It was Catholic doctrine at the time, and a significant portion of the protestant reformation.
'Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the Catholic view on indulgences. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
Now, I am not saying the church selling indulgences from a specific menu of sins > prices was mainstream. But, the idea of good works on earth and specifically giving to the church being a good work was very much so. There are also cases of rather significant donations to the church connected to this idea.
PS: Note, this is about reducing time spent in purgatory, not buying your way into heaven. Purgatory was supposed to be a very unpleasant place, but your stay was going to be temporary either way.
The Catholic church today encourages giving "from the heart" without a specific tithe, and doesn't have a concept of indulgences. Mainline protestant churches fundamentally rejected the practice of indulgence. Evangelical churches are different from church to church by nature.
This is incorrect. The Catholic Church still practices the use of indulgences, just not their sale. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church which was promulgated by John Paul II in 1992 and last revised by Pope Francis this year.
They have to launder it a little. The tithe helps keep the church there. The church helps you practice your faith. And practicing your faith may help save your soul.
If you're going to take money for performing a service, you should be able to demonstrate that the service has been performed. Otherwise, yes, I'd call it fraud.
>Having said that, is there any other kind of witchcraft than fake witchcraft?
It seems like an obvious question for a skeptic (it's all fake) but from a cultural and anthropological point of view, what constitutes "real" and "fake" witchcraft is an interesting question. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence linking beliefs about witches during the times of witch-trials to any particular pagan or old-world religions - such beliefs being predicated on the Christian premise that witchcraft was explicitly Satanic, and practices like fortune telling tended to persist across cultures.
>Having said that, is there any other kind of witchcraft than fake witchcraft?
I assume the distinction would be that the law targets people who pretend to practice witchcraft for the sake of defrauding people, rather than people who practice witchcraft "in good faith" because they are adherents of the religion.
Having said that, is there any other kind of witchcraft than fake witchcraft?
The same can be said about most religious practices and superstitions. It really doesn't matter what you (or I) think about other's personal practices so long as it isn't affecting others much.
(I'd argue they all affect others, but so does any set of morals a person has whether religious or secular. Most of these don't actively harm other folks).
My mom worked as a witch/psychic/medium. She offered clients a potion, called "tea", and then let the person talk about their problems and prodded them occasionally until they realized what they needed to do.
Adding some trappings let people open up because of assumed authority. Same as most religions, though I know she told a decent share of people to go get medical help.
Very similar to the Terry Prachett version of witchcraft. Worked great. Not sure how much actual magic was involved, but I'm not sure how much needed to be.
TL;DR the law prohibits fraud in the context of witchcraft and is being repealed along with laws against dueling and blasphemous libel because it is redundant and isn't really used except by prosecutors looking to throw the book.
>"If you're going to invest $20, $40, $60 in a tarot reading and you find it's irrelevant to you, or did you no good, why would that being any different than going to a reiki treatment and finding that didn't work?" she asked. "Would you charge a reiki practitioner with fraud?"
She makes an excellent point, but not the one she intended.
Agreed. But if you go to a tarot reading for purposes of entertainment (without deceptive promises from the practitioner), or to get general life advice and a supportive ear, absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The difference is that the false pretense of the engagement breeds the abusive behavior that is common in these sorts of engagements. The "magic" is just a veneer over the grift, and the entertainment aspect is a start of the sales funnel.
That's why legitimate therapists, etc have professional associations and standards of ethics.
Tarot reading is discussion of ones life with the aid of a random number generator (the shuffled deck) to overcome preexisting maladaptive interpretations and cultural assumptions.
It is a slippery slope, though. Do we need to prosecute all manufacturers of homeopathic medicine and all doctors who recommend it for fraud? All psychics, mediums, etc.? Does this extend to religious healers? Similar to reiki, what about people who claim acupuncture or chiropractic adjustments or crystal healing can treat serious diseases? What about doctors who recommend Eastern medicine practices like consuming certain organs of certain animals to treat issues?
It is all fraud, but if we're going to be charging all people like that with fraud, then freedom of speech becomes infringed to some extent. Many of these fraudsters genuinely believe what they're doing is legitimate and isn't fraud. Many of the clients genuinely believe it's legitimate due to their belief systems.
An argument could be made that people should be allowed to spend their money as they choose and that the government should not be in the business of deciding if they're spending their money wisely. Gambling is another example.
It strongly depends on the ways these things are advertised. If I market homeopathic medicine as "some of our customers report that it helped them, but scientific consensus is that these pills are indistinguishable from sugar" that's very different from claiming effective treatments.
The UK restricts advertising of medicine quite dramatically (you're not allowed to advertise prescription-only drugs), and has a specific ban on falsely advertising the ability to cure cancer.
> freedom of speech becomes infringed to some extent
Fortunately not everyone thinks that freedom of speech extends to freedom to defraud the vulnerable.
True, but many of the aforementioned fraudsters are careful to dodge around those laws and not make extravagant claims of effectiveness. They won't advertise that something can cure cancer. But during private 1-on-1 treatment sessions, they could imply otherwise.
that's largely an American concept, along with the rest of your post. please stop assuming other countries are like the US, especially laws and legal systems. it rarely furthers the debate
Yes, we should prosecute all people who commit fraud for fraud. There are many people on both sides of Ponzi schemes who believe what they're doing is legitimate and isn't fraud.
Good luck criminally charging all of those hundreds of thousands or millions of people and dealing with the pushback from groups who say their freedom of religion and speech is being infringed.
Taking the slippery slope even further, organized religion (and religion in general, but the non-organized ones usually don't harm people too badly) is a fraud. Saying that prayer will help someone recover from disease is fraud. Scientology is fraud. Prosperity gospel is fraud. Compulsory tithing is fraud.
We could make all of these things illegal, but then you're crossing into authoritarianism. Psychics and mediums are no more fraudulent than any Mormon church (Mormon churches have compulsory tithing), in my opinion. It's all woo and it's all pilfering money from the gullible and hopeful, but I don't see why it needs to be illegal.
When done properly and
with responsibility, it does not claim any accuracy when it comes to telling the future.
It's a tool that you use to have deep and meaningful conversations. The cards are loosely similar to Jung's archetypes, among other things. Modern tarot is an anachronistic melting pot of many philosophies and concepts.
You simply use the cards to investigate a situation. You may discover someone's fears or hopes through one of those conversations. You can then use this information to help them plan out their future. That's pretty much it.
---
For example:
Say someone asks you about their career and you pick a card that means "shyness" at some point. The conversation then focus on the concept of being shy. Is this person shy? Could their shyness be the thing that make their work life harder?
If the answer is no, do they have someone at work that may be shy? You then talk about that.
If the answer is still no, could it be that they should be more shy? Is this person too bold? You ask this and the person gets defensive about themselves. A good reader will be able to notice this and then shift the conversation on that.
Through this discussion, they tell you that they might be too brash about one of their employees. You can then help them figure out a plan for the future, a plan to apologize or simply be more emphatic about that employee. But this person come up with the plan by themselves. You simply facilitated this discovery.
---
In short, it's a tool that get people to open up to you. Some people abuse of this. They give dates, prophecies, claim truths. They pick up on the points where the person they read for gets defensive and then use this information to emotionally blackmail them.
A good tarot reader is a good listener. You should not make any claim, you are not a trained therapist. Tarot readers should allow people to discover themselves without forcing anything. They should never say "you are x and need to do y before z happens".
(This is going to be controversial on HN. Keep an open mind and be polite. I am not a professional tarot reader and decline reading for people most of the time because of the liabilities that come with it.)
It’s a shame the law is being repealed. Seems like it’s doing it’s job perfectly fine at dealing with “witches” defrauding people out of tens of thousands of bucks.
I don’t have a problem with “altruistic” witchcraft (although I still think anyone believing in this is an idiot) but there should be protections in place against these magicians exploiting the fears of vulnerable people for money.
They're removing this law because the fraud involved is already covered by general fraud laws, not to condone fraud. There's no reason this specific type of fraud ought to have an extra criminal charge on top of the regular fraud charge.
I also would like to see the Catholic Church treated like any other organization would have been treated whose members abused children and covered this up for decades.
Eh just because people don’t have scientific evidence of the truth of their religion (or politics) doesn’t mean they “blindly believe.” People ha e their religion and political beliefs for cultural and personal reasons based on their life experiences.
When you see a storefront psychic, which appears to have no customers, in a place where it would seem the rent wouldn't support a handful of $20 readings a day, there is a reason why. People don't understand how widespread psychic fraud is or how much money they are stealing.
Other religions or cults tend to be more ambiguous in the direct benefits donors will be receiving but often the general premise is the same.
47 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadHaving said that, is there any other kind of witchcraft than fake witchcraft?
This article is about prosecuting people for pretending to be a witch, rather than being a witch, which people were prosecuted for in the past.
When Christian churches tell congregants that tithing 10% saves your soul, are they engaging in fraud?
Now days it’s not mainstream, but I suspect a few preachers/televangelist has suggested such things more recently.
And, in any case, many modern churches and denominations are only tenuously connected to Catholicism of any era.
'Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the Catholic view on indulgences. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
Now, I am not saying the church selling indulgences from a specific menu of sins > prices was mainstream. But, the idea of good works on earth and specifically giving to the church being a good work was very much so. There are also cases of rather significant donations to the church connected to this idea.
PS: Note, this is about reducing time spent in purgatory, not buying your way into heaven. Purgatory was supposed to be a very unpleasant place, but your stay was going to be temporary either way.
The Catholic church today encourages giving "from the heart" without a specific tithe, and doesn't have a concept of indulgences. Mainline protestant churches fundamentally rejected the practice of indulgence. Evangelical churches are different from church to church by nature.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4G.HTM
It seems like an obvious question for a skeptic (it's all fake) but from a cultural and anthropological point of view, what constitutes "real" and "fake" witchcraft is an interesting question. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence linking beliefs about witches during the times of witch-trials to any particular pagan or old-world religions - such beliefs being predicated on the Christian premise that witchcraft was explicitly Satanic, and practices like fortune telling tended to persist across cultures.
I assume the distinction would be that the law targets people who pretend to practice witchcraft for the sake of defrauding people, rather than people who practice witchcraft "in good faith" because they are adherents of the religion.
The same can be said about most religious practices and superstitions. It really doesn't matter what you (or I) think about other's personal practices so long as it isn't affecting others much.
(I'd argue they all affect others, but so does any set of morals a person has whether religious or secular. Most of these don't actively harm other folks).
Adding some trappings let people open up because of assumed authority. Same as most religions, though I know she told a decent share of people to go get medical help.
Very similar to the Terry Prachett version of witchcraft. Worked great. Not sure how much actual magic was involved, but I'm not sure how much needed to be.
She makes an excellent point, but not the one she intended.
That's why legitimate therapists, etc have professional associations and standards of ethics.
For the non-scammy entertainers, no need for a law whether it's real magic of pretend magic.
It is all fraud, but if we're going to be charging all people like that with fraud, then freedom of speech becomes infringed to some extent. Many of these fraudsters genuinely believe what they're doing is legitimate and isn't fraud. Many of the clients genuinely believe it's legitimate due to their belief systems.
An argument could be made that people should be allowed to spend their money as they choose and that the government should not be in the business of deciding if they're spending their money wisely. Gambling is another example.
> freedom of speech becomes infringed to some extent
Fortunately not everyone thinks that freedom of speech extends to freedom to defraud the vulnerable.
Thats not free speech. That’s fraud.
that's largely an American concept, along with the rest of your post. please stop assuming other countries are like the US, especially laws and legal systems. it rarely furthers the debate
But this article is about Canada, which is also pretty friendly to free speech, even if it's not to the extent of the US.
Taking the slippery slope even further, organized religion (and religion in general, but the non-organized ones usually don't harm people too badly) is a fraud. Saying that prayer will help someone recover from disease is fraud. Scientology is fraud. Prosperity gospel is fraud. Compulsory tithing is fraud.
We could make all of these things illegal, but then you're crossing into authoritarianism. Psychics and mediums are no more fraudulent than any Mormon church (Mormon churches have compulsory tithing), in my opinion. It's all woo and it's all pilfering money from the gullible and hopeful, but I don't see why it needs to be illegal.
When done properly and with responsibility, it does not claim any accuracy when it comes to telling the future.
It's a tool that you use to have deep and meaningful conversations. The cards are loosely similar to Jung's archetypes, among other things. Modern tarot is an anachronistic melting pot of many philosophies and concepts.
You simply use the cards to investigate a situation. You may discover someone's fears or hopes through one of those conversations. You can then use this information to help them plan out their future. That's pretty much it.
---
For example:
Say someone asks you about their career and you pick a card that means "shyness" at some point. The conversation then focus on the concept of being shy. Is this person shy? Could their shyness be the thing that make their work life harder?
If the answer is no, do they have someone at work that may be shy? You then talk about that.
If the answer is still no, could it be that they should be more shy? Is this person too bold? You ask this and the person gets defensive about themselves. A good reader will be able to notice this and then shift the conversation on that.
Through this discussion, they tell you that they might be too brash about one of their employees. You can then help them figure out a plan for the future, a plan to apologize or simply be more emphatic about that employee. But this person come up with the plan by themselves. You simply facilitated this discovery.
---
In short, it's a tool that get people to open up to you. Some people abuse of this. They give dates, prophecies, claim truths. They pick up on the points where the person they read for gets defensive and then use this information to emotionally blackmail them.
A good tarot reader is a good listener. You should not make any claim, you are not a trained therapist. Tarot readers should allow people to discover themselves without forcing anything. They should never say "you are x and need to do y before z happens".
(This is going to be controversial on HN. Keep an open mind and be polite. I am not a professional tarot reader and decline reading for people most of the time because of the liabilities that come with it.)
I don’t have a problem with “altruistic” witchcraft (although I still think anyone believing in this is an idiot) but there should be protections in place against these magicians exploiting the fears of vulnerable people for money.
Other religions or cults tend to be more ambiguous in the direct benefits donors will be receiving but often the general premise is the same.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4594695/woman-charged-witchcraft-...
I'm guessing the 60k charge is against this woman's sister or mother?