Today we live in the Great Vibes epoch. Inherent yet ephemeral, vibes are difficult to measure. They’re the perfect concept for a period when “if you know, you know” is answer enough. Uncertainty is the fraught space where pseudo-prophetic practices like aura photography thrive. Still, who doesn’t want promises of self-knowledge, healing, and growth when we know what the problems are but change seems futile?
Last summer I visited Magic Jewelry’s two locations in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which specialize in feng shui, healing crystals, and aura photography. Display cases at both shops were crammed with crystals, stones, and various talismans related to Buddhism and other Chinese religions. In the window of the Elizabeth Street store is a classic feng shui protective talisman, a Later Heaven bagua. This octagonal mirror is a feng shui energy map, and it sits on a fabric background embroidered with flowers and dragons. On top of the bagua sit eight dark, ferocious stone frogs (thought to attract wealth) surrounding a clear crystal that to me looks like a smiling lion or goofy-faced deity. The object is labeled in Chinese as 財源滾滾—cáiyuángǔngǔn, which means “profits pouring in from all sides,” or, as my dictionary puts it, “raking in money.”
During my visit to the Centre Street location, I was led to a corner and told to place my hands on two blue boxes with metal hand-shaped contacts connected to another blue metal box. This was the AuraCamera 6000, a machine created and marketed by Guy Coggins in the 1970s. My first reader didn’t allow any photographs, claiming it was company policy. She was an older Chinese woman, and my mother is Taiwanese, so when she began my reading I stood up straighter, feeling the only judgment that can truly wound me: that of a slightly disapproving older Asian woman. She said I was intuitive and a thinker who tries to do the right thing. As the photograph developed, she complimented the brightness of my aura—in the photo I can barely be made out; the only visible part of my body is my face. A bright white light is right above my head. Above that is another sweep of light, like colored balls that shift from pink to green to blue.
She pulled out a chart that explained the chakras, a Sanskrit word that can be translated as “cycles.” These focal points of energy are believed to be spinning wheels that life energy flows through, similar to how qi flows through meridians. The chakras are located along the spine, from the crown chakra, at the top of the head, down through the brow chakra (a.k.a. the third eye), throat chakra, heart chakra, solar plexus chakra, navel chakra, and finally the root or base chakra. In the photo, an aqua light surrounds my heart chakra; below, the light around my soft belly is pinkish-purple. As she droned on, my mind strayed to articles I’d read about people sunning their yonis. I widened my eyes so my skepticism wasn’t too obvious.
When she asked if I’d been busy recently, I made a tight-lipped concession to that fact. For the upcoming academic year, I would be on sabbatical from the school library I manage, and I was making preparations for my absence. She pointed to my shoulder and said I had tightness on my right side, then touched my midsection in the photo and diagnosed inflammation in my stomach. She advised me to get more sleep, eat earlier, and eat less—all admonitions my mother makes, and which I mostly ignore.
The second time I visited, I got a similar reading, albeit with more effusive praise. “Wah, so pretty!” my reader exclaimed, upon looking at my photo. My aura this time was bright green with some yellow, instead of white and purplish. She said green means changes, a new job or project. “Also, green means money,” she said with a laugh, adding, “Money is easy come, easy go.”
Again I thought of my mother. After a recent move to the Bronx, my mom had babied her green “money plant,” cooing to it, “I know you miss your brothers and sisters in Brooklyn, but you can grow strong here.” Then she assured me the plant was now robust, “making money grow” for her and my father. A few weeks later, my father hit a Lotto jackpot for the second time this year. The first time he hit it, he’d played the first three numbers of my birthdate and used the money to fund my parents’ move. For the second winning jackpot, he played those same numbers backward. That money is going toward rent.
Once again, my reader suggested I sleep more, avoid eating late at night, and eat less. Then she tried to sell me some crystals as cures: black obsidian, citrine, and amethyst. She pointed out the “crystal chair”: a simple folding chair underneath what looked like a palanquin straight out of a Chinese historical drama. The wooden frame had a triangular brass bell roof, from which hung strings of clear crystals. She said many people come sit there to cleanse their energy. I left without giving it a try. I promised I’d be back to buy some crystals.
The technology of aura photography has its roots in a technique developed back in 1939 by Russian scientists Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, who generated phantasmal effects by connecting a high-voltage source to a photographic plate. Kirlian photography was seen for decades as a potential diagnostic tool for health, and perhaps this is what gives it the illusion of impartiality. Today, as you look at your aura, a reader dispenses personalized attention: confirming your desires, validating your ailments. Tangible proof comes in the form of the photograph.
Looking at all the green in my second photo, a wide band going from the right (the past) to the left (the future) gave me some hope for the prospects of my novel, which is on submission. Alas, the photos themselves were disappointing: in previous years, aura readers used a now discontinued film that had higher fidelity, and the photography purist in me longed for that era. Then I recalled that whenever I’d walked by Magic Jewelry in the past, I’d always seen pairs of people leaving with their new mementos. They had someone who could tell them what they looked like while the reader was explaining their aura. They had someone to share the experience with, not just the object in their hands.
For my third aura reading, Nadia, the same reader I’d had the second time, was joined by an assistant who offered me a cup of hot green tea. When the assistant sat me down, she asked in Chinese if I speak Chinese. I said, “Yidian dian,” which means “a little bit” in Mandarin, but when I say it, it means “I am greatly saddened and ashamed that I no longer do.”
Nadia has been reading auras for thirty years and is from Taiwan, near my mother’s hometown. Once she learned of our shared heritage, she was just as solicitous as the last time, but less impersonal. She said this third photo was very different from my first two. My colors were more indigo and purple, and the image was sharper, meaning I was more at peace, while still being sensitive to other people’s perceptions. She said I treat people with kindness but sometimes I put distance between myself and others to give myself space. When she asked if that was correct, I didn’t want to admit how apt it was. She told me not to overthink things and to go with my first instincts. She didn’t tell me to eat less, or eat earlier, but again she said I should sleep more.
After my reading I asked about the crystal chair, and she invited me to sit in it. She told me to place my left hand on the large, clear crystal sphere and my right hand on the jagged black crystal, and then let their energy wash over me. I sat in the crystal chair while Nadia and her assistant attended to two other customers. While observing the room, I kept a private mantra going in my head about selling my book and maintaining stability in my relationship. The jagged crystal dug into my hand. I felt at peace, but between the scent of incense and all the wooden furniture around me, I thought the sense of peace wasn’t really about my hopeful mantra and the energy crystals, but more about the fact that the shop resembled my Taiwanese grandmother’s living room. It was neat but cluttered. To my right, next to the crystal chair, was a packaged hot oat drink with goji berries and a red bag of paper cups; to my left were Amway boxes with handwritten labels in Chinese. I watched the assistant help a thirtysomething woman carefully select beads for a bracelet. The woman’s left hand was deformed. The other customer was a round-faced older woman with impeccable makeup and a confident smile. She was having a necklace restrung, and Nadia supplemented her passable Cantonese with “Okay-lah?,” which in Cantonese has multiple intonations with varying meanings. I wanted to stay awhile longer, but soon Nadia asked if I was paying with cash or card.
Back in May, a few months before my first aura photo, I had stood in line at the annual Passport to Taiwan Festival in New York’s Union Square to ask Mazu, Goddess of the Sea, if I would sell my novel. I appreciated the curtness with which the temple intermediary declared her answer, a brisk shake of the head: No. This shook me out of my impatience with the process, and I reassured myself that divination wasn’t real. But when I walked into Magic Jewelry, the part of me susceptible to magical thinking hoped for the best. We all want someone to tell us that our dreams can still come true.
