Psychics have been around for centuries; most of the time, free psychic readings are given out by psychics as a means of luring customers in for another, longer, “better,” paid session. Psychics can generally be quickly and easily proven to be little more than actors pretending to fulfill a role for their customers, and the free psychic readings they offer are just a way to get those customers interested in the first place. People who would never otherwise choose to engage in a psychic consultation can be lured in by the promise of free psychic readings.

So what’s wrong with giving out such free psychic readings? After all, it’s not as if customers are being forced to come to the psychic, and these are free psychic readings. Furthermore, if the free psychic readings lead to people feeling better about themselves or the world around them, then those reading would seem to be worthwhile somewhat.

There is something to the above argument, that any kind of comfort that can be gained from free psychic readings should not be frowned upon; only when people begin paying exorbitant sums of money in the search for the same kind of comfort should something be done about the situation. There is, however, another argument to be made, under which the kind of comfort being offered by free psychic readings is false and empty, and therefore should be avoided simply because of the way in which it manipulates you. Most free psychic readings are based on simplistic facts and generalizations, designed to allow you to fill in the blanks left by the vague statements so that you feel that these are actually personalized statements, directly about yourself. In other words, the psychic is playing off of your own emotions and desire for the readings to be true, in order to lure you into paying money. This is a technique called cold reading, and it is often used in free psychic readings.

Belief in the ability of psychics to genuinely perform psychic readings that are true and complete is perhaps the most dangerous consequence of attending too many free psychic readings. After all, generally speaking, psychics can be proven false with ease, unless they are making such general statements that they cannot be proven either true or false. Essentially, a psychic’s statements will either be falsifiable, in which case they can be disproved, or they will be non-falsifiable statements that require the customer’s interpretation to have any meaning. Belief in the truthfulness of these non-falsifiable statements is the most unfortunate consequence of attending free psychic readings.

Regardless, however, it is the decision of every person whether or not he or she wants to partake in free psychic readings. After all, who knows? The psychic might, this time,

Montag and Chase had worked together with Chase using his psychic expertise as Montag’s “intuitive healer” after she had 10 plastic surgeries in one day. Apparently, it took only a month of such work for Montag to decide that she’d rather have the psychic in the managerial position than her Pratt, who’d been in the position for 5 years. Of course, when People magazine attempted to reach Chase for a comment, he claimed that he had no knowledge of a change in his business relationship with Montag. So much for that psychic thing.

Montag’s relationship with a psychic is by no means rare for celebrities; people with that much money have often been known to seek out aid and advice from what are generally considered less than reputable sources, such as psychics. After all, if they have the money to burn and there is a chance that the psychic will be correct in his or her predictions, it would seem to be worth it to spend the money. Psychic consultations, then, are not altogether unheard of for celebrities. But putting a psychic into a business role seems like a rather different issue entirely.

If a psychic genuinely doe shave psychic skills, and he is able to put those skills to use as a business person, then yes, it would seem like a particularly good deal to put a psychic into such a position. But the faultiness of psychics, in general, seems to make putting them into such a position problematic, to say the least. Psychics seem to have fairly fluctuating success rates, and as a result, using a psychic as a business consultant doesn’t seem to be the brightest move. Psychics are probably best thought of as personal consultants; if nothing else, a psychic is someone whom you can talk to, even for a little bit, someone with whom you can express yourself a bit. Heidi Montag’s decision to turn her psychic, who doesn’t seem to have even filled the traditional predictive role of the psychic, but instead played the part of a psychic healer, seems more than a little bit hasty, as does her decision to become her own manager. After all, if she first chose to replace her husband, who clearly had done an alright job with her career for five years, with a psychic whom she fired a week later, then it would seem that she should be putting the important decisions of her career from the business perspective into the hands of someone with a better understanding of those decisions. But then again, Heidi Montag had ten plastic surgeries in a single day, another decision that seems somewhat poor. Perhaps she should have had a psychic then, to tell her how much it was going to hurt her. Maybe then, she could have avoided this entire mess.

Freepsychicnetwork.com
This website is the first that pops up on Google, and it has a nice long set of predictions for 2010. Some of them obviously we can’t talk about yet, but some of them we can. In the offered free psychic reading for the year of 2010, the psychic predicts such things as: “I see a sharp thrust propelling us forward, into the New Year. The thrusts crescendo energizes the first several months of the year. In my psychic vision, I see the areas of macroeconomics, employment, personal finance, education, and relationships benefiting heavily during this period.”

So, was there a sharp thrust propelling us forward into the New Year? Can the free psychic readings from this site be trusted? Well, doing a bit of research, it would appear…not. Looking at a talk between Ray Suarez of PBS and a number of financial commentators, including David Wessel, the economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, the New Year did not start off with a “sharp thrust.” It started off with a vague, yet growing sense of hope for the future, but with the knowledge that it would take the economy a long time to recover. The psychic prediction that there would be such a strong sharp thrust proved entirely off-base, then. One could probably do better than to look here for a free psychic reading.

Moonwhisper.com
This website is the second on the Google search. It’s a nice looking site, but as you know, that doesn’t mean much when it comes to the accuracy and worth of a free psychic reading. The primary problem I see here is that most of the free psychic readings I can find on the website seem to be in the horoscope genre. The actual conversations with psychics are “free to start,” which likely means that it won’t take long for your free psychic reading to become something far more costly. You’re looking at a cost of $1.99 a minute, and $50 for an email with two questions. That’s a psychic reading that’s far from free.

On the horoscope front, it’s hard to believe that any of the horoscopes are particularly accurate considering that they are the same for all comers. The free psychic reading that you get from the horoscope pages is going to be the same free psychic reading that many, many others are receiving. The terms are vague and indeterminate, leading to a lot of room for interpretation; if you wanted to, you could probably reinterpret the horoscopes so that they mattered to you, personally, but it’s far more likely that you’d simply find them to be too vague for comfort. So, you probably won’t satisfy your search for a good psychic reading with these horoscopes.

As for some of the free oracles offered on the right side of the page, there’s a bit of fun to be had in checking them out. They are free, but the are also primarily programs, and lack the special, personal touch you might be looking for in a psychic reading. But they do include some interesting options, including a free online I Ching program. The I Ching of course is an oracle that comes from China. It’s quite ancient, and it uses 32 pairs of hexagrams to answer a question for you. The program will likely work for you as well as the actual sticks and coins might, so if you’re looking for a free psychic reading of the I Ching variety, you could do worse than look here.

Psychicearth.com
This site’s primarily available psychic readings seem to come from emailing the three women who provide them. The site features Nanci, who offers a service called “Sacred Garden Psychic;” Dipali, who offers “Astrology;” and Nicole, who offers “Tarot.” Each of them has a listing of questions that they’ve been asked, or with just general tips and comments in the case of Dipali. Assuming that it is free to email them and ask them a question, then it does seem like they may be a pretty good resource for a free psychic reading. After all, you’d have a more personalized response, and you’d likely get the level of interpretation on the results that you’d expect from a psychic reading. Beyond that, this website offers a number of other services, including a chat room, some horoscopes, and a dream guide for you to look up terms about your own dreams. They also offer a number of free oracle tools, including a coffee oracle.

The site is overall less filled with content than moonwhisper.com, but it seems to also have those three primary psychics available to give out psychic readings over the Internet, which is certainly better than moonwhisper.com, where you’d have to pay a significant sum of money for the same service.

Spiritnow.com
This site looks pretty nice, akin to moonwhisper.com in design. On the left side of the screen it offers up an immediate service labeled “Ask a Free Psychic Question,” and then includes a set of boxes for you to fill out with information. This seems to be a useful resource for those seeking a free psychic reading, as it is immediately available, and allows you to ask a specific question. There is also a contest listed at the top of the page for a free 1 hour psychic reading, which you can win. The website offers free daily horoscopes, as well as angel messages, and quizzes to find out how psychic you are.

In general, it seems like a fairly good resource if you’re looking for some psychic readings, or even if you’re looking for information on how you can perform elements of a psychic reading upon yourself or others. For instance, the dream interpretation guide seems useful for performing dream interpretation yourself. But in general, it appears to be lacking the personalized touch that the previous site bore. It also seems that as a result, the interpretations of a psychic reading that you get from this website are going to be either more vague, as they have to be more generalized, or they’re going to have a greater chance of being incorrect for you.

Lifepsychic.com
Lifepsychic.com opens up with a large banner proclaiming that you can have a free reading telling you whether or not your relationship is “passion or love.” The banner says that you get 5 minutes free, so it qualifies as a free psychic reading, although it is highly doubtful as to whether or not you will genuinely get a satisfactory psychic reading in only 5 minutes. Beyond that, it features a list of psychic reading services, but each of them is most decidedly not free. Each one lists a price ranging from $2 per minute to a full $10 per minute. You can talk live to each of these psychics, but you are unlikely to find a free psychic reading here. True, it seems that certain fees may be reduced if you choose to go to a psychic through this site, but the charges for a psychic reading from each psychic him or herself are not abated. The site also offers astrology and horoscopes, articles, and a blog, along with testimonials. All of these are nice features, but nothing particularly standout, or different.

Perhaps most useful, however, this site features a list of promotions, each of which might be valuable. Some of them offer 5 minutes free in a psychic reading; others offer cash back for every person you refer to LifePsychic.com. These are worth checking, just in case there’s a promotion that catches your eye. After all, a psychic reading is always better when it’s free.

That sums it up for the top five websites to show up on a Google search for free psychic readings. It’s entirely likely that there are more websites available, and there may be better ones out there. But there are so many that coming through them is very difficult. Much as it’s likely to be much costlier, it seems that perhaps the best route for someone looking for a good, solid psychic reading might be to look for an in person service, as many of these online services are likely to be fairly costly anyways, and impersonal to boot. But in the end, whatever your psychic reading needs, you can rest assured that the Internet is sure to provide something.