Psychics and the Pandemic

Excerpted from the New York Times, this article describes how psychics are moving to more online readings and the rising popularity of consulting psychics during this stressful time.

What, if Anything, Can Psychics Tell Us About All of This?

Demand for their services has illuminated another kind of health crisis.

A few weeks before the U.S. presidential election, Zulema Hormaeche, a tarot reader in Los Angeles, chose a card to reflect the state of the nation. It was the one that depicts a tall building struck by lightning, with flames bursting from the top and occupants leaping to their deaths. “The Tower,” she said, “is the end of a system as we know it, the end of an era as we know it.”

Ms. Hormaeche has an intimate understanding of the ways this year upended people’s lives and sapped their optimism. She has peered into a huge number of homes during virtual consultations. Her clients tell her they are eating and drinking more, and that they feel desperately lonely. And sometimes they mention even more troubling details. One client, she said, described a dream in which she harmed her children.“All of us are feeling the fear of everybody,” Ms. Hormaeche said, and that fear, coupled with uncertainty about when it might abate, has caused demand for spiritual guidance to soar. According to data from Yelp, interest in businesses in the somewhat niche “Supernatural Readings” category more than doubled in April. Keen, an online marketplace for psychics, has reported a steep rise in customers.

These consultations function almost as armchair counseling sessions: clients can open up and have their thoughts reflected back at them through a nonscientific — even mystical — lens. And while there is good reason to doubt the material of psychic readings (the mystical realm being inherently unknowable, or at least, endlessly interpretable), these consultations provide comfort for some.

 

A surprising number of people say they’ve consulted fortune tellers: 1 in 5 Americans, according to a YouGov survey published in 2017. People go to psychics for all kinds of fanciful services, like palm and aura readings, astrological consultations, cartomancy, mediumship and animal communication.

Even before the pandemic, the business, like so many others, was shifting online. In 2019, consumers spent nearly $40 million on the top 10 U.S. psychic and astrology apps, compared to $24 million the previous year, according to the app research firm Sensor Tower. And demand for services that support emotional well-being (such as counseling and wellness apps) has grown over a year of profound loss and collective anxiet

Thomas Rabeyron, a professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the University of Lorraine in France, recently published the results of a study on a group of 60,000 students during lockdown, where he found marked increases in depression, anxiety and post traumatic symptoms. He compared it to the aftermath of 9/11: the constant warnings of an invisible threat have wreaked havoc on mental health. Though he is a scientist first, Mr. Rabeyron also conducts research on the paranormal. “Psychics are barometers of social anxiety,” he said.

 

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“In the long run, it will be very beneficial,” Mr. Wamback said of virtual readings. “In the short term, it’s a little chaotic.”Credit...Cole Barash for The New York Times

Fraud and scams are undoubtedly a danger, particularly now. In September, the A.A.R.P.’s Helpline reported receiving at least one or two weekly calls from victims of psychic fraudsters compared to one complaint every couple of months in the past.

 

Even Mr. Wamback, who relies on videoconferencing technology to work, is critical of the platforms, which he refers to as “psychic sweatshops.” Ms. Bowman, on the other hand, is more skeptical of psychics who haunt the neon signs and small storefronts of New York City. (She’s not the only one; in New York, performing a psychic reading under pretenses other than entertainment is a class B misdemeanor, and those convicted of fraud can face multiple years in prison.)

“All you need is a handful of desperate people,” she said.

Bridging the Counseling Gap

In recent years technology has opened up new possibilities for counseling, in addition to traditional talk therapy. Apps that feature consultations with professionals and self-guided thought exercises have reached a wider population, and the evolving view that mental health is simply health has reduced some of the stigma around seeking help. The pandemic has only caused demand for such services to rise.

But instead of seeking out mental health professionals, some sufferers have looked to psychics. Mr. Alcock, the psychology professor, is worried they are using these sessions to make important life decisions. “People ask specific questions sometimes,” he said. “This gets really serious when people ask for medical advice.”

Indeed, equating therapists and psychics places a global mental health crisis in the hands of people with no training. And while many different kinds of counselors — religious, spiritual and mystical among them — may be able to help with temporary bouts of anxiety and depression, only health care professionals have the adequate qualifications to treat chronic conditions and more dangerous disorders like schizophrenia.

Dr. Bufka emphasized that people experiencing distress should reach out to professionals: “Whether it’s going to be a psychologist or other kind of mental health professional, social worker, counselor, primary care provider or a psychiatrist — somebody who has training in mental health concerns and understands what those are, and has expertise in how to best treat and address those problems.”

Mr. Rabeyron believes there are some benefits to nonpsychological consultations, like helping people carry out mourning rites in a new way, or simply listening. He said that clients may decide to consult a professional after talking to a reader.

 

“When it goes well, it can be an entry point into a process of self-examination,” Mr. Rabeyron said.

Therapy can appear daunting at the outset. The need for multiple sessions can also be a deterrent, along with the possibility of diagnosis or medicalization. “Some people are less frightened of psychics than doctors or psychologists,” Mr. Rabeyron said.

Still, there’s no match for a trained professional. Ms. Hormaeche, who also works as a nurse’s assistant, is used to dealing with vulnerable people, but she is receiving calls that are beyond her expertise. (The uptick could be due to the immense stress of the moment, but there have also been reports of a small number of Covid-19 patients experiencing psychotic symptoms, hearing voices and developing paranoia.)

She mentioned a new client who said he was hearing voices that were encouraging violence. She told him only a doctor could help him; she has not heard from the young man since.

“I hope to God he got some help, but that made the hair on my neck go up,” she said.

 

The Surrealist Artist Leonora Carrington Created Tarot Card Paintings

In a case of art meets new age, artist Leonora Carrington created a series of tarot card paintings.

As reported in Artnet news -

Tere Arcq didn’t expect anything like what she found during a 2017 visit to a collector while she was doing research for the 2018 show “Leonora Carrington: Magical Tales” at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

She knew that Carrington, the English-born painter who lived in Mexico and was part of the Surrealist group, was interested in all things occult. She knew she had done paintings based on imagery from tarot cards. But she did not know that Carrington had done a whole suite of small paintings based on the Major Arcana, the 22 trump cards in the standard 78-card pack.

 

“I was speechless,” Arcq said in a phone conversation. “It was an epiphany.”

She describes it as the greatest surprise of her research for the show, and one of the greatest achievements of the exhibition overall.

These paintings are now the subject of a new book, The Tarot of Leonora Carrington, published by Fulgur Press. A limited edition including the deck in facsimile with an essay on tarot by expert Rachel Pollack, an introduction by the artist’s son, Gabriel Weisz Carrington, and essays by Arcq and art historian Susan Aberth, priced up to $400, sold out within days. A limited edition of the deck alone also went quickly (but will be reissued and available from Fulgur Press direct in January or February). A trade edition of the book will be available in February, priced at $50.

Carrington took the Surrealist world by storm when, at just 19 years old, she fled the confinement of a wealthy English family for the freewheeling scene in Paris. André Breton took up her cause, and her work went on view in the Surrealist group’s exhibitions and publications. She left Europe for Mexico during the Second World War, where she befriended cultural figures including the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. Now firmly part of the art-historical canon, Carrington saw her work exhibited in museums worldwide before she died in 2011 at age 94. Interest has only grown since.

The Tarot of Leonora Carrington, published by Fulgur Press.

For Aberth, the discovery of the deck sheds new light on Carrington’s body of work.

 

“Once we saw the tarot, we immediately knew that this was very important to the iconography,” she said in a phone interview. “For many years, people thought her work was playful, a bit like fairy tales. But it’s a very serious study of esoteric principles—primary among them the tarot.” She describes a famous 1938 portrait of her then-lover, the artist Max Ernst, as being “exactly like” the Hermit from the tarot deck.

Many versions of the tarot deck exist, but, by Arcq’s lights, Carrington’s is unique. She primarily drew inspiration from the well-known Rider-Waite set, as well as the Marseilles tarot. But her use of gold and silver leaf, mostly when the imagery shows the sun or the moon, reaches back to conventions of older sets, and her inspirations were diverse: the figure of the High Priestess, Arcq says, looks to Egyptian renditions of the goddess Isis.

The new book scratches several itches, including an overdue interest in women artists who were overshadowed by their male peers, and a new enthusiasm for artists with a taste for the occult (such as Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton).

But while the occult may be hot right now, Aberth points out that for Carrington, it wasn’t just a means of fortune-telling, but rather a guiding principle on a much higher plane.

“For a certain portion of the population, one of tarot’s appeals is divination,” she says. “Like in all divination practices, there is the element of chance unfolding a higher truth. But Carrington was way beyond divination. She studied tarot very seriously as a means to journey upon a higher realization path. It has a psychological as well as a spiritual element. It’s a guide for greater self-knowledge.”

Lena Rodriguez - Tarot Down Under

Lena Rodriguez is a fascinating Australian tarot card reader who has been conducting readings - primarily political - on YouTube. Her forecasts, no matter what your political persuasion, are fascinating as you can see in this July 17 reading:

Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Will Tell Your Surreal Future

I want these cards!!

The deck was originally created for the 1970s James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour, but it never appeared in the picture.

If you think you already know everything there is to know about Salvador Dalí, this lesser-known factoid might change your mind: In the early 1970s, the surrealist artist ventured into the occult with a custom deck of tarot cards featuring himself and his wife, Gala, as mystical figures. The deck was originally created for the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour, but it never appeared in the picture.

In 1973, Albert R. Broccoli, a producer for the 18th James Bond spy thriller, approached Dalí with an offer to create the tarot deck for a scene in the film. The cards were needed as props for the character of Solitaire, played by Seymour, a psychic who works for a menacing drug lord. As Bond films typically go, the psychic changes sides to become the spy’s collaborator and love interest.

Dalí accepted the offer and started working on the cards, possibly encouraged by his mystically inclined wife Gala, but it was rumored that the contract fell through when the artist demanded an astronomical fee that was too high even for the film’s $7 million budget.

The deck’s 78 cards combine classic tarot themes with Dalí’s signature motifs: dissected faces, ants, roses, and butterflies. The deck features the artist himself as the Magician, while his wife poses as the Empress. Dalí’s Ten of Swords card — which can represent betrayal, backstabbing, or the death of a relationship — is a depiction of the assassination of Julius Caesar. The Queen of Cups is a play on François Clouet’s portrait Elisabeth of Austria, Queen of France (circa 1571), whom Dalí dresses with a goatee and mustache. The Moon is a woman’s face looking down on at a modern metropolis and Death is an ominous skull in a floating, cut-off cypress tree.

Queen of Cups (© Cartamundi, Turnhout Belgium © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019)

Death (© Cartamundi, Turnhout Belgium © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019)

As a poke at the producers of Live and Let Die, Dali gave the Emperor’s face to actor Sean Connery, who was the first to portray Ian Fleming’s literary spy character in a film. Connery and Moore were in public rivalry at the time, each criticizing the other’s performance of the secret service agent.

Taschen Books’s edition of the deck comes with an explanatory booklet authored by tarot expert Johannes Fiebig. It includes an introduction about Dalí and a guide explaining the meaning of each card and how to perform a reading.

Salvador Dalí as the Magician on the cover of Taschen Books’ edition of the artist’s tarot cards (courtesy of Taschen Books)

Musings on Tarot

For those seeking a way to make sense of the world, I recommend a tarot reading with a reputable reader. I have found that tarot cards are really good at telling you what you already know but may not be ready to hear. And when someone reads your cards, you can also see what is revealed and discover something that may not be said to you.Knowing what certain cards mean can give you added insight into what is what.

 

If you see the following cards, you will get your wish:

The Sun

The Nine of Cups

 

If you see the following cards you can make your own success - I call them Grit cards:

Two of Pentacles

Strength

 

If you see the following card you need to pull back and meditate. You know the answer - you just have to hear it:

The High Priestess