{"id":298918,"date":"2026-07-17T19:29:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298918\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T19:29:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:29:43","slug":"dab-hand-the-enduring-allure-of-new-yorks-mystics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298918\/","title":{"rendered":"Dab Hand: The Enduring Allure of New York’s Mystics"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York\u2019s whacky mystics are clinging on to real estate in a changing city. Ed Stocker tempts fate by visiting a palm reader.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing negative, please,\u201d I say, offering a hand. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve done anything like this; I\u2019m sceptical and slightly nervous. Money has been exchanged \u2013 $40 (\u20ac36) for a 10-minute palm reading \u2013 and the offer of tarot cards and crystals politely declined. \u201cSome people think they\u2019re making the building shake,\u201d says palm reader Apollonia Eli as the floor rumbles. \u201cBut that\u2019s just the subway.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York is often derided as a homogenised metropolis that lost its edge to big money. But look around Manhattan carefully enough and you\u2019ll find tiny reminders of just how odd this place is. Shops in neighbourhoods as diverse as Murray Hill, Chelsea and the East Village advertise the wares of psychics and spiritual healers. So why are there so many mystics in New York? \u201cIt\u2019s like asking why there are so many therapists,\u201d says Eli.<\/p>\n

\"ZenaZena Clairvoyant\u2019s prime New York location<\/p>\n

\"HandsMid-reading<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in Zena Clairvoyant, which is tiny even by Manhattan standards. Its triangular three-storey building occupies a coveted space in the West Village. Despite development and rising costs, palm readers and their ilk have survived and even thrived. For Zena Clairvoyant \u2013 with an illustrated palm on its fa\u00e7ade and a neon sign in the window that says \u201cPsychic\u201d \u2013 owning the building is a gamechanger.<\/p>\n

We settle around a table upon which are tarot cards and a crystal ball. Eli meets my gaze. My energy, she says, shows that I am on the brink of a new chapter (she could be right), about to make a lot of important decisions (again, it\u2019s possible) and will have three healthy children (interesting). I also like to be in control and tell people what to do (my partner would agree). Detractors argue that palm readers are deliberately vague, their utterances easily malleable to anyone\u2019s life. And the scandals in the Big Apple don\u2019t help. In 2013 Sylvia Mitchell, a Zena Clairvoyant employee, was convicted for stealing $138,000 from clients. Eli is keen to point out that Mitchell was the only person outside the family that they\u2019d ever employed, also calling her \u201cgifted\u201d and \u201cinnocent\u201d. In a more recent case, a psychic on the Upper West Side called Kitty Mitchell (no relation, we assume) cheated vulnerable people out of cash.<\/p>\n

For psychic and astrologer Melissa Townsend, a former New Yorker who now works in San Francisco, it\u2019s easy to understand the appeal of a fortune teller. \u201cIn cities like New York there are powerful, driven people with inherent anxiety and a desire to know, \u2018Am I doing the right thing?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThere may be more of a tendency for people to look for something to provide answers beyond the rational.\u201d<\/p>\n

My brush with palmistry left me curious about back pain, a future book deal and a propensity for thinking negatively. Perhaps I\u2019ll try the tarot cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s whacky mystics are clinging on to real estate in a changing city. Ed Stocker tempts fate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,104999,9,24,63,113689,1491,8089,113690,2380],"class_list":["post-298918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-mystics","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-palm-reading","tag-real-estate","tag-society","tag-urban-culture","tag-west-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}