Is Fortune Telling Illegal in the US? Tarot, Psychic Readings, and the Law
No federal law, a patchwork of old state statutes, and forty years of First Amendment cases. Which states still ban paid readings, what the entertainment disclaimer really does, and where the law is actually aimed.
Whether reading cards for money is legal in the United States depends on which state, and sometimes which town, you are standing in. This guide lays out the three kinds of rule you will actually meet, what the courts have said, and what the disclaimer on every psychic storefront is really for — it does not replace a lawyer for a specific business or a specific charge.
Contents
Reading tarot or telling fortunes is legal in most of the United States, and courts have generally treated paid readings as protected speech. There is no federal rule, but a patchwork remains: Pennsylvania still has an 1861 statute making fortune telling for money a misdemeanor, New York bans it for a fee unless it is presented as entertainment, and Massachusetts leaves it to towns, which license readers with a residency rule. Enforcement against ordinary readers is rare; the laws mostly serve as an add-on charge in fraud cases. If you charge for readings, check your state code and your city ordinance, and never promise outcomes. We are not lawyers.
Pennsylvania's crimes code, 18 Pa.C.S. § 7104, makes telling fortunes 'for gain or lucre' by cards, palmistry or astrology a misdemeanor of the third degree; the provision dates to 1861.
Source/tradition: 18 Pa.C.S. § 7104; Spotlight PA, October 18, 2024
New York Penal Law § 165.35 makes fortune telling for a fee a class B misdemeanor, with an exception for a show or exhibition solely for entertainment or amusement — the origin of the 'for entertainment purposes only' disclaimer.
Source/tradition: N.Y. Penal Law § 165.35
Massachusetts requires a local license to tell fortunes for money and the applicant must have resided in the city or town continuously for at least twelve months.
Source/tradition: Mass. Gen. Laws c. 140, § 185I
Courts in California (1985), the Eighth Circuit (1998) and Maryland (2010) struck down outright bans on paid fortune telling as violations of free-speech protections.
Source/tradition: Spiritual Psychic Science Church v. City of Azusa, 39 Cal.3d 501; Argello v. City of Lincoln, 143 F.3d 1152; Nefedro v. Montgomery County, 414 Md. 585
The old statutes are in practice used mainly as an add-on charge in fraud prosecutions rather than against ordinary readers.
Source/tradition: Reporting on the Hanover, PA case (WITF, December 2025); pattern in reported prosecutions — not systematically counted
Working readers in regulated states frame sessions as reflection rather than prediction, avoid health and legal advice, and put refund terms in writing.
Source/tradition: Common practice among professional readers; not survey data
A tarot or oracle reading can predict the outcome of a legal case or any future event.
Source/tradition: No controlled evidence supports predictive accuracy of card reading
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
Quick answer
Reading tarot or telling fortunes is legal in most of the United States, and courts that have looked closely have generally treated it as protected speech under the First Amendment. But there is no federal rule, and a patchwork remains: Pennsylvania still has an 1861 statute making fortune telling for money a misdemeanor, New York bans it for a fee unless it is presented as entertainment, and Massachusetts leaves it to towns, which issue licenses with residency requirements. Enforcement against ordinary readers is rare; the laws are mostly used as an add-on charge in fraud cases. If you charge for readings, the two things that actually matter are your state code and your city ordinance — and never promising outcomes. We are not lawyers, and a real problem needs a real one.
Why a question this odd still has an answer
Most Americans who buy a tarot reading assume the transaction is as legal as buying a haircut. Most readers assume the same. Both are usually right and occasionally wrong, for a reason that has nothing to do with modern attitudes toward divination: in the nineteenth century, many state legislatures wrote anti-vagrancy and anti-fraud laws that listed "fortune tellers" alongside jugglers, beggars, and card sharps. Some of those laws were repealed. Some were struck down by courts. A surprising number were simply forgotten — still on the books, almost never enforced, and available to any police department that decides to read the code.
That is exactly what happened in Hanover, Pennsylvania in October 2023, when a local nonprofit profiled a small metaphysical shop and mentioned in passing that it offered tarot by appointment. Within hours the borough police chief had called the nonprofit; within days, officers were in the shop explaining that a law from 1861 made what the owner did a crime. The shop had the usual "for entertainment purposes only" sign on the wall. It did not help. The owner sued in 2024, and the case turned a curiosity of legal history into a live question for every reader in the state.
The three kinds of rule you will actually meet
Every state and local rule we have seen falls into one of three shapes. Knowing which one applies where you are answers most of the question.
| Type of rule | What it says | Where you find it | What it means for a reader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Criminal ban | Telling fortunes "for gain" is an offense, usually a low-level misdemeanor | Pennsylvania (18 Pa.C.S. § 7104, from 1861); a handful of older state statutes and city codes | Rarely enforced, but a real risk if a complaint or a fraud case gives police a reason |
| Ban with an entertainment exception | Fortune telling for a fee is an offense unless it is part of "a show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement" | New York (Penal Law § 165.35) | This is the origin of the "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimer. It is a defense, not a guarantee |
| Licensing and zoning | You may read for money if the town issues you a license, often with residency, fee and background requirements | Massachusetts (G.L. c. 140 § 185I); Salem, MA; many cities and counties | Legal, but bureaucratic. Reading without the license is the offense, not the reading itself |
| No specific rule | Ordinary consumer-protection and fraud law applies, nothing more | Most states, including California after a 1985 state supreme court decision | You are a small business. Keep receipts, do not promise outcomes |
The fourth row is where most of the country sits. The first three are where the stories come from.
Pennsylvania: the 1861 law and the Hanover case
Pennsylvania's statute is short and old. Section 7104 of the crimes code makes it a misdemeanor of the third degree to "pretend for gain or lucre, to tell fortunes or predict future events, by cards, tokens, the inspection of the head or hands of any person, or by the age of anyone, or by consulting the movements of the heavenly bodies, or in any other manner." Astrology is named. Palmistry is named. Tarot is covered by "cards." The word "pretend" is doing quiet work — it frames every reading as a pretense, which is the nineteenth-century legislature's view and not necessarily a modern court's.
For most of its life the law was invisible. Reporting on the Hanover case found it used mainly as an additional charge when someone was already being prosecuted for defrauding a client, which is how similar laws function in most states. What made Hanover different was that police invoked it against a shop with no complaint, no victim and a disclaimer on the wall. The owner, Beck Ravenswood of the Serpent's Key Shoppe, first asked the borough for a written assurance that the law would not be enforced against them; when that failed, the effort became a lawsuit aimed at the statute itself, and a state lawmaker introduced a repeal bill in 2025. As of this writing the law is still on the books. If you read for money in Pennsylvania, you are doing something a statute calls a crime, in a state where the police in at least one borough have shown they will act on it.
New York and the disclaimer everyone copies
New York's rule is the one that shaped the whole industry's language. Penal Law § 165.35 makes it a class B misdemeanor to claim, for a fee, to tell fortunes or to use "claimed or pretended" occult powers to answer questions, give advice on personal matters, or "exorcise, influence or affect evil spirits or curses" — except when this is done "as part of a show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement."
That exception is where "for entertainment purposes only" comes from. Readers in New York put it on their signs, and readers everywhere else copied it without knowing why. Two things are worth understanding about it. First, it is a description of what you are doing, not a magic phrase; if a reader tells a client she is cursed and needs to pay to have it lifted, a sign in the window does not turn that into a show. Second, the clause about curses is not decorative. It is aimed at a specific and well-documented fraud in which a client is told that a curse, a dark energy or a "block" is the cause of their troubles and that removing it requires escalating payments. A widely reported Manhattan case in 2015 involved a single client who paid a psychic more than seven hundred thousand dollars over several years for exactly that. The law exists for those cases. It catches ordinary readers only incidentally.
Massachusetts and Salem: the license route
Massachusetts took a different path. Chapter 140, section 185I of the General Laws says no one may tell fortunes for money unless the local licensing authority has issued a license, and the applicant must have lived in that city or town continuously for at least a year. Towns can add fees, background checks and caps on the number of licenses. Salem, which has more working readers per square mile than anywhere else in the country, runs its own licensing scheme on top of the state law, and a reading offered in Salem without the city license is the offense — not the reading, but the missing paper.
The practical effect is that Massachusetts readers are small licensed businesses, in the same category as a food cart or a second-hand dealer. The residency requirement means you cannot move to Salem in September and read on Essex Street in October, which is roughly the point of the rule.
What the courts have said
When these laws are challenged, the question is whether telling a fortune for money is speech protected by the First Amendment or commercial conduct the state can regulate. The trend over forty years has run in the readers' favor.
In 1985 the California Supreme Court struck down the city of Azusa's ban in Spiritual Psychic Science Church v. City of Azusa, holding that a blanket prohibition on fortune telling for pay violated free-speech protections and that the city's fraud concerns could be addressed by fraud law. In 1998 the federal Eighth Circuit reached the same result for Lincoln, Nebraska in Argello v. City of Lincoln, with a memorable line to the effect that a ban on fortune telling would also ban an economist's forecast. In 2010 Maryland's highest court, in Nefedro v. Montgomery County, held that fortune telling for compensation is protected speech and that the county could not ban it outright.
The main counterweight is Moore-King v. County of Chesterfield, a 2013 decision of the Fourth Circuit that upheld a Virginia county's licensing and zoning requirements for a "spiritual counselor," treating readings as professional speech that could be regulated the way the state regulates other professions. Lawyers who follow this area point out that the Supreme Court has since cut back sharply on the idea of "professional speech" as a lesser category, which is why Chesterfield looks weaker today than it did when it was decided. None of this means every old statute is dead — a law is enforceable until a court says otherwise, and most have never been tested.
Temple Tip
Whether or not you ever charge for a reading, adopt the single habit that keeps readers out of every one of these cases: never sell an outcome. "The cards suggest," "what I see here," "this is one way to read it" — that is a reading. "I can remove this," "if you pay for the second session it will resolve," "do not tell anyone we spoke" — that is the fact pattern in every prosecution we found, from Manhattan to the Miss Cleo hotlines. The law almost never arrives for a reader who describes; it arrives for one who promises. The same line, incidentally, is the one an honest reader draws for ethical reasons anyway. If you are on the other side of the table and a reader crosses it, get up.
Where the law is really aimed: fraud
Two federal facts make the picture clear. First, there is no federal fortune-telling law, and no one in Washington is interested in your tarot deck. Second, the Federal Trade Commission has acted against psychic businesses — most famously in 2002, when the companies behind the "Miss Cleo" television hotlines settled FTC charges of deceptive advertising and billing by forgiving roughly half a billion dollars in customer charges and paying a five-million-dollar fine. The case was about billing practices and advertised "free" readings that were not free; it was never about whether anyone could see the future.
That is the pattern everywhere. The people prosecuted under fortune-telling statutes are almost always charged with something else too — grand larceny, theft by deception, wire fraud — and the divination charge is the smallest item on the list. State attorneys general and district attorneys treat curse-removal schemes as what they are, which is theft with a costume. If you want to understand what the actual warning signs of those schemes look like, we have written that up separately in how to spot a fake spell caster, and it applies to readers word for word.
What this means if you pay for readings
For clients, the law matters in two directions. It is, weakly, a protection: a reader who takes your money in a state with a fortune-telling statute is slightly more exposed if they defraud you, and the "curse" language in New York's law tells you precisely which behavior legislators considered predatory. It is also, occasionally, a nuisance: in a strict state a nervous reader may hedge everything as entertainment, decline to take questions about health or legal matters, or refuse to work at all, and none of that is about you.
The useful consumer test is the same one an honest practitioner would apply to themselves. A reading that ends when the session ends, at the price quoted, with no follow-up pressure, is a reading. Anything that escalates — more sessions, more money, more secrecy — is the thing the statutes were written for. If you are preparing for a first session, our guide to preparing for a reading covers what to bring and what to expect, and what to do when two readings contradict is the honest answer to a question the law will never help you with.
What this means if you read for others
If you read professionally, or want to, the checklist is short and unglamorous. Look up your state's criminal code for "fortune telling," "occult" and "clairvoyance" — the terms vary. Then check your city or county code, because local ordinances are where most licensing lives and they do not show up in a state search. If your town requires a license, get it; if your state has an entertainment exception, describe your service accordingly and mean it. Keep receipts, do not take cash you cannot account for, and put your refund policy in writing. And if you are in Pennsylvania, know that you are working under a statute that is currently being litigated, and that police in at least one borough have shown a willingness to enforce it.
None of this changes the reading itself. The best readers we know describe rather than predict, ask more than they assert, and end the session on time. That practice is good craft, it is good ethics, and it happens to be what keeps you out of every case in the table above.
Which rule are you actually under?
Voices from practice
Working readers in strict states tend to describe the law less as a threat than as a reason for careful language: sessions framed as reflection rather than prediction, no health or legal advice, refund terms in writing. Practitioners who have been through a license process usually report that the paperwork was tedious and the effect on their practice was nil.
The other pattern people describe is the reverse — clients who assume a reader must be a fraud because "it is illegal," when in most of the country it is nothing of the kind. Readers say the single most useful thing they do is explain, briefly, where the old laws came from. These are general impressions from the field, not survey data, and they will vary by state and by town.
What we don't promise
We are not attorneys, this is not legal advice, and the law in this area changes: a statute described here as live may be repealed or struck down after we publish, and a town may pass an ordinance we have never heard of. We have limited the specifics to statutes and cases we could verify and named the rest only in general terms. We cannot tell you whether your reading business is legal in your town; a local attorney or your municipal clerk can, usually in one conversation. And no reading, ours or anyone's, predicts the outcome of a court case — including the one in Pennsylvania.
Practically: how to work with this
- Search your state code for "fortune telling," "clairvoyance," "occult" and "spiritualism." The terms are old and inconsistent; try all four.
- Search your municipal code separately. Licensing lives locally and will not appear in a state search.
- If a license is required, apply. Budget for a residency wait in Massachusetts and a fee in most towns.
- Write your framing down — what a session is, what it is not, what it costs, how refunds work — and put it where clients see it before they pay.
- Never sell an outcome. No curse removal for a fee, no guaranteed results, no pressure toward a second session.
- Keep records of payments and communications. They protect honest readers far more often than they incriminate anyone.
- If you are a client and something escalates, stop paying, keep everything, and contact your state attorney general's consumer office.
From our shelf
Moon Witch Oracle Deck — 42 Cards for Lunar Cycles & Ritual
A reflection deck rather than a prediction deck: forty-two cards built around the moon's phases, which is exactly the kind of reading no statute has ever been interested in. $23.95.
More in Tarot, Books & Divination and Tarot Arcana.
Frequently asked questions
Is tarot reading illegal in the United States?
No, not as a general matter. There is no federal law against it, most states have no specific statute, and courts in California, Nebraska and Maryland have held that fortune telling for money is protected speech. A few states and many towns still have old bans, entertainment exceptions or licensing rules, so the answer depends on where you are.
Which states still have fortune-telling laws?
Pennsylvania has an 1861 criminal ban that is currently being challenged in court. New York bans fortune telling for a fee unless it is presented as entertainment. Massachusetts requires a local license with a one-year residency rule. A handful of other states retain older statutes, and many cities and counties have their own ordinances; check both your state code and your municipal code.
Does saying "for entertainment purposes only" protect me?
It comes from the exception in New York's statute and it helps there and in places with similar language. It does not turn a fraud into a show, and it did not stop police in Pennsylvania from visiting a shop that had the sign posted. Treat it as an honest description of your service, not as a shield.
Can I be arrested for reading tarot for money?
In most of the country, no. In Pennsylvania it is technically a misdemeanor, and one borough has threatened enforcement. Elsewhere, arrests connected to readings almost always involve a fraud allegation — a client who was told they were cursed and paid repeatedly to fix it — with the fortune-telling charge added on.
Is astrology covered by these laws?
Often, yes. Pennsylvania's statute names "consulting the movements of the heavenly bodies," and New York's language about answering questions through claimed occult powers is broad enough to reach paid astrology. In practice, astrologers are prosecuted even more rarely than card readers.
What is the real risk for a client?
Not the law — the scheme the law was written for. A reader who tells you that you are cursed, that only they can remove it, and that it will cost more each session is running the fraud that appears in nearly every prosecution. Stop paying, keep records, and contact your state attorney general's consumer protection office.
Sources & further reading
- 18 Pa.C.S. § 7104, Fortune telling — Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes (enacted 1861; current text).
- N.Y. Penal Law § 165.35, Fortune telling — including the "show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement" exception.
- Mass. Gen. Laws c. 140, § 185I — local licensing of fortune tellers and the twelve-month residency requirement.
- Spiritual Psychic Science Church v. City of Azusa, 39 Cal. 3d 501 (1985).
- Argello v. City of Lincoln, 143 F.3d 1152 (8th Cir. 1998).
- Nefedro v. Montgomery County, 414 Md. 585 (2010).
- Moore-King v. County of Chesterfield, 708 F.3d 560 (4th Cir. 2013).
- Federal Trade Commission, press release on the settlement with Access Resource Services and Psychic Readers Network ("Miss Cleo"), November 2002.
- Sara Stewart, "PA shop owner sues to overturn 19th-century fortune-telling law," Spotlight PA, October 18, 2024.
- Asia Tabb, "Tarot Reading Arrest Threat Sparks Legal Fight Over Pennsylvania's Fortune-Telling Law," WITF The Spark, December 18, 2025.
Questions about anything in this guide? Write to us at 28@templeofdesire.com.
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