For those who are on Pinterest, I have several boards over there where I post random things that catch my attention, and you should go visit. I want to start a new board of client, customer, and reader photos, and I’m going to get it kick-started by having a contest.
There are two prizes, one in each category. I am not going to check entries against some master list of invoices or emails or anything like that, so even if your only interaction with me has been reading this blog and I have no idea who you are, you can still enter as long as your caption explains why your entry qualifies.
Send me a photo — with caption — related to your rootwork or spiritual work that involves using, wearing, or otherwise employing a product or item from Karma Zain Spiritual Supplies, or even doing something on advice from Karma Zain. This could be a photo of your altar, but if you have a nice or artistic altar setup, you might want the next category. This can be a photo of you wearing a jewelry item, or a photo of your cat looking skeptically at a jewelry item, or a photo of your car after you’ve dressed the upholstery with Safe Travel oil, or a photo of the boyfriend you got back with Reconciliation candles, or a photo of the crossroads where you threw your ritual remains after using a spell kit you got from me, or a photo of your golf clubs that you got after a reading advised you to get a new hobby, etc. It could even be a photo of a bottle of oil on your kitchen counter, but I encourage creativity. One entry per person, please.
Email the photo to me at karmazain at gmail.com, and make the subject line “photo contest – category 1” or something along those lines. The caption needs to explain how the stuff in the photo qualifies it for entry in the contest. If you send me a photo of a shoe, for instance, you need to explain in the caption that the shoe had Hot Foot powder sprinkled in it or whatever. Your sending me a photo for entry in the contest *constitutes your permission to have the photo published electronically* on my Pinterest board, on my blog, or wherever else, along with the caption (with any identifying information removed, if you like, though if you want me to include your website or business or contact info, that’s fine, so you can publicize your services as a reader or accountant or website designer or whatever through this, too, if you want).
At some point in early December, I will do a drawing, and one of the entries will be chosen randomly as a winner. The winner will get a gift basket containing *at least* six voodoo or hoodoo condition oils, brews, candles, and/or bath items. The winner will have some input on the type of thing they’d like, though I’m not making any promises that you will definitely get 2 drams of X and one packet of Y — but the winner can say “I’d like things for luck” or “I’d like things for the loa Legba” and I will send a related assortment in some sort of gift basket or keepsake gift box (there probably aren’t 6 different things for Legba, so in that case you might get some Legba stuff and some Road Opener stuff, stuff like that. If you ask for a bunch of little stuff, you might get more than 6 items; if you want big stuff, you might not, it just depends on the stuff and what fits in the box or basket).
If you are artistic or creative, and you have an altar setup, a ritual room, a backyard shrine, some kind of artistic work, or some other kind of creative arrangement that you can photograph, and that artistic/creative thing incorporates something you’ve gotten from Karma Zain Spiritual Supplies, or gotten help on from Karma Zain directly, then you should enter this category. You could photograph your saint altar if you got advice from me on creating it, or if you use saint’s incense you got from me. You could photograph yourself in dramatic makeup or clothing or lighting wearing earrings I made or before you perform a ritual that you learned about at my blog. Hell, you could make origami animals out of the packing materials in a package I sent you, if you want, or take a screenshot of the negative feedback you just left me on ebay (though be aware that your chances of winning in that case are not very good – remember this category is judged on artistic merit/creativity — but the point is that you don’t have to be an artist or photographer to enter). You have room to be creative with this, in other words – you just need to explain how this photo shows us something that involves me or my shop, and it should ideally have something to do with spiritual stuff.
In this category, you may enter as many photos as you like, but it’s one photo per entry, and one entry per email. So if you have three great altars, you should only send one photo of each – don’t send three shots of the same altar to give all the angles, but instead choose the best angle or compose your shot artistically, and send that one best photo for that entry. Only one photo per email, please. But you can send three emails, and thus you will enter three different photos into the contest, and your photos will then be competing against each other (and all the other photos that are entered by other people as well). In other words, enter as much as you like, but entering more than once does not increase your chances of winning. This category is judged on creativity and artistic merit.
Email the photo to me at karmazain at gmail.com, and make the subject line “photo contest: artistic category” or something like that. The caption needs to explain how the stuff in the photo qualifies it for entry in the contest. If you send me a black and white still life of a bunch of rocks, your caption needs to explain that the rocks are part of your Santisima Muerte ritual that you got a consultation on last year or whatever. Your sending me a photo for entry in the contest *constitutes your permission to have the photo published electronically* on my Pinterest board, on my blog, or wherever else, along with the caption (with any identifying information removed upon request, but I will include your info if you like – your name, your website, your shop, etc, so feel free to publicize your art or skills this way, too). The panel of judges will consist of the assistants and associates of Karma Zain Spiritual Supplies (me, Maggie, Dani, Kris, Mari, and Lor). The winner will receive a rosary or altar art item that she or he has some input on: you can tell me you want an altar something for Legba, and I may do you up a small altar bottle or a shadow box. Or you may want a rosary for a saint or loa, and I will make you one. Or you may want something you can hang on the wall that looks like art but is also protective, and I will make you something that fits the bill.
If I get a lot of wildly different entries, or I get some really good entries that involve things too disparate to measure against each other, then I may modify the contest on the fly and split this category into sub-categories, in which case there may be more than one winner. But I may not get enough to merit setting up a bunch of subcategories, so I’m not going to do that yet. As of now, there’s just the one artistic category. We’ll see how it goes.
In both cases, since the whole point here is for me to be able to post/publish the entries on social media sites, you are relinquishing copyright to the photo that is your contest entry – you’re handing over the “publishing” rights for the photo and its caption to me. But I do promise I will not transfer or sell the rights or anything like that, beyond the sort of temporary permission that’s granted through a certain blogging or social media site’s terms of service. And I do promise I will not disclose your name or email address or contact info without your express permission in writing. But *anything you send me* in your photo or caption could be seen by *anybody,* if it’s posted, so please be aware that your entry will NOT be private; if you need to keep your face away from association with rootwork, do not send me a photo of your face. If your target for Cursing work will recognize your jewelry, make sure the hand holding the poppet with pins in it is free of jewelry. I reserve the right to *not* publish any photo, as well, so there’s no guarantee it will be published. But if it is published, I will not present it as my own work, and I will use only your initials to I.D. the owner unless you specify something else be used. Your email and location will not be associated with the photo – just the caption you give me. Social media being what it is, though, I can’t guarantee it won’t be reposted, reblogged, republished, or even outright stolen as sometimes rarely but unfortunately happens, so I do discourage you from sending me anything private, anything indecorous, anything giving away your secrets, or anything that contains identifying info that you wouldn’t want getting out. Think before you hit send, because once it’s out there, it’s out there, and what with the Internet Archive and Google cache, there’s really no such thing as “erasing” something that’s been put on the internet.
Be creative! Send your photos! Get your fifteen minutes of fame! Win cool stuff!
Here, for instance, is an example of Jude stuff, to give you an idea of the sort of thing I mean when I refer to your being able to win “stuff.”
Big Lucky Hoodoo 