A few years ago, Lucy, 41, a stylist, was offered a big new job. Unsure whether or not to take it, she did what she often did with important decisions and consulted a psychic. ‘I’ve used psychics to guide me through some big decisions. It was a hard no on taking it. She said it would be a disaster,’ Lucy says. ‘I emailed and said I didn’t want the job.’
If you’re a hardboiled cynic then that probably sounds foolish, but Lucy is far from the only Millennial using the guidance of a psychic to make decisions. Friends report using them for everything from house moves and wedding dates to thawing family feuds and toxic work dynamics.
Then there are those (myself included) who seek reassurance on issues where perhaps there is nothing to be done at all right at this second: am I ever going to meet someone? Will I ever have children? Am I going to be OK? ‘I have used it as a tool when I wanted hope,’ says Liz, 43, an account manager who is now a married mum-of-two. ‘When I was single I wanted reassurance that that was on the horizon.’
Psychics and what I, an open-minded and open-hearted non-expert, would think of as psychic-adjacent woo-woo/New Age/ spiritual therapies, tools and disciplines – tarot, crystal healing, astrology and the like – are thriving among Millennial women looking for an extra helping hand (you can even buy crystals on Net-A-Porter).
But why? Natalie Walker, a psychic medium who has been reading for over 31 years, is part of the Psychic Sisters who work out of Selfridges in London (I have con- sulted founder Jayne Wallace several times and found her to be enormously soothing – and spookily spot on). Walker says she is busier now than she’s ever been.
‘Everything is so fast paced,’ she tells me. ‘Modern technology is brilliant but it also makes us accessible all the time. So in some ways there’s no downtime; so while the world is chaotic, so are people’s energies because it’s relentless. People might have a day off but they barely switch off. And I feel that’s when more and more people feel like, “I’m on a merry-go-round and I can’t get off,” and I feel like that’s why they seek guidance.’
Dr Kate Tomas, 42, agrees that the chaos has something to do with it, or, as she puts it, ‘It’s an absolute shit show!’ A world expert in mysticism and Catholic women mystics, with a PhD in philosophy from Oxford, she says, ‘Our generation has got the sharp end of the global stick.’ Tomas has been reading for almost 25 years and self-describes as a witch, ‘which is partly a political choice because the word has been demonised for centuries’. What that looks like is not a pointy hat and a broomstick. It means teach- ing mostly women about ‘sources of knowledge and wisdom that we’ve been disenfranchised from’ in the name of healing.
Tomas is articulate, warm, fiercely intelligent and connected to real world injustices. ‘There’s a direct correlation between the worsening of the socio-economic position of women and the interest in magic,’ she says. ‘There’s a lot more interest in money magic now because everybody’s so fucking poor. I think people are struggling more and are seeking other alternate ways of surviving.’
She adds that it’s important to separate structural injustices from personal ‘failures’. ‘I think people come to me because they think they personally are doing something wrong and very rarely is that the case.’ Tomas’s masterclasses (£69 a pop) including one on the Art of Seduction (very much not a How To Get A Guy class) attract guests – 99% women – from all over the world and they participate in a WhatsApp group for a week after. ‘It’s true solidarity, real commu- nity,’ she says. ‘It’s basically manifestation but without the whitewashed New Age bullshit.’
But how good is all of this for us? If you’re sceptical, I get it. But so much of life, even at its most rote and mundane, is inexplicable. And while it’s true that we should seek out psychics and healers with care (to separate the ‘New Age bullshit’ from the genuinely intuitive and well-intentioned), the same should be said about ‘traditional’ therapists too – there are charlatans in all industries!
Besides, both can co-exist. I do the work weekly with my therapist, but sometimes I just want spiritual hand-holding, a reminder to hang on in there. But we must take respon- sibility for what we do with the information we are given. It would have made for a less interesting play but might it have all worked out OK for Macbeth if he’d just taken the insights of the Weird Sisters, stored them away and not tried to hurry things along?
Lucy wouldn’t have been consulting the psychic about that job if she didn’t have a ‘bad feeling’ about it. ‘I wouldn’t use one at this point as I don’t have the need to have something confirmed for me.’
You need to be discerning and figure out who is right for what. As one friend in LA (HQ of woo woo) who is totally at ease with the spiritual puts it, ‘I wouldn’t go to a psychic for a pap smear, but then I wouldn’t ask my gynaecologist to read my cards, either.’