By LAURIE SNELL
Keep an open mind.
At least that’s what they told you to do at the doors to the 21st annual Psychic Fair that took place Jan. 10 to 12 at the Bingemans Conference Centre.
There were no crystal balls, no dim lighting, no lit candles or voodoo dolls. There was, however, a pressing need to remove your inhibitions and appreciate the variety of talent, ready to explore your past and your present, and then predict your future.
For $8 you could connect with loved ones through mediums, channel answers about your love life, find out how many children you’ll have, when you’ll wed, or most surprisingly, meet a chiropractor to understand natural healing.
With booths all over the room, selling books, good luck charms and souvenirs, readings at each corner and the very potent scent of burning incense and oils – an open mind is absolutely necessary.
Whether you’re a believer or not, most people came to the fair looking for answers or simply to satisfy their curiosity.
But all answers come at a cost – some for $15, and others up to $100 or more per session.
For fourth generation psychic medium Miki Corazza, people approaching her with questions about loved ones, health and career advice is far from unusual.
Corazza has heard almost everything. “I love my job – actually. It’s given me a lot of freedom in life. I do a lot of travelling and meet a lot of different people. There’s nothing I don’t like … When I was younger I’d hear things that would shock me and freak me out, but not anymore,” she said.
But one element of the psychic trade does frustrate her – industry fraud. Corazza has recently teamed up with Toronto Star investigative reporter Robert Cribb to, “… debunk psychic fraud –because there’s a whole lot of it in this industry – especially in those stores you see, where they charge you $25 for the reading and tell you you’re cursed. Then they ask for $2,000 to remove the curse … (so) we’re going to send out his Ryerson University journalism students to go to all kinds of different stores to see if they hit them for curse money – and different stuff like that,” Corazza said.
But Corazza warns, not all fortunes are good – and those are the hardest to share. Most difficult, she explains, is telling parents their child is ill and will not make it. “They ask, so I have to tell them when they ask questions like that,” Corazza said.
“I’m a psychic medium, I’m not just a tarot card reader. So you know, I connect with people emotionally, I hear things from the spirit world for them, I see visions of things that are going to happen – it kind of bounces all over the place so it depends on the person that’s in front of you.” She often uses tarot cards to validate her visions, as an extra precaution.
Another booth at the fair was inner channel Reiki master, K.C. Black, who explained that both her sister and mother possess psychic powers but, “they wouldn’t practise it, it freaks them out.”
Black discovered her abilities as a child when she would say things knowing they were truths, but weren’t necessarily her own thoughts – something too difficult to speak to her parents about at the time.
“I prefer talking to people about things that will help improve their lives – so it doesn’t matter what the topic (is),” Black said.
The most confusing of vendors at the fair was a booth from the Westheights Chiropractors office, based in Kitchener.
Dr. Ryan Rullitis explained, “what we do is – we love to get out in the community and most people don’t understand what a chiropractor does. So my main mission is to come out here and educate as many people as possible … so we ended up here because a lot of it is natural stuff, natural healing. As a chiropractor that’s what we’re all about. We align the vertebrae up with the spine and take pressure off the nerves to allow the nervous system to function. So what we say is, really, who is doing the healing, the patient or the chiropractor?” Rullitis said.
This is the first time a chiropractic office has participated in the fair, and the office plans on coming back next year. “Everything’s turning out great. Today we were so busy,” he said.
