are just a load of crap?!

[candyandyoga]

So, friend is having a tarot/clairvoyant night and asks if I want to come. When I was younger I used to really believe it all this but now, I am very cynical and think there are very very few genuine 'fortune tellers' out there - if any...

Aibu to think that this is all just a load of old shit or are there really people out there who can tell us our future?!

[thebody]

I think we are all absolutely entitled to believe in any religion, creed or otherwise as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

We are all absolutely entitled to deal with grief and bereavement in any way that we can and any way that helps those left to survive.

Every way is not necessarily the same and none are wrong.

[Sallystyle]

I went to see a medium at a Spiritualist Church once with my mother, it was all completely free.

My Granddad apparently came through and the medium told us that I recently put a picture up of a little blonde boy in the shed (it was my son, he wasn't with me, the person has never met me) she also told me a lot of things that is impossible to have known unless you were in my house at the time but I won't go into all the things she said here. I am not silly, I know exactly how to stick to yes and no answers only and how not to let myself lead them, the things she said were all said before I even opened my mouth.

I am an agnostic and a cynical bitch but it impressed me and they didn't get a penny from me. I often wonder if basically they can tap into energy or something as I don't believe that loved ones are hanging around waiting to talk to people, but I do believe that we all have energy and some can tap into that, if that makes any sense.

There are a lot of cons out there who very clearly fish and you give them all the answers without even realising and there are those who pray on people but the lady I saw was none of those things.

Still don't believe it was a spirit though. Maybe she was just an amazing mind reader

[ItsOkayItsJustMyBreath]

I disagree thebody, please watch the Derren Brown programme I linked to, there is so much harm caused by these charlatans.

[KitchenandJumble]

Of course YANBU. I'm surprised anyone believes any of this stuff, but clearly people do. I think that preying on vulnerable people who have lost loved ones is terribly immoral. I'd love to see a medium who claims to have a gift actually participate in a scientific study.

[FarBetterNow]

ItsOkay: I was brought up RC.
Then rejected all religion.
Then joined a meditation class, which costs £8.00 for 2.5 hours and often there are only three of us, so I don't think the class leader is making a mint out of that.
I've always loved old churches and other spiritual sites, stone circles etc.

I cannot prove what I believe and don't really want to prove it.
But we are all free to believe what we want and I do not deride or hate others with different beliefs.

[thebody]

There is harm done by many people in many walks of life.

There are bad doctors,teachers, priests that doesn't mean that all doctors, teachers and priests are bad does it?

Of course a programme focusing on the bad things some psychics do will feature only bad ones.

They don't make programmes about the good psychics can do as its not particularly good TV is it?

You can't tar all with one brush. So unfair.

[FarBetterNow]

It is an entire industry based on insulting the dead and exploiting people's grief.

Some of them, maybe. But that is an incredibly sweeping statement and quite offensive.
Simililar to saying:
all vicars and priests are paedophiles.

[notbotheredreally]

seeker i did have a recording at the time but it was about 10 years ago so no longer have the tape :(

[Bumpotato]

I used to love readings as a gullible teenager.

Since growing old up I don't believe.

However, I went with a relative to see a lady when I was 18. This woman took bookings once a year and it was almost impossible to get an appointment with her if you didn't call her on the day/week once a year that she took bookings. She charged but it was £10 or something and she said that all the money went to the local cat and dog home. She had cats and dogs and was obviously an animal lover so no reason not to believe she was donating the money.

We went to her house. The readings were in this lady's kitchen.

The first thing she did was spread some pebbles in a circle on the table (or ask me to do it, I can't remember). She then spelled out my brother's name, as if she could see letters on the pebbles and told me he was in the Navy. This was corrrect. My brother has a relatively unusual name with a few different spellings and she got his spelling right.

She said a few other things about me that although now I cannot remember what they were I did think at the time she was good.

Then she told me that in the next week a friend who was learning to drive would ask me to sit with them while they drove. The woman was quite clear with me that the person would not ask for a driving lesson but for me to sit with them. She said the person would take a wrong turning, would be driving too fast and there would be an accident and that it was important that I didn't go when asked. I was a bit spooked but didn't think much more of it and couldn't at the time think of anyone who would actually ask me to sit with them as they drove as I think that in order to do this you have to have been driving for more than a few months yourself (?).

Less than a week later my neighbour across the road who was my learning to drive chum knocked on my door and asked me very clearly to sit with her while she drove (not for a driving lesson). I made excuses and didn't go. My pal was pissed off at me, I could tell. I didn't tell her why I wasn't going as (1) I didn't 100% believe that a little old lady could predict the future and (2) I thought my mate would think I was a bam.

Anyway the next day my pal's mum came to the door to say she'd been in an accident and although she hadn't been seriously injured she was being kept in overnight for observation.

What had happened was my mate had got her boyfriend to sit with her while she drove, instead of me. She went on to a roundabout and he was asking her to turn right or left but she went straight on. The road took them out of town but was a narrow B road. She was driving too fast (as she did) and clipped the side and the car ended up on its roof in a field. Both of them got out with just cuts and bruises. My pal had a few stitches to the top of her head.

I told my pal when I saw her about what the lady had said to me. She said it gave her the shivers...especially because when the policeman spoke to her he said he couldn't understand why they'd got away with just minor injuries as the roof of the car was so crushed it was level with the steering wheel.

This woman didn't claim to be talking to dead relatives or anything she just concentrated on the pebbles.

I think the Derek Acorahs of this world are con artists. I think that as an 18 year old, yes it would be obvious that I might be a new driver but the woman gave me details that weren't easily guessable is that a word?

[Flobbadobs]

Actually Tarot can be very useful, it just depends on how you use it.
I read cards for myself, never anyone else but I don't use them to tell me what to do, more to open myself up to thinking about a problem in a different way.
For example:
I am considering HEing my eldest at the moment. So I may use a spread to help me work through the issue. The first card I draw is Death. This means the end of one period of your life and the beginning of a more fruitful era. If I took the card at face value I could say that changing his education is what I need to do but thats not how I use the cards. Drawing this card helps me to focus: what would I need to change in order to successfully HE? I can then work through any issue I can think of, turn my next card over and more often than not the meaning of the card will throw me another issue I might not have thought of.
Thats a fairly simplistic example but it's how I and many of my friends who read cards use them.

Psychics on the other hand are generally bollocks from my experience, cold reading and guesswork for the most part..

[Bumpotato]

Flobba...so they're a tool to help you think things through rather than cards with special powers?

[Flobbadobs]

Thats right, a form of meditation in a way, the cards don't hold any powers at all, they're just pieces of card with pictures on!
The 'power' if you like is my own capacity to read the meaning of the card and process it.

[CalamityKate]

These people are either:

Mentally ill (small percentage)
Deluded (usually the sweet old lady who doesn't charge)
Or (mostly) perfectly aware that psychic powers dont exist and making a very good living from exploiting grieving people.

They make me sick.

[MalcolmTuckersMum]

Of course it's true that there are con artists out there - they've seen a business opportunity in the vulnerable/grief striken/gullible. That is how any con artist operates - they'd have no market if everyone was totally switched on and on top of things.
Post by thebody at 16:52:37 is spot on.

[ecclesvet]

People are of course entitled to their own opinion. But the 'abilities' of mediums, fortune-tellers, etc are not a matter of opinion, but of fact. People are not entitled to their own facts.

[FarBetterNow]

Calamity: That is an offensive sweeping statement.

[seeker]

"seeker i did have a recording at the time but it was about 10 years ago so no longer have the tape "

Why am I not surprised!

[notbotheredreally]

seeker what are you surprised at ?

[notbotheredreally]

*not

[seeker]

Far better now- no it isn't.

[FarBetterNow]

Notbothered: Seeker thinks you are a liar.

[Flobbadobs]

Oh and by the way MarianaTrench I am a Witch and don't need help with any mental health problems thank you.
People committing fraud are criminals not mentally ill. Taking money off people under false pretences is fraud I believe, whether they use supposed psychic abilities or sell them a dodgy car.
A good tarot reader or Scryer will not charge for a reading, I don't know one who does. In fact many of us only read for ourselves or friends/family as a favour (or in my case in return for a glass of wine ).
Tarring us all in the same way and putting me in the same class as Derek Acorah et al is making me want to break out the toading stick...

[notbotheredreally]

is that why you asked if i had a tape so i could let you listen ? why would i it wouldnt make sense to you it was personal to me , why would i lie about a medium telling me things that i believe , as long as it made sense to me i dont see a problem. it shouldnt bother anyone what anyone else believes , i dont believe in god, fortune tellers or aliens but some people do , thats up to them :)

[seeker]

Seeker doesn't. Seeker thinks you are a person who wants to believe and so , quite naturally, has a selective memory of so merging that happened 10 years ago and for which you now have no evidence.

If you could go bacteria to the tape now I guarantee that it would be full of generalisations, vague statements and lots of that plain were 't true. You' be forgotten them. That's how it works.

[seeker]

Sorry about the typos!