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Laws regulating fortune-telling vary by jurisdiction. Some countries and sub-national divisions ban fortune-telling as a form of fraud. Laws banning fortune-telling have often been criticized as infringing upon the freedom of religion and speech or as being racially discriminatory against Romani people, due to the traditional importance of fortune-telling within Romani culture.
Fortune telling is easily dismissed by critics as magical thinking and superstition. [24] [25] [26] Skeptic Bergen Evans suggested that fortune telling is the result of a "naïve selection of something that have happened from a mass of things that haven't, the clever interpretation of ambiguities, or a brazen announcement of the inevitable."
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Onychomancy: fingernails analysis. Onychomancy or onymancy (from Greek onychos, 'fingernail', and manteia, 'fortune-telling') is an ancient form of divination using fingernails as a "crystal ball" or "scrying mirror" and is considered a subdivision of palmistry (also called chiromancy).
Cartomancy using standard playing cards was the most popular form of providing fortune-telling card readings in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The standard 52-card deck is often augmented with jokers or even with the blank card found in many packaged decks.
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A fortune-teller conducting a palm reading, with lines and mounts marked out on the person's left palm Gold stamped front cover of The Psychonomy of the Hand. Palmistry is the pseudoscientific practice of fortune-telling through the study of the palm. [1]
Illustration taken from page 31 of China, a History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People, edited by W. G. Gregor, depicting literomancy. Literomancy, from the Latin litero-, 'letter' + -mancy, 'divination', is a form of fortune-telling based on written words, or, in the case of Chinese, characters.