Oh geez... what to say, what to say.....
I started accidentally and have only read "professionally" years ago on a topless beach while I waited for my girlfriend to get out of work and join me (North Lido Beach, Sarasota, Florida). I had been reading cards since I was 11, and now I was about 23 and had a damn fine knack for looking at the Celtic Cross and just
knowing what was going on in front of me. Those were the days: now I'm thinking too damn much. I think most here would call it "speed reading" or "guerilla reading" and I was very, very good (no kidding)..... I'd look over the cards and something like a story would come to me...all based on Eden Gray's simple card definitions; and I summed up what I saw into just 3-6 short sentences. The cards always told me something worthwhile.
Anyway, I was just reading for myself one day and a couple of girls saw the cards and asked me to read for them. Like I'm going to say "no" (ahem).
The reading was fine, I knew what I saw, they seemed to be impressed, and they trotted back to their blanket for money and insisted on paying me.... ok, fine
. Other people saw this, and that first day I did maybe six readings.... mostly for free; I never asked for money. I was promptly arrested by the beach police for "Fortune Telling without a license". After much heated discussion and a serious lambasting to the boys in blue from my girlfriend (who had just arrived), I was released on account of the fact that I wasn't "charging" for it.
I had no intention of getting licensed, and my total disrespect for authority led me to buy one of those HUGE brandy snifters that some people put fish in. The next week I did the same thing - except I had a fish bowl in front of me with $5 of my own money in it (three one dollar bills, loose change, and some pretty rocks and shells), and I read for anyone. If people asked if I charged, I said, "it is bad luck to not pay the fortune teller... but I accept trinkets, shells, rocks, whatever you want to give me".
I did it for 3 years and got quite a following. The beach police loathed me; and I loved every second of it (for several hopefully obvious reasons), and it paid for the dinners/dancing that said girlfriend loved and we'd had a hard time actually affording.
Oh wait... what was the original question...? Oh yeah, "how did I know".... easy - when people started paying me without me asking or advertising - and actually
insisting on forking over cash. Um sorry. Got busy reminiscing....
Michael