ABOVE: A Halloween costume party at Huntington Beach city hall, mid 1970s. Then-city council member Harriet Weider is at far right, seated. (City of Huntington Beach archives, circa 1974-1978)
Look up Huntington Beach Municipal Code Chapter 9.60, "hypnotism." This is the ethereal section of the local government code. It was there for almost four decades, then, poof! One day in 2013 it vanished.
Orange County cities in the 1970s were freaked out by what were then called "new age" practices. So much so that in October 1976, Huntington Beach passed Ordinance 2116 prohibiting, among other practices, phrenology, crystal gazing, augury, divination, magic and fortune telling (excerpt of Ordinance 2116 below). There would be no Hogwarts in Huntington Beach.
In 1975, astrologist Zelda Pryor, head of Church of the Astrolight, was convicted of violating a Costa Mesa ordinance prohibiting fortune telling for a fee. Pryor was fined $150 by Harbor Municipal Court, later upheld by an appeals court in Superior Court. In December 1975, the Santa Ana Register reported Pryor was appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds she was denied freedom of religion, equal protection under the law, and due process. Pryor, 76, said Costa Mesa had kept "an old lady from her livelihood and from practicing her religion."
In March 1976, a Garden Grove woman was to go on trial for violating an ordinance against fortune telling. She reportedly was practicing what she called, "Huna," claiming it was a religion of the ancient Hawaiians. Patricia Ann Roberts, who went by the professional name of Zalithea de Racon, was doing business under the Scarab Society psychic workshop. She explained her ancestry was Welsh and French, and that she was "brought up in a psychic world where astrology, dream analysis, spirits and the like were as much a part of me as my arms and legs."
The Santa Ana Register reported Zalithea's practices included "divination, the act or practice of trying to foretell future events or the unknown by secret and mysterious means." The judge was concerned that if Huna was a religion whether the city statute had been applied in a way that infringed on her first amendment rights. (Huna is considered a "new age" movement created in the 1930s by Max Freedom Long--like Zalithea, not Hawaiian--and is not considered a Hawaiian religion.)
Zalithea, aka Patricia Roberts, was convicted, sentenced to one-year probation, and fined $125 for illegal fortune telling by West Orange County Municipal Judge Ragnar H. Engebretsen. The conviction prompted one of Zalithea's followers in June 1976 to publicly call on the Garden Grove city council to outlaw their "blue laws" and if they did not "the council should change the city's name from Garden Grove to Salem." Garden Grove's city attorney Eric Lauterer informed the council that "Priestess Zalithea-Patricia Roberts had appealed her fortune telling conviction" and that the council should not respond until the court case was settled.
Meanwhile, next door in Westminster and Huntington Beach, the mystical drama that had overtaken the Garden Grove and Costa Mesa city councils was not lost on local officials. Best to nip this stuff in the bud and pass an ordinance outlawing anything with a hint of old magic or new age.
RIGHT: Westminster moved quickly to curtail magical powers inside its jurisdiction. (Santa Ana Register, June 254, 1976)
In October 1976, just in time for Halloween, the Huntington Beach city council passed Ordinance 2116.
But, then an odd thing happened the following year, with accusations the Huntington Beach city council was attempting to fast-track an ordinance to allow hypnotism for someone not licensed to practice hypnotism. The city clerk said it was if the city council was brainwashed. The University of California Irvine (UCI) student newspaper, New University, covered the drama which involved UCI executive program director James McCann, Council Member Harriet Weider, and city administrator Floyd Belsito.
According to New University, James McCann sent Harriet Weider a letter requesting the ordinance prohibiting hypnosis be changed. Wieder directed it to city attorney Ron Bonfa to draft a new ordinance and "within two days after Weider received McCann's request, City Administrator Floyd Belsito prepared a letter recommending the council adopt a new ordinance Bonfa had prepared allowing hypnotism in the city."
"I've never seen an ordinance move so fast," city clerk Alicia Wentworth is reported as commenting. "Usually when the council considers an ordinance they will study it first. But, in this case it never happened. No study was ever made by the council."
A complaint was filed by the Medical Quality Board of Assurance with the West Orange County Municipal Court that McCann was not a licensed physician or psychologist and not permitted to practice hypnosis, the Huntington Beach police department was called to investigate, and city councilman Richard Siebert charged that the investigation was inadequate. City administrator Floyd Belsito--who in 1970 managed to get the city council to approve Ordinance 1552 to name a street not even owned by the City after himself--said he had recommended the council allow "vocational and advocational hypnotism" in Huntington Beach at city attorney Bonfa's direction.
The blue law ordinance prohibiting fortune telling and all the practices categorized as "magical" arts and new age "voodoo" remained on the books in Huntington Beach until June 17, 2013, when the city council repealed it. Four decades later, we'd kind of embraced crystals, essential oils, and become more open about what people choose to believe. An entire generation went to Hogwarts and wanted to believe in a little good magic. However, the placeholder for Municipal Code Chapter 9.60, "hypnotism," is still there just in case we get freaked out again.
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