Jerik of Jackson Square
“When you go to Jackson Square, you have to have a palm reading with Jerik!”
Jackson Square is a park of name-dropping proportions, located in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and ‘protected’ from the nearby Mississippi River by hillock-like levees. Along the park is the Cabildo, the site of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and the grand St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest in the United States. From a distance, the view is faintly Disney, unlike the reputation.
The Cathedral features an enormous statue of Jesus Christ that casts an eerie rapturous shadow across the building at night. This ‘night miracle’ is apparently the most photographed scene in the area. Although the French Quarter was relatively unscathed by Hurricane Katrina, the long-suffering Jesus lost two fingers during the high winds. Jesus just keeps on sacrificing. According to folklore, He sacrificed His thumb and forefinger, single-handedly fending off the storm and redirecting the Hurricane before it hit the coastline.¹ Though Moses was clearly needed to part the sea…
“Before The Storm”, a euphemistic, wistful phrase uttered often in New Orleans, Jackson Square was a bustling tourist zone and a thriving mecca for some 200 artists, musicians and mystics. However, the latter were not always welcome. In 2003 a Parish Ordinance (yes, ‘Parish’ is the Louisianan equivalent of ‘County’) forced the psychics, astrologers and palm readers out of Jackson Square. Ostensibly, this was a measure to return New Orleans to its former glory, a haven for art and music. Rather than a display of skeptical zeal in this city of voodoo, hoodoo and juju, this was a fiscal ranking for those who held permits and paid taxes. At this time, Jackson Square had ‘deteriorated’ into a hovel of homelessness, (Southern) decadence, filth and crime. The Ordinance was viewed as an elitist beautification campaign for the wealthy residents of the ‘Beverly Hills on the Bayou’.
The Storm further depleted the ‘street culture’. Only a handful of artists remain today. Of the 50-100 mystics that once plied their trade in front of the Cathedral, only about 5-10 have returned. Jerik Daenarson is one of these psychic stalwarts.
‘Jerik – House of Scorpio’, as his sign proclaims, is the patriarch mystic of Jackson Square, and a palm reader with over 35 years experience. He operates his psychic stall, seven days a week, from dusk til midnight. Payment is by donation. Known to all of the locals, Jerik came highly recommended by my hosts, as part of the Nawlins’ experience (If Nawlins isn’t Strine, I don’t know what is! But forget your high school French, the innovative pronunciation there is a wonderful example of linguistic evolution).
It was a Saturday night. The Bourbon Street crowds were rowdy enough to terrify the most belligerent contingent of drunken Aussie yobbos at an Oktoberfest. It wasn’t Mardi Gras, but tourists hurled plastic beads at people from the hotels above, as intoxicated passers-by hurled back insults. The French Quarter is one of the few places in the US where drinking on the streets is permitted, as long as the drink is contained in a plastic cup. And so, the Quarter is crowded with tourists quaffing and spilling Hurricanes and Grenades.
I escaped to the renowned 24-hour Café du Monde, where the staple Café au Lait is blended with chicory (hearkening back to the blockade of the city during the Civil War, when the root was added to extend the coffee supplies). Their specialty is the lard-laden beignet, or ‘French doughnut’, a greasy instant-diabetes covered in an unfeasibly high mountain of icing sugar that carpets the floor of the café.
I arrived at the psychic promenade at 11pm. Sure enough, Jerik was there, resplendent in medieval jester-style garb. He was engaged in a group reading, but he paused and made eye contact, at which I nodded and he winked. The deal was sealed. At my turn, Jerik welcomed me like an old mate, and, in the way of those in the not-so Big Easy, he soon shared his Hurricane tale.
Jerik’s psychic powers weren’t sufficient to predict Katrina, “We’d been warned for many years, but we never thought it would actually happen”. Jerik is a long-term resident of New Orleans, and was reluctant to evacuate during the non-calm before the storm. Like many others, he assumed that the city would weather “just another storm” in the turbulent climate.
Jerik described the storm as a fearsome vigil in a perpetual night of darkness and howling winds. The aftermath brought new horrors of hunger, thirst, isolation, crime, death and destruction. In the rioting, looting, junta-like state that followed, Jerik spent twelve days and nights in his “besieged city”. He and his family were coerced to relocate temporarily to Knoxville, Tennessee. Others were forced out of their homes at gunpoint. Only a third of the former population have returned so far, and Jerik is one of those proud, resolute residents, infatuated with and forgiving of their hazardous home.
With his Southern charm and cultivated Californian accent, Jerik and I had a warm chinwag, as much as a palm reading. I was promised that my experience would not be a “Gypsy fortune telling”, but would be a bone fide palm reading, backed by “good science” and his many years of expertise. Palmistry (also known as Chiromancy or Hand Analysis) is the practice of interpreting the markings on the hands, palms and wrist, and providing predictions about a person’s past, present and future on the basis of those markings.
I need only speak to aid and abet a cold reading, but in his first ‘miss’, Jerik mistook me for being English. My mini-lecture on the not-so-subtle differences across Commonwealth accents provided him with some immediate and future fodder. “Show me the hand you write with. This is called your dominant hand.” I presented my right palm, fingers straight out and thumb splayed out in isolation. “Your hand formation shows that you are a very dominant person.” (I later attended a ghost tour in which my group made a pit stop by Jerik. He performed this very trick for the group, and this same ‘hand formation’ was presented as “Cantankerous. People see you as arrogant and argumentative. You’re an asshole!”). I resisted proving him right, and asked what other ‘hand formations’ might reveal. Apparently, resting the thumb straight alongside the hand would indicate a “team player”, while squishing the thumb onto the hand would suggest a “meek and mild” personality type.
Jerik lit up a cigarette and continued. Running a pen along my ‘heart line’, he told me that I am strong in personality, and strong in health. The heart line supposedly indicates literal and figurative issues related to the heart, i.e., aspects of love and health. I am also kind, sympathetic and generous (in donating?). There was good news in the idiosyncratic creases of my hand; I will always have good relationships, and good mental health. It was all good.
The ‘Line of Head’ is supposedly indicative of the subject’s intelligence, talent and affluence. My ‘head line’ reveals that I am both creative and analytical. Apparently, I am an excellent communicator, and also a great listener. In an interpretation that was probably directly motivated by my spiel about pronunciation, I was told that I would make a great teacher or professor. I love to learn, and I love to share what I learn.
In a quick pre-judgement day, my ‘Fate Line’ revealed that I will have great success and fame in my career, there will be no major traumas or terrible events, and I will make a major relocation in my life (Really? Never!). I have a “high fertility rate” and will have 2 or 3 kids (which was a nice hedge bet on the 2.5 average).
My ‘life line’ is thin, deep and long, indicating that I will live well into my 80s. I overheard other subjects being told that they too would ‘live well into their 80s’. We live in an aging population, but this was too uncanny. This stock gem was further repeated by a few local friends who had visited Jerik (including one in his 60s, suffering a terminal illness).
Was Jerik telling me what I wanted to hear, or did he truly have better vision than me in the dim light of the night? Anecdotally, Jerik’s reading contradicted two other palm readings that I have had previously (where I was respectively told that I would have 1. one child; and 2. that I would be childless). Jerik’s reading was very formulaic and rehearsed, with many stock phrases and jargon that must keep the tourists convinced. The ‘psychic code’, preventing the ‘disclosure’ of bad news, keeps the tourists happy (but who is to say a psychic can foretell bad news? Better to avoid than be inaccurate!). Overall, the reading was replete with generalisations, constituting a warm reading; and assumptions, constituting a cold reading.
One website unwittingly admits that palmistry is a pseudoscientific attempt at kinesics (the study of body movement, such as gestures), and therefore presents a cold reading:
A palmist usually greets their clients and watches to see how they use their hands.
Do they shake, ring their hands, fidget or when they place them on the table do they lay flat or hold them close and tight fisted at first? This can tell the palmist right away if their clients are shy, suspicious, or relaxed.²
This was borne out by my own experience, when Jerik introduced Heather, his “apprentice”. I shook her hand prompting her comment, “I like a woman with a strong handshake.” Did my “strong handshake” influence Jerik’s portrayal of me as a “dominant” person? In addition, interpreting the shape and appearance of the fingers and nails, and the texture of the hands as soft or rough, is part of a cold reading, leading to assumptions about the background and personality of the subject. For example, the subject who indulges in manicures might be labelled ‘vain’, while the male subject with rough hands might be perceived as a tradesperson.
Some proponents believe that palmistry is more ‘scientific’ than other paranormal practices, such as a psychic reading. Palm reading certainly appears to have ‘structure’, in that specific markings are meant to be invariably indicative of specific traits and events. However, there is subjectivity and ambiguity in any palm reading. It is one person’s subjective (often conflicting) interpretation of superficial features, using an unproven theory. Palmistry makes many obscure, irrelevant and untestable claims. For example, traditional palm reading contains elements of astrology, whereby different fingers and ‘mounts’ or bumps supposedly represent different planets. Whatever that means…
Using the shape, colours and appearance of the hand to identify personal characteristics is a form of physiognomy (i.e., judging character based on superficial appearances). So, are the lines on our hands specific signs, or inconsequential, random markings? Some aspects of appearance are certainly indicators of physical health or disease, such as white markings on the fingernails that can suggest a zinc deficiency. However, one web site claims that palmistry has practical applications for medicine, and functions as a diagnostic tool. It is claimed that there is a correlation between specific hand patterns and finger ratios to conditions including ADHD, Autism, Dementia, Dyslexia, Schizophrenia and Depression.³ The site offers many links to genuine medical publications but these are irrelevant to palmistry, which is divination, not diagnosis. A book by John Manning further suggests that digit ratio can reveal such characteristics as homosexual inclinations, musical aptitude and sporting prowess.4
During the reading and the tour, Jerik repeatedly spoke of a Duke University study in which he claims to have participated. The study reputedly revealed that two vivid lines below the hand, across the wrist, indicate that the subject is not predisposed to Parkinson’s disease. I could not find any reference to this particular study, so I contacted Tim Strauman, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. I received the following reply to my enquiry:
I’m aware of no such study. At one time there was a “research institute” called the Rhine Research Center at Duke (back in the 30s and 40s originally) that purported to study parapsychology. At some point Duke and the Rhine Institute parted ways, thankfully, but it may be that the story you heard originated from some Rhine study.
The Rhine Research Center (http://www.rhine.org/) still exists in Durham, but it is no longer connected with Duke University (although they make much of their former connection to the institution). During the 1930s, Joseph Rhine conducted experiments into ESP and other paranormal phenomena, using Zener cards and other paraphernalia. However, Rhine was later criticised for using poor experimental design and faulty statistical analysis.5 If Jerik referred to these early studies, it is impossible that he could have participated in them. It is plausible that such a study exists, perhaps through another department at Duke University or through the modern incarnation of the Rhine Research Center, but I could find no reference to this. In any case, the alleged study is again unrelated to the main aims of palmistry concerning personality, love, career and other social themes.
While there is no concrete or significant evidence to suggest that there is a connection between illness and hand markings, there is certainly no evidence to suggest that hand appearance is related to personality and can be used to predict future events. The lines on our hands are more likely creases formed by hand movement, rather than markings that predetermine our lives. Most palmists will admit that these lines change over the course of a lifetime, but this is often seized as an ad hoc hypothesis to explain the dynamic features of palmistry, to account for different readings over time. The site www.handanalysis.co.uk further claims that our lines are influenced by our behaviour:
Most prediction is based on the direction you are going in now. It is not set in stone - we all have free will to make choices and changes in our lives that will affect our future and alter our ‘fate’, and our lines will change accordingly.6
The site goes on to make a revealing observation that we can extrapolate to the entire practice:
Some people have several “marriage lines” (these days we would say “relationship lines”) but have never married or lived with anyone, or had only one marriage type relationship. Although many palmists still read these lines, (and sometimes get them right!), any prediction about children or marriage from the hand shouldn’t be taken too seriously, as very often it is not accurate.
Indeed, palmistry itself shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Where does this leave Jerik? As part of the street culture, Jerik and his mystical cronies are important to the tradition of Jackson Square. These mystics are as New Orleans as gumbo, and probably as paranormal too.
Footnotes:
1 Wikipedia. Retrieved July 7, 2007 from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Cathedral%2C_New_Orleans
2 Eagle Spirit Palmistry. Retrieved July 7, 2007 from:
www.eaglespiritministry.com/pd/sdc/sdc15.htm
3 Publications: Hands & Dermatoglyphics. Retrieved July 13, 2007 from:
http://www.dse.nl/~frvc/handresearch/publications.htm
4 Manning, J. T. (2002). Digit ratio: A pointer to fertility, behavior and health. NJ: Rutgers University Press.
5 Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Retrieved July 7, 2007 from:
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-206940
6 Hand Analysis. Retrieved July 13, 2007 from:
http://www.handanalysis.co.uk/faq.htm
Thanks to www.dragonseye.com for the photo of Jackson Square and www.astrologicallyspeaking.com for the palmistry chart.
Adapted from: Stollznow, K. 2007. The Palm Reader of New Orleans. The Skeptic. Vol.27, No.3. Australian Skeptics. pp,8-11.
