Ascension by Joshua Quinn

Description

Imagine... After establishing yourself as a person with some unusual intuitive skills, you say you'd like to put those skills to a real, measurable test. In order to do that, you need some sort of benchmark to compare them against. There are various items that could serve this purpose, from tarot cards to personality profiles. But, you explain, because you like to set the bar high, you've chosen the divinatory tool which, throughout the several-thousand-year history of esoteric practice, has generally been regarded as the most trusted source of metaphysical wisdom and insight into the human condition: a horoscope mini-magazine, direct from the supermarket checkout counter.You give such a magazine to a volunteer, pointing out that it deals with four distinct areas of life: love, money, health, and leisure. You then turn your back and ask your volunteer to look up her horoscope -- either for the current month (if it's far along enough to get a good sense of how it's turning out), or for the previous month (if it's too soon to tell how this month is going yet). In either case, she silently reads her horoscope. When she's finished, you ask her to consider how accurate it seems in hindsight. She does, and arrives at a "percentage score" for the magazine's accuracy, which you write down. No matter what it is, you say you think you can do better. You then turn to face the volunteer again, and proceed to give her a disarmingly accurate and insightful description of her personality and her current situation in life. This is no mere "cold" reading, as it contains a wealth of specific information that you had no way of knowing, including personal details about her character, actions, and circumstances, delivered confidently and unequivocally. You then wrap things up by revealing her zodiac sign, with no pumping or guesswork. With that, not only have you done much better than the magazine, but you've given the volunteer an intimate, inexplicable experie