For many years, fortune telling was illegal in Michigan, and that law was only repealed in 1994. In 2010, the city of Warren made local and national news with their plan to regulate psychics as a way of preventing fraud by requiring them to be licensed.
Keep in mind, the city considers both “actual” fortune telling and “pretending” to be a fortune teller grounds for needing to be licensed, which doesn’t actually eliminate fraud.
It also includes spellwork in its definition, “It shall also include effecting spells, charms, or incantations, or placing, or removing curses or advising the taking or administering of what are commonly called love powders or potions in order, for example, to get or recover property, stop bad luck, give good luck, put bad luck on a person or animal, stop or injure the business or health of a person or shorten a person’s life, obtain success in business, enterprise, speculation and games of chance, win the affection of a person, make one person marry or divorce another, induce a person to make or alter a will, tell where money or other property is hidden, make a person to dispose of property in favor of another, or other such similar activity.”
Warren’s licensing process requires an applicant to be fingerprinted ($10 at the police station), undergo a background check, and list their business location. The permit, when issued, is $150 and good for a year, after which, you must re-apply (and pay again). Applying for a license means that you will allow the police to inspect your place of business, and your receipts and bookkeeping at any time. It also means that your license might be denied depending on where you’re planning to work.
The application for a license requires you to provide age, height, weight, gender, eye color, and hair color. It requires you to provide every job you’ve had in the last 5 years, and any conviction other than a traffic stop in the last 7. This is more information than many other background checks require.
The penalty for not being licensed is up to $500 and 90 days in jail.
Why should we, as a community care about this?
Because many of us include psychic skills and spell work as a part of our beliefs and practices, but the ordinance only allows this if you’re doing this as a rite of “any bona fide church or religious association that conducts regular services and has a creed or set of religious principles that is recognized by all groups of like faith.” This makes it a religious rights issue, especially in our community, where agreeing on creeds and religious principles are nearly impossible, and where being part of a congregation isn’t required.
As Kenya Coviak mentioned today, she has spent 10 years asking the city how to get a permit for a psychic fair, or even for a festival that teaches people how to read tarot. She cannot get an answer from the city. She cannot get an appointment to speak to the city attorney. Mostly, they’ve told her they will call back – and then they never do.
They did give her a helpful packet today when she was there – it’s a printout of the ordinance. Not helpful at all, since it doesn’t mention psychic fairs and festivals. And without city attorney approval, she can’t get an application for a festival permit, so she can’t say they’ve denied her permit because she can’t submit it.
Since businesses aren’t allowed to be licensed, only individuals, that suggests that every readers at a festival would have to be licensed, even if they’re only there for a day or two of a festival. That makes most events untenable, since it can take 20 days or more to get a license approved.
Stay tuned for more updates on this unfolding topic. We’d like to get to the bottom of what is really required.
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