On Saturday February 3rd, 2024, I was invited by my good friend Mahdi Gilbert to help him manage his table at a Psychic Fair in Toronto. Being a closet spiritualist and aficionado for everything related to the mystic arts, I naturally jumped at the opportunity.
I picked up Mahdi from his place in the morning and drove down to the Don Valley Hotel where the Psychic Fair was taking place. On our way there, Mahdi told me that we shouldn't tell people we were magicians, a sentiment I could appreciate as I assumed most people attending these things may not appreciate trickery and deception in this context. "So what's our story?" I asked while turning onto highway 404 heading south, to which he replied, "Our story is the truth: Just no need to emphasize on our magic background."
Truth be told, Mahdi wrote the book on cartomancy , which is art of divination using a deck of cards. For those who are interested in the subject, I'd highly recommend you go onto his website and order a copy of his book. It's a fascinating booklet that describes the meaning behind each card. If you are one who likes to do a reading for yourself and your friends, this would make a great reference. Aside from a self-publishing author, he has also designed and produced his own decks of cards and is a highly accomplished internationally renowned magician.
I forgot to mention, Mahdi is a rare survivor of Phocomelia syndrome, which means he was born without hands and feet. Despite this, he decided to stick a middle finger to God and took up sleight-of-hand magic, becoming not only proficient at it but achieving mastery of the craft, to the point of becoming one of the few who were able to fool Penn & Teller (The OGs of Magic) on their popular TV show FOOL US. Making him the ONLY person in history to ever fool them with sleight-of-hand without hands. Those of us in the magic circle refer to Mahdi as a living legend.
Magic is only one of Mahdi's many diverse talents, which also include drawing, and playing the piano. I am proud to be able to say that I am his piano teacher, but today, I'm here as his chauffeur/assistant/bodyguard. I dressed up for the occasion upon his suggestion to "look professional". I've known Mahdi for over a decade and we have become close friends over the years. We first met at the Browser's Den, a little magic shop tucked away in a secret corner of Toronto where I spent much of my youth and savings in exchange for secrets and the ability to share wonders with the world. Mahdi and I met at this magical place and our friendship grew as we aged to form a bond that transcends the boundaries of this reality, the world of magic and illusion, and the realm of dreams, but that's a whole other story which I won't get into details right now.
Upon arrival to the York room of the Don Valley Hotel, where the Psychic Fair was taking place, we were greeted warmly by a woman with dark hair who introduced herself as the organizer. She was so nice and friendly and showed us to our table where we then proceeded to start setting things up. The event was smaller than I imagined, while I envisioned going into a comic-con type convention full of fortune-tellers and booths set up offering the latest fashion and accessories for witches, I found myself in a fluorescent lit space slightly bigger than a classroom. There were a few other people who just arrived and getting their booths ready. Everyone was very friendly and polite, as you would expect in an corporate net-working event. I made rounds to shake-everyone's hand on Mahdi's behalf to introduce ourselves and make friends with all the psychics in the room, getting acquainted with the people we are about to spend the day with. Meanwhile, Mahdi noticed an adjacent table left unattended adorned with a table cloth belonging to another magician friend of ours -- the one and only, Mark Lewis.
Mr Lewis is a respected elder in the Toronto magic community. I met him in my early teens, also at the magic shop. He has a reputation in the community for his invective disposition, but I've learned to love him despite of this and recently invested some money and time into help him produce a hypnotherapy audio track designed to help people quit smoking which is now available for streaming on his youtube channel. It was my gift to him for being a part of my childhood memories as one of the magicians I looked up to when I was young.
Aside from being one of the greatest pitchmen of the Svengali Deck, Mr Lewis is also famously billed as the renowned psychic in Ireland, despite his Scottish background. According to Mr Lewis, people in north America don't know the difference anyway. Mahdi worked with Mark to do readings at CNE and was brought into the psychic fair world under his guidance. Even though his presence in this room was to be expected, we were still a bit surprised. The man is pushing eighty and it's winter in Canada! Could it be that someone else has the same crescent moon and star blue table cloth? But when Mark's cheerful assistant Corrie came up to say hi to us, we knew the man was in the building. Sure enough, the moment followed when Mr Mark Lewis entered the room, returning from a visit to the restroom. We greeted each other with a knowing smile, and immediately I knew the day was going to be nothing short of a comical one!
Having just returned from doing a week at the Magic Castle myself, coming here with my friend who fooled Penn & Teller and then seeing the great Irish hypnotist from Scotland, I couldn't help but to wonder how much illusion was involved in the psychic community.
The day began very slowly, first with the WIFI in the room not working. The password didn't work on my phone nor computer, no one could get online except the nice Reiki healer lady next to us who had the foresight of coming with a solid data plan on her phone, but everyone else was having trouble setting up their credit card payment systems. I took it upon myself to go to the front desk to get the problem fixed. After going back and forth a few times they eventually sent a guy over to reboot the router. I was happy to be there to help resolve the issue while containing my giggles for the irony of a room full of psychics not being able to function without access to the internet. Back in the day, psychic powers and crystal balls WERE the internet!
By around 1pm, slowly there started to be some people walking into the room to check out what's going on. Mr Mark Lewis is notably the most experienced guy in the room. Out of the dozen or so people that came in within the first hour of business, half of them crowded around his table to watch him do magic tricks with a Svengali Deck, which he also offered for purchase for 10 bucks each. I bought a deck to show support even though I have no less than a dozen of these at home already. But at least now I have my first souvenir from my first visit to a Psychic Fair: a trick deck of cards from the master himself!
Returning to our table, I sat with Mahdi waiting for people to come ask to get a card reading. The first to approach our table was woman in her late forties whose name rhymed with "money" (of course her real name will remain undisclosed in respect of her privacy). Seeing the success of Mark Lewis drawing a crowd with his card tricks, I was also compelled to entertain our prospective client. However unlike Mr Lewis who brought gaffed decks to the party, we only had some ordinary cards that we were trying to sell as souvenirs. I gave the deck a Tamariz-esque shuffle and tried to make conversation that could lead a reading. I asked her to name the first card that comes to mind, but instead of saying the Queen of Hearts or the Ace of Spades or any card for that matter, she immediately shook her head and took a step back as if I had offended her in someway.
She refused to name a card, but instead started a rant to talk about herself for no less than half an hour: She grew up in the beaches and now lives in a small town where the closest shopper's drug mart is an hour away in Owen Sound. She showed us her gold ring studded with diamonds and talked about how she bought it herself because she doesn't need a man to buy it for her... her speech had the weight of a Shakespearean soliloquy minus the philosophy, by the end of the third act, she had revealed everything to us short of her social insurance number. Another psychic might have taken notes on this and used the information in her next reading. I'm no psychic, but I could read that she was a bit lonely and was in need of attention. But the length and delivery of her speech was not resonating with Mahdi, he eventually politely asked me to show him something on my computer in an attempt to end the one way conversation where she monopolized our time and was blocking everyone else from approaching the table. That was the first lesson I learned at Psychic Fair: Keep interactions brief with prospect clients.
Next thing I know, she left our table and was getting her palm read by Mark Lewis next door. I guess she missed him doing the Svengali Deck routine.
Another hour went by, maybe all of twenty or so people have come through the room and left. Mahdi had zero clients up to this point thanks to the lady who bought herself the diamond ring. These people have no idea that they're missing out on an opportunity to meet one of the most genuine readers in the room! Mark's assistant Corrie went on a break to have some liquid bread at the hotel bar, and the room fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence. I walked around and got to know the others in the room a bit better, one astrologer who came all the way from Buffalo offered to look up my star chart for free and told me a bunch of stuff about myself in the context of celestial movements that I could barely follow, not having any experience in this stuff, I had no idea what the house of mercury meant, and resorted to smiling and nodding as I listened out of respect and curiousity. A mother and daughter team had a table set up near the entrance of the room with displays of tarot decks and crystals but offered no readings. They were very nice and pleasant so I was happy to purchased a few items from them, including a pack of incense, a pendulum and pendulum board, and a tarot card holder. I admitted to them that it was my first psychic fair and I was very happy and eager to learn about everything. They told me that it's not usually this quiet. "There's usually a lot more people at these things. This is not how it's like normally."
I guess for a first timer like me, it's a good entry-level Psychic Fair.
During the quiet moments of the day, despite the lack of business, we still had a great time thanks to Mark Lewis providing some impromptu entertainment by making a little bunny puppet out of his handkerchief. Breathing life into inanimate objects is a metaphor for creation as it simulates the original magic of God. In his hands, the simple piece of cloth became a little character that I couldn't help but keep watching. The artistry behind this bit of shenanigan was ingenious on many levels; not did it only help pass the time in an amusing way, Mark was also speaking through the bunny puppet to voice his dissatisfaction with his now drunk assistant in a way that expressed his frustration in an honest and truthful way without being offensive.
During this time, Mahdi was nice enough to take the time to give me a free reading. It was my first cartomancy experience and enjoyed hearing Mahdi tell me about myself and my relationship with money as a never-ending cycle of reassessment of my value-system. Just from 3 random cards drawn from the deck, we opened up a philosophical discourse on the illusion of money versus the reality of creating value. I've had tarot cards read and my palm looked at before on numerous occasions by friends and professional psychics. Usually these things would leave me with various degrees of skepticism, but this time I felt it was the most genuine reading. Mahdi had me shuffle the deck and draw three cards, then proceed to read the cards and tell me what they represented while having a conversation with me about my past present and future in relation to what the cards say.
This was the moment I began to understand the value of these readings: it's a way to have a conversation with your deeper self, using the symbol of the cards as a springboard for your imagination to dive into your subconscious, where you can connect to a part of your mind that you seldom get to explore. The psychic reader acts like a medium of your own deep self, they are reading what the cards mean based on a set of pre-existing stories while reading your responses to these stories to guide you through the process of interpreting them, helping you to find meaning in these card stories in the context of your own life experiences.
Psychics are those who are good at helping you connect to your own psyche. Now that I think about it, they are no different from any therapist or other type of artists. Just like a painting is something that inspires imagination and subject to interpretation by its viewer, a psychic reading is a process of inspiring the imagination of its sitter and subject to his/her interpretation.
The day went by with only a few more patrons stopping by. Nobody seemed to have made much money that day with the exception of Mark Lewis, who sold most of his Svengali Decks and was still doing a reading for someone as we packed up and left. I am still puzzled by why the woman with the diamond ring wouldn't name a card at our table but went over and sat down to get her palm read by Mark Lewis who drew crowds with a trick deck. Perhaps they're more comfortable with tricks they can see through. After all, psychic readings are always accompanied by the disclaimer that it's for entertainment only.
On our drive back, I asked Mahdi, why don't these psychics draw a tarot card or check the star chart to see if this was a good place and time for business before going to a poorly attended psychic fair?
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