You haven’t truly experienced spiritual capitalism until you’ve wandered through a psychic fair set up in the abandoned lot behind a defunct strip mall.
The Crescent Moon Psychic Fair proudly offered “guidance, enlightenment, and authentic metaphysical experiences,” all conveniently located between an empty Payless ShoeSource and what used to be a Curves gym.
Upon arrival, I was immediately struck by the sheer audacity of the signage. Hand-painted plywood arrows pointed toward sagging white tents where the sacred and the ridiculous collided like two drunk shopping carts. A speaker mounted to a folding chair pumped out pan flute covers of Top 40 hits. A woman in a sequined kaftan tried to sell me “spirit popcorn” — allegedly popped with “cosmic energy” — for $7 a bag. Spoiler: it tasted like stale regret.
The fair featured a dazzling array of mystical services: Aura photography booths promising to capture the “true colors of your soul” (produced by a $40 thermal printer from Office Depot).
Palm readers stationed under EZ-Up tents decorated with plastic ivy and “crystal curtains.”
A “Channeling Tent” where you could pay $25 to hear a man named Astralis pretend to be a 4,000-year-old Atlantean high priest who, for some reason, only spoke English with a bad Midwestern accent.
Feeling brave, I signed up for a tarot reading. My reader — a woman with four nose rings and a name tag that said “MoonFire” — stared at the cards for several long minutes before informing me that I was “on the verge of a great awakening.” Given that I was also on the verge of heatstroke and dehydration, she wasn’t wrong.
The real pièce de résistance was the “Enlightenment Pavilion,” a sagging circus tent where, for $49.99, you could attend a workshop titled “Activating Your Galactic DNA.” It was led by a man in velvet robes and Crocs who solemnly declared that we were all “part of the 9th-dimensional awakening wave” and that our true cosmic purpose would be revealed — after we completed the credit card payment form taped to a clipboard by the entrance.
I’ll give it this much: the Crescent Moon Psychic Fair offers a rare glimpse into a world where anything, absolutely anything, can be sold as mystical wisdom if you slap a mandala on it and hand out flyers.
If your idea of spiritual growth involves standing in a cracked parking lot getting sunburned while someone named MoonFire tells you you’re special, this is your Woodstock.
Bring cash and a sense of humor.