I’ve been to a lot of “spiritual centers” in my time — strip mall palm readers, candle-lit séance parlors, roadside UFO museums complete with homemade aluminum hats — but few have been quite so aggressively adorable as The Divination Station in Mystic Grove.
For starters, it’s housed in a repurposed gas station. Somewhere around 1962, this place was probably a Texaco where your grandfather bought cigarettes, a Moon Pie, and a tank of leaded for two bucks. Now it’s selling crystals, tarot readings, and “charm casting” under a string of fairy lights hung exactly where the cigarette machine used to be. That’s a stunning metaphor for modern spirituality: it’s all smoke and mirrors — just with better marketing.
From the outside, the building looks like a Hallmark movie set — pastel paint, flower boxes, and an aggressively whimsical sign promising “Insight! Guidance! Inspiration!” It’s cute enough for a TV special, and about as deep as a puddle on Main Street after a light drizzle.
Inside, I met Quinn, the self-proclaimed psychic behind the operation. Pink hair, ripped jeans, and a broad smile. She’s sweet in that spun-sugar way: all brightness and fluff, like cotton candy. It’s lovely to look at, but collapses the minute you apply pressure.
Now, I won’t lie. She’s cute. In the way that makes you think of twirling lollipops and glitter nail polish — not communing with the unseen mysteries of the cosmos.
She invited me to pull three tarot cards. I complied, tossing them onto the velvet-covered table. The cards — Death, Three of Swords, Ten of Swords — were predictably dramatic, and she interpreted them with the kind of solemnity normally reserved for reading war memorials.
Transformation, betrayal, and an ending already in motion.
If I wanted vague existential dread wrapped in decorative language, I could have called my ex-wife and saved myself the $60.
Once Quinn made her pronouncements, the reading was over. She hinted at clarity that would come — later, of course, because fortuneteller’s don’t like to be too specific. If they could really see the future, after all, they wouldn’t be flipping playing cards for strangers.
The Divination Station is a candy-coated sideshow: sweet, charming, hollow. If you want a glimpse into your future, skip the tarot and just grab a fortune cookie from your favorite Chinese restaurant. It’ll be just as accurate, and you’ll get some sweet and sour chicken, too.
Stay tuned, my friends. I have a few more stops to make in Mystic Grove — and something tells me the fakes and frauds have only just begun.