What is it about the psychic process that speaks so eloquently to women?  What do they expect to find, and does the psychic connection satisfy their quest?

The answer is typically a variation of, “It’s because women are intuitive and feeling-based. They are more non-rational, non-linear, and don’t mind seeking direction from unconventional sources of knowing.  Women are just more open-minded to these things than men.”  But why! I want to know what is in the feminine psyche that is so brilliantly ignited when it comes into tune with divination.

Here I’ll share a small sample of my discoveries, and hopefully stimulate an interest in some of you to join me in this rich exploration of the feminine knowing.  Certainly psychic reading isn’t the only relational field that is dominated by women.  Most of the care-giving professions remain high on the list for career choices for women.  What all these fields share in common is a focus on the relational.  Women need to relate to others to mature and enlightenment is the ultimate goal of the conscious individual.

Feminine Developmental Theory

Leading the field in feminine developmental theory, Carol Gilligan in her ‘80’s book titled, In a Different Voice, broke psycho/social, theoretical ground when her research revealed that women don’t follow the same developmental path to maturity, as men.

Up until her research was published, it was touted as fact, that the male path to maturity was THE path. Women, it was asserted, suffered their whole lives, in a mire of perpetual childishness.  Sadly, women were forced to live their lives as immature males. Women, it was noted, got snagged at certain stages of development related to achieving objectivity, which justified why women weren’t permitted to the hallow halls of Justice.  For example, women were not permitted to be judges in our court systems based upon this singular, sexist assessment of women’s psychology.  Women were too “emotional, sympathetic, and biologically determined” to be objective in matters where “truth, objectivity, and logic” must rule.

For women it is within the context of relationship that women learn to communicate (and much earlier than males), listen, analyze, assess, problem solve, develop moral and social codes of behaviour, and interpret.

Unfortunately, this is not all behind us.  Just observe women’s discouragingly unequal representation in parliament, Supreme Court justice, and the executive board room.  Evidence suggests that this sexist opinion remains deeply rooted in the collective psyche.

Why women come to a psychic reader is rooted in our social norms regarding who and what women are.

Eccentric Fortune-Teller

Psychic readings are fundamentally a relational experience.  The timeless image of the crone-like, eccentric fortune-teller planted at her reading table, surrounded by mystical and magical instruments is a universally, fascinating enigma.  This image crosses all cultures the world over, and has for millenniums.  Rulers, royalty and military elites have been seeking the counsel of fortune-tellers, readers and diviners since the beginning of time.  And ordinary women have too.

Yet this highly valued, ferociously sought after fortune-teller, is also denigrated, ridiculed, and marginalized by established social institutions.  Even as recently as last week CTV in Canada did a story on how people are duped by so named “fortune tellers”!. What is it about that fortune-telling Crone, which ignites such passion, attraction and repulsion at the same time?  What does her station constellate in our collective psyche?

Suspiciously, fearfully, she is suspected of knowing just too darn much. Where and how she obtains this knowledge is frankly too obscure. With great aplomb, she traverses the mystery of birth, death and rebirth.  She intuits magically, the fortunes of individuals, and collective humanity, and blithely bestows her wisdom at the humble table that also sets out food for her family.  She is the manifestation of an archetype that resonates deeply in the collective unconscious of humanity.

The fortune-teller is a resonating symbol of the sacred feminine; where the waters of intuition are the guide, where life and death are meted out with an objectivity that is terrifying, and where chaotic random rules.  There is no order, planning, and predictable, statistical outcomes in this realm!  It is what is.

Fortune-Teller is the Psyche-Healer

I declare that the time is nigh for psychics to reclaim this denigrated title, fortune-teller.  It is now incumbent upon us to bring her out of the darkness, the secretive, and the hidden.  The fortune-teller is the psyche-healer long before psychotherapy was even a word, who listened to the suffering, fears, and deceit of thousands, in the distant past to the distant future, for as long as humanity manifests on this planet.  She will tell of our patterns, secrets and passions and give us a glimpse into a future.  A future explicitly designed, in a conjoined character-making dance we have engaged with destiny and fate.

The fortune-telling Crone is the magi women consult when they need an objective guide, that one who simply expresses what she feels and sees outside the limitations of her five senses.  Clarissa Pinkola-Estes states in her brilliant book on feminine psychology,

”…when women connect with wild woman they are gifted with oracle.” (Estes, p. 8)

 “The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands-all these are the making of something, and that something is soul.”

“..Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation-in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation.” (Estes, p.15)

Psychic reading is a way of knowing, learning and reaching higher levels of spiritual awareness for many women. It stimulates their creative powers of intuition and relatedness, their ability to absorb energies on a meta level, and act with wisdom on information their sense is objective and accurate.