Politics: Fortune Telling & the Law

Welcome to The Twilight Zone of the North Carolina legal system.

It’s a Friday night and you and your best friend are hanging out at your house. Since both of you have already seen this week’s episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and you don’t have enough money to go out, you decide to fill the time by playing with the new deck of Tarot cards that you purchased the day before at Border’s.

Several weeks earlier you broke up with your boyfriend, Eric, because he seemed to be a bit of a control freak, but in the last couple of days he’s been calling you on the phone wanting to work things out. You ask the cards, “If Eric and I get back together, what will our relationship be like?”

Carefully, you shuffle the cards, according to the instructions in the little booklet that came with the deck, and then lay them out on the floor in front of where you and your friend are sitting. The first card you turn-over is the “Five of Wands.” You look the card up in the booklet to discover that the card is called “Strife” and indicates that arguments are at hand.

“This doesn’t look very good, does it,” you say to your friend with a shrug.

Suddenly the door to your apartment bursts open and four police officers come barging into the room with weapons in hand, followed by a camera crew from the television show Cops who are filming this weeks episode in your town. You and your friend are made to lie spread eagle on the floor while the officers collect your cards and drop them into an evidence bag. Then you are handcuffed and taken to one of two patrol cars that are waiting out on the street.

At the station, you and your friend are interrogated separately.

“Where did you get the cards?” the interrogating officer wants to know.

You tell him he truth, that you bought them the day before while browsing at Borders. You are taken to a cell, where you are joined a few hours later by the clerk who sold you the cards.

Although this scenario is not very likely, according to North Carolina state law it could happen, under an antiquated statute that should be of great concern to everybody in the alternative community. The law (General Statute 14-401.5) reads, “It shall be unlawful for any person to practice the arts of phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance, fortunetelling and other crafts of a similar kind...” Any person found in violation of this provision is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor, subject to a fine of up to $500 and possible jail time.

We all know that there are many old and outdated laws on the books that are never enforced. For example, when was the last time you heard of someone getting arrested for spitting in public? In this case, the problem is that the law is sometimes enforced, and the wording is so vague that almost everybody is guilty of breaking it. If you ever told someone what you though the weather would be like then, technically you could be guilty of “fortunetelling and other crafts of a similar kind.” In fact, under the provisions of this law, the Book of Revelations is probably illegal as a fortune telling tool.

This is all silly, of course. This section of the criminal code was intended to stop gypsy readers from swindling the gullible. But the law makes no distinction between those who charge money for their soothsaying services and those who do it as a hobby. Looking into the future is banned period, although the statute does allow fortunetelling “in connection with school or church socials, provided such socials are held in school or church buildings.”

However, most (if not all) of those arrested under this statute are professional readers. Most recently, in January, a state Alcohol Law Enforcement officer arrested the owner of “The Gypsy Cafe” in the Raleigh suburb of Cary for allowing and promoting palm readings. The reader, Lara Beth Henrick, is a Wiccan high priestess and was practicing the craft in accordance with her religious beliefs, which brings us to the crux of the matter.

In the alternative community, many of us believe that systems like astrology, Tarot and numerology are part of our spiritual lives and that people who have the training and ability to use these systems have the right to charge for their services. We are aware that there are those who use Tarot and palmistry in a fraudulent way, but there are other laws on the books to handle those cases.

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees and has, for years, been trying to get the law declared unconstitutional on religious and free speech grounds. Also, the fact that the statute only applies to 61 of the state’s 100 counties automatically makes the law invalid under the state’s constitution. The trouble is, whenever anyone is charged under this statute, the case is usually dismissed in the lower courts, which has kept any cases from being appealed to the state Supreme Court for a ruling.

But now there’s another person championing the cause of getting this law off the books. Steven A. Stone is the proprietor of The Cosmic Lemniscate, an occult store in Raleigh. When he heard about the arrest at The Gypsy Cafe, he was spurred into action and has started a grass roots petition drive to convince the state legislature that the time has come to get rid of this regulation. In addition, he has devoted a page on his store’s web site to dealing with this issue.

Like the ACLU (and practically everyone else) he also sees this as a freedom of religion issue. “When this law was passed, Wicca wasn’t considered a religion,” he says. “Now it’s a religion that is recognized by the federal government.”

He urges people to sign his petition instead of trying to phone their local lawmakers. “It’s too easy for a politician to ignore ten or fifteen calls,” he explains. “But they can’t ignore 20 thousand signatures on a petition.”

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