By GALINA PEMBROKE

I stare at my deck of tarot cards, unwilling to flip through them, for each card brings memories of someone I have deceived.

It’s been over a year since I last picked up my tarot deck. I used to seek their counsel daily. I knew their meanings by heart. During a reading, I would feel a remarkable range of emotions. Sometimes I would be shocked by the cards' perceptive, common-sense advice. Sometimes I was awed by their uncanny prediction of future events. Other times, I was just puzzled. 

But for the entire period that I read for myself and free for my friends, I never once felt alarmed. It wasn't until I ventured into the shady business of pay-by-the-minute telephone tarot reading that I understood why people in the Middle Ages often referred to the picturesque deck as "The Devil’s Bible."

Dave* is calling from Indiana. His voice is soft and it quivers slightly: 

"I want to know what’s going to happen for me, especially whether or not I’m gonna run into money soon." 

I know the answer. I don’t even have to spread out the cards. From my experience with telephone tarot readings, people who call wanting money are in dire need of budget-balancing, not tarot counsel. But I can’t even hint at that to Dave. I can’t integrate my own common-sense advice with the myriad of possibilities reflected in the tarot – not if I want to keep my job. After all, my recruiter has told me in his peppy, I'm-getting-a-commission-for-every-buck-you-bring-in voice, I have to "keep it positive."

For my company (the largest and most successful in North America), this means positive at any cost: misleading the client, advising without information, even telling outright lies.

Dave's voice is taut with concern when I inform him that the tarots are showing a troubling recent financial situation. He asks how I know. 

"It’s all in the cards. They show me everything."

Impressed, Dave starts opening up about a potential business venture. I know what he wants to hear. Asking is only for show.

"You’re wondering about the results of this enterprise. You’re curious whether or not you can trust your business partner."

Dave is astounded. "This is unbelievable. That’s exactly what I wanted to know!"

"It will all work out. I see financial success in your future. The ace of pentacles reveals a positive new financial beginning which tells me you have the elements of success ready and waiting for you." 

I don't mention that whether this financial upswing will help is all relative to how much in debt Dave is.

Nearly an hour more passes before Dave breathes an audible sigh of relief through the receiver. "Thank God," he says. "I thought everything was hopeless. I’m so poor right now, they shut off the electricity in our house. I’m calling on my neighbour's phone."

The 60 minute call had cost Dave – who would return home to a dark room and a warm fridge – $6 a minute. Had I had learned sooner of his financial destitution – had I really been psychic – I would have wrapped up the call in under ten. I still think of Dave, and a pall of guilt washes over me. 

You may be wondering what my share was. Fifty percent? Twenty percent? Just two percent: $16 an hour. 

For me that was actually a generous income. But even if they had paid me ten times as much, it wouldn't have compensated for the guilt and anguish that followed the barrage of calls I began receiving after my conversation with Dave. 

Like most callers, Dave had assumed he would enjoy a "free 3 minute reading," as advertised on TV. What he didn’t know – what no first-time caller knew – was that we were not permitted to even start a reading during that time. My recruiter demanded that I wait at least three minutes. I would then have to keep my callers entertained for at least seventeen more (cost: $102) or the company would start directing fewer calls to me. Keep the calls short, and I would receive no calls at all. Fired. 

During those first three "free" minutes, my job was to find out the caller’s name and home and email address. If I didn't produce that information, which the company said was "strictly for marketting purposes," I didn’t get paid. 

The email adresses were used to solicit repeat calls under false pretenses. Fraud. For instance, Delilah from Texas called, and in her awkward southern twang demanded that I tell her more "about the email you sent me saying I’d won a bunch of money!"

I’d sent no such email and immediately realized who had: the company. Stunned, I danced around the subject, telling her I needed to do a general reading first. Had I told her the truth, she might have hung up; and with that kind of technique, I would soon have been fired. 

So I lied. 

I told her I saw multiple financial windfalls in her future. We talked for over an hour about the Divine Plan for her to be prosperous, as revealed by the tarot. 

I felt like dirt. And the company rewarded me with a stream of new callers. 

Always remembering to keep it positive, I had forgotten to keep it truthful. 

The tarots don't always deliver messages we want to hear. In my private readings, I had the option of discussing how the tarots revealed the error of a client's ways and pointing to better choices. But most people calling the psychic line weren’t willing to pay $6 a minute to hear that. They just wanted a fairy godmother to validate their fantasies. 

Gambling was a big issue for most of my callers. One older client named Gary had applied for bankruptcy but was still making daily trips to the casino. Every two days he called to ask about his lucky numbers and how to acquire "winning energy," as he called it. Initially, I attempted to divine lucky numbers from his card spread. When these failed to give him the winnings he wanted and he called back with doubts, I urged him to "trust the process" – a standard line for nonbelievers. But after weeks of the same go-round he grew impatient, and I suggested he "take a break" from gambling. "I didn’t call to get a scolding!" he huffed. He never called again.

My work soon taught me to understand the expression "a clear conscious is the softest pillow." I tossed and turned endlessly. 

My waking hours were a nightmare too. My mind was inundated with visions of callers desperately seeking some mystical manna to make everything better when what they really needed was a down-to-earth dose of self-discipline.

When I could bear it no longer and began levelling with my callers, my career as a 1-900 psychic came abruptly to an end. Regardless of how impressed the callers had been with my "uncanny accuracy," the moment I started suggesting they curb their gambling or question the wisdom of having a relationship with someone in prison or – you get the idea – the line went dead. My average call-time shrank so fast that within hours the phone stopped ringing. After just a day, I was fired – or as my recruiter put it, "disconnected from the system." He did offer me "another chance," if I returned to "keeping it positive." But it was just another chance to fuel people’s illusions. I refused.

The tarot's treasury of symbols demands honest and courageous self-examination from client and reader alike. In tarot, as in life, while it may be easiest to tell others what they want to hear, seldom is it in their best interest. My stint as a 1-900 psychic tarot reader taught me that my precious avocation could be corrupted by easy money. But it also helped me realize that such a reward comes at a price I can't bear to pay. The next time I read the tarot, I'll read it for free. 

*All names have been changed.