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Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

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Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#51

Post by fractallyte »

tarotuser wrote: post #44

Greetings. I'm rather new here and a friend steered me towards here. I'm a pagan, and unfortunately this has caused a rather ugly stir in our communities. In recent (last 1.5 years), TikTok has been the primary contributing 'terrible occultists, witches, and pagans'. Their practices equate to what we would describe as cargo cultism, commercialism, and general lack of any understanding what we do. Most of us look down…

This is a very enlightening comment, thank you! Some commentators might take issue with the very last word: 'science'...

Regarding symbology, for both intuitive and mechanistic readings, isn't there a lot that can be interpreted - in many different ways - from even a single symbol, let alone a string of symbols?

Edit: adding this part for anyone who wants to dismiss this as pseudoscience.

Jung devoted much of his life to the study of the 'collective unconscious' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious) and 'synchronicity' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity).

This intersects with notions about 'manifestation' (in pop-spiritual culture), and also with explorations in well-regarded fiction: Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke (the scene with the Ouija board), and His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman (the alethiometer).

These ideas are very much on the edge of the curve scientifically, but nevertheless, it would be unwise to dismiss them. If someone who believes in the veracity of this took the trouble to write a comment here (and risk annihilation!), then I'd like to hear their point of view...

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#52

Post by mongol »

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact,

This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime.

It was factually true but found defamatory because it was deemed irrelevant and harming the reputation of that person. Many, including me, find the Swedish version of defamation strange. Now people on Twitter with opposing political views constantly bring up that she was sentenced for a crime (defamation), which is hypocrisy of tall order.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#53

Post by draw_down »

mongol wrote: post #52

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime. It was fac…

[dead]

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#54

Post by gnicholas »

tptacek wrote: post #49
gnicholas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I recall of law school, the reasonable person standard is most common in tort law, and specifically in negligence cases. These involve car accidents, trip and fall, etc. There is no general overarching rule that applies a reasonable person standard to all areas of law.

Defamation is a tort. :P

Indeed, but not one of negligence!

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#55

Post by bagels »

I took a look at some of the videos on the tik tok.

One video in, I see the a bunch of factual claims about a relationship between the professor and one of the students (which the professor denies) with no reference to them being opinion or even derived from tarot cards (though there are out of cards appearing on a table).

https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyisinthebookoflife/video/717838...

I'm curious if one of the other videos makes the murder claim in a similar manner. If I was on that jury, there's no way this is not a win for the professor unless the defense was able to back up every one of their direct claims.

Edit: More factual claims without any reference to tarot or opinion

https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyisinthebookoflife/video/717841...

Edit again:

A nice short one without even the context or pretense of tarot cards, refers to the professor as "killer"

https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyisinthebookoflife/video/718049...

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#56

Post by thaumasiotes »

tptacek wrote: post #48
thaumasiotes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But tarot reading is an appeal to a supernatural force; your religious beliefs do not need to conform to what is commonly believed by other people in order to be fully protected.

The idea here is that it is at least conceivable, if not especially likely, that you could generate some evidence that the Tarot reader just made things up on the fly, claiming to have read something in Tarot cards completely inconsistent with normal Tarot interpretation or their own previous readings; there might just be evidence that they deliberately made it up (we know they made it up, but you might find evidence…

You could generate evidence that they came to a conclusion most other Tarot readers wouldn't have come to, though even that would be very difficult.

But that would be irrelevant against the defense "I have a superior understanding of how to read the messages in the cards than other people do". Which seems like a pretty likely defense.

If you can prosecute "the cards told me X is the murderer", you can also prosecute "God told me X is the murderer"; they are identical claims.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#57

Post by tptacek »

mongol wrote: post #52

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime. It was fac…

We're exclusively talking about US defamation law on this story.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#58

Post by bawolff »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that it is at least conceivable, if not especially likely, that you could generate some evidence that the Tarot reader just made things up on the fly, claiming to have read something in Tarot cards completely inconsistent with normal Tarot interpretation or their own previous readings; there might just be evidence that they deliberately made it up (we know they made it up, but you might find evidence…

You could generate evidence that they came to a conclusion most other Tarot readers wouldn't have come to, though even that would be very difficult. But that would be irrelevant against the defense "I have a superior understanding of how to read the messages in the cards than other people do". Which seems like a pretty likely defense. If you can prosecute "the cards told me X is the murderer", you can also prosecute…

> If you can prosecute "the cards told me X is the murderer", you can also prosecute "God told me X is the murderer"; they are identical claims.

Can't you prosecute the latter though? Its not like freedom of religion is a get out of jail free card. Like you can't murder someone and then say $deity made me do it.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#59

Post by Dracophoenix »

mongol wrote: post #52

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime. It was fac…

The Swedish definition isn't foreign to the 1st Circuit as demonstrated in ruling opinion in Noonan v. Staples

https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-spr...

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#60

Post by kortilla »

tptacek wrote: post #57
mongol wrote: post #52

> I know I’m like a broken record about it: defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, This is actually not true in all jurisdictions. In Sweden a statement can be defamatory even if true. A Swedish politician was found guilty of defamation for mentioning on Facebook that the legal counsel of an opposing party in a civil law suite she was involved in had been sentenced for a a child sex crime. It was fac…

We're exclusively talking about US defamation law on this story.

Who defines what we’re exclusively allowed to talk about when a story comes up? I missed that one in the HN guidelines.
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