To ask what you think of crystals, stones and tarot readings?

[TheFirstRuleOfFightClub]

Had my cards read today, very interesting and strangely relevant.

I could convince you I have a gift. I've demonstrated it in public "cold". Friends picked a random woman at the bar and approached her and asked if she wanted a reading. I told her about her pets, car, dreams, relationship status, current worries and some info about her parents. She was "shocked" and "amazed". Am I psychic? Am I fuck. I have eyes and ears and years of people watching plus a knowledge of psychology and am a good manipulator of situations. I also have a very good memory. I saw who dropped that woman off, his body language, the coat she checked in to the cloakroom and the label on it so knew where she bought it. She's probably out there telling people psychics are real.

I also have friends who have had readings (went with one of them) and it's v clever and loosely fits. They quickly forgot the bits they got wrong and came out quite ready to be convinced. I've heard them retelling the stories over time and they quickly went from "some of it was uncanny" to "it was amazing, no way she could have known, 100% accurate". We tell ourselves stories and then believe them.

Utter and complete bullshit. If you paid for it, then you saw a con artist.

ShowofHands, you see, the thing about it is, that I don't do any of that fake shit. I just sort of happen to have an energy. I'm not saying that I have a power, but what I do, and what you did are entirely different. As I said, I wouldn't trust someone else reading for me, but I do trust myself. You can read people on a physical plane if you will. But there is something else involved with me. WWooooooooooowhoooooooooo.

I accept that you think that's what you are doing.

Probably lots of people aren't just charlatans, they think they are reading secret mystical signs and feeling special gives them a natural high which they call energy.

Absolute bullshit, all of it. Same as “psychics” , “fortune tellers”, “horoscopes” and the paranormal in general. Total crap peddled by ghoulish charlatans looking to cash in on often desperate and vulnerable people.

Not many believers then?

Someone at work did it, the £2.50 she was charging was going to charity, she does something like this every pay day. Real or not, I made my mind up about something huge that I've been pondering on the drive home, so at least it gave me a kick up the arse that was long over due.

Someone mentioned Reiki, this was the only thing during my pregnancy that ever relieved the pain in my hips!

Woo bollocks offered to the naive and desperate by charlatans and snake oil purveyors.

What is interesting to me is that woman appear to be more inclined to believe this utter horseshit. My best guess that in patriarchal societies women have less agency than men are more willing to believe in a guiding force behind their lives.

Well you can mock all you like, I'm not desperate , fickle, naive or looking to be conned. I am level headed, educated and come from a church background. No mind altering substances.
Yes there are charletons and cold readers, and unfortunately TV "Entertainment" shows are very overdone (I;m looking at all you Stage Presenters)

My palm reading took a good few years to show itself.

People ridicule what they don't want to understand.

I've had my cards read.
Often it was rubbish.
Once I saw a woman and she told me I was going to a place I hadn't been before. I told her no, I'm not going there. She insisted that I was and told me she could see me stood at the railway station instant town.
Anyway later that week at work my boss informed me that I needed to go away to work to x place.
In order to get to x I had to travel by train from the destination the card reading had said!

I think that’s likely to be true, Kingston, plus women are (depressingly) still socialised to think that the most meaningful parts of their lives involve being chosen by a man. I can’t imagine many psychic helplines consulting the crystal ball as part of a school-leaver’s decision between medicine and law.

and come from a church background.

Ah why didn't you say you were from a church background. The Christian churches are renown for their rationalism, scientific rigor and empiricism aren't they?

They're just another bunch of woo-pedlars, so believing in one bunch of made up supernatural nonsense probably makes you susceptible to believing other charlatans.

People ridicule what they don't want to understand

I understand fully well how it works, xold reading, basic psychology, barnum statements and confirmation bias, plus these tricksters have victims who desperately want to believe they can tell tbeir future, ease their suffering or contact their Great Aunty Dorris, makes it all too easy.

I had my cards read last year, and even I was surprised at how accurate they were. I thought it was just going to be about of fun but it did give me a “wow” moment.

It's not that I don't want to understand. I have read a lot about this subject actually, particularly the psychology around it (to a postgraduate level) and I'm afraid my conclusions come from understanding, not deliberate ignorance.

If any of this were true, presumably these psychics would have found a way to predict events and game the odds at a betting shop and thus be filthy rich, instead of trying to con gullible people out of a few bob.

fun, have you seen the Derren Brown programme where he did individual readings for lots of people, and they all said theirs was uncannily accurate, and he revealed he’d given identical readings to everyone? Classic Barnum effect.

Harmless bollocks unless people are being charged. Then it's dishonest and wrong.

Dog shit of the rankest sort.

What is so depressing about tarot, crystals, palm reading etc is that unlike organised religion this woo dross adds nothing to learning or cultural expression.

You don’t have to believe to find religious art, sculpture, architecture, music, theological scholarship and so on, beautiful, moving or intellectually absorbing.

Woo just preys on people and provides nothing good at all.

My palm reading took a good few years to show itself

If your palm reader is genuine there are cash prizes waiting to be claimed.

They're just another bunch of woo-pedlars, so believing in one bunch of made up supernatural nonsense probably makes you susceptible to believing other charlatans

Your opinion and you're entitled to it .
But I would say I'm less likely to be swept away by the whole culture . We were told that even horoscopes were not allowed to be followed.

I have seen Derek Acorah and Derren Brown live . They are both extremely interesting in different ways.
What I chose to believe in and spend my money on is up to me

I just don't expect to be insulted about it. I'm hardly stamping on puppies .

If your palm reader is genuine there are cash prizes waiting to be claimed

It was in my early 20s and took between my late 20s til mid 30s to unfold. I;m now in my 50s

They are (the Palmist) probably still not even alive now so I have no way to prove it (was it Derren Brown who offered the £££ for proof? )

They're absolute bullshit. If you like them and get something from them, good for you.

But they're really do nothing, and you're consciously or unconsciously kidding yourself that they do.

People enjoying them are fine, people peddling them; not so much