For a mystic to say :”I will heal you if you prepare my meals for a week” is far more involving of the supplicant’s time and will than ” I will heal you and I ask that you donate $100 to my ministry.”

Well, that $100 may be used to feed the ministry for that week while they prepare for theri next week’s sermons and charitible works, no? I doubt they’re out there blowing it on cocaine and hookers like I would.

A nice ideal but what if you wind up with an unbalanced or manipulative personality who gets off on being waited on and having his supplicants on site 24-7 - what’s next?

Why do we spend so much time arguing what-ifs? What if monkeys flew out of my butt? I’d be embarrassed for a while, then sell the rights to tv for a million dollars. Then I’d buy a bunch of cocaine and hookers.

People can go to a mystic to fix a problem, it doesn’t mean they have to live with him or even adopt his beliefs. Mayvbe they just solve the problem and get on with their lives.

I think this is an important note, because not everyone’s life-story are perpendicular. Many people just want a service, and whether the individual in question with this capability to provide this service wants to do so for money, food, a blowjob, or good will is totally up to them and fits into their experiences with their own life-story.

Who are we to criticise?

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A nice ideal but what if you wind up with an unbalanced or manipulative personality who gets off on being waited on and having his supplicants on site 24-7 - what’s next?

I’ll trade you my assistance for some oral sex? That basically what a lot of those guru communes in the 60s turned into aint it?

People can go to a mystic to fix a problem, it doesn’t mean they have to live with him or even adopt his beliefs. Mayvbe they just solve the problem and get on with their lives.

Give child a toy and expect it to be quickly broken and forgotten. But if the child earns that toy through hard work and accomplishment then it will be cherished and cared for.

I don’t think a mystic should accept or charge money for services. That is demeaning to both parties, money is too abstract, it doesn’t have any real value to most people. (yes, you value your money, but you can get more, and it’s not usually that hard, depending on the amounts being discussed).

A far better way to create perceived value in a service is to require that a service be performed. This is as old as human culture and immediately understood by the supplicant. If the task is too onerous for them to undertake, then they do not value the service enough.

For a mystic to say :”I will heal you if you prepare my meals for a week” is far more involving of the supplicant’s time and will than ” I will heal you and I ask that you donate $100 to my ministry.”

It would be possible for a true mystic to live a simple life supported entirely by these kinds services from supplicants. And that’s the end result: even a mystic must eat and have a place to sleep out of the elements to live. His supplicants can provide that as he provides them guidance and healing. Once that guideance is no longer enough, the supplicant is free to leave.

I also do pro-bono work for the holistic health industry here, and have donated my services to the City of Edmonton’s committee that deals with homelessness. My roommates run an esteemed restaurant here in the city and also run a charity program in which they take almost–past-due foods from local grocery markets, and they donate their time and equipment to turn them into stews. These foods are donated weekly to the homeless and needy.

I wouldn’t be able to do much, if any of this, if I didn’t make money. It’s not like I make a lot of money, either, trust me.

An acquaintance of mine once told me something that sticked when I was in high school: You can’t take care of anybody else if you don’t take care of yourself first.

There is a monk who lives here in Edmonton that teaches martial arts on the grounds of the U of A, and he asks that his students pay him for his services as a token of their worth of his doings. It’s not a lot, mind you, $20 a month for one of the most amazing fighters I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing, but it holds worth.

I also have clients that are reiki masters, they teach at MacEwan College, and run a practice in which they treat clients with reiki, NLP, and a form of existential counselling. They are wonderful, spiritual people, and they do this for a living. In a world where money is the symbol of commodity, commerce, and a social means of interaction.

A few years ago I also did some stuff with a thirteenth-generation Chilcotin medicine man. He held a degree in psychology, I believe it was, and spent most of his time volunteering with the troubled youth of the inner city. A few days a week, he’d work in cafés around town as a tarot reader. Yes, he charged for his time. He also would hold workshops once a season or so on developing psychic ability. And yes, he charged for these workshops also.

As far as corporatism and the occult goes, I am fairly certain that I’ve read about Grant Morrison, author of The Invisibles and head of an Illuminates of Thanateros chapter in England (chaos magicians), speaking to executives and marketing people about magic and sorcery.

When would it be okay to charge? I’ve always dreamed of an occult institute, a school where one could go to pursue studies in magic and the occult. I figure it’d be very similar in nature to The Banff Centre, located in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta.

There is also a very open possibility (in Canada, at least… I’m not sure about how it would fly in the U.S.) that a not-for-profit organisation could be registered in order to bring what we refer to as spirituality back to everyday life, as well as working them into improving the human environment, developing professions in which shamanism and the occult wouldn’t be censured, and serve the existing persons out there with legal, promotional, and other forms of aid.

Money is part of the game of life, ergo part of the overall story we have all decided to incorporate ourselves into. You can either embrace the structure which we have and try to make it better — à la designer Bruce Mau or Oxfam International — or we can all sit around bitching and complaining about what is “right” and what is “wrong,” when just days prior everyone in this field is arguing about whether and right and wrong even fucking exist.

Define yourselves by your actions, not by your thoughts.

as for shamans who charge for services and whatnot, well that’s something else entirely. gotta pay yer doctor. in a perfect world, it’d all be based on bartering items or skills but that’s just not how we’re set up. i’m talking about people who would have you pay for access to the path to god, but asking someone to pay for a service rendered doesn’t seem to carry as many negative connotations.

fwiw, i suppose it’s possible that some ‘free’ paths are detrimental & exploitative, but i can’t think of any off of the top of my head.

“Make money money/ but please don’t waste money/ We don’t love money/ but we don’t hate money”
–”Trade Money”, Dilated People

You pay taxes (no other mandatory participation required, except the occasional draft and “mandatory” presence in courts, jails and prisons if you break the rules)

Taxation is the price of liberty.

Saddam had no taxes. Lots of tyrannies do.

(Try switching the labels on a couple bottles of wine if you want a mundane example of the pv effect!)

Money and spirituality have a very uneasy relationship, and I don’t know if it can ve resolved in opur current model. Max had a really great point when he mentioned the value to the tribe. Sure, you pay the shaman in chickens and whiskey, but he’s a dedicated civil servant who’s expected to produce. In this culture, tho, anyone can hang a shaman shingle, and there’s no consumer reports on psychic healers. (Then again, there’s no saving the rubes from themselves.) The scammers and their prey are unfortunate, but unavoidable in capitalist cultures.

What really concerns me is when ppl with real intent go astray..I’ve seen some truly gifted psychics get some popularity and completely blow it- first, they’re paying the bills, then they’re rationalizing the fortune telling parties or crappy books, or their exorbitant fees, because they’re ‘helping’ people…and the sad thing is, most of them aren’t helping anyone, they’re creating junkies dependent on ego flattery and bad advice.

IOW, I don’t trust any clergy person of any stripe who works for more than basic human comforts.

I’m not saying that everyone is like this, but a good few are around.

i’m going to sleep now but more on this tomorrow !

collecting money to cover costs and effort is OK in my book

but keep your day job too

that way you don’t need the money and can afford to keep your principles

kinda like a fine artist who works in graphic design for an evil corporation

keep the art separate from the day job that way it can be beautiful on its own terms and hey if you sell a painting too, awesome!

then again do i think http://www.alexgrey.com/ is unspiritual because he makes a living off his art?

how about authors who make a living off of their books, e.g., the Gnostic Gospels

How do you use money without letting it get you dirty?

See it as neutral I guess - we all need to eat. Don’t love it just accept it for what it is

an energy which comes and goes

he says that if you do things for people for free then their problem will stick to you

when there’s an exchange then the problem gets shunted off into nonordinary reality and off of both him and his client

That makes a LOT of sense actually. I know that there are times I’ve done things for people for free and when you do that, it really does become your problem, instead of you just being able to help with their problem. I like this idea that the money becomes sort of a shield between the people, and a recognition that this is just a problem. It doesn’t have to belong to somebody. It can be dealt with. That makes more and more sense to me.

I knew you guys would have good arguments on this. This is just what I was looking for and what I would have never come up with on my own.

he has made tumors disappear gotten people out of jail etc ad nauseum

he charges money but it basically based on what people can afford

he throws the bones to find out

if the bones say no he doesn’t charge at all

if the bones say yes he won’t help them no matter what they offer to pay

but in 99% of cases he charges something, even if its only a few pennies

he says that if you do things for people for free then their problem will stick to you

when there’s an exchange then the problem gets shunted off into nonordinary reality and off of both him and his client

but we are talking about tangible benfits here, if he didn’t know what he was doing he wouldn’t have clients

he doesn’t advertise but they’re beating a path to his door anyway

this is very typical in the shamanic world view based on my experience

a lot of people are walking around fille dwith light and love and good energy but no defenses

it only takes one greedy asshole to come along and penetrate your armor and suck you dry

to change the way you look at things

we live in the world in this case the money is a medium of exchange

Now if I could only beleieve that my artwork was worth all the effort i had put into it i would be rich by now

instead i give it away to friends etc

go figure!

On the other hand, if you see those connections and choose to cash in anyway, perhaps using your witchy powers, well… that brings us back to some of the arguments about “what is spirituality” from last week. But it doesn’t fit within my spiritual framework.

I don’t think we need to make ourselves profoundly uncomfortable economically (although I’m sure there is spiritual benefit in that at some point on your path). But putting the acquisition of money as central goal in your life after knowing where the money comes from seems wrong to me.