A lot of people fall for the age-old psychological tactics of con artists. Are you one of them? Learn why a spiritual life coach is the same as a fortune teller.
It’s practical to seek professional help for personal development or spiritual matters. It’s smart to seek professional advice for complex life issues. We hire consultants for a variety of things.
For example, we ask an attorney for legal advice or call a plumber when we have a water leak. It’s why people go to fortune tellers and spiritual life coaches. But do these mystical counselors really provide honest and credible advice?
Spiritual advisors use psychological and mystical language tailored to fit their client. This is an important tactic, making them sound knowledgeable, which builds trust. They also feature testimonials from people who faced similar issues on their websites.
Do You Need a Spiritual Life Coach?
The right coach can help you meet your goals. Life skills coaching isn’t new. Finding a real spiritual counselor can be tough. The field isn’t regulated, so it’s hard to know who to trust. This arena of spirituality is full of grifters. They have found ways to market fortunetelling using different names. One of these names is spiritual coaching. Let’s examine this profession in greater detail.
Organizations like the International Coaching Federation (1) sell wellness certifications. They claim that 99% of people who complete their certification would do it again. Of course, if you’ve spent $1,000 or more on something, you will likely view it as worthwhile.
We’ll talk about the history and development of this kind of personal coaching in moment. First let’s look at what these titles mean, and what the people provide who doing counseling under these titles.
Why Rebrand and Rename?
Do you know what rebranding is? It’s changing the name of something to make it more appealing. You have likely seen things that companies have rebranded, and there are excellent reasons for doing it.
The most common reasons are to change the image or increase marketability. You may not know, but Google was rebranded Alphabet in 2015 to reflect businesses beyond the search engine. Philip Morrisre rebranded to Altria in 2003 to distance itself from its tobacco heritage.
A name change you may not know about involves the corporate leadership training known as Emotional Intelligence. We’ll talk more about this in a moment.
Right now we are focusing on the name change from fortune teller to spiritual life coach. it’s a business decision similar to those we’ve mentioned. The name change make the profession more acceptable and appealing to a larger market.
The idea of having a coach for your spiritual growth sounds more modern and professional. Whereas the profession of fortune telling is old-fashioned or superstitious. Having a guru sounds too new age. The title change to coach draws in those seeking personal growth, not just spiritual advice or psychic forecasts.
Creating Legitimacy
The new title also makes the profession seem more legitimate. A spiritual life coach may hold certifications or training that boost their professionalism. For example, they may have taken courses in coaching or personal development. This adds to their credibility. This helps people feel more confident in their skills and less like they’re being tricked. It’s the same as a fortune teller completing a course in sleight-of-hand trickery.
Finally, the title change allows them to reach a broader market. Many people avoid tarot card readers. But they might be open to working with a coach or advisor to achieve their goals. For instance, a person wanting to boost their career may prefer a spiritual life coach over someone who reads fortunes or tarot cards. This rebranding helps them attract a wider audience and seem more credible.
Service to Meet Your Need
What if you need help with making hard personal or financial decisions? Perhaps you want to contact deceased loved ones or conduct past-life therapy? You are in luck. Both fortune tellers and spiritual life coaches can help with all the same things.
Although these counselors or guides use different props, all the techniques comes from the same source. These methods originate in the Spiritualist Movement in the 1800s. (2) Here is where psychic parlor tricks were honed. More about the history of this movement a little later. First, let’s dig into the various titles associated with these methods and outline the techniques.
Psychological Tactics of Con Artists
Psychological tactics are methods that influence, manipulate, or control thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. These tactics help achieve goals like building trust or gaining an edge in negotiations. They can also be used to demoralize opponents, or convince people to adopt specific beliefs or actions. The people who use these tactics are known as confidence artists.
Grifters and Con Artists
A confidence artist, or con artist, exploits the trust and confidence of others. Their goal is to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain. They use charm, persuasion, and psychological tactics to make people believe in them. For example, a con artist might pretend to be a financial or spiritual advisor, gaining your trust and then convincing you to invest in a fake scheme.
Spiritual counselors and future prognosticators use the same psychological tactics of con artists. It’s the same for a fortune teller.
What About clairvoyants?
A clairvoyant believes they can sense things beyond normal perception. This skill is often known as a sixth sense or extrasensory perception (ESP). This can mean seeing future events, or gaining insights that regular methods can’t reach.
The word clairvoyant comes from the French words clair, meaning clear and voyant, meaning seeing. It first appeared in English in the 17th century to describe someone with sharp insight. By the 19th century, clairvoyance took on its current meaning about psychic abilities.
Clairvoyance is associated with several disciplines, including:
Parapsychology is the study of paranormal and psychic phenomena. It includes the study of cryptozoology, clairvoyance, telepathy, and psychokinesis.
Spiritualism is a belief system. It involves talking to spirits, often using mediums. These mediums may have clairvoyant abilities.
Occultism involves practices that use mystical, supernatural, or magical powers. Clairvoyance is often seen as an evil occult practice.
Divination involves practices for gaining knowledge about the future or the unknown. It uses supernatural methods like clairvoyance. It is the same as a fortune teller who predicts the future.
Let’s look at a group of techniques that have been rebranded and are popular in corporate culture. You’ve probably heard the term Emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence = Psychological Manipulation Techniques
Emotional Intelligence (EI) tactics are not new. It is just a new name for previously unacceptable practices. The techniques of EI are what mental health professionals call psychological manipulation techniques.
Grifters and con men use these methods to take advantage of people. These tools teach people how to deceive, coerce, and manipulate others. None of these health or ethical concerns matter. Businesses train managers to use them because they drive performance.
How a Spiritual Life Coach is the same as a Fortune Teller
We use analogy, the duck principle, to help understand what the people who use these titles. If it walks like a duck, has webbed feet like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck by any other name. You can call them waterfowl or shovelers, but they are still ducks. It’s the same as the tricks con artists use while pretending to offer counseling services.
Wide Range of Services
Both fortune tellers and spiritual life coaches offer guidance to people who are seeking answers or direction in their lives. Coaching and mentoring are common in business and personal counseling. They help people set goals, discover their purpose, and improve relationships.
Tarot card readers and others who claim to predict the future can offer insights into a person’s love life, career, or health. In both cases, the goal is to help the person feel more confident about their future.
Mystical Knowledge
They also use mystical language to make their advice sound more convincing. A spiritual life coach might say to align your chakras or connect with your higher self.
In contrast, a fortune teller might refer to reading your aura or seeing your destiny in the cards. This kind of language can make their guidance seem more profound and special.
Expert Researchers and Manipulators
Another similarity is the personal connection they try to create with their clients. Spiritual life coaches hold one-on-one sessions. They listen to your issues and give tailored advice. They might say things like, I understand what you’re going through to make you feel heard and valued.
A clairvoyant may do something similar; they might hold your hand, look into your eyes, and tell you things that make you feel special and understood. This personal touch helps build trust and makes you more likely to believe their advice.
Both will use ploys to gather information. Some of their most common questions are, tell me about yourself and what brings you here today? These open-ended questions help them understand your background and finances. They also show where to focus their online research.
Tactics Used By Fortune Tellers and Spiritual life Coaches
Exploiting Vulnerabilities
They look for things that make you feel sad, worried, or insecure and use those to manipulate you. For example, if you’re feeling lonely, they might say, I can help you find true love, or if you’re worried about your health, they might promise a miracle cure.
Creating Urgency
They make you feel you have to act quickly, or you’ll miss out. For example, This offer is only available today, or If you don’t act now, you could lose. Or, Your deceased relative has an important message for you, but I need to set up a special reading to do, which can be expensive. Is your loved one worth it?
Cold Reading
Fortune tellers and spiritual life coaches both use psychological tricks. These methods help make their advice feel more accurate and reliable. One common tactic is cold reading. For example, they might notice you’re wearing a wedding ring and say, I sense you’re married, and sometimes worry about your relationship. This is a general statement that could apply to many people, but it makes you think they know more about you than they actually do.
Barnum Statements
Another tactic is using Barnum statements. These are vague statements that feel personal. However, they are true for most people. For instance, they might say, sounds like you’re not living up to your full potential. This is something many people feel, so it makes you think they have special insight into your life.
Build Trust
Building trust is another important tactic. They might share a personal story or compliment you to make you feel comfortable and valued. A spiritual life coach might say, I went through something like this. I know how hard it can be. In contrast, a fortune teller might say, You have a kind and generous spirit. These statements make you feel understood and more likely to open up and believe their advice.
Confirmation Bias
They make you focus on things that match what you already believe and ignore things that don’t. If you believe in luck, someone might say, I see you’ve had bad luck lately. You’ll recall all the times things went wrong. This can make you believe in bad luck even more.
Emotional Manipulation
They play with your feelings to get what they want. For example, they might make you feel scared about the future by saying, I see a dark cloud over your life, and then offer a solution that costs money. Or they might make you feel guilty by saying, If you don’t do this, bad things will happen to your loved ones.
Now that we have outlined the psychological tactics of con artists, let’s look back at the history of this movement.
Origins of the Modern Spiritualist Coach
The Spiritualist Movement developed the blueprint for a personal coach with mystical insight. This movement has its roots in the Gypsy and Traveler cultures of Europe known as the Roma (3). This movement was the home of traveling sideshows and circuses.
The Roma were among the first to rebrand or rename the Shamanic Journey. They called it past-life regression.
Spiritual counseling and psychic and clairvoyant powers have always been popular entertainment. The rich aristocrats made the Roma or Gypsies of Europe and the Americas rich. Everyone likes a good show. The more extravagant the showmanship, the more they could charge. The séance became one of the most popular events on the spiritual circuit.
In the 1800s, Evangelical Christians adopted the tactics and showmanship of the gypsies and Roma. They rebranded the tactics and made millions as the Faith Movement expanded from traveling tent revivals to TV.
The focus of the traveling gypsy shifted toward prophetic personal counseling. This con gave the spiritualist a steady cash flow from rich patrons.
The spiritualist established a personal relationship with the client. Their relationship gives them access to family secrets. They can then leverage this knowledge for their financial gain. People do not publicize being victims of these schemes. It is embracing. Fear of being exposed works in favor of the grifter. With their knowledge of family and friends, they can branch out to take advantage of others.
One of the most influential life coaches was a Russian holy man named Grigori Rasputin. He leveraged the fears and weaknesses of the Romanov family members. Rasputin gained access to the ruling family by treating the son of the Emperor, Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. Then he used this relationship to befriend Emperor Nicholas II. It is well known that he encouraged Nicholas II in his desire for an autocratic dictatorship, leading to pointless conflicts and wars. Historians say it was the advice of Rasputin that led to the revolt of 1918 and the assassination of the Romanov family.
The Internet opens new markets for selling these services. Here, the age-old ideas of the spiritualist find new ways to generate cash. Tarot reading and future telling got a fresh start by rebranding their products.
The Shaman
Shamans are the pioneers of consciousness research. Shamanic cultures created ways to mix imagination and rhythm. This helps them reach an altered state of consciousness.
It was the shamans who created the healthcare profession. They pioneered counseling techniques used today and pharmacology through experimenting with plants. So, in indigenous cultures, their spiritual life coach certification was the training for a shaman.
Indigenous cultures were very cohesive because of the depth of information they shared. Every member knew the other parties’ histories, strengths, and weaknesses. The Shaman was a part of this shared knowledge, so they knew how to help the people in the group. They passed along generations of cultural knowledge, but this isn’t possible today. The modern cultural narrative is fractured into multiple subcultures.
The best coach you’ll ever have is a simple paper journal. It is the most cost-effective, honest, and always available friend. If you learn to use it regularly, your spiritual journals will be your trusted advisor. Never take your spiritual journey without one.
Still Need a Spiritual Life Coach? or Still Need a Fortune Teller?
Perhaps you need more guidance than your journal or close friends can provide. If so, seek the direction of your intuition and common sense. You can learn to use the Shamanic Journey on your own. There are many good books that can get you started. Some have a CD with a drum track specifically for the journey.
Seeking a teacher may lead you to a shaman who can help you journey to find your answers. Take your spiritual journal with you. A good shaman will ask if you keep one. Take an Enneagram workshop. You’ll meet many people looking for answers, and they can help you just like you can help them.
A reputable shaman will typically help you in exchange for a donation amount of your choice. In contrast, those who peddle their services with phony titles or certifications charge upward of $100 per hour. The quality of the counseling is far better and more accurate with your journal and a shaman.
Instead of seeking advice, find a resource that can provide you with tools. Stay away from the psychological tactics of con artists. Instead of going to fortune tellers and spiritual life coaches, take up yoga. Learn tools to explore consciousness and share them. Learn to meditate and then help others learn how to do it. Try the Shamanic Journey and Spirit Canoe. Investigate your subconscious mind. Use the Enneagram to discover how to move beyond the default settings of personality and instinct.
References
(1) International Coaching Federation: Wikipedia
(2) Spiritualist Movement or Spiritualism: Wikipedia
(3) The Roma: Britinica.comneen