Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law. By Jeremy Patrick. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020. Pp. 280. $89.95 (cloth); $32.95 (paper); $32.95 (digital). ISBN: 9780774863322.

Abstract

As any legal scholar knows, in modern democracies lacking monarchical leaders, no individual right is absolute. Just as the deeply revered right to freedom of speech does not permit one to threaten bodily harm against another person, the individual freedom of religion does not allow an adherent to infringe unreasonably upon the rights of someone else. In his brief but dense Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law, Jeremy Patrick examines this tension with regard to the practice of fortune-telling, an example of religious expression “at themargins”: not associatedwith a recognized sect, but nonetheless practiced within the invocation of spirituality (6). The obvious question raised by the practice: To what extent is it fraudulent to offer (and often ask payment for) services to customers promising accurate results, but with no discernible or measurable basis in reality? Furthermore, does it matter to the question of fraud whether the fortune-teller truly believes in his or her own authenticity and does not have the intent to deceive? In an introduction, seven body chapters, and a conclusion, Patrick offers a history of laws covering fortune-telling in four nations (England, Canada, Australia, and the United States), and he thoroughly investigates the legal position of self-identified “spiritual” practitioners holding no affiliation with organized religious bodies (7). Chapter 1 provides a concise consideration of fortune-telling in the context of organized religions. As Patrick notes, despite passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy condemning the practice, its popularity has grown in recent years, most notably with Nancy Reagan’s reliance on psychic advisors while serving as First Lady of the United States (12–14). The next four chapters examine laws regulating the practice, and subsequent court rulings, in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. English laws on fortune-telling, which provided the template for the other three nations, emerged as early as the 1500s, and banned the practice not on the basis of fraud but because it looked toomuch like witchcraft, and also served as a public nuisance. Punishments included imprisonment and also possibly the death penalty. Laws passed in the 1700s upheld bans on fortune-telling, but reduced the severity of penalties for violations. In Canada, the 1892 Criminal Code banned the use of “occult”methods to find lost objects, regardless of situational context (47–48). A 1954 update to the law tried to tighten the language but instead created ambiguity: It made the criminality of fortune-telling