The Triangle

Bravo!! I am glad to see someone in media challenge the so-called "paranomal" industry. I also have a comment on those tarot cards.
Tarot has no historical connections with astrology or Kabbalah. The tarot deck was created for playing a trick taking card game and nothing more. Descendents of the original tarot card game are still played in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. Tarot is really for card games, people!
Tarot is more fun, interesting, and authentic as a card game!
From The Penguin Encyclopedia of Card Games, by David Parlett,
"People are often suprised to learn that Tarot cards were originally invented for playing games, that such games are still widespread and popular in continental Europe, and that the employment of tarots for divination and fortune-telling is a relatively recent perversion of their proper use, dating only from the eighteenth century."
Mainstream media has duped the American public into believing that tarot cards are something else besides playing cards.

Its a shame when a few bad apples spoil things for everyone else. There are genuine psychics just as there are genuine faith healers and genuine tarot readers just as there are genuine tele-evangelists but how many times do we hear about so called 'Christian' leaders who live a life of obscene luxury from the proceeds of their poor and vulnerable congregations? Who stops them?

People will always need psychological and spritual help. Who are we to prevent anyone's right to choose where that help comes from. USA, the land of the free but clearly not in Philadelphia.

oh! Give me a freakin' break! There are "genuine" psychics, faith healers, tarot readers yadda, yadda, yadda. This is utter nonsense! When people need psychiatric help they should turn to a psychiatrist and not to fortune tellers or psychics. There is no "alternative" counseling just as there's no "alternative" medicine. A method works, it doesn't work, or we do not yet know!

Bah... nonsense! the society is full of "spiritual leaders" the lies are other but are mere lies after all... nobody thinks to ban religious churches (I don't want that, eh).

Yesterday banned Galileo, burn Bruno, today ban "psychics", what you really love is to persecute people, if Jesus was born today you hang him on a crux with proud smile...!

Banners... Idiotic ideas, idiotic people, what they really hate is liberty...

Miguel

If the incidence of violence and discrimination against transsexuals were not so high, I might have laughed along with you. But I found your reference to transsexual people alongside drug dealers and swindlers to be demeaning and offensive. Perhaps you feel free to make such comments because you don't know any transgender people, but we are not all prostitutes, criminals and swindlers. As a transsexual professor of law at Ramapo College, I suggest you learn something about the topic. First assignment: you can start at my blog, Transgender Workplace Diversity, http://transworkplace.blogspot.com

What a shame that Philadelphia seems to be so paranoid that a few small minded, arrogant individuals will take away everyone elses freedom of choice. Oh its ok to carry a gun, harass transexuals and generally oestracise anyone or anything that doesn't fit neatly into the comfortable mould that the biggotted, oldschool mentality would have us all spring from.

Its clearly ok for established religions to run their businesses based on an unprovable, paranormal truth such as God, Angels, walking on water, raising the dead etc, etc but woah, hold on, don't dare to say that any regular person here and now could have a real, spiritual experience outside the mainstream churches? Oh give me a break.

So if the saints can have visionary experiences and its ok for the Bible to be taken as literal truth then why can't a guy from Philly have a visionary experiences too and help people with them? Perhaps you think that all religion should be banned too? Oh and while you're at it, all theoretical physics and Jungian psycho-analysis since neither of them can be proven . . .

For goodness sake, keep your small minded opinions - the rest of the world, though not perfect, at least can make up their own minds. We have free will for a reason and we are not children!

Why are you so frightened that other people may make a choice that doesn't match your own opinions?

Tarot reading runs the gamut from wilfully fraudulent money bilking to very skilled exploration of a person's deep needs and feelings, with the aid of images. I agree it is a good idea to shut down the frauds. However how do you throw out the bathwater without the baby?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm claiming a lot of things in this article, but I'm not by any stretch of the imagination trying to say that all transexuals are drug dealers. If I'd put "male prostitutes" in there instead, would you be saying "aaron is claiming all men are prostitutes"?

If you took my mentioning a kind of person in a sentance as some sort of derision to that kind of person, I very much apologise. While I don't know any specific "transexuals" I did ask a number of acquantances who fit into the category of "transgendered" and they don't take offence at it. So I can sleep with a clean conscience.

Claiming that just because I mention transexuals in the same sentance as I mention drug dealers reveals some sort of bigotry is, at best, alarmism. I've got nothing against those folks, and if you thought I did because of something I wrote, I apologise.

I understand well why people are so quick to smile when yet another frauulent psychic is exposed. They do prey on the desperation of others. And the majority of Neon-sign psychics are usually cold-readers without a psychic cell in thier bodies. Please note, that's most, not all. Every once in a while, there is someone who does more than cold-read.

However, I feel amazed that most of these scams are able to still exist. I tend to be a highly trusting person myself, but even at my lowest point (& I have lived out of my car before) I would certainly view someone with suspicion if they said I had a curse on my money & I should burn it. I'd take it to the bank & exchange it for new, uncursed cash. Or just deposit it & leave it there.
And these diseases, people in desperation will do almost anything, including flocking to anyone who waves the little flag of mystic cures.

Maybe people really AREN'T smart enough to be allowed to make our own choices. Maybe we really DO need to be protected from our own ignorance, stupidity, & naivetivity (sorry if it's misspelled). Now that natural selection is mostly removed from the picture, the majority of us lack the survival skills to avoid the predators in our own herd.

How sad. Personally, I am a tarot card READER, not player, & I do get asked constantly by people to read for them. The first thing I say is that I am not a psychic & nothing I say is written in stone. All divination is nothing but a guide. It's also the first thing they forget.

Maybe instead on banishing the so-called psychics, we should do something about the people they rely on? Just my take on things.