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Expertise in any sort of occult path requires a significant commitment of time and effort. There are dozens of books to be read over countless hours, and a great deal of work to be done no matter what sort of spells and rituals you have chosen to pursue. Anyone who has actually done these things could be reasonably considered an occult expert of some sort, if not a bona fide magician worthy of esteem. The amount of study and work required is at least equivalent to what one would put into a collegiate degree or professional training in a trade.
Certainly a person of modest means and intelligence, given the inclination, could learn to practice his or her own magic; but these people could also learn to do the other jobs for which professionals are called. Do you install your own electricity and plumbing, fix your radiator, style your hair, and evaluate the condition of your father's prostate gland? I doubt it, and no one would expect it if you did: professional assistance is warranted and even recommended.
Where, then, do you stand on the subject of hiring an occult professional?
If you had no occult practices of your own, would you hire such an individual? Upon what conditions or criteria would you do so?
Under what conditions would you undertake paid magical work, and to what extent? How would you determine the appropriate fees?
Personally I would not charge for occult services no matter what the price or the request. I strive to set magical goals that are productive enough in their own right, without the need to sell the same service to others. If I feel that someone else warrants my help, I give it freely. If requested for intervention, I say "no" and then either do it anyway or ignore it completely, at my discretion.
I believe that a magician should be independent, at least to the extent that he or she is not reduced to drooling over the possibility of a hand-out. We ought to be in charge over what we choose to conjure for ourselves and for others, so that we make happen what we think is best instead of what we expect to be paid for doing. Obviously this is only my opinion though, as there are many people who are happy to sell any old thing as long it makes money, and I wouldn't really hold it against them for earning a living.
One of the biggest differences I can see in hiring a magician versus hiring a plumber is that you can be relatively certain that the plumber will actually come over and install pipes. With magicians, especially online or by mail-order, there is no such guarantee, and I have known many to simply collect client checks and laugh about it, without any intention to do the spell or ritual at all. The customer complains, and inevitably the fault is pinned on the customer for failure to comply with some obscure terms of the original deal. Selling services as a spell-caster or spirit-conjurer is, by and large, the business of frauds and is rightly made illegal in many civilized nations.
If I were to hire a magician, I would first ask whether or not he or she had previously conjured for the same sort of problem in the past. This is obviously no guarantee, but it will give an impression of how the conjuror presents his or her work. If he says he cures cancer or reunites lovers, I want examples. I would also never, under any condition, pay before the spell or whatever has satisfied the original conditions under which I agreed to pay. Notarized agreements to pay, or maybe even some sort of escrow, might be appropriate; but giving money (especially a lot of money) before the fact is pretty stupid without a very good reason.
I should mention here that while I am skeptical of conjurors, I have seen magicians of many paths cure diseases, help in personal relationships, bring financial favor, and all the other things the same fake magicians promise. These things are not rare or exclusive practices hoarded by elsuive authentic magicians: they are basic goals of most magicial traditions worldwide. I would not dismiss the for-hire sorcerers out of hand for simply charging for their services, but it would be ignorant to deny that there are problems in this business.
I think a lot of people pay the spell-casting frauds because they feel as though there might be a chance that these scam artists are legitimate. It is very often a case of excess cash and insufficient intelligence on the part of the customer. Amusingly, when the big scam spell-casters are caught, many of their former clients (some of whom have paid tens of thousands of dollars) refuse to come forward to accuse them of fraud either out of embarrassment or out of fear of the fake wizards.
Has anyone here ever paid for magical work to be done? What did you pay, what did you request, and how did it go?
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Wizards For Hire?
Vagrant Dreamer I have never paid for magickal work, but if I were... Feb 23 2008, 02:03 AM
Feb 23 2008, 12:32 AM
