My friends at work are going to see a fortune-teller. They want me to come along but I’m a bit afraid of what I might find out. I don’t want to lose face and tell them that I’m scared. They say its a bit of fun and maybe it is. What do you think? Emma.
Usually fortune-tellers want to be paid for their services. A worried young person once confided to me that she was having difficulty escaping from the hold that a fortune-teller had over her. She felt that she had to keep going back as the supposed plot of her life thickened. Each visit had to be paid for. At the time she spoke to me I was astonished to learn that she had already paid out about five thousand pounds in the old Irish money. That’s a considerable sum for a ‘bit of fun’ in anybody’s language.
Serious matter
While some people may go to fortune-tellers ‘just for the fun of it’, this is not how it is treated in the great literature of the world. It is only when in serious trouble that Macbeth seeks out the Witches in the vain hope of hearing good news. Saul, about to lose the kingship of Israel to David and face his doom, consults the Witch of Endor.
At best, fortune-telling from the client’s point of view is a frivolous form of idle curiosity and a waste of money that makes no positive contribution whatever to emotional development, psychological stability or spiritual growth. At worst, it is a dallying with the occult that can, and occasionally does, have disturbing consequences. Either way it should be given a wide berth.
Fortune and fortune-telling has a long history. For the ancient Romans, long before the time of Christ, Fortuna was the goddess who was responsible for the good things that came the way of individuals and nations. If you could convince other people that you had privileged access to Fortuna, you were in business. Everyone needed her on their side if they were to keep the Fates at bay, a trio of other goddesses called Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis, who were continually throwing spanners in the works.
Twists and turns of life
Rather than consult the different Oracles, who were supposed to reveal the future, the gifted poets, dramatists and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome tried to make sense of the twists and turns of human existence, especially its apparent successes and failures, by serious reflection on what was happening around them.
Many of these gifted people were sceptical about explanations based on the whims of gods and goddesses. However, all were agreed that there was some agency, more than human, at work. A few of them, by dint of reason, actually got to the idea that there could only be one God.
Subsequent thinkers in the Christian era built on their valiant efforts and integrated them into the meaning of life as revealed by Jesus Christ. One thing that humans had in their day as well as in our own, was an innate desire to succeed and to avoid failure in all their undertakings. To ensure this, people have always been tempted to look for short cuts. Fortune-telling is one of them.
In spite of 2000 years of Christianity, your question indicates that Fortuna still has clients, as well as a network of highly skilled agents, working on her behalf. She found her way into The House of the Rising Sun, the song made very popular some years ago by the British group, The Animals. While deploring the fate of a young girl who ended up in a house of ill repute in New Orleans the lyrics remind us that ‘there but for Fortune go you or I’. That line, I suspect, was a straight borrowing from the famous comment of St. Philip Neri as he saw a man being led off to the gallows: ‘There but for the grace of God goes Philip’.
Superfluous agencies
Now that the Light has come into the world and ‘grace has been revealed’ as St. Paul tells us in his letter to Titus, things are different. Other agencies are now superfluous. When Paul himself seemed to be at the end of his tether and felt that his suffering was unbearable he received the Divine answer: ‘My grace is sufficient for you’ (2 Cor 12:19).
This is true for all the rest of us, too. We have no need to seek for help from any self-appointed person who is no more qualified than ourselves when the Creator of the whole world is waiting to help us. This consoling message keeps running through the Bible from beginning to end. With St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, we can confidently ‘throw ourselves into the arms of His tender mercy’.
In our dealings with the Lord we should act with the simplicity of children. However we should keep in mind the advice of St. John of the Cross, one of the great masters of prayer. Reflecting on a tendency to look for things that might not be for our good he writes, ‘Anyone who today would want to ask God questions (like some of the figures in the Old Testament) or desire some vision or revelation, would not only be acting foolishly but would commit an offence against God by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ, without wanting something new or something besides him.
‘God might give him this answer, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. I have already told you all things in my Word. Fix your eyes on him alone, because in him I have spoken and revealed all. Moreover in him you will find more than you ask or desire”.’
If at times we are overly concerned about what lies ahead, we might recall the old saying, ‘It is an Angel of Mercy that holds the veil that hides the future’.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (September 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
