There are many types, methods and systems of psychic or extra-sensory readings employed by those who claim to have psychic abilities. A professional psychic may have one or more specialized areas of expertise such as psychometry, distant readings, Tarot reading, astrology or horoscope readings, numerology, palm reading, past-life readings, aura readings or any number of other methods. Psychic readings include face-to-face readings such as in-person readings at home, psychic party readings for a group, and the less detailed and shorter psychic fair readings. Distant readings include internet readings, phone readings and mail readings. In some rare cases, a method of psychic sensing known as remote viewing is used.
Distant readings are conducted many times without the reader ever meeting or speaking to the client. The client asks questions pertaining to his or her life and a psychic uses intuitive senses to determine a probable outcome or solution to those questions. At times this practice is similar to methods used for remote viewing and healing. This method dispenses with the possibility of the reader picking up on visual or verbal cues evident in face to face or telephone readings.
Tarot reading is one of the most popular forms of psychic reading. A deck of 78 cards known as the Tarot is used to predict and interpret relationships, love, careers, etc. The tarot is also used for spiritual, esoteric, psychological, occult and divinatory purposes. Tarot reading tends to have a great deal of variation, since each card in the Tarot, as well as the order in which they appear, and their position within the 'spread' when dealt, have different specific meanings. The meaning of each tarot card is also open to the interpretation of the Tarot reader, and the same set of cards may have two different meanings to two different readers.
Psychometry is a form of postcognition which enables the psychic reader to receive information about people, events or objects associated with events that have already occurred, or are occurring in the present, by being in close contact with the area or object where the event took or is taking place. Commercial psychometry readers often ask the subject for their favorite and most meaningful objects, such as wedding rings, glasses, car keys, etc., for the reading. The belief is that objects which are in close proximity to a person for extended periods of time hold some of that person's energy; energy which can be detected. This method is often used to try and locate missing persons.
Aura psychic reading involves the observation and interpretation of auras around physical human bodies. The “aura” is a set of cascading colored outlines emanating from the surface of the body which differ from one person to another in terms of size, shape, intensity, and color. Aura readers claim to have the ability to see or sense this aura, observe each characteristic and interpret their meaning to the individual.
Palmistry is another popular method in psychic reading, involving characterization and foretelling of one's future through the study of the lines, shapes, wrinkles and curves on the palm.
Astrology involves the reading of an individual and predicting of their future based upon their date of birth, based on the alignments of the planets and stars. Astrology is an ancient practice and pre-dates many scientific methods of astral observation.
Cold reading is a technique used to convince another person that the reader knows much more about a subject than he actually does. Even without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by carefully analyzing the person's body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.
Before starting the actual reading, the reader will typically try to elicit cooperation from his subject, saying something like, "I often see images that are a bit unclear and which may sometimes mean more to you than to me; if you help, we can together uncover new things about you." One of the most crucial elements of a convincing cold reading is a credulous subject eager to make connections or reinterpret vague statements in any way that will help the reader appear to have made specific predictions or intuitions. While the reader will do most of the talking, it is the subject who provides the meaning. After assuring that the subject will play along, the reader will make a number of probing statements or questions, typically using variations of the methods noted below. The subject will then reveal further information with their replies (whether verbal or non-verbal) and the cold reader can continue from there, pursuing promising lines of inquiry and very quickly abandoning or avoiding unproductive ones. In general, while only some of the information comes from the reader, most of the facts and statements come from the subject, and are then refined and restated by the reader so as to reinforce the idea that the reader got something correct. Even very subtle cues such as changes in facial expression or body language can indicate if a particular line of questioning is effective or not. Combining the techniques of cold reading with information obtained covertly (also called "hot reading") can leave a strong, but false, impression that the reader knows or has access to a great deal of information about the subject. Because the majority of time during a reading is spent dwelling on the "hits" the reader is able to obtain, while the time spent recognizing "misses" is minimized, the effect is to give an impression that the cold reader knows far more about the subject than any ordinary stranger could.
The most comprehensive book on how to perform Cold Reading techniques is The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading by British illusionist Ian Rowland. In this book he discusses over twenty different techniques including The Rainbow Ruse, Fine Flattery and Barnum Statements.
"Shotgunning" is a commonly-used cold reading technique, allegedly used by purported television psychics and spiritual mediums: Edgar Cayce, Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, Colin Fry and John Edward in particular have all been accused by skeptics of using shotgunning techniques in their stage and television shows. The psychic or reader quickly offers a huge quantity of very general information, often to an entire audience (some of which is very likely to be correct, near correct or at the very least, provocative or evocative to someone present), observes their subjects' reactions (especially their body language), and then narrows the scope, acknowledging particular people or concepts and refining the original statements according to those reactions to promote an emotional response. This technique is named after a shotgun, as it fires a spray of small projectiles in the hope that one or more of the shots will strike the target. A majority of people in a room will, at some point for example, have lost an older relative or known at least one person with a common name like "Mike" or "John". Shotgunning might include a series of vague statements such as: "I see a heart problem with a father-figure in your family, a father, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin... I'm definitively seeing chest pain here for a father-figure in your family." "I see a woman that isn't a blood relative. Someone around when you were growing up, an aunt, a friend of your mother, a step-mother with blackness in the chest, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer..." "I sense an older male figure in your life, who wants you to know whilst you may have had disagreements in your life, he still loved you."
"Barnum statements" named after P.T. Barnum, the American showman, may also be used. These statements seem personal, yet apply to many people. And while seemingly specific, such statements are often open-ended or give the reader the maximum amount of "wriggle room" in a reading. They are designed to elicit identifying responses from people. The statements can then be developed into longer and more sophisticated paragraphs and seem to reveal great amounts of detail about a person. The effect relies in part on the eagerness of people to fill in details and make connections between what is said and some aspect of their own lives (often searching their entire life's history to find some connection, or reinterpreting the statement in any number of different possible ways so as to make it apply to themselves). A talented and charismatic reader can sometimes even bully a subject into admitting a connection, demanding over and over that they acknowledge a particular statement as having some relevance and maintaining that they just aren't thinking hard enough, or are repressing some important memory. Statements of this type might include: "I sense that you are sometimes insecure, especially with people you don't know very well." "You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house." "You had an accident when you were a child involving water." "You're having problems with a friend or relative." "Your father passed on due to problems in his chest or abdomen." If the subject is old enough, his or her father is quite likely to be dead, and this statement would easily apply to a number of conditions such as heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, most forms of cancer, and in fact to a great majority of causes of death.
The rainbow ruse is a crafted statement which simultaneously awards the subject with a specific personality trait, as well as the opposite of that trait. With such a phrase, a cold reader can "cover all possibilities" and appear to have made an accurate deduction in the mind of the subject, despite the fact that a rainbow ruse statement is vague and contradictory. This technique is used since personality traits are not quantifiable, and also because nearly everybody has experienced both sides of a particular emotion at some time in their lives. Statements of this type might include: "Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there has been a time in the past where you were very upset." "You are a very kind and considerate person, but when somebody does something to break your trust, you feel deep-seated anger." "I would say that you are mostly shy and quiet, but when the mood strikes you, you can easily become the center of attention." A cold reader can choose from a variety of personality traits, think of its opposite, and then bind the two together in a phrase, vaguely linked by factors such as mood, time, or potential.
People who are naturally good at personal observations can unwittingly conduct readings demonstrably based on cold reading without a deliberate attempt at deception. Cold reading in this context could also simply be "knowledge of the world." Consider the case of a taxi driver in Las Vegas, where innumerable professional conventions have provided him with the opportunity to gauge the characteristic group style and demeanor of entire occupations. Knowing the six big conventions on at the moment, as a party of five enters his cab, he can tell the wound continence nurses from the scuba divers, the phytopathologists from the pilots, the doctors from the police chiefs, without recourse to anything but his personal experience. Former New Age practitioner Karla McLaren said, "I didn't understand that I had long used a form of cold reading in my own work! I was never taught cold reading and I never intended to defraud anyone; I simply picked up the technique through cultural osmosis." McLaren has further stated that since she was always very perceptive, she could easily figure out many of the issues her "readees" brought into sessions with them. In order to reduce the appearance of unusual expertise that might have created a power differential, she posed her observations as questions rather than facts. This attempt to be polite, she realized, actually invited the readee to, as McLaren has said, "lean into the reading" and give her more pertinent information.
After a person has done hundreds of readings their skills may improve to the point where they may start believing they can read minds, asking themselves if their success is because of psychology, intuition or a psychic ability. This point of thought is known by some skeptics of the paranormal as the transcendental temptation. Magic historian and occult investigator Milbourne Christopher warned the transcendental choice may lead one unknowingly into a belief in the occult and a deterioration of reason.
