Travelling Show

For most of the 1990s I earned my living with a deck of Tarot cards. I was good at it and even though I haven't done a reading for six or seven years there are still occasional phone calls from people wanting advice, or from somebody organising a psychic fair who wants me to attend.

I worked extensively with two New Age entrepreneurs—a woman who organised shows at Sydney's regional shopping centres, and a man who conducted psychic fairs all over eastern Australia. With him I travelled to four states as well as New Zealand. I declined his invitation to Santa Barbara and Las Vegas.

We always had lots of advance publicity and that guaranteed financial success, but we were unprepared for the crowd who greeted us at one major shopping complex in Sydney's south. As we set up our tables we were surrounded by protesters from the local Uniting Church who thought we were in league with the devil. They neither spoke to us nor harassed us in any way except to stand silently and look at us with accusing eyes. It had the comical effect of attracting shoppers who may well have passed us by. They came to see what everyone was looking at and made it the most successful week we ever had.

My friend Jay once said she had been visited by a Greek woman who handed her a wallet full of money.
"What's this for?" she asked.
"I want you to put a curse on my husband's girlfriend," said the woman.
Jay was horrified. "I've never done such a thing," she said.
"But you do! You advertise it! Look!" and the woman pulled a news clipping from her purse and showed it to her.
That was when the laughter started. "This says I teach courses, not curses," she said.

I had a parallel experience myself once when a young woman who came for a reading said she had bought some magic charms to make her ex-husband die slowly and in agony. I threw her out.

I was once approached at Sydney's Centrepoint by a man who wanted to know who was the best psychic on the floor. There were plenty of people to choose from but without hesitation I pointed out a woman who had decades of experience and many confirmed results. Did he listen to my advice? Not a chance. He headed straight for the youngest, prettiest least experienced girl there.

I don't often see ghosts or spirits, but it has happened a few times. Once when I was reading Tarot for a woman a spirit was visible above her.
It appeared to be a woman in her thirties, slim, elegant and with waist-length mid-blonde hair. She was dressed in nineteenth century style. "I don't know whether she's there for you or me," I said, "but she's right over your shoulder."
When the show had finished for the day one of the psychics said, "There's a spirit near you." She described the same woman I had seen. It was her way of introducing herself.
Later I learned her name was Irene (emphasis on the "rene", if you please) and I've had occasional contact since then.

Once at the end of a reading I asked, "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
My client said, "My father died a few weeks ago and I want to be sure he's all right."
I was taken aback to have missed such a major happening and started to explain that I don't normally see spirits. Then, suddenly, I saw something.
"This is weird," I said. "I can see somebody but he has no nose."
"That's Dad!" Excited. "He had a cancer that ate away his nose."
I looked again and said, "Now he's got one."
"Yes," she said. "We buried him with his prosthetic in place."
Then she asked if he was with her mother. Once again I was about to beg off but instead said, "Who's Elizabeth?"
"That's Mum," she said, even more excited now.
So I was able to reassure her.
I can't explain it. It isn't one of my normal abilities.

Sometimes psychic messages can be obscure, or couched in language that needs interpretation.
I once misjudged a particularly scruffy-looking woman who asked about renting a shop. I assumed her language skills to be roughly in the same ball park as her dress sense and said, "The message that came through was caveat emptor. That means..."
"I know what it means," said the woman. "I'm a barrister."
Ah, well!
(Caveat emptor is legalese for "let the buyer beware". It's not an expression I would normally use and I mention it only to point out that the language that comes through in readings is often more appropriate to the client than the reader.)

On another occasion I told a woman she was going to get a new job then asked her what she did for a living. "I'm a doctor," she said.
"Oops!" I said. "I blew that, didn't I."
As it turned out my prediction was spot on.
She was an attractive woman and was working as a GP at one of the State's biggest male prisons. She said most of the prisoners who came to see her claimed to have sexual problems that required examination. She hated it and had already applied for another position.

Criminals like to have psychic readings too.
At Newcastle one weekend I looked at the cards and asked, "Are you doing something illegal?"
The man became comic-book furtive as he looked about to see if anybody was listening then leaned forward and whispered, "Yeah."
I put my finger on one of the cards and said, "That's a copper, and the date is September. I'd stop whatever it is you're doing before then."
He probably didn't but he can't say he wasn't warned.

I tried to inject a bit of humour into my readings so people wouldn't take them too seriously. I worry about people like President Reagan who allow fortune tellers to dictate their lives.
So once, at a Canberra fair, I accompanied a woman back to my table and when she sat down said, "Can I touch your third eye?"
"Er, yes, I suppose so," she said.
I touched her lightly somewhere about mid-forehead and said (mysteriously, I hope), "Your name is Christine, isn't it?"
She was certainly impressed. "How on earth did you do that?" she asked.
"I saw your driver's licence as you paid for your reading," I said.
We both had a laugh about it.
I could have used the knowledge to advantage, I suppose, but there was never any need to cheat.

You can't please everybody. Let's face it—you shouldn't please everybody.
Usually if people were honestly dissatisfied with their reading I refused payment but some folk just enjoy complaining.
I finished a reading one day and my client said, "You didn't even get close."
So I put the cards away, held her hands for a few seconds and looked at her aura (it's not difficult to do – see Mystic Parties). All I saw was the glyph for Scorpio so I let my thoughts flow into words.
I said, "You were involved with a man. He was born in late October or early November and something passed between you that nobody else knew about. Now you need to have that confirmed but he won't do it..."
She interrupted to say, "It was nothing like that." So I asked her to explain.
Yes, there had been a man whose birthday was October 28. He came from a wealthy family and she had carried his baby. Then he died and she wanted his family to give her money. I had certainly missed his death but the rest wasn't far off. It was obvious she wouldn't have been happy with anything short of an assurance that the family would welcome her to their bosom and shower money on her.
Finland's Helvetinjärvi translates into English as Hell's Lake. I think the lady had more chance of getting that money if she took a wintertime trip to Finland and waited for Helvetinjärvi to freeze over.

I was never shy about asking a client for information. Whether or not they gave it was up to them but sometimes it was necessary to clarify a line of thought.
At Ballarat in western Victoria I asked a woman if she was planning to sell a house.
She immediately became agitated and started to make sounds that were not quite words. I held up both hands and told her there was no need to answer, then launched into what I thought I saw.
"I think you're planning to sell your house in the near future and that somebody is pressing you to sell quickly. Don't do it. If you take your time you'll get the price you want."
The reaction was certainly one of the funniest (and nicest) I've had. Still unable to speak clearly she leapt out of her chair, hugged me, and kissed my cheek. Then, embarrassed, she sat down again and looked for somewhere to hide.
When she told me her story she said that she and her husband had recently divorced and he wanted her to sell the house quickly so he could get his share of the money. She wanted to wait till the price was right and that was the question she hade come to ask.

Hahndorf is a beautiful town in the Adelaide Hills. Built by a group of German migrants it is like a piece of old Europe transplanted Down Under. If you've never been there put it on your list of places to visit.
At a festival in Hahndorf I was approached by two men and two women. The first couple wanted a reading but asked if their friends could sit in and listen.
During the reading I turned to the second couple and asked if they would walk around the hall for a few minutes as I had something private to discuss with the other two.
When they got back the man raised an eyebrow in query and his friend said, "He found out about us."
The four of them were sharing a ménage and, since I couldn't be certain their friends were the second couple, I sent them away before discussing it.

One of the oddest experiences I had while working the fairs happened on Sydney's Anzac Parade. I was driving to a regular venue in the Eastern Suburbs when the driver in front of me swerved out of his lane and hit a power pole. Nothing unusual about that, of course, but I saw it happen ten seconds before he lost control. By the time he started to veer away I had already slowed down and moved out of the danger zone. At this point Ripley would say, "Believe it or not."

Billy Joel, in The Entertainer said "after a while and a thousand miles they all become the same". So it is with psychic readings and psychic fairs. In my memory towns, venues and people meld and what was an extraordinary part of my life would be mostly lost if I hadn't been a note-taker.