New York Mediums & The Law

New York classifies fortune-telling as a class B misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment. Yet, New York is littered with psychics, mediums and more. How does one reconcile the two?

Dressed in a sharp black-leather jacket and raven-colored pants, Marina Margulis was seated comfortably on a couch at the centre of her 16th floor office by Central Park West. Light streamed through the wall of white-framed windows to her left, as she brushed her side-swept bangs away from her eyes and back into her violet bob-cut.

While her 6-year-old chow-chow, Loki, scurried across the wooden floor of the apartment to skeptically sniff the stranger in the seat opposite his owner, Margulis placed a pair of sharp-edged, metallic blue spectacles on her nose. With six corners on each lens, the trapezoidal contraption looked like something out of a science fiction novel used to see that which is unseeable.

Margulis’ slender brown brows furrowed as she scrutinized the diary she held in her hand. Her high-sculpted cheekbones rose to make way for her words. “There’s a documentary on Netflix,” she said, continuing, “it’s a four or three part series about mediumship.”

The Russian-born, Brooklyn-raised Margulis, who is able to converse with the spirit world herself, explained that there are three categories of professionals in her field: the first kind are legitimate practitioners of mediumship, the second are fortune-tellers looking to scam passersby and the third are people who might genuinely think they are connecting the physical world with the spiritual one, but seem a little bit ‘out there’, in her opinion. Flipping through her notes about the Netflix documentary, Margulis said “there was one [medium] where I was like…I’m not buyin’ it!”

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More than half of the American population believes in psychics, astrology, reincarnation, or the existence of spiritual energy in objects, yet the right to practice any of the above is withheld in states across the country. For instance, New York classifies fortune-telling as a class B misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment.

Despite that, Marina Margulis, who goes by the title The New York Medium, has a robust digital presence, having given interviews, held classes and written articles about her work. To stay in compliance with New York State law, she puts a disclaimer on her website saying ‘all readings are for entertainment purposes only’.

“I guess we’re not legitimate in the eyes of the state of New York,” said Margulis.

The medium does admit that she doesn’t believe in fortune-telling. “If there were [such a thing]…don’t you think…somebody would mention 2020?” she exclaimed, rushing to clarify, “I’m not a psychic…I’m a medium.”

Psychics claim to see the future, but The New York Medium is clairaudient, which means she can hear the voices of her clients’ relatives, friends and acquaintances. She also reads tarot and shares with her clients what the cards are guiding them to do. “We have free will,” she said, “I can give you guidance, it’s up to you to take [it].”

Margulis was not always able to read tarot and talk to those who have passed. She initially worked in corporate America and then started a matchmaking company called New York Socials.

“I woke up one day and there were people in my head,” she said. She tells the story of how during a massage, she envisioned an older man walking her through a small western town talking to her about a woman named Carol. Margulis later recognized Carol as her masseuse, and this experience brought her to the realization that she was a connector between two worlds: the physical and the spiritual.

As a woman who prides herself on being logical and one who has spent much of her life working in finance and entrepreneurship, her first reaction was, “I’m crazy.” Her husband was in a similar boat, asking her in disbelief if she talks to dead people. Confusion turned to annoyance and a desire to make the voices stop. “If I’m sitting at the opera, I want to hear the singers and not somebody’s grandmother in my ear,” Margulis joked.

The former matchmaker spent two years reading books, including biographies and memoirs of mediums. She struggled with giving herself labels typically associated with the powers she had, because she couldn’t relate to being born with the ability to connect two realms. “Who am I?…I just have voices in my head,” she would think. It took a while to make sense of her skills, especially as she pursued two full-time jobs.

Eventually, as more and more people came to her for readings, with limited time and energy she decided to make a choice about her career. “You cannot teach [mediumship]… if this is something that was given to me…I needed to use it to help people.”

Margulis then began to see her abilities as a path to closure for those who have lost loved ones. Her clients typically look to reunite with deceased relatives but every now-and-again she does encounter the skeptic who simply wants to prove her wrong. “I had two clients who specifically told me they came in to test me,” she said, questioning why anyone would pay upwards of $250/hour for that.

Then there are the clients who ask her to connect with their cat, read apartments and most commonly, request for a curse to be removed. Emphasizing how ridiculous the idea sounds, Margulis exclaimed,“there’s no such thing as curses…you’re just making stupid decisions!”

The New York Medium is also vexed by the stereotypes around her profession. She doesn’t need to burn incense or have crystals to conduct a reading, she says, expanding, “if I wear thick beads and a babushka would that make me any better qualified? No!”

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Twenty-nine-year-old Alicia Munian, who is a medium and Oracle card reader in New York State, grew up surrounded by people skeptical of her abilities. Her journey coming to terms with her powers has brought her to emphasize the importance of opening oneself up to different possibilities. “We live in a mysterious world…so it’s important to not limit yourself to explanations for what could be.”

“[I’m a] marketing professional by day, and psychic by night!” she joked, calling in from her home in Long Island with a cheery voice to match the froly-colored walls of her brightly-lit room. From her golden bamboo-textured hoops to her perfectly winged eyeliner, you could tell Munian had experience with building a brand. Promoting her practice through Instagram, a self-designed website and word-of-mouth, Munian has been able to build an international audience for herself with clients from India, Croatia, Turkey and South Africa to name a few. But she wasn’t always as open about her powers.

Cloaked in a black top with a long, spoked-sun pendant hanging from her neck, she described going into a depression as she tried to grapple with family issues alongside her ability to see figures and hear voices from age 4 or 5. Her skills ran in the family, which was among the reasons her mother hoped she would ignore the signs of being psychic. “I was interacting with the world in a deeper way and as I continued to get older, I started looking into stuff online by myself.”

Munian’s breakthrough moment came when she attended a psychic’s event and was asked by the speaker if she had ever given readings. “I told her how I’ve been experiencing things my whole life…and she invited me to take part in her class.” Munian quickly became a star student, but as she started to share her knowledge with the world, the relationships she’d built over the years suffered. “I ended up losing a lot of friends, but I also ended up gaining a lot [of friends and followers]…who did believe in me and …who were empowered by my message.”

New York State continues to be one such skeptics of psychic mediumship, but both Munian and Munian plan to continue on their journeys as they emphasize the importance of their role in helping the clients they meets to the best of their abilities. “As long as my conscience is clear that I did everything I could, the rest is up to [the client],” says Margulis.

Commenting on the plethora of belief systems out there, mediumship included, Munian concludes, “it’s about accepting other people…giving people the right to believe what they want to believe.”