Divining The Future?
January 5 is the birthday of famous astrologer / psychic Jeane Dixon. Ironically for someone who claimed that fate was tied not only to the position of the heavenly bodies on the calendar day someone was born but the position of the heavenly bodies on that date in a specific year, she lied about the year she was born. She regularly claimed she was born in 1918, once testified to being born in 1910, but was actually born in 1904, making today her 120th birthday.
Dixon was followed by millions, and gained fame for a prediction in 1956 that a Democrat would be elected president in 1960 and then die in office. However, few remembered that she then changed her prediction to say Nixon would be elected that year, and issued many more wrong predictions, including the launch of WWIII in 1958, and all kinds of failed psychic claims to parents of missing kids, which is awful when you think about it.
Follow The Stars?
What’s your take on horoscopes, Deadsplinterseers? I don’t believe in them, but I don’t mind reading them. I think there can even be some genuine value for a non-believer in reading them because they can often be thought provoking, and they can lead you to some interesting hypotheticals, such “Suppose I did meet a tall mysterious stranger — what would I say?”
The best ones can be like reading Zen koans or aphorisms by Nietzsche, which are better when not taken literally but as a spur to think about things you hadn’t considered.
Or are there similar things that you like to read? The slips in fortune cookies? The writings on the wrappers of Baci candy, or the little sayings on Bazooka gum comics?
Ever go to a fortune teller or palm reader? Or are you the type of serious skeptic who won’t even entertain the idea that these things are anything but a scam?
Even if you’re not a believer, have you ever come across a coincidence that made you go “Whoa, dude!”
Let’s talk about fortunes, the power of suggestion, the value of a skeptical eye, the value of opening yourself to new possibilities, scammy crystal ball readers, or anything else of that ilk.
The best horoscopes were from The Onion, back in the day.
Yes, those were especially thought provoking.
We have met Jeane Dixon before!
I am not that persuaded by astrology, and the horoscopes published in the media are vague to the point of uselessness, but I think (and this may be confirmation bias) there is something to them. I am a Pisces. We are supposed to have fantastic memories, which I do when the Covid brain fog lifts, and can be wishy-washy, which you would expect from the two fish swimming in opposite directions, and we like to swim among our kind. Of all my friends the greatest number by far are Pisceans.
Meanwhile, Better Half is a Gemini. Our two signs are not supposed to get along, but we seem to. Those are the twins, but Geminis are not wishy-washy. Far from it. It’s more like they have bipolar disorder. My mother was a Gemini. Just tonight when I was making dinner the Faithful Hound started doing his little tap dance and mock-growled at me and Better Half blew up at him. (It’s been a long week for beleaguered BH) and then 15 minutes later he’s feeding Faithful Hound slices of deli cheese and we’re watching another marvelous episode of “Hawaii 5-0.” So glamorous, this Manhattan lifestyle.
I hope I didn’t spoil a special rerun FYCE.
Oh no, you (or at least I) can never get enough celeb intel.
A psychic opened up shop in our neighborhood recently. I don’t believe in it but I’m too awkward to pay for a session for the sake of science/mockery. Like what if the fortune teller believes the shit they pedal? It’s kind of like going to church for a religion that I don’t believe in. I wouldn’t be able to fake my disbelief. My neighbor/friend has no such qualms and does want to try it out under the guise of a true believer. I don’t want to egg him on because it kind of feels like bullying the psychic. But I am curious as to where the psychic lands on the spectrum between grifter to true believer.
I think it’s one of those things you do because you’re in another city and drunk, or maybe gone without sleep for 20 hours because your plane keeps getting delayed, so that you can go home after and never be tempted to go back.
Nah. I trust fortune cookies more than psychics.
Do you believe the ones that say “Help! I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory?”
Yes
I like the woo woo stuff. Chani does a good horoscope, levened with meditations and altar guides for those who follow wiccan beliefs. I find this type of thing less harmful than most religious belief systems, which are often patriarchal, controlling, and focused on demonizing anyone who is “other”. I also like feng shui and tarot. All of it can serve as launch pad for self reflection.
I like the ones that treat it less as prediction than grounds for reflection.
Rob Brezsny falls into that category.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Brezsny
I unwittingly practice feng shui myself! What happened was (PLEASE, MOTHER OF GOD, MAKE THE VOICES STOP) I had an office and the building’s architect, I guess, or someone, believed in the principles and practice of it, unbeknown to me. Then, when we bought this apartment, it was spacious enough that you could carve a corner of it into another room. Most of the people in my line did this and stashed a kid or two in. Being childless, I created an office. Since I’m not an architect or an interior designer I just went into my office one weekend and measured everything and replicated it, because I loved my office.
Then one night, at a party we threw, and I was still smoking then and the office was the smoking lounge, I dragged a couple of people in there and one of them, who had never seen my work office, said “Oh, this is very feng shui.” The following Monday I went into my office and asked around (I was pals with the building’s operations people) and sure enough! I can’t remember now makes it so feng shui but we’ve been very happy. Apparently our bedroom is too, but that’s another total accident. It’s an odd shape, it’s somewhat like a pentagon, and if you have a big bed like we do there’s really only one place to put it, and then you put the nightstands on either side of the bed, and this low-slung faux-mid-century modern wall-length bureau then has to go opposite the bed, &etc.
I don’t know if anyone is ever going to read this comment, @elliecoo , but that novel I’m working on has a major character who has a version of a Tarot deck. In his case it’s 100 cards and each card has nine little figures/scenes on it so there are 900 possibilities, and the character knows how to interpret them and has the gift of prophecy.
It’s a really handy plot device because when he gives a reading the subject draws three cards, past, present, and future, calls out a number representing the positions of these images (think of the Hollywood Squares) so you (I) can make up these images and say, “That represents [whatever.]”
Jenn Stark has an excellent book series based on the archetypes of the Tarot, set in Las Vegas, the Immortal Vegas series. One of my favorites. @MatthewCrawley
I am superstitious and hyperstitious. I see coincidences (or reflections) everywhere. I’m not saying I know what synchronicities mean, but I know they exist because they show up all the time.
It’s probably just me getting old, so don’t take me too seriously. I do enough of that for both of us.
Breaking!
This is a little strange because the President of UPenn and the head of its Board of Trustees resigned after the car crash of House testimony, and as a Senator from the Keystone State I suppose he can weigh in on them. But kind of à propos of nothing, going after Claudine Gay (a piece of work if ever there was one)…I guess that’s Senatorial prerogative.
I went to a very conservative but highly regarded college and I used to chafe at the homophobia and Reaganomics (I was an Econ major, remember) and the Department of Defense money that came flowing in, but it was the 1980s. Two women from my class went to Harvard, and they weren’t particularly liberal as far as I can remember. I do remember that one of them, she was the valedictorian, natch, had very permissive parents so a small group of us would cluster in her bedroom and smoke pot and listen to Jethro Tull albums. Oh my God. Where is that Obama death panel we were promised?
My point is that Harvard may offer seemingly nonsensical courses like the new one devoted to Taylor Swift (WTF?) and have a pro-Palestinian contingent, but that doesn’t make them pinkos or anti-Semites. Just a little misguided, perhaps, depending on your point of view.
I will also say that my college has kept up with the times and has done a 180. This is a terribly overused cliché but they are now woke. I get the print edition of the alumni magazine (I am a faithful donor and reunion-goer; I like nothing better than a good conclave) and there’s always at least one article that raises the hair on the back of my neck and would have been unthinkable when I went there. So the pendulum has swung entirely in the opposite direction.
Did I ever tell you (OH GOD NO. NO NO NO NO NO) that I used to get periodic visits from members of my college’s outreach committee? It’s because I am a donor. These are usually work study students or recent grads doing fundraising appeals. So they come and visit you and chat about your college experience and what you wish the college could have done differently. During the last such visit a young undergrad woman got in touch and I invited her to join me at a pub near Columbia. I used to kind of haunt that pub, and I did not go to Columbia, but plenty of my friends did. So she arrived and I was on my second vodka-and-soda and picking at some French fries and I said, “What would you like to drink? Here’s the beer and wine list, and as you can see they have a full bar.” And she said, “I can’t legally drink. I’m not old enough.” And I said, “Of course you can. This is Manhattan. And if anyone questions this I’ll say I’m your father and I want a drink for my daughter.” But still she declined.
She must have thought I was a total freak. But we had a fine chat and I picked up the tab, an indirect contribution to alma mater, and that was that. I wonder if I still have her phone number. I probably do, but I’m terrible about keeping up with people. It’s my lack of (and disinterest in) a social media presence.
Just a thought: When I was at that very conservative college a very wise visiting Poli-Sci professor concluded the final class (before he distributed the bluebooks and we took our finals) by saying, somewhat out of the blue, that we must believe in an afterlife. Why? Because take the example of Hitler. (And remember I was a Germanophile, one of very few. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have disbanded the German department by now.) What if the Allies had captured him alive? What could they have done with him? Death penalty, obviously, war crimes, crimes against humanity, but what if that was it? No. Far better to know, or believe, that he will be roasting in Hell forever.
AND THEN I went off to my philosophy class about Existentialism to take that final. Heady stuff for an 18-year-old freshman, but I was a very well-read autodidact so I wasn’t quite as shocked as my peers.
No Taylor Swift for us. I suppose in our day it would have been the wisdom and philosophy of Morrissey, the moody sage, but that would have been too ridiculous and parents would have started withdrawing their children if they had signed up for something like that.
anyways im a sagitarius apparently all my friends are laughing behind my back and i have to kill them and i need to get rid of all my naked pictures of ernest borgnine…..
well that sucks…..i like those pictures