A few years ago, Sean Foley started to notice something unusual. He is the chief marketing officer at Ingenio, a tech company that specialises in online spiritual guidance. The company had recently acquired two competitor websites for live psychic video chats, where users could organise video calls with psychic advisors with names like ‘Clairvoyant Sabrina’ for $10.99 a minute. The two sites – called Purple Ocean and Purple Garden – are among the few sites owned by Ingenio that track the gender of their users, and Foley noticed that they were attracting more and more men.
For a long time, astrology and other psychic services have been considered largely female pursuits – the preserve of women’s magazines, and sparkly apps in varying shades of pink. But the industry has been revolutionised by the internet and social media, and now a small but growing number of men are taking an interest in astrology, clairvoyance and other esoteric practices.