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Does anyone believe in fairies? How about dragons? Witches? What about astrology and tarot cards? As the author of this first article points out, some people will believe anything that they are told, even when it comes from a complete stranger who is just saying the first thing that comes into their head. According to her experience as an astrologer, the author can attest to the fact that astrology, fortune-telling and other associated mystical and spiritual hogwash is based on not much more than just someone (the “spiritual guide”/”seer”/grifter) making things up as they go along, or projecting or reflecting one’s own desires or doubts onto others in order to get the answer they think they (the customer/dupe/victim) deserve. By reading physical cues in facial expressions and body language, and listening for other verbal cues, it is possible to read the intentions of people, as even Clever Hans, the once famous “counting horse” could. The next trick is to extort lots of cash out of the vulnerable and clearly misguided sucker. It may come as some surprise then, that people can actually be arrested for doing almost exactly the same thing. In the second article, it is hard to see what the accused are guilty of really, especially when there are millions of other people dressed in “holy” robes, chanting “sacred” sutras and flogging “blessed” trash, not to mention those real con artists as described in the first article, who go around pretending to have some kind of divine insight into the future, when all they are actually doing is talking through their hats. Perhaps their real crime is that they were duping the weak and the helpless on their own, and not under the auspices of some government-sanctioned “spiritual organisation”. If the law is really worried about people being duped, then they have their work cut out for them. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/06/i-was-an-astrologer-how-it-works-psychics http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2019/11/10/2003725591 |
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