Qué será, será. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Qué será, será.

But wait! I really want to know my destiny. And I’m not alone. Throughout the ages man has looked for ways to learn what the future holds.

The Romans were particularly curious. In ancient Rome the Emperor Valens employed alectryomancy, which is the practice of using chickens to read the future, to learn who might be trying to overthrow him. Under this method, a hungry bird was placed amid piles of grain with each pile representing a letter. Names of his enemies were then spelled out as the chicken pecked at the piles. It was like a living Ouija board with feathers. Another means of predicting the future used by the Romans was haruspicy, which is a way of learning the future by studying an animal’s entrails after it is sacrificed.

These practices have since fallen by the wayside as chickens are notoriously bad spellers and PETA had issues with the killing of animals to study their guts. So today we rely on psychics to predict our fate. The American Federation of Certified Psychics and Mediums estimates that there are over 45,000 psychics in the U.S. and Europe and they do a brisk business. In America, about one in seven adults visits a fortune teller each year. Interestingly, women are twice as likely as men to visit one. By the way, it is estimated that 50 % of women ask their psychic to put a spell or curse on somebody compared to only 3% of........

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