Sheila Lyons reveals the secrets of palmistry in

her new book.

Forget sitting around a table in a low-lit room as a woman dressed in gypsy garb looks at a crystal ball and shakes her head.

The 21st-century palm reader is all about revealing personalities and being the life of the party.

“Psychic entertainer” Sheila Lyon’s mission is to dispel the fortune-telling stereotypes and have people understand that reading heart lines and life lines is a type of character analysis, not an omen of love gone wrong and shortened lives.

“We create our own destinies,” said Lyon, who grew up in the Northwest and lives on Bainbridge.

“We want people to know that if they have a short life line they may live to be 90. It’s the intensity of life that counts, not the length of the line.”

“My style of fortune telling is never to sit at a table,” Lyon said. “I walk around and talk to groups,” putting them at ease with humor and then injecting insights into their lives via their palms, fingers and thumbs.

Lyon’s interest in spiritualism began when she was 4 years old. As she got older, she used fortune telling as a way to fit in with other children. She did Ouija boards – until they started spiraling out of control, and had to be burned – and read everything she could about cultures and anthropology, which she continues to study.

“I learned if you’re smart and elusive, you have power,” she said.

While attending a fashion institute in New York, Lyon read her friends’ fortunes.

After breaking her leg on a ski trip, she moved to Seattle and changed direction.

Armed with the belief that “with a marketing degree you can do anything,” Lyon opened a school in Ballard. After a few years, when she needed another challenge, she moved into the political arena and worked for a congressman.

She hired magician Darryl Beckmann for a fund-raiser, and they merged professionally and personally.

They took their magic act, complete with animals and costumes, on the road, performing throughout the Northwest, Idaho and Montana.

Having an act causes more pressure, Lyon discovered.

She decided to follow the path of the great Claude Alexander Conlin, the turbaned “Man Who Knows,” who started out as an illusionist and became what is said to be the highest paid entertainer in the field of magic, having cast aside his props in favor of showmanship.

“This led me to the fortune-telling business big time,” Lyon said. “I figured I can walk into a room without props and make a lot of money.”

Lyon considers herself a serious person who had to market herself to make this venture work.

In addition to corporate appearances, Lyon leads Pike Place Market “ghost tours” in the winter and does magic tricks at the Pike Place Magic Shop she owns with Beckmann.

She has appeared on television on the Discovery channel, the Travel Channel, in various local and national publications and on radio programs.

Into the mind

Lyon’s extrasensory abilities are extensive, from drawing a picture of what someone is thinking to finding a quarter that has been hidden in a room.

She can, she says, read anything: tea leaves, regular playing cards, dog paws and even chocolate, her latest endeavor, which may land her on the Food Channel next year.

The chocolate connection came about when she was asked what she could do for a Valentine’s Day event.

“I flippantly said, ‘Oh, I can read chocolates,’” she said.

The person who asked called back six months later to see if she would do it and Lyon promptly consulted her books and bought boxes of candy.

She found, though, that all it took was sitting at a table and asking someone what kind of chocolate they prefer, what shape candy they would choose and what filling they’re looking for.

Lyon reads positive Medicine and Zen Tarot cards, which are about cycles and totems, or animals.

As she has done for about three years, Lyon entertains the “Hour of Indulgence” wine crowd at Seattle’s Hotel Monaco on Wednesdays and Saturdays with palm readings, stories or magic tricks.

One night, a woman told Lyon her company wanted to write a book on palm reading, and Lyon agreed that was a good idea. The woman was a senior editor for Penguin Books and – voilà! – “Palms Up! A Handy Guide to 21st-Century Palmistry” was born.

Written by Lyon and fellow psychic entertainer Mark Sherman, “Palms Up!” is no medieval tome. Its frothy, reader-friendly language and simple graphics are designed to enable first-timers to understand the meaning of hands, from the lines on a palm to the length of the fingers to the curve of the thumbs.

Sherman’s introduction to palmistry occurred when he was a child visiting Jackson Square in New Orleans. A self-described Navy brat, he learned how to read playing cards from his grandmother and read cards for other children, as well as his own palm.

“This was my first experience trying to use intuition and divination,” Sherman said.

A longtime student and lecturer of palmistry, he is particularly interested in the Big Easy version of the art. He plays electric accordion in the zydeco band the KingBees of the Bayou, which incorporates straitjackets and fire-eating into its Mardi Gras-style act, and is a horror novelist. Sherman has taught technical communications at Western Washington University for 16 years.

Together, Lyon and Sherman have performed palmistry for more than two decades. They believe palm reading gives people the change to reinforce their intuitive thinking about their “life, attitudes, potentials and possibilities.”

“If you start with fun, it can lead to intuition,” Sherman said. “We call it ‘lightning cognition.’ It gets you to trust your intuition and it’s an excuse to begin trusting yourself.

“These are talents we all possess. We can track our parents’ gazes when we’re babies.”

The book helps people think outside the box, he said, adding, “It’s sort of a shortcut to using their intuition as a tool in some kind of organized way.”

Whether a in group of five or 500, Lyon and Sherman keep palm reading light and interactive. Their book offers tips on how to handle job interviews and new relationships without going the good/bad route. And, it’s a great ice-breaker at parties.

Whether one believes this wholeheartedly or not, the point is it makes people think and better connect with others, the authors say. And it can help you find out if you’re compatible with someone who catches your eye.

“Palm reading should be both fun and serious. What we’re doing is entertainment, but you can take palmistry as far as you want,” Sherman said.

“It’s a way to start talking about things…respecting the fact that all of us have very different takes on this world.”

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Inside the lines

Sheila Lyon and Mark Sherman, authors of “Palms Up! A Handy Guide to 21st Century Palmistry,” will appear at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 11 at Eagle Harbor Book Co. The authors will discuss their book, read palms for members of the audience, answer questions and sign books at this free event. For information, call the bookstore at 842-5332.