Earlier this month, the Board of Aldermen for Somerville, Massachusetts, passed an ordinance requiring ‘fortunetellers’ to obtain a license before opening a business in Somerville.
According to the Somerville Patch, the ordinance defines ‘fortunetelling’ as …
… the telling of fortunes, forecasting of futures, or reading the past, by means of any occult, psychic power, faculty, force, clairvoyance, cartomancy, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, tea leaves, tarot cards, scrying, coins, sticks, dice, sand, coffee grounds, crystal gazing or other such reading, or through mediumship, seership, prophecy, augury, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, mindreading, telepathy talisman, charm, potion, magnetism, magnetized article or substance, or by any such similar thing or act.
In an attempt to keep convicted frauds from obtaining a fortunetelling license, readers must now undergo a criminal background check, as well as provide the city with information about any consumer complaints that may have been lodged against them.
Fines for violating the ordinance will be $100 for the first offense, increasing up to $300 for subsequent offenses.
There’s been some exciting news on the home front … last week CelebEdge.ca started posting a celebrity Tarot reading series called Tarot Views on the News.
If that sounds an awful lot like my very own Tarot Views the News, it’s because it’s me doing the readings! Yay!!
In the bite-size video clips, Amy and Sabrina from Sympatico.ca ask me and my cards questions taken from the covers of the latest tabloid magazines.
Important issues like ‘will Kate Middleton get pregnant soon’, or ‘how is Miley Cyrus dealing with the sudden stardom of her beau?’ How about Michelle Williams and Jason Segel … ‘is their romance going to spark’?
The questions might be silly, but the whole thing is a lot of fun. If you like celebrity gossip and Tarot, take a look!
Opening a psychic shop or tattoo parlour just got a little less expensive in San Clemente, California.
Until last week, if you wanted to open either type of business in San Clemente, you would be charged a daily license tax of $20. That’s just over $7,000 a year.
In comparison, medical offices pay on average $400 a year, while most auto-mechanic shops pay about $600.
Thanks to tattoo artist Susie Floyd who challenged the city, Council voted 5-0 last week to do away with the unfair fee schedule and to treat psychic and tattoo businesses the same as others in the area.
According to the Boston Herald, seven Boston psychic businesses were asked to appear before the city Licensing Board last week, after being cited for license violations.
To obtain a psychic business license in Boston, the applicant must prove to the city that they are registered voters and that they have not been convicted of any state or federal crimes.
They must also prove that not only their landlord approves of their business, but also those residents who might live or work on either side.
Psychic businesses are also required to clearly list their services, and how much each will cost.
I’m not sure how the meeting went, or what specific violations each of the businesses had, but if I learn more, I’ll let you know.
Last week, city commissioners in Leavenworth, Kansas began discussing the possibility of repealing a city ban on fortune-telling that’s been on the books for ages.
Presently, the ordinance states that it is ‘unlawful for any fortuneteller, palmist, phrenologist or clairvoyant to carry on or practice his business, trade or profession within the city.’
Commissioners are considering repealing this law, and instead regulating psychic businesses through licensing, zoning, and possibly criminal background checks.
The whole discussion surrounding the ban came about after a Leavenworth resident requested last December that it be repealed.
The ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri backed up the resident’s request by notifying city officials that psychic speech was protected under the First Amendment.
No decision has yet been made, but further discussion will take place after commissioners have had time to review their options.
On behalf of Salem resident, Anaka Hunter, the ACLU last week filed a complaint against the City of Salem, Missouri, its public library’s Board of Trustees, and the library’s director.
The ACLU maintain that the ‘Netsweeper’ content filtering software used by the library is unconstitutionally limiting Hunter’s ability to access information on ‘minority’ religious views, specifically sites related to Native American religions and Wicca.
While trying to do research on her own Native American heritage, as well as on the Wiccan faith, Hunter discovered that the sites she was trying to access were being blocked.
The reasons given were that they contained content related to the ‘occult’ and/or ‘criminal skills’.
To understand how ludicrous this situation is, take a look at some of the sites Hunter was denied access to:
Interestingly enough, Christian discussions on pagan and occult practices were not blocked by the software.
According to the complaint, library director Glenda Wofford told Hunter that library staff will only allow people to view blocked websites if the content in those sites pertain to their jobs, or they’re writing a paper, or if it’s determined by the staff, that the person inquiring has some legitimate purpose for viewing the content.
Wofford also noted that she was required to inform the proper authorities about anyone she believed might misuse the information being requested.
Personally speaking, I can’t imagine why any of the websites listed above are considered a threat to Salem residents. And it’s absolutely outrageous that Native American traditions are being classified as occult or potentially illegal.
And what do they mean by ‘occult ‘ and ‘criminal skills’ anyway?
I’m glad that the ACLU took up this case, and I wish them and Ms. Hunter success with it.
As promised yesterday, we have an update on Grandpa the Psychic Monkey’s predictions for the New Hampshire Republican primary. I don’t know what to think of them though.
As you can see in the NY Daily News clip below, Grandpa ignored conventional wisdom and chose Newt Gingrich as the frontrunner.
When offered an array of bananas all representing particular candidates, he went right to the Gingrich banana, snapped it up and ate it.
Though he grabbed the Huntsman banana at the same time he took the Gingrich one, he didn’t actually eat it until he’d finished off the two marked Santorum and Perry.
And he completely ignored both the Romney and Paul bananas, leaving them for another monkey.
Till now, Grandpa’s record has been good. At least in sports. He picked the winner for last year’s Super Bowl, and six out of nine winners in the US Open.
But maybe politics isn’t his strong point, or it’s possible he knows something we don’t.
He could also just be saying he thinks the whole lot of them are bananas.
Tomorrow is the New Hampshire Republican primary. The polls and the pundits have been anticipating a win for Romney, but who knows, politics can be a difficult business to predict.
And for that reason, the New York Daily News decided to look beyond the mainstream commentators to see what a true oracle has to say.
They visited the Staten Island Zoo in order to meet with Grandpa, the black-handed spider monkey who has been credited with correctly predicting outcomes for the US Open and the Super Bowl.
Bananas are Grandpa’s divination tool of choice. In this case, each one represents a particular candidate in the race.
They’re all laid out in a row, under a light covering of hay. Then Grandpa sets to work. Whichever banana he chooses to eat is his projected winner.
Unfortunately, the news report below is nothing but a teaser, and we won’t know who Grandpa chose until sometime later today.
I’ll try to keep on top of the story and will report back tomorrow with an update. If for some reason that’s not possible, I apologize in advance.
But either way, we’ll know who the winner is soon enough.
Television advertisements must not promote psychic practices or practices related to the occult. Psychic and occult-related practices include ouija, satanism, casting of spells, palmistry, attempts to contact the dead, divination, clairvoyance, clairaudience, the invocation of spirits or demons and exorcism.
I’m not sure how satanism got thrown in there. If it’s to be disallowed from the airwaves, it should probably have its own category. It’s a belief system, not an ‘occult’ tool or form of divination.
But the rest of the statement is pretty clear – they don’t want anyone advertising psychic services on TV.
In addition to the above, psychic advertisers must clearly state in their pitch that what they do is ‘for entertainment purposes only’, and that they do not do predictions of any sort.
Furthermore, nothing can be in the ad that could lead someone to think that the psychic is ‘reliable’ or ‘substantiated.’ They don’t allow endorsements.
Most readers I know wouldn’t have nearly enough money to advertise on TV anyway, so I imagine these rules will primarily affect large psychic phone-line and internet companies only.
And I expect they’re meant to target situations where people are duped into paying $4.99/minute to talk to some schmuck they think they saw on TV with recommendations from the stars.
I sympathize with them there, and don’t like that kind of business either. But why pretend psychic advertising is allowed at all.
Clearly it’s not if while trying to sell your services you’re obligated to discredit them at the same time.
Archeologists in China’s Shaanxi province have unearthed more than 10,000 engraved tortoise shells at the Zhougong Temple site.
The shells date back to the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1100 BC-771 BC) and are part of a large excavation that’s been ongoing since 2004.
It’s an amazing discovery. Nearly 2,600 recognizable characters have been identified, telling a story of life during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
According to People Daily, in late November researchers uncovered one shell that depicts a scene of two people practicing divination together.
The report doesn’t mention how they’re divining, but whether they’re reading sticks, stones, or bones, it’s nice to think of these ancient diviners sitting around doing exactly what my friends and I do with our cards.
The divining pair seems to be an unusual specimen. Most of the shells found record information about ancestor worship, troop movements, and other matters. They also describe dream interpretation.
War, worship, dreams, and predictions. We don’t write on tortoise shells anymore, but it looks like we still write about the same things.
