Introduction
Since the old days, many people have longed to know what the future holds, how it will look like and exactly what will happen. Due to the persistent search of the unknown, people have developed the knowledge and different ways of looking into the present and past and relating it to what will happen in the future. Through this, many different methods of telling the future have been found and they include among others, psychic readings, crystallomancy, numerology, tarot card reading and astrology. Thus the findings of the different methods of telling the future has enabled selected individuals to predict the future of others, either through mystical and supernatural means or by influencing the persons mind in a positive way.
Jorgensen et al (380) in the article, social meaning of the occult, noted that when an experienced forecaster take up the exercise of fortune telling people who knows him easily develop the notion that the fortune teller will predict the future as well as analyze all the problems presented to him. The fortune tellers therefore believe that in the entire universe there is nothing that can happen because of chance occurrence since everything that happen in life are controlled by the superior being who dictates all the happenings. This is an ancient belief, but even in the modern world all people who believe in fortune telling know that the past and present events should not be ignored. They believe that the future can be predicted by the past or the present, albeit they are likely to be coincidental and irrelevant.
The practice of fortune telling takes different forms, but it is widely agreed by the fortune tellers that the concepts of the fortune telling are almost the same since they usually take the most primitive and persevering method to take the records of the most sublime events. It is expected that humans regardless of the region, race and gender easily reach a decision. For instance, suppose event C leads to event D, if you consistently see and practice event C, the results will lead to event D. Some fortune tellers who are the fortune bigwigs have studied and demonstrated fortune telling through predicting things that will happen in the future with much accuracy (Pickover et al, 110).
It is not easy to tell with accuracy the pre historic beginning of predicting the future from the card lore. However historic findings have hinted that Europe got the idea of predicting the future by cards from the East, notably India following the invention of paper. The earliest cards to be used in the prediction of future are the tarot cards. They have overcome the test of time through history and today they are still in use for telling the future. And as a tarot card reader, you must interpret what the card means to be able to predict the future. And many people believe in the findings from the cards by the card reader since in these cards, the meanings are pre defined and there is no way the user can have his intuition on the outcome. Unlike card reading, psychic reading depend wholly on the intuitive reading of the fortune teller, though for one to develop a remarkable psychic ability, he must practice for a considerable length of time. Since this ability is developed with time, many refer to it as an extra sensory ability. It is one of the most common methods of predicting the future that is widely used in the modern world. In fact it is the psychic ability of the fortune teller that is still employed in the tarot card readings to interpret the card meanings. Another method that the fortune tellers have found favor in is the astrology, and it is widely practiced in the modern era. Many people believe in astrology and they look into it almost daily, either in the papers or in the internet. Though it needs the exact time, date and place of birth to get a detail prediction from the horoscope, an astrologer is able to make his predictions provided he can tell the position of the different planets. Others still look at the future prediction from a divine point of view. Through this they consider ones future through divination and interpreting omen or telling the future by interpreting the mystical or mystic powers. And to successfully interpret and make a meaning from the omens interpretation, the fortune teller needs to have an in born gift of pareidolia. This method depend majorly on magical thinking where the fortune teller tries to get meaning from meaningless patterns and having a third eye which enables him to see distinct things in random patterns that are vague and meaningless to the ordinary person. These fortune tellers have a list of apohenia from which they draw their comparison to the interpretation they make of the divine intervention. However, this method is not common in the modern era, neither has it been accepted since the ancient times (Zusne et al 42, 45).
For a long time the act of forecasting and analyzing the future was left for a few individuals in the society, but with the most important information about the fortune tales finally broken down, most people have been noted to be forecasters, however the best predictors are few since they rely on omens to be the best analysts. In deed the fortune tellers who rely on omen to predict the future will be very précis, and as expected from them, they will use the readings from the present and past occurrence to relate the future. Since they are swerved by the concern of the omen, they will usually take positive and negative omen, interpret the meaning and inform people of the outcome which will equally be positive or negative.
Thus fortune tellers have developed ways to control people who rely on them to know the future happening. This is so because, each time there is new beginnings, individuals usually get concerned with the intent of knowing what will exactly take place in the future. And with fortune telling, there is no any other best and acceptable way that they can use to predict the future. Since the fortune tellers have gained the trust of people who go to them, they have the power to control these people. For example a fortune teller like an astrologer, a tarot card reader, a psychic or numerologist will have control of the person who believes in their practices and in this way they will earn their trust. In return, these people will try to be faithful and maintain their trustworthiness to the fortune teller and they will keep seeking answers from them (Mackay 77).
The main reason why one will get swayed by the practice of a psychic is because we believe and accept what the psychic tell us, and also because we want to know what will happen in the future as well as to know whether the prediction will be good or bad. And for you to find answers to the above concerns, you must be loyal to the fortune teller and do exactly what he expects from us. And by this we put too much faith in them that we can hardly doubt the outcome of their predictions (Pickover et al, 108).
Since so many people believe in the psychic prediction, they are very ready to expect and accept everything that the psychic do, and they can hardly doubt the psychic ability, thus they take everything for granted that be it anything from the psychic it is going to happen. Should the psychic predict a positive happening, the people who are faithful to him will become positive too. And with so many studies in the history of fortune telling, many findings agree with the idea that the more an individual consider fortune tellers prediction as real and true, the more it becomes a possibility, because from the positive outlook we give to the prediction it just get real (Steiner et al, 288).
Thus it is worth noting that fortune tellers have a great influence, such that people have misunderstood them and believes that their predictions are only to warn the world of the pending misfortune rather than predicting what the misfortune is all about. For this reason, many fortune tellers will only speak of good things and will usually convince their faithful’s that the good is to come. This is because, many believe that what they say will happen, thus if they predict a misfortune, it will be, and for this explanation they tend to be positive and at the long ran make their believers to trust them even more.
Therefore the secret that the fortune tellers use to influence on their followers and make the prediction to happen is the positive outlook that the individual develops. However for you to develop the positive outlook, the fortune teller knows that he must tell you only good things that will make you to believe and work hard towards that end. Thus, when the psychic put a positive prediction you also tend to be positive. Recent studies have found out that many people will tend to think more about the positive predictions that the fortune teller has put before them, and with the recent findings stating that the more an individual think about the future the more it become a possibility, the fortune teller has got a great influence through the predictions. Once the fortune teller predicts a good future for you, you put all your energy and drives towards a positive future, and you sub consciously and sometimes consciously work very hard to attain the positive prediction, and therefore the prediction will become true because you have worked hard to achieve it (Zusne et al 43)..
I believe that anybody can work so hard without the predictions of a fortune teller to have a positive future by simply ignoring and avoiding the negative tendencies and influences that may cross our ways. At the same time it is true to conclude that a fortune teller can determine a person’s future by impacting a positive influence through positive thinking.
Works Cited
Jorgensen, L. Jorgensen, M. L . "Social Meanings of the Occult", The Sociological Quarterly 23 (3): 373–389. (1983)
Mackay, C. (1841). Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds. Crown Publishing, (1995) pp. 77
Pickover, C. A. Dreaming the Future - the fantastic story of prediction. Prometheus (2001) pp. 107-111
Steiner, R. A. "Fortunetelling," in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal edited by Gordon Stein Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books (1996) pp. 281-290
Zusne, L. and Warren, J. Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. 2nd edition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1989) pp. 39-45
