As would be obvious to most by now, entire business enterprises that market and sell the foretelling of things to come can go on the up and up. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were known to be close followers of what their psychic said and advised. Unfortunately, the much-consulted seer missed to foresee the huge deficits that Reaganomics brought to America. In Chinese society, fortune-telling is a big thing, so big that it dictates practically everything from where to situate your bed to exactly when to move it around and the color of what you should be wearing when you finally decide to relocate it.

Divination hedges on what can only be speculated on by the human mind. And because the future will forever be unknown, uncovering the myth that surrounds it can actually sell. Psychics have, thus, been cashing in on people’s fear of what might be and/or their hopes of what could be. Most seers will say that 2009 as the Year of the Ox will bring hardship, as well as hard work to address the hardship. This is because the ox is an animal of labor, work, and struggle. They, of course, completely avoid saying the obvious – that the whole world is suffering from an economic meltdown.

The ultimate purpose of divination is for good fortune. Most of these seers offer magic numerical combinations for betting at numbers game as bait, not knowing that there are some people who do not even know how to gamble. Money, money, money is what diviners of the future harp on. This is because it is really what people hope for. It is a truly market-based enterprise. In the process, there is an exchange of cash for psychic talent, making the business of foreseeing what lies ahead a multibillion dollar industry worldwide.

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Via Times Online