Some time ago, this poster popped up in my estate cautioning people: "Do not be victims of scams". 4 examples of said scams are then given, complete with graphic illustration: Fortune Telling, Computer Chips, Magic Stone (sic) and Lottery Tickets.

Now, Magic Stones have long been villified, and every now and then you see a story in the Shitty Times about how someone got conned into buying them. I'd always suspected they featured in regional culture (and thus it was insensitive, perhaps even seditious, to label them scams in our harmonious multi-racial society), but it took the addition of fortune telling to incite me to draw on my not inconsiderable resources to find out the depth of the sedition.

In Thailand, Magic Stones are used by Buddhist Abbots to help cure AIDS patients (Perceptions of HIV/AIDS and caring for people with terminal AIDS in southern Thailand). Meanwhile in Phuket, the annual Vegetarian Festival involves the throwing of magic stones. Even the Kabaa is basically a magic stone, in a manner of speaking. In Singapore, money was raised earlier this year in a donation drive for a temple to house what is believed to be the tooth of Gautama Siddhartha; is a magic stone really so different from a sacred tooth whose provenance is disputed? And this is to say nothing of how magic stones feature in many variants of New Age religion (eg healing crystals).

The singling out of fortune telling is even more egregious, since fortune telling is so mainstream among the Chinese that I won't even bother writing about its numerous instances and forms.

At this point, or at some time before, many a reader would doubtless have gone: "But Agagooga, of *course* everyone (except gullible old grannies, who we have to protect) knows that magic stones are scams! Res ipsa loquitur! Anyone who buys what is billed as the 'Pill of Eternal Life' is a moron! Those who buy indulgences from unlicensed sellers at $0.01 for a year out of Purgatory should know better! Someone selling the 6000 year old skull of the first human being is obviously a fraud, since everyone knows the earth is billions of years old! Anyone vouching for a life-prolonging and health-improving pill containing mercury is lying, since we all know that mercury consumption kills! Hawkers who offer tooth fragments from the Merlion must be con artists since everyone knows the Merlion is a creation of the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board!" But then, who is to say what is a genuine religious object and what is a scam? One man's scam is another man's faith.

For the state to have to intervene to be the arbiter for what is which blurs the State-Church divide, and risks making it partisan. It is really impossible to judge what is a legitimate religious endeavor and what is simply a scam, for all religions started out either as cults or as heresies, and most were persecuted (both by religious and secular authorities) during their inception. To persecute emerging forms of religion is simply to entrench existing forms of religion at the former's expense; all forms of religion and mysticism involve claims that cannot be convincingly and empirically proven with finality.

Some suggested to me that the defining characteristic of a con artist (as opposed to a religious figure) is that once the con artist gets the money, he disappears, whereas a religious figure lingers around and so has accountability of sorts. So presumably the lesson for aspiring con artists is to either form a religious system around their scam that is at least semi-coherent (a la L Ron Hubbard: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion." [attr]) and carry out a long term con job or to masquerade as a member of an existing religion and con people of their money within that particular religious framework. Not a very comforting corrolary of those people's suggestions, I must say.

In the final analysis, perhaps the best piece of advice to all faced with mystical propositions, be they magic stones with healing powers or more mainstream forms of miraculous religious healing; the sale of lucky 4D numbers or a blessing upon one's Yong Tau Hoo; promises of eternal life or an alleged prediction of one's future; promising people a greater chance of winning in lucky draws or a bomo charging for his services; improved job prospects or the guarantee of being the last one standing at next year's Subaru Car Challenge, is simply this: Caveat emptor.


[Addendum:

Someone: "i wun be surprised if some of the supposedly-healed ppl are kelong one
esp those last stage cancer

that's a typical scam u noe..for magic stones
cheat tries to sell to auntie A
aunties B n C are part of scam..stand beside n saying how the stone worked for them"]