A pair of psychic fortune tellers used tarot cards to predict the futures of around thirty students in the Brooks Student Center in Gorham last Thursday. The Gorham Events Board organized the event as part of their weekly Thirsty Thursday series.
The GEB decided to bring the fortune tellers in a last minute change of plans when the scheduled main event, a mind reader, was unable to come. Most students who attended the event ambled out of the student center when it was announced the mind reader would not be coming, but a minority stuck around and formed a loose semi-circle around the tarot card readers.
With no set line to wait in, it kind of became a race to see who could get up the guts to walk over first. Despite everyone’s initial skepticism, the fortune tellers were no generality spewing con artists. Participant after amazed participant walked away from the readers with a look of wonder. The reader “knew intimate details about me,” said one student who wished to remain anonymous. “She knew things I haven’t told my closest friends.”
The sessions were more like psychic advice consultations than B-movie mystic prophesies. As the readings were private, there was nothing to entertain the crowd while they waited. So the students stood around chattering anxiously, wondering about what their fortune would be and speculating about what the reader was telling their friends.
Rosemarie Danelle, one of the two psychic readers, is a local psychotherapist who uses hypnosis and other mystical arts to treat people “for whom traditional psychotherapy is not enough.” When not working with clients, Danelle teaches classes on “Psychic Development” and tarot card reading. While the readers were dressed professionally in black, Danelle showed a lighter side with some orange and black Halloween themed socks. “Humor,”?she says, “Is one of my most potent therapeutic tools” She is currently writing a book on the development of psychic gifts called “We Are All Psychic.”
The lack of a crowd-drawing performer could have made the night a massive disappointment, but, judging by the giant smiles across the faces of the students who had their fortunes read, the event was a big success.