Move over, crystal ball — Children of the ’80s will probably remember Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network. The telephone hotline eventually went bankrupt, leading to one of the most overused punch lines in bad-joke history: Uh, didn’t they see that one coming? Anyhoo, with similar telephone psychic businesses going under left and right, where are psychics to turn? The Internet, of course — how better to predict someone’s destiny than via the most impersonal electronic tool ever invented: the computer.
Although many online psychic Web sites simply direct you to yet another 900 number to call, a few actually offer exclusive tech support for the spiritually minded. At sites like kasamba.com and opdr.net (that’s short for Online Psychics and Divination Readers), you can engage in chat room discussions with alleged psychics — great news for the truly phone-phobic. These sites provide lists of psychics to choose from, such as “Master Z,” whose slogan is “Good or bad, you get the truth,” and “Latinstar-9,” a self-professed Brazilian priestess who specializes in cowry shell readings. You don’t need ESP to figure out these consultations, which are charged by the minute, are probably going to cost you an arm and a leg. But for the cash-strapped, there are a few sites that offer free tarot card readings, such as facade.com. Just type in your pressing, life-altering question, select your deck of choice (if you’re not familiar with tarot, the site can choose for you), point and click and — voila! Divinations at your fingertips. Hell, there’s even a site that offers online palm readings: visit greetingsamerica.net/palminstructions.htm, place your hand on the computer screen, and the site will magically scan your palm, calculating your future in a matter of seconds. What was it that P.T. Barnum said?
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