I Am Ni's Atrophied Tolerance For New Age Bullshit
Yesterday I saw a sign on the roadside for a Mind Body Spirit event up at my old Uni. Being a bit starved for cheap entertainment I walked up to the campus for the first time in ooh, must be about eight or so years. I'd forgotten how long a walk it is- I was a bit light-headed by the time I got to the front door (I had no conscious memory of that door, but my hands knew just how to unstick it and my feet knew just how the dodge the sweepy bits as it moved round) but I refuse to faint at a MBS event, in case I wake up under my own weight of quartz crystals.
I've fallen out of the scene a bit without realising, because there's been some new and frankly hilarious developments. The aforementioned quartz is still in evidence, as are the books advocating that I sit down and have a cup of tea with my spirit guide*. However, there's a new trend for aura photographs (a discreet peek at one photographer's laptop showed me some decidedly non-mystical image editing software) and various people offering hypnotic gastric bands.
These are not half as annoying as the new breed of tarot reader. Half of them now have massive banners with soft-focus portraits of themselves looking all-seeing, and Photoshopped as though posing for head shots in Wise Crones Gone Wild. This already dubious illusion is entirely pointless as the woman herself is usually sat all of a metre from the banner, in her all her wrinkled and dour-faced reality. What's worse is that a further subset of readers now offer recording of the reading to CD, which wouldn't be a problem if it didn't necessitate the reader wearing a headset that made it look as though she was about to launch into an infomercial about kitchen knives.
The tarot reader I picked was mercifully free of these affectations, and anyone who signs herself as CERYS(Pamela) at least gets marks for keeping the bullshit down to an acceptable minimum. So I had a nice therapeutic vent to her about my current emotional frailty, got some good advice, and stepped from the event feeling suitably cathartised.
And then I walked home via Friargate, where a driver waiting at the traffic light spat at me for daring to be fat and ginger in public. Ho hum.
*In all fairness, I am notoriously bad at spirit guides, totem animals and the like, possibly because I'm inherently suspicious of anyone in driving my soul who's not me. When other people are enjoying watching dolphins, eagles, wolves and so on, what's the nearest my hindbrain can visualise?
Thellwell ponies.
I've fallen out of the scene a bit without realising, because there's been some new and frankly hilarious developments. The aforementioned quartz is still in evidence, as are the books advocating that I sit down and have a cup of tea with my spirit guide*. However, there's a new trend for aura photographs (a discreet peek at one photographer's laptop showed me some decidedly non-mystical image editing software) and various people offering hypnotic gastric bands.
These are not half as annoying as the new breed of tarot reader. Half of them now have massive banners with soft-focus portraits of themselves looking all-seeing, and Photoshopped as though posing for head shots in Wise Crones Gone Wild. This already dubious illusion is entirely pointless as the woman herself is usually sat all of a metre from the banner, in her all her wrinkled and dour-faced reality. What's worse is that a further subset of readers now offer recording of the reading to CD, which wouldn't be a problem if it didn't necessitate the reader wearing a headset that made it look as though she was about to launch into an infomercial about kitchen knives.
The tarot reader I picked was mercifully free of these affectations, and anyone who signs herself as CERYS(Pamela) at least gets marks for keeping the bullshit down to an acceptable minimum. So I had a nice therapeutic vent to her about my current emotional frailty, got some good advice, and stepped from the event feeling suitably cathartised.
And then I walked home via Friargate, where a driver waiting at the traffic light spat at me for daring to be fat and ginger in public. Ho hum.
*In all fairness, I am notoriously bad at spirit guides, totem animals and the like, possibly because I'm inherently suspicious of anyone in driving my soul who's not me. When other people are enjoying watching dolphins, eagles, wolves and so on, what's the nearest my hindbrain can visualise?
Thellwell ponies.