At her elementary school carnival.

“It was the sixties and (the new age practice) was everywhere,” she said. “I became very interested and studied palmistry and tarot intently as a child. I’d do school carnivals and dress up and do palmistry and astrology. I had these really cool outfits. It was a blast.”

Botke-Coe no longer wears paisley saris or bold headbands as the co-owner of Triple Goddess New Age Bookstore, 2142 Hamilton Road., in Okemos. But she has more passion and flair for the new age practices than ever before.

Not a “psychic” stereotype

Botke-Coe’s cozy cove in Okemos allows her to perform psychic and tarot readings, as well as sell a plethora of books and new age materials with her husband, co-owner Alan Coe. In some places, the floor makes an eerie creaking noise, and on your right you can find the book, “Wicked Voodoo Sex,” two shelves away from, “The Prophecies of Nostradamus.” There’s a corner of children’s coloring books featuring pale dragons and fairies, which sit adjacent to three walls of herbs and dried flowers. There’s the dream pillow herbs, the Arabic gum powder and, of course, patchouli, the timeless scent of the eccentric crowd.

Although she knows the best herb to heal a cough and the aromas that will calm your soul, Botke-Coe doesn’t call herself a psychic.

“I like to think of everyone as being intuitive psychic, so I don’t think I have cornered only that,” she said.

Botke-Coe’s training is in tarot cards, herbs, astrology and aromatherapy, so she’s not “classically” considered a psychic.

“A psychic doesn’t even need a tool, although the cards, they are my tool,” she said. “My job is to help people to sort of awaken their intuition to help them to see the energies, the possibilities, or problem-solve using both logic and intuition.”

Chemistry or art history?

Although the practices that Botke-Coe praises are considered “new age,” she said they’re actually very old and fluctuate in popularity throughout history. While some people view the psychic methods as skeptical, Botke-Coe said it should appeal especially to college students.

“I think in college, there’s a lot of questions about self-knowledge and self-esteem and working,” she said. “I think you’ll know a little bit better about career choices. Certainly about love.”

Botke-Coe emphasizes love is important to address as a college student.

“What kind of person are you attracted to and why?” she said.

Psychic or tarot readings for students also helps to determine majors, Botke-Coe said.

“It’s perfect for every age but in particular when you’re really trying to find your direction in life,” she said. “Why not use intuition to help you?”

It’s in the stars

While Botke-Coe reads cards in a back room, Coe mans the front desk. The two met as classmates at Eastern High School in Lansing when Botke-Coe was dating another man.

The two have been together since 1983 and married in 2001, although they both have concerns with each other’s astrological sign.

“She’s a Gemini, so it’s like being married to seven different women in one day,” Coe said.

Triple Goddess New Age Bookstore makes the majority of its money selling books, but the highest quantity of items sold is its greeting card selection. But with Michigan’s sour economy, Coe remains neutral in predicting the future of the bookstore.

“(The slump in the economy) will probably indirectly affect us,” he said. “A lot of people like our store, but I’m not selling bread and milk here.”

Not sacrificing goats or “killing babies”

New age practices aren’t only for people who grew up wanting to be hippies. Geological sciences and archaeology freshman Nancy Svinicki has been practicing paganism for the past two and a half years, which encompasses a variety of divination techniques to predicting the future.

Although she was baptized and confirmed with the Catholic Church at 13, Svinicki found her draw to nature overpowered her faith in Catholicism.

While Svinicki was drawn to the pagan beliefs of trees and rocks having personalities, she felt mostly connected to learning about the moon phases.

“I had always considered the moon to be a magical thing,” she said.

However, Svinicki said as a young pagan, she believes the perceptions people have about the usage of divination techniques aren’t correct.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions about new age stuff about psychics and divination,” she said. “A lot of people think it’s completely or entirely crazy, and they’ll think you’re crazy if you say you do tarot cards.”

Svinicki said her goal is to change this view of divination.

“That’s a misconception that I myself, living every day, try to change,” she said. “That all pagans and Wiccans sacrifice and eat babies — we don’t really do that.”

Still a slight skeptic

Svinicki met Botke-Coe at a psychic fair, but she prefers to practice her tarot card reading in solitary.

While her faith often practices tarot card reading, she isn’t sure every psychic is completely genuine.

“I’m a natural skeptic, and not everyone is completely honest,” she said. “Everybody wants to explain everything, and everything has to have a scientific meaning for it. Some people are saying they’re psychics to earn money.”

Pagans often practice divination because the future is an ever-changing idea, Svinicki said.

“It’s not an exact science,” she said. “It’s never set in stone, it’s always changing. You can do one tarot card reading one day and get one thing, and you can read another the next day and have it say something completely different.”