Charles Cochrane, owner of The Silver Willow shop, in Rehoboth, uses tarot cards, a crystal ball and a bag of hazelnuts to help his clients learn what the future might hold.

The Providence Journal Frieda Squires

You may favor office pools and Vegas odds. We went supernatural in predicting particulars of Sunday’s Super Bowl.

We began at The Silver Willow, a small store on Route 6 in Rehoboth owned by Charles Cochrane, an avuncular sort who calls himself “the Celtic Cricket.” The Cricket greets us in his outer chamber, which overflows with mystical accouterments, then brings us into a room in back. A black cat peers down from a windowsill. A candle burns alongside a crystal ball, tarot cards and a velvet bag arrayed on a table cloaked in purple cloth. We sit facing each other. Charles dims the lights.

“We’re going to start out with some tarot,” he says. “Give them a quick shuffle for me. Put them down on the table. I want you to cut them once.”

The cards are cut.

“I guess the major question everyone wants to know is how the Patriots are to do,” Charles says.

He turns over three cards.

“I have The Moon Card, which is a sleepy card. It’s followed with the Three of Cups and that is followed with the Five of Pentacles. I think the Patriots are going to get off to a slow start … I have a little bit of disappointment here. But we’re not done. It takes me several cards. Let’s see how the Giants are doing.”

Three more cards.

“They come out fighting,” the Celtic Cricket says. “They maintain a decent score for a while and they seem to think they have it in the bag, but where does this really go?”

Evidently, soothsaying is no simple process; another three cards, dealt face up. The oracle’s face brightens.

“The Giants are going to get a good lead for a while — and then the Patriots are going to cream them! I do see this as being a very nail-biting game, but I see the Patriots coming out on top. We can get into scores by using the other forms of divination.”

He hands over the velvet bag, which contains ten Celtic hazelnuts, an ancient form of connection to the future (and also the past) that is rarely used in contemporary America. Charles implies, modestly, that he is an expert practitioner, having recently taught a course in New Orleans, a city receptive to the mystic arts.

“I want you to shake up that bag,” he says. “Now I want you take three nuts out with your left hand — that’s your receiving hand. OK. Let’s see what they say.”

They look identical to us, utterly devoid of clue. But what do journalists know?

A long silence ensues.

“I do see the game doing very well after half time,” Charles finally says, “the Patriots picking up a lot of points. I see a margin of probably ten points or more for the game. Let’s select three more for the opposing team.”

This time, he laughs; a casual Pats fan himself, he likes these nuts.

“Again, I see the Giants coming out fighting. They do well, they think they have it, halftime comes and goes and they have lost. The Patriots are going to win and the score difference is between 10 and 15 points.”

THIS BEING 2008, prophets can just as easily declare by phone. So we call CaliforniaPsychics.com, which offers the first five minutes for free. We want to ask only who will win, by what score. Surely one question, one answer, cannot take more than 60 seconds. Maybe we can ask what the Sox will do this year during the remaining minutes.

We reach a customer service representative somewhere on this planet (we assume) and are told that to get our free foretelling, we must supply a valid credit card account number. “We have great psychics,” the voice says, “and a good reading can take 25 minutes or more.” Each minute starting with six will cost a dollar, although discount rates are available. When our account clears, we are asked if we have a specific psychic in mind. We do not.

“Irene is a good clairvoyant and tarot reader.”

Irene it is. We punch up her personal code and she comes on the line. She sounds middle-aged or older and we learn that she has been predicting the future for many years. “I’ve been gifted with it since I was a child,” she says.

A promising omen. We ask our question: Who will win and by what score?

“Who’s playing who?” Irene asks.

Not so promising.

The Patriots and Giants, we explain. As in those two successful professional football teams over here on the other coast.

The connection to Phoenix on Sunday is made. Irene’s voice deepens.

“That’s going to be a pretty tight score,” she says. “It’s going to be about four points apart. It looks like the Giants are going to win.”

We have four minutes left, time for another question: How many yards will Tom Brady pass for?

The psychic circuit goes down.

“I don’t know much about football,” Irene says. “I just see that the Giants will win.”

RECOGNIZING that professional prognosticators have no monopoly on prophecy, we contact Profnet, a national media service that sends journalists’ inquiries to thousands of businesses and individuals. Minutes after our inquiry goes out, replies begin to pour in.

Plenty of sports-odds experts respond. Sorry, but they rely on the statistics, not the cosmos.

Someone named Valerie sends this e-mail: “I consulted my genius Border Collie and he says that the Giants will pull off a major upset and he is planning on betting the money line.” Intriguing, perhaps a put-on, but several reply e-mails seeking more on the allegedly clairvoyant canine go unanswered.

Wayne H. Schaffel of White Plains, N.Y., writes to relate that his coin toss has determined that New England will win. He goes on to predict that the final score will be 38 to 7; that the Pats will get on the board first, on their second possession; and that Tom Petty will not be booed offstage at halftime. It is not clear how cold currency can be a harbinger of such things, but there you have it.

A freakier prefigurement comes from Giants fan Danielle Bagdzinski, who works for a Manhattan public relations firm. Danielle predicts a Giants win — and should they prevail, she would like to claim a sliver of credit. The reason: a green-colored sticker with the number “10” that mysteriously appeared on her fingertip during the playoffs.

“I’m sure this will sound a little crazy,” she writes (yu think?), “but essentially I’ve been wearing a #10 sticker since January 5th. I have no idea where the sticker came from, but I woke up on the Saturday of NFC Playoffs Week 1 (1/5/08) when the Giants played Tampa Bay, with the sticker on my left pointer finger. I thought it was a good sign, because #10 is Eli Manning’s number.

“Since the day I began wearing the sticker, the Giants have won each playoff game, beating Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay. Another interesting fact is that the #10 is green. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the only thing I could think of was that the Giants beat the GREEN Bay Packers to make it to the Superbowl. I’m extremely superstitious, so I’ve been wearing the sticker every day.”

We gently request proof. Danielle sends us a digital photo of the sticker on some part of her anatomy, along with a “fact sheet” in Word document format:

When I wear the sticker:

Pretty much all the time (at work, when I work out, sometimes in the shower, when I sleep, etc.)

How the sticker stays on my body:

Each day, I frequent my coworker’s cube to obtain two pieces of Scotch tape from her desk. I place the Scotch tape in a cross fashion over the sticker on my right side of my lower stomach. My coworker has the joy of enduring this process each day and for the next week until the Super Bowl.

We say:

If the Giants win, bring Danielle on staff immediately. And 3M, manufacturer of Scotch products, might want to seek her endorsement.

THE CANDLE burns low; the black cat on the windowsill stretches; our time with the Celtic Cricket draws to a close.

“Anything else?” Charles says.

We ask: What will Coach Belichick say after the game?

“Oh, man, that’s a good question,” the psychic says. He guides our hands back to the crystal ball; three times, we repeat the question. Charles closes his eyes and seems to be struggling. Then he looks up. Clarity fills his eyes.

“It’s something to the effect — I’m trying to get his words exactly — ‘They worked hard, they’re a good team’… I’m not getting all this elation, just ‘they played hard, they deserved it.’ ”

And that, we dare say, is likely to be the soundest prediction of all.

gwmiller@projo.com