Dealing With the Future : Fortunetelling: A fair’s deluxe ticket plan entitles visitors to a 15-minute Tarot reading by one of seven psychics.

Jim Burnaugh went shopping Sunday in Studio City, not for groceries or clothes or furniture, but for a glimpse of his future.

Having recently settled in Woodland Hills, the 43-year-old businessman was anxious to find a local teller of his fortune, and his first stop was a psychic fair, held monthly in the sedate surroundings of the Sportsmen’s Lodge. What he found there was one-stop shopping: Burnaugh was able to spend the afternoon in back-to-back sessions searching for the metaphysician most in tune with his vibes.

“You’ve got to go to several of them, because what some of them tell you might not make a lot of sense to you,” Burnaugh said between readings. “So you try another and it kind of rings a bell.”

Burnaugh, who had his fortune told bimonthly for the past two years in his former hometown of San Jose, was just one of about 50 people seeking wisdom in the lodge’s second-floor conference room. The fair, sponsored by the In-Sight Foundation of Canoga Park, usually attracts more than 100 people who fair organizers said are eager to discuss money, relationships and their children--in that order.

A $2 admission fee entitled people to lectures on everything from UFOs to reincarnation. In honor of their birthdays, Virgos got in free. The deluxe plan, at $17, enabled fair-goers to indulge in a 15-minute reading with one of seven psychics using Tarot cards, crystals and numerology to divine pasts, presents and futures.

Some of those who waited for their turns at the card tables, each decorated with candles and one with a crystal ball, were repeat visitors. Others described themselves as skeptical newcomers who thought the fair would be a lark.

For 12-year-old Bonnie Specter of La Crescenta, a reading with psychic Linda Tidemanson--Bonnie’s introduction to metaphysics--was a chance to learn what the first six months of junior high might hold.

Bonnie sat entranced, her blue eyes fixed on Tidemanson as the psychic waved her hands back and forth over a stack of Tarot cards.

The future Tidemanson divined for Bonnie was at times general. “Things are going to start happening faster for you,” Tidemanson said. But other parts of the session homed in on specifics. “Don’t dress up as a witch for Halloween,” she playfully warned. “Don’t do that.”

Bonnie asked Tidemanson what the cards said about her chances of returning to her former home in New Mexico, where she said peer pressure to dress and act certain ways was less intense than in Los Angeles. She smiled brightly when Tidemanson said chances were good.

“I’m kind of glad I came,” Bonnie said later. “I thought it was kind of educational.”

Others were less impressed. “It was all so general,” said Kathie Gisler, 48, of Ventura.

And some who attended were shy about discussing their participation in the event.

“My friends already think I’m strange enough,” said one woman, who declined to give her name, but revealed that she had dreamed of John Kennedy’s assassination two months before it happened.