Even as a child, I harboured very skeptical thoughts about the credibility of fortune-tellers, on the simple logic that if they could really predict the future, the one who should most benefit from this gift should be themselves. Yet fortune-tellers, like ordinary mortals, fall sick from illness, suffer accidents, suffer financial losses, are betrayed by people they trust, including even family members, etc. all of which misfortunes they could presumably have foreseen and avoided, or at least prepared for, to minimize the harmful consequences.

My skepticism became real distrust after I observed the experience of a neighbour. (I must have been about eleven or twelve years old then) She was a young widow with four children, supporting them by doing the laundry of as many households as she could manage. Thin and worn out by stress, worried about her children’s future, she regularly went to consult a fortune-teller. He was a temple-medium who prepared himself for the task by going into a trance. Once he told her that bad luck would come to her and she would suffer from a terrible illness that would confine her to bed. Her first thought was for her poor children. The medium also told her that to avert the disaster, she would have to wear a special amulet, a small metal cylinder filled with the ashes of a piece of paper on which he would first write some holy words. The amulet cost thirty dollars.

The neighbour had come to my mother to tell her story. At the end of it, she took out a handkerchief from her blouse pocket, and untied a knot at one end, to reveal a small jade ring. She asked my mother if she would like to buy the ring for thirty dollars—it had cost much more when her late husband bought it for her many years ago .

Listening in on the conversation, I wanted to say, ‘Auntie, you’ve been cheated by that fortune-teller!’ without being able to explain the thought processes that had made me come to this conclusion. But of course, young people could never speak to their elders that way.

I am amazed that today, the fortune teller—or psychic, as he or she is often called, to avoid the primitivism of the old name—is still as much trusted as ever, even by those who are well educated, are highly sophisticated or belong to religions, including Christianity, that strongly denounce fortune-telling as part of the world of dark superstition. Once walking along a street in New York, I was astonished at the number of signboards advertising the skills of this or that psychic reader.

Among my friends, the stories of consultations with fortune-tellers or psychics have mainly to do with three permanently engrossing subjects—love, money, health. One of them, a devout Catholic, unfailingly seeks supernatural help whenever her relationship with a very temperamental businessman goes through a rough patch. Once she told me, ‘Psychic Mother told me that he will come back to me within a year. But he may not; it all depends on whether he is in the right mood.’ I almost wanted to say, ‘I could tell you that—for free.’ She had paid fifty dollars for the consultation.

Another who passed away from cancer some years ago, aged sixty, had confided, at a time when she was heartened by a brief reprieve from the disease, that a well-known psychic had told her she would live to eighty.

A friend told me about a relative who has been buying lottery tickets all his life and who one day heard about a fortune-teller in Hong Kong, a very old woman, famous for her accurate predictions . He journeyed to see her and asked outright when he would hit that jackpot in the Singapore Sweep. She lit some joss-sticks and waved them around him, all the while chanting in a voice that he said made his flesh creep. She said she saw a few puzzling things in his future, finally assuring him that he would win that first prize of more than two million dollars only when he cleared the next two zodiac cycles, and his Goat sign became much brighter than what it presently was. According to his calculation, that would be when he reaches age seventy two. ‘I can look forward to a very good retirement,’ he tells everybody cheerfully, ‘free of all money problems!’ Meanwhile, his gambling forays mean reduced household money for his wife.

Crystal ball gazing would be no more than a harmless parlour game if no elements of dishonesty or exploitation were involved, the best proof being if the consultations were for free. Even then, it could do much harm, whether predicting good or bad fortune. In the first case, it would instil fear and bring about the predicted misfortune by creating this psychological disaster called a self-fulfilling prophecy; in the second case, it would raise expectation and hope to an unrealistic degree, as in the case of the cancer patient who was told she would live to eighty, and also of the aspirant for the two-million dollar lottery win.

‘What’s the harm?’ asked a friend who never fails to visit a world-famous psychic based in London each time she travels to the UK. I asked her how many times the psychic’s predictions had come true for her. ‘Well, lots of times!’ she exclaimed enthusiastically. It turned out that the lots of times numbered exactly four, out of about a total of twenty visits over as many years. Four out of twenty aren’t exactly good. ‘But what’s the harm?’ she persisted. None really, except that she is helping to feed an industry that thrives on gullibility and false hope.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...