The Cost of Photographing Your Aura

Auras are “the luminous color fields many psychics and spiritualists believe surround all people and things, illuminating their moods, health, preoccupations, and future,” and Katie Heaney recently paid someone $21.67 to take a photo of her aura and wrote about it for her latest column at Pacific Standard:

My aura is photographed on 7 p.m. on a Friday night after a week I would not consider great. The place I go is a tiny shop called Magic Jewelry. Crystals fill glass display cases around the room, and three young Chinese women sit over them, talking and eating pizza. A fourth woman, nearest to me, sets up the camera and tells me to sit on a wooden stool in front of a black curtain. She gestures for me to place each of my hands on metal handprints attached to surfaces on either side of me, which I do without question, which makes me worry about my qualifications as a spy — not that anyone’s asked.

Within a few minutes I’m holding a sealed Polaroid aura photograph. For reasons unknown, I have to take my picture to a second location, also called “Magic Jewelry,” a few blocks away, for the reading itself. Again, I did not ask why.

Of course, this is all very suspect — people profit by selling stones and talismans to help you “protect” your aura. Who knows though, maybe the most successful people in this world all have the best auras.

Photo: Surian Susay

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