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by Hallie Claflin, CommonWealth Beacon
August 13, 2026
IT'S NO SECRET that Massachusetts suffers from an abundance of red tape, outdated laws, and obsolete regulations. One law still on the books requires at least three bells to be attached to horses drawing sleighs or sleds.
So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that even fortune telling is a licensed job in the Bay State, right along with barbering, teaching, and nursing.
State law says no person shall “tell fortunes for money” unless they have been issued a license by a local licensing authority. The law also states that a fortune teller must reside continuously in the city or town in which they wish to practice for at least 12 months before they can receive a license. The licensing fee, set by the municipality, must cost at least $2 but not more than $50.
The statute dates back to 1963 and was likely established to prevent grifters from passing from town to town. But lawmakers haven’t forgotten about it – or at least some of them haven’t.
State Rep. Susannah Whipps of Athol introduced legislation in 2025 for the second time that would repeal the 12-month residency requirement for fortune tellers. A previous version of the bill passed out of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure but never made it to the House floor for a vote. The current version sits in legislative limbo and is likely to face the same fate.
“To be honest, there is not a very active or powerful fortune-teller lobby in the state that I know of, so there hasn’t been a big push to get this over the finish line,” Whipps said. “My interest is just to remove an outdated law.”
There have been numerous attempts to repeal the residency requirement over the years, yet none have been successful. In 2000, for example, then-state Sen. Stan Rosenberg filed the legislation after being asked by the city of Northampton to challenge the law. An applicant there had been denied a license because of the rule. Whipps said she was similarly asked by a former Greenfield city employee to file the legislation after someone reached out to the city wanting to provide fortune-telling services.
It would be easy to assume that most psychics, tarot card readers, and mediums want to do away with the red tape, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Nowhere do people have more opinions on the topic than in Salem, which licenses more fortune tellers than any other community in the state. Many say although the archaic statute may have originally been rooted in distrust and prejudice toward marginalized communities like the Romani people, there are tangible benefits of the law today.
“I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to regulate and monitor to make sure that there aren’t fraudulent people,” said Leanne Marrama, co-owner of Pentagram, a psychic shop in Salem. “A lot of people have a certain amount of fear in regard to this industry. The world, unfortunately, is filled with jerks, and this is supposed to weed out the jerks.”
So, what differentiates fraudulent fortune telling from genuine fortune telling? Don’t worry, there's a state law for that too, though it prompts more questions than answers. It states that whoever fraudulently obtains money from another person “by a game, device, sleight of hand, pretended fortune telling, or by any trick or other means by the use of cards or other instruments” shall be charged with larceny.
But what is “pretended” fortune telling?
Marrama, 56, is a licensed psychic who has practiced in Salem for 25 years. She said psychic readings are meant to empower customers and “show people a map of their life” rather than tell them a “fortune.” Fraudulent fortune tellers take advantage of people’s fears and hopes and may promise someone a quick fix or a future outcome for a hefty price, she said. They also might purposely instill fear or desperation in a customer or tell them a grim fortune that only they can correct for money.
“A lot of people don't know what it is. They think I'm going to tell them when they're going to get married or how many kids they're going to have,” said Marrama, who also describes herself as a witch. “If you want to change the map of your life, you change your actions in the world. There's no crystal ball or candle that's going to fix everything.”
The licensing process provides psychics, mediums, and other magical practitioners with some degree of credibility in a field that is often met with skepticism and suspicion, Marrama said. Bad actors could threaten the entire industry in Salem.
“When one of us turns around and acts a fool, then all of us are going down with them,” she said. “A lot of our clients come in October, and they want to be sure that these people have been vetted. We get to say that all of our psychics have been vetted by the city.”
Lorelei Stathopoulos, the owner of the Crow Haven Corner shop in Salem, is a licensed psychic reader, as well as a “love witch.” She said the licensing and residency requirement ensures that when Salem experiences a massive tourism boom in October because of Halloween, those who don’t typically practice in the community cannot simply set up shop on the street and take business away from psychics who have been working in the city for years.
Salem city ordinance defines a fortune teller as anyone who forecasts futures or reads the past “by means of any occult, psychic power, faculty, force, clairvoyance, cartomancy, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, tea leaves, tarot cards, scrying, coins, sticks, dice, sand, coffee grounds, crystal gazing, or any other such reading, or through mediumship, seership, prophecy, augury, astrology, palmistry, necromancy, mindreading, telepathy, or other craft, art, science, talisman, charm, potion, magnetism, magnetized article or substance, or by any such similar thing or act.”
In other words, it covers almost anyone in the supernatural industry who charges money for their services. It even includes aura photographers, who capture and interpret visual representations of a person’s energy field.
At any given time in Salem, there are between 80 and 100 active fortune-telling licenses, according to the licensing department. That includes individual practitioners, store owners, and sub-licensees providing fortune-telling services in stores. Licenses expire after two years and cost $50, mostly to cover the price of a background check. By comparison, Boston, which only offers individual licenses, currently has just five licensed fortune tellers.
The application asks for a five-year employment history, educational background, and a brief description of the nature of the services to be provided.
Marrama’s business partner Timothy Reagan, who is also a psychic, holds the store license for Pentagram. Marrama lives in Revere and does not have to meet the residency requirement herself because she is sub-licensed under the store. Only individual fortune tellers who do not work in a licensed store in Salem have to meet the 12-month residency requirement.
City ordinance allows licensed fortune-teller shops to have up to five sub-licensees practicing at a time – a restriction that limits how many readings and services they can offer in a day and ultimately reduces profits, according to Reagan. But overall, he is happy with the licensing process.
“It is kind of a pain in the butt, and it costs us money,” Reagan said. “But it protects our profession from anybody off the street just wanting to make a couple of extra bucks who has never done this or studied or trained in this.”
In 2022, Reagan, a Salem resident, successfully challenged a fortune-telling ordinance in Beverly that placed a residency requirement on store owners. After spending nearly $200,000 on the construction of a new psychic shop in the city, Reagan was denied a license because he was not a resident of Beverly. The requirement was later overturned by the city council.
In order to receive a fortune-telling license, Salem also requires at least 75 percent of a store's revenue to derive from the sale of “metaphysical products,” defined as “ritual tools or materials used in the study or practice of Witchcraft, Wicca, Pagan, New Age, Occult, or other spiritual belief.”
“If you are selling sandwiches, you can't just be like, ‘I'm also going to offer psychic readings,’” Marrama explained.
Christian Day, a self-described warlock and one of the most well-known figures in Salem’s magical community, said the metaphysical requirement is almost impossible to evaluate and enforce.
“I can take out a bag of Doritos and do a reading. It's the same as using tea leaves,” he said. “You can see signs and omens in just about anything, so what the hell is a metaphysical product?”
In 2007, Day was at the forefront of a controversial but successful effort to remove a city ordinance that said only five fortune-teller shops could be licensed at any given time. Many of the psychics who practiced before the restriction was lifted were not happy about the new competition.
Day said he sees the benefits of the licensing process when it comes to background checks, but he is otherwise against the red tape.
“I don't like overregulation of things, and when you're overregulating psychics, you're overregulating people from a variety of minority and often persecuted religions like witchcraft, voodoo, or spiritualism,” Day said. “Do I agree with the 12 months? No. Do I agree with the 75 percent metaphysical requirement? No. I think those things level themselves out anyway. How many pizza parlors are really going to want to get into this business?”
Just weeks ago, when asked what he would put on his legislative “fun agenda,” House Speaker Ron Mariano jokingly told reporters that fortune-telling policy would make the list.
Some have questioned why lawmakers have repeatedly tried to repeal only the 12-month residency requirement rather than the entire law.
“We have never discussed removing the requirement to have a license,” Whipps said. “I believe it might be an industry that could be exploited for trickery or scams. At least with a licensing process, a town knows who is performing this kind of work and could do a background check to make sure they are on the up and up.”
But when it comes to regulatory overreach, if there’s a political will, there’s a way. In 2021, for example, Massachusetts eliminated licensing for natural hair braiders in a bond bill signed by former Gov. Charlie Baker. The move was celebrated by immigrants and women of color who said the licensing requirements were a major employment hurdle.
Whipps isn’t so confident that fortune-telling regulations will garner the same attention.
“If I were to make a prediction, this bill will not move forward, although I would like to see it come for a vote,” Whipps said. “If only I had a crystal ball.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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