The Superstition Industry: Does it exist in the developed world outside the U.S.?

Because people want it. And because homeopathic practitioners successfully lobbied for it.

No, you’re dead.

How about Islam?

Not necessarily the case. It’s pretty big in certain parts of Germany, especially in the “Bad” belt of Germany. That’s Bad as in Baths/springs. These areas have long histories as health retreats for Europeans origininating from the supposed restorative properties of their curative springs.

Don’t know about anyone elses experiences with German Doctors, but my Mom went to a supposed licensed Doctor in Germany for a bad flare up of her asthma and Emphysema, and the treatment administered was to draw blood and reinject it back into her along with some herbal drops to take home. And an admonishment to her American doctors who had never given her the reinjections of her own blood, and a recommended course of treatment of continued reinjections.

What about local laws? I’ve run across many references to laws banning or restricting fortune telling in the USA in old books, movies, and television shows. They used to be more vigorously enforced.

Belgian airline forced to change its logo because its having 13 dots scared some passengers.

Shamans in Taiwan

WRT the OP I don’t recall seeing many tarot/palm reading/forturne telling type places here in the Greater Boston Area. There is one in the suburban town I live in, some lady apparently will do palm reading and has a sign in her window advertising it. It is reallly quite unusual though, I can only recall seeing maybe one other such sign in the last 20 years. Og knows that kind of thing is not on my radar screen though, there could well be others out there.

The crystal/New Agey type stuff is somewhat more common, I think there are a few such places around, in Cambridge and maybe the touristy areas of Boston itself.

As for the Netherlands:

We have those ads to, but they seem to be for a “softer” kind of superstition, like little notes offering “spiritual retreat weekends” or " holistic massage therapy". These also hang in organic food stores.

There are stores for new-agey stuff in every Dutch major shopping mall and shopping centre. They sell incence, crystal pyramids, gemstones, sage to burn, massage stuff, little Buddha statues, postcards with glurge or medieval stuff or elves. Mostly stuff for interior decorating and little gifts, really.

My mom worked as a past life regression therapist for a couple years. She worked out of her home, and she could have made a living out of it. There even was a a Dutch official membership organisation for Regression therapy, with standards and complaint procedures and educations and everything. Including fights and schisms in the leading committee.

Homeopathy is huge here too, and similarly officially regulated.

We had those too, but IIRC, they were outlawed. We also have adversitements for those in the lower education. gossip rags.

Classic palm-readers and healign doctors don’t have brick and mortar stores in the Netherlands, but I do get a little card sized advertisement for their services in my mailbox about once a month. They do seem to operate from their own homes in our Surinam and African ghettos in Amsterdam.

I doubt it in the extreme. In many states, fortunetelling and the like is barely legal as it is. Here in Philly, the cops often watch psychics for scams( I mean like ‘bring the money to get rid of the bad luck. I make it look like I burn the money, but really I burn newspaper and pocket the cash’ scam). So you’d have a business the cops would already be paying extra attention to, and looking for an excuse to shut down. Not a very good front, is it?

Superstition is alive and well in the Phillipines.

The good news is that all this belief in non supported superstition is on the decline and science is finally rising to an honored and respected position in society!

Well, at least that’s what my psychic tells me. :smiley:
In actuality, this has turned out to be a pretty depressing thread :frowning: