Patronage
I’ve always had a disdain for selling the spiritual work. In fact I fucking hate it, or I should say that I hated doing it. It doesn’t bother me to, when I receive a spiritual service, pay the other person, but it did irk me to think that I might do something like that.
I recently went to a tarot reader. A lot of people seem to like him. He’s a homeless man who’s clearly a little nuts, however he gives good readings. He gave me a reading that really felt like he was building the reading as we went. He followed no specific structure, but as he asked questions he seemed to draw cards that presented either options for the future or insight. It was part cold reading, part tarot, part reasoning all in one great flow that both called me out for my failings and presented insights into potential futures and what they might hold for me. Truly a beautiful experience. I gave him a $20 and felt no shame in doing so.I am also planning on doing a past life regression soon, and will be paying the woman for doing so. I feel no shame in that either.
Nonetheless this economy requires capitol to do the good works. Therefore I am starting a Ko-Fi account, both for myself and for my greater work: the Astral Oaken Grove. However, I feel it is necessary to declare my boundaries and direction so that I can attempt responsibility in including capitol in the spiritual work that I do.
Ethics
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The whole spirit of what I am about to write can be summed up as this: Everything that I know, that I believe may help another person will be freely available. If someone values what I spend my life producing, they may voluntarily help make that life possible. Money is the means not the ends.
- I will never charge for a spiritual working. I may charge for material necessity, but only for the materials to be used by the one who is paying. Should a working require ingredients aside from the most basic candles and incense then I may charge for them, and when it is applicable the payer would keep the materials should they want them.
- I will never charge for writing itself. I will always make my metaphysical and philosophical writings publicly and freely available digitally, and only sell physical copies for profit. To be clear I may financially profit from book sales, but will always have the writing digitally available for free, (except for the book prefaces and introductions, but really these should be available online too).
- I will never purport exclusive access to Truth, nor secret knowledge, nor any other thing which may grant me authority over another person. I may discover something independently. I may have information which is truly original to me. I may even have a level of study which grants me some amount of credibility in what I say. I will never insist that I am the only pathway to a particular knowledge because the Truth is available to all who might seek it.
- I am no messiah. Naturally I will gain expertise in what I do, but this will never make me more special or human than another, nor will it make me a necessary intermediary. All things that I do should help another to be more capable of proceeding without me, not less.
- Free service does not imply owed service. I give of spiritual services freely to whom I want, and I owe no person anything.
- I will never have spiritual services be contingent on donation, nor will advancement in any group, church, system, or otherwise (which I am presiding over) be contingent upon finances or donations. I will treat all services with the same level of care that I normally would without donation. Except for whatever materials are necessary for the working a person will not have to pay me anything, and more ideally they would be able to acquire all materials themselves and keep anything that is unused or reusable.
- I will never guarantee supernatural results. This is not possible.
- I will never manufacture fear. There is no problem which I alone can solve. There is no circumstance which makes me necessary in any way.
- I will keep personal patronage and temple donations distinct. To do otherwise would be both illegal and immoral.
May the Great Goddess guide me through this. Should I fail by becoming a charlatan, I hope now that She swiftly corrects me. It would be another horror on the world for me to become what I hate.
