MY SECRET HISTORY AS A WOO WOO WIERDO
Here are a few of the paranormal phenomena some savvy folks actually believe in.
I bet you didn’t know that some of the least skeptical people when it comes to woo-woo stuff like astrology, psychic mediums, and tarot are journalists. Yes, that includes me. I have never met a journalist who scoffed when told that editors were refusing their pitches because Mercury is in retrograde, or that butterfly who fluttered into their office yesterday unexpectedly was really their deceased father who loved butterflies.
I try to retain my skepticism when dealing with paranormal phenomenon, but I desperately want to believe my book WILL be made into a movie and I will get rich as one psychic predicted. It was optioned—twice—and dropped twice. There are unlikely to be more takers because it’s the least woke book on Amazon. Unfortunately the psychic who predicted its success has passed on. Maybe I can find a psychic medium to contact her.
They may not admit it, but here are a few of the paranormal phenomena some savvy folks actually believe in.
ANGELS
The notion of heavenly intervention is very appealing to those of us who feel life is has spun rapidly out of control. Once upon a time angels used to be conceived of as fierce winged creatures who were messengers from God.
Today in movies and TV they can be anything from saviors to savants to sex objects to nerds, in movies and shows such as Touched by An Angel (remember that one?), Lucifer, Supernatural, Good Omens and others that I’m sure I haven’t heard of. My favorite angel is Clarence, who hearkens back not to biblical times, but to simpler days‑‑ when we had A Wonderful Life.
The nice thing about angels is‑‑unlike God, who is generally fairly indifferent to human suffering–they show up to save your ass when you need it most. The not-so nice thing about angels is that they proliferate unchecked. Angels are all over the place these days. They have morphed from the outfield to gift shops in the guise of refrigerator magnets, gift bags and door stops, paintings and kitschy statuary. They have wings and are cute.
ASTROLOGY
The popularity of astrology, which purports to predict behavior from the movements of the stars, can be attributed to its effectiveness as an excuse. Your horoscope gives you a label at birth which can be used to explain bad behavior. If you're a Gemini, for instance, the two‑faced sign, you might toss off, "I'm a Gemini, I can't help it," when you're caught in that motel room with a person not your spouse.
For those of you who don't resemble your signs a whit, there is always a convenient explanation in the planets. After all you not only have a "sun" sign, but a rising sign, a moon sign, and a bunch of planets in different "houses." And depending on the time of the year, you may be under the influence of some nasty planet who’s out to get you.
As for me I was stunned to find out that a well-known Astrologer Reda Wigle, reported that my sign, Capricorn, is the snarkiest zodiac sign. “Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, Known as the great teacher, Saturn’s lessons sometime take the form of making people feel stupid or incompetent. Apropos of this tendency to cut one down to size, Saturn is the planet most similar in look and tendency to a sickle.”
I always wondered why I wasn’t popular. Now I know.
MEDIUMS
Mediums communicate with the dead, maybe because no one else will have anything to do with them. They want to let their loved ones know they’re OK. OK? How ok can you be when you’re dead. Mediums seem to specialize in conveying platitudes like “your mother still loves you.”
The question is, what's in it for the dead? After all, it must be tiring enough to go through dying and reuniting with all your dead friends and relatives and meeting God and touring around heaven without having to give advice to people who should be on Prozac.
PSYCHICS
The longing for a psychic reading used to come upon me most urgently when I’d been unlucky in love. Actually that’s how psychics survive, and even rack up six figure incomes—not predicting the stock market, career moves or even sickness and health--but preying on the man troubles that afflict so many women. They all guarantee to tell you if he really loves you, is seeing someone else, will come back to you or whether you should just dump the bum and move on.
Unfortunately, the problem with psychics is not that they aren’t psychic, but that they are as often wrong as right. When they’re right they can be downright uncanny, but from my extensive if non-scientific research, I’ve determined that they’re only right about 50% of the time. The problem is figuring out which 50%.
TAROT
Tarot readers make you ask the cards a question while you shuffle and cut them. They then lay them out in a pattern which is supposed to reveal your past, your future, your goals, what is standing in your way. Most tarot decks have lots and lots of colorful pictures of people in vaguely medieval dress doing really strange things with snakes, wands, and other paraphernalia. Even though there are kings and queens, tarot decks don't have numbers or suits, so you cannot play pinochle with them.
The popularity of the tarot can be attributed to its utter inscrutability. It can mean absolutely anything to absolutely anybody. You have to go to about 10 years of tarot school to find out whether or not to read the cards right side up or upside down. Therefore anything that card readers say could be right–or wrong. This leaves us with readers who interpret the Hanged Man and Death cards as heralding good news. They have rather lame explanations for these interpretations, but they're not about to tell you that you have terminal cancer.
WICCA
People who practice what they call "Wicca" call themselves witches and insist it’s an ancient religion deriving from the Celts. Conveniently, witches never reveal that no one knows what religion the Celts actually practiced because all they left was Stonehenge and no one has the vaguest idea what it means.
In Shakespeare's time witches were toothless hags who wore rags, rode broomsticks, and cackled while stirring disgusting stuff in large pots. Modern witches are more likely to be massage therapists who wear L.L. Bean, drive Subarus and eat only organic food. When questioned about witchcraft's bad rep, modern witches insist they're "good" witches and mean no harm to anyone. However, in their eagerness to counter an image which must be the public relations nightmare of all time, they're taking all the juice out of witchcraft. If witches can't at least cast a few spells to punish their (and your) enemies, what good are they?
All these beliefs were considered way out once upon a time. But now that the far right has outdone everyone else in weirdness, I no longer have to worry about being considered a flake when citing my astrological chart or quoting a psychic prediction. Compared to Q-Anon and space lasers, my new agey beliefs are about a 2 on the wacky scale from 1-10. In this era of alternative facts, pretty much anything goes.
Tour de farce!
Believe it, sister. There are weird phenomena. Even physicists use the word.