“It was like a good movie, you need an hour to think about it and to be able to talk about it.” Antony, however, was not initially convinced as he sat down across from the psychic Jean-Luc Casado. The cards are shuffled, selected at random, and Jean-Luc delivers the future. Knowing only the birthdate, he manages to define one’s character. Depending on the cards drawn, he predicts the outlines of possible future events.
“I’ll be frank,” he says, staring intensely, cigarette in mouth, glasses on his forehead. We worry. We listen. “I see a money problem, an overdraft. Be careful… I see an important trip to Paris… You met a key person last fall who will have a great influence…” Troubling yet realistic. Truths are spoken, and future assumptions seem plausible.
The setting is conducive. The light shines by its absence. The stars twinkle as if the gifts of psychics and mediums are transmitted to them by distant stars. Mystery, mysticism, a world of the strange: this atmosphere, this intimate relationship with the psychic silences the skepticism of the irreverent towards this spiritual exercise.
The psychic fair, organized by the Ruhl casino, will see 600 people, curious or devout followers convinced by this experience considered by many as mystical. In France, nearly 15% of French people declare having used psychic services, while 23% would trust these practices. This is the case for Olivier. He regularly consults psychics to help him in all areas: health, money, love, work… “I need it. It reassures me, but I’m becoming wary. There are scammers,” confesses Olivier. “I’ve met some. They take their time during the first consultation, and session after session, their duration decreases and the price increases. They captivate us, promising to tell us more next time. We get taken in.” The question of how much he spends to know his future remains unanswered. For him, it’s a necessity. He can’t live without it. He came to consult at the Ruhl because he is certain that none of the five psychics present (Chantal, Davine, Marine, Tina, and Jean-Luc) is a scammer. Davine confirms Olivier’s statement: “I’m here to help, not to take advantage. I have a gift, but it shouldn’t become commercial.”
Davine practices a profession. He is a barber. The foresight (a term he prefers to use) appeared to him at the age of 13: “I lost a classmate. At the funeral, I laughed. I regretted it. People held it against me. The friend came to talk to me, and he comforted me.” That’s how he became aware of his gift.
The consultation with Davine is different. We just provide our birth date, and through “automatic writing” (scribbles to the uninitiated) that he calligraphs on a white sheet, our future and our personality appear to him. Just as unsettling… Just as mystical. Humbly, he explains this gift through a hypersensitivity. The highly sensitive feel more than other individuals. They more easily perceive emotions, which manifest as intuitions. A psychic sees. But the verbs etymologically derived from “see” better characterize this phenomenon. A psychic is capable at the same time of foreseeing, perceiving, predicting, conceiving (imagining through thought), glimpsing…
Ludivine, 22, is the age to be passionate about this fashionable discipline. She enjoys reading the future with tarot cards but had never consulted a “real” psychic. So it was an opportunity. Intrigued, she takes advantage of the psychic fair to discover. She faces Marine. Their session will last about twenty minutes. It remains secret, mysterious. Ludivine comes out disturbed, with a loss of eloquence, and like Antony, needs time to analyze. Only a few words escape her mouth, allowing us to see the impact of the session: “It was too short. I didn’t have time to tell her everything. I will come back.” In conclusion: no one leaves a consultation unaffected. We expose ourselves and we question. More than the predictions, which one may or may not believe, the interest is to step back and reflect on oneself, to take time to think about what we have done, what we are going to do, and with whom we are going to do it. A consultation with a psychic resuscitates a fundamental maxim of existence expressed by the philosopher Socrates: “Know thyself.” And the fundamental question posed by Nice-Premium: by knowing oneself, do we need to consult a psychic?
