Day I was Mystic Trevor, but I didn’t foresee the downsides!

BACK in the early 1970s, as a teenager, I was a member of Mount Crozier Tennis Club in Cobh.

It was a small club with three courts, but a large group of us spent most of our time there during the summer holidays. When we weren’t playing tennis, we were hanging out together and having fun.

It was a place where teenage love blossomed, and hearts were broken, but at the end of the day it was the friendships that mattered. There was never an ounce of trouble in that place.

It was long before mobile phones, but we had no need to be calling anyone. When we wanted to meet up with friends, we just headed to Mt Crozier, and you could be guaranteed someone would be there.

There were no bags of cans or drugs to be found. The only vice belonged to the few who smoked cigarettes. Looking back on it, it was innocent fun.

One summer, a group of us decided to do a fund-raiser for the club. It was going to be an open day. I can’t remember what we were going to offer in the line of entertainment, but I do remember some genius suggested that we should engage a fortune- teller for the craic.

I’m not sure how it happened exactly, but I became the mystic for the day.

I have no idea why I went along with it, but I ended up wearing some ridiculous clothes, including a head scarf which was wrapped around me like a veil, and some make-up. A cross between Hilda Ogden and Dame Edna Everage.

The readings took place in a small changing room in the clubhouse that was in darkness to protect the anonymity of the mystic. I can still hear some of the gang sniggering as they huddled outside the little window trying to hear my prophesies.

It was meant to be a bit of fun for the kids, and all went well until an elderly lady wandered in and wanted her future told. This was a real person, not a child. Panic set in.

I waffled on for a bit, and I thought I was doing OK until I mentioned something about her husband. When she told me her husband was dead, I knew I was in bother.

I don’t remember much after that, apart from being consumed with guilt and resigning my position as the resident mystic with immediate effect.

I’m sure that woman wasn’t as old as she appeared to my teenage mind, and maybe she was having a joke at my expense too. She probably got a bigger laugh from the experience than we did.

At any rate, I’m glad that finished my experiment with mysticism because it could have landed me in hot water with The Vatican if I was still practising.

According to The Times UK, The Vatican has launched a task force to tackle the rising number of mystics who claim to communicate with the Virgin Mary, including a woman with hundreds of followers near Rome who says her statue of the saint can multiply plates of pizza.

Claiming that it wanted to help believers who “can easily be fooled”, the Vatican said thousands of people had claimed to have “a private relationship with the Madonna” in Italy in recent decades, while only a handful were recognised as genuine by the church.

They claimed the rising army of Madonna mystics needed to be challenged because they “cause confusion, promote apocalyptic scenarios and even make accusations against the Pope and the church”.

The Vatican began their initiative on the day that Gisella Cardia, 53, went into her monthly trance on a hilltop at Trevignano near Rome, in front of a statue of the Madonna that she claims sheds tears of blood.

Watched by about 250 devotees, she jotted down advice and predictions the the Madonna supposedly passed to her during her trance, before reading them out.

Cardia, who neglected to mention that she has a conviction for fraudulent bankruptcy in her native Sicily, boasted she witnessed the inexplicable multiplication of pizza and gnocchi portions prepared for her followers.

Cardia has been ordered by the mayor to remove benches, a marquee and the statue of the Madonna, which were set up without permission. It has become a pilgrimage hub since six children said they saw visions of Mary in 1981.

The Vatican is determined to avoid Catholicism being hijacked by possible fraudsters.

So, maybe all isn’t what it appears to be in the mystic world.

Many people have faith in fortune-tellers and astrology and some like to read their horoscopes, but others would say it’s just a load of hocus pocus.

It’s big business in America though. Four in 10 U.S. adults believe in psychics, according to polling by the Pew Research Center, and there are nearly 94,000 psychic businesses nationwide, with an estimated revenue of $2 billion a year.

To each his own, I say, but Steve Finan, who previously wrote horoscopes for a newspaper, has poured cold water on the predictions.

Writing in The Courier, he said, “Don’t believe your horoscope - I’ve written enough of them to know it’s all nonsense.”

He says those horoscopes we see every day are just a but of fun, and his advice is to have a giggle but don’t make any life-changing decisions on the back of them.

Predictions for the next 12 months based on the alignment of the stars are a load of rubbish, according to Mr Finan. It is a pseudoscience, he says.

Most newspapers print horoscopes every day, and there is little wrong with that. It’s a bit of fun, something to have a laugh with during your coffee break, and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

As someone with experience of the mystic world, I second that.