Page Text: elevASIAN
The art of fortunetelling: from tradition to pop culture
Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly engaging in fortunetelling practices that are steeped in decades of tradition and spirituality.
Expand
A young couple participate in the ritual of bamboo stick shuffling while kneeling down in front of Buddha at Bao Quang Temple, Santa Ana. (Photo courtesy of Mia Tran)
February 12, 2022 at 4:05 pm PST
Listen to this article
For some people fortune cookies satisfy the hunger to know the future, but others need more concrete answers. The desire to know the future is nothing new — from palm reading to card shuffling, fortunetelling rituals have been alive for centuries. Today, it continues to gain popularity among young people through astrology apps and social media fortunetellers.
Some ethnicities tie in fortunetelling with praying sessions at the beginning of the year to ward off bad luck. Every Lunar New Year, Asian communities gather at temples to pray for themselves and their loved ones.
An important ritual is shuffling for the magic card that forecasts one’s fate for the upcoming year. Most of the time, the mother and the grandmother represent the family to communicate their wishes to Buddha and heaven and raise their inquiries about the family’s fate within the year. Kneeling in front of the Buddha, Bao Quang temple visitors shuffle a wooden basket of bamboo sticks, each of which are marked with a number between 1 and 25.
Those offering prayer believe that Buddha will provide an answer on the stick that falls out of the basket. The stick’s number corresponds with one of the numbered paper pieces, which contains personalized poems (with a general translation) foretelling what will happen that year. The results of the readings lead to anxiety for some but smiles of contentment for others.
Bao Quang Temple visitors pick up the card that matches the number on the bamboo stick they shuffled. (Photo courtesy of Mia Tran)
Portia Ousch is a junior double majoring in real estate and business administration at USC. She says the tradition of fortunetelling is deep-rooted in her family.
“My first reader was my uncle,” she says. At 7 years old, Ousch dreamed of being a surgeon, so she decided to ask her uncle, a Feng Shui master and astrology reader, for a career reading session based on her horoscope signs. The moment her uncle affirmed that she had all the qualities fated to be a surgeon, she remembered immediately rebelling against her “destiny” to quit the dream.
“You know when a goal suddenly becomes achievable, you kind of do not want to work toward it anymore,” she says.
Ousch’s history with fortunetelling didn’t end there. When she was in secondary school, her grandmother went to Taiwan, where she met with a fortuneteller who forecasted her granddaughter’s whole life. According to Ousch, the reading has been “accurate so far.”
Other forms of fortune telling have gained popularity among Asian young adults in recent years. One is tarot reading. Tarot was invented in Italy in the 1430s during an “experimental period” where queen figures were added to court card sets that previously only included the king and male figures. Italian cultural symbols such as coins (Denari in Italy), swords (Spade), and cups (Coppe) were heavily embedded in these card series.
Despite its European origins, tarot was also picked up by teens in Asian countries who started to form learning groups and communities to discuss the meaning of the cards.
“There were lots of these clubs around my hometown, and they did weekly meetings,” says Huong Tra Nguyen, who grew up in Vietnam and is currently studying economics and creative writing at Dartmouth College.
Having been both a tarot reader and listener herself, Nguyen sees the practice as a psychological and therapeutic treatment. She takes a practical approach to reading tarot results and believes most people already know the answer inside themselves.
“I believe 40% of the success of tarot readings comes from whether the reader is experienced enough to ask really profound questions that guide the listeners’ self-reflection process,” says Nguyen. “They have that inner inclination toward what they should do, so my advice only gears them more toward what they want to do.”
Expand
Autoplay
Image 1 of 3
Weekly card reading session conducted in a candlelit corner of a college apartment. (Photo courtesy of Tanaya Apshankar)
Ousch describes tarot card reading as a push to work on something that she has avoided and which remains at the back of her mind. For example, she shifted from constantly dating to working on herself instead, after a tarot reading from her friend. Ousch resonates with card readings done by those who know her well, unlike Nguyen who believes this may lead to inherent bias that could tamper with the reading.
For many, fortune reading also serves as a community activity. Ceylin Sener, a junior majoring in biology at USC, loves ‘kahve fali’ the Turkish practice of reading coffee grinds at the bottom of a coffee cup, often done by the mother or grandmother of the family. It is a group activity for sparking conversation whenever her family invites people over that provides therapeutic relief.
Some have successfully developed fortunetelling into a business. Kieu Vi, born and raised in Vietnam, runs an Instagram account with more than 31,000 followers. Her feed features posts on tarot and tea leaf readings alongside screenshots of testimonials from her clients. She also uses her account to communicate with clients about questions or scheduling. Vi started tarot in 2015 before gaining the confidence to commercialize her readings in 2018.
“If you book a reading session with me in 2020 and another one in 2021, you will probably be surprised by how I manage to go deeper into the reading of certain events, even if they stem from the same cards,” says Vi.
Like Vi, many members of the modern card reading community gain recognition through social media. Tanaya Apshankar, a junior majoring in creative writing, recently started doing weekly reading videos on YouTube and Instagram Reels. Viewers simply need to pick a card seen on the screen and click on the time corresponding to the explanation of each card.
On the other hand, Ella Dao, a student in her final year at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Vietnam, expresses skepticism toward social media as a medium for tarot card readings. For her, readers can potentially gain insight into listeners’ personalities and struggles via their social media accounts and presence, which might color the results.
Dao gravitates more toward the study of astrology and how planets and stars affect human behavior and life. She is particularly interested in the ways astrology is adopted differently across cultures, from Vietnamese to Chinese to Indian psychology.
The popularity of astrology applications among young men and women has grown exponentially. Apps like Co-Star and The Pattern boast 5.3 million and 3.5 million users respectively. They have also attracted significant investments, with Co-star raising 5 million in 2019. Daily personalized messages from these apps inform their users of their overall mood on a certain day or during a week. The conversational tone of daily messages resonates with young adults, connecting them to a community that the traditional offline fortunetelling medium does not do.
“People are scared to go to big readings in case of bad news. Daily things are a bit lighter,” Sener says.
While fortunetelling lacks strong scientific validation , many readers and listeners have utilized these practices for introspection. Vi believes if card reading inspires a deeper connection with oneself and healthier actions, manifestation of good fortune can be achieved.
Vi says, “Fortunetelling simply serves as a form of guidance and therapy, but it is the listeners who should take charge of their life.”