Three visits to Magic Jewelry, a small shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where spectral photographs reveal something more than aura color.
Today we live in the Great Vibes epoch. Inherent yet ephemeral, vibes are difficult to measure. They’re the perfect concept for a period when “if you know, you know” is answer enough. Uncertainty is the fraught space where pseudo-prophetic practices like aura photography thrive. Still, who doesn’t want promises of self-knowledge, healing, and growth when we know what the problems are but change seems futile?
Last summer I visited Magic Jewelry’s two locations in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which specialize in feng shui, healing crystals, and aura photography. Display cases at both shops were crammed with crystals, stones, and various talismans related to Buddhism and other Chinese religions. In the window of the Elizabeth Street store is a classic feng shui protective talisman, a Later Heaven bagua. This octagonal mirror is a feng shui energy map, and it sits on a fabric background embroidered with flowers and dragons. On top of the bagua sit eight dark, ferocious stone frogs (thought to attract wealth) surrounding a clear crystal that to me looks like a smiling lion or goofy-faced deity. The object is labeled in Chinese as 財源滾滾—cáiyuángǔngǔn, which means “profits pouring in from all sides,” or, as my dictionary puts it, “raking in money.”
During my visit to the Centre Street location, I was led to a corner and told to place my hands on two blue boxes with metal hand-shaped contacts connected to another blue metal box. This was the AuraCamera 6000, a machine created and marketed by Guy Coggins in the 1970s. My first reader didn’t allow any photographs, claiming it was company policy. She was an older Chinese woman, and my mother is Taiwanese, so when she began my reading I stood up straighter, feeling the only judgment that can truly wound me: that of a slightly disapproving older Asian woman. She said I was intuitive and a thinker who tries to do the right thing. As the photograph developed, she complimented the brightness of my aura—in the photo I can barely be made out; the only visible part of my body is my face. A bright white light is right above my head. Above that is another sweep of light, like colored balls that shift from pink to green to blue.
She pulled out a chart that explained the chakras, a Sanskrit word that can be translated as “cycles.” These focal points of energy are believed to be spinning wheels that life energy flows through, similar to how qi flows through meridians. The chakras are located along the spine, from the crown chakra, at the top of the head, down through the brow chakra (a.k.a. the third eye), throat chakra, heart chakra, solar plexus chakra, navel chakra, and finally the root or base chakra. In the photo, an aqua light surrounds my heart chakra; below, the light around my soft belly is pinkish-purple. As she droned on, my mind strayed to articles I’d read about people sunning their yonis. I widened my eyes so my skepticism wasn’t too obvious.
When she asked if I’d been busy recently, I made a tight-lipped concession to that fact. For the upcoming academic year, I would be on sabbatical from the school library I manage, and I was making preparations for my absence. She pointed to my shoulder and said I had tightness on my right side, then touched my midsection in the photo and diagnosed inflammation in my stomach. She advised me to get more sleep, eat earlier, and eat less—all admonitions my mother makes, and which I mostly ignore.