There are many different names for people who provide psychic readings. Some of these words are interchangeable; however, others are misleading. ‘Fortune teller’ is one of those misleading terms that is evidence of how little people generally understand about the nature of psychic readings in the first place.

The word ‘fortune teller’ conjures up all kinds of images, such as that of a woman wearing a turban and a lot of jewelry gazing into a crystal ball. While some psychics do in fact use crystal balls to conduct their readings, a reputable psychic would not consider ‘fortune telling’ to be what he or she does.

Many people visit psychics because they want to know ‘their fortunes,’ but in reality, only you have the power to determine your future and your life’s path. Every decision that you make affects your future. You can be going in one direction for a long period of time and then suddenly change course and head on an entirely different path. What a psychic does is tap into your current energy to let you know what is likely to happen if you stay on your current course.

A good psychic provides you with a list of possibilities — how your life can turn out if you keep going the way you’re going or if you make a slight shift. That is an empowering process.

However, the word ‘fortune teller’ suggests that the person is telling you what’s at the end of the road no matter what you do. That speaks of predestination, which is the belief that some people are born blessed and others are born cursed. While that may have been a popular notion at one time, particularly among those who sought to use religion as a method of controlling people, those with more metaphysical and spiritual belief systems tend to believe that we all have a say in our evolution. The pace at which we evolve is up to us and the choices that we make.

The word ‘fortune teller’ also has a negative connotation to it and it has been used by those who seek to discredit psychics and make them out to be scammers or fraudsters. While there are certainly some psychics who are scammers — just like there are some ministers who are thieves and some politicians who are crooks — all psychics are not cut from that same cloth.

If you do see someone who calls himself or herself a ‘fortune teller’ rather than a ‘psychic’ or even an ‘intuitive counselor’ you might want to be wary and make sure the person isn’t more interested in playing on your misunderstanding of what a psychic reading is rather than someone who is truly out to give you an informative service.