At Karma Soup, I write about my chickens (badly-behaved), my gardens (reluctant), and my life trajectory (bewildering) in between researched pieces on family lore or regional history. And then I offer the odd handmade rosary, folk art shrine, spiritual cleansing floor wash, and/or salvaged/refinished end table in between DIY tips and various esoteric ramblings at the Seraphin Station site.
Work on deGruy family and Conner-Tally family research continues as I have time. Projects: the deGruy-Glapion-furniture connection; children's book on family pet stories (need illustrator); family recipe book(s); children's book on Mae's scary neighborhood creatures.
I’m offering community honey jar altar work monthly, beginning after the new moon each month. One service is for matters relating to prosperity/career/income and one is for matters relating to love/relationships (they don’t have to be romantic relationships). January’s community altar work services start on Wednesday, January 13th.
Here are the details for the prosperity/career/income service:
This service, focusing on goals related to prosperity, work, income, and career success, has your name/petition added to a sweet jar with the names/petitions of other community members having similar goals. I work these community jars on my altars for a month, from new moon to new moon, with special attention to pertinent moon phases, astrological transits, holy days, etc. as applicable. Participants receive a link to my client calendar detailing the work over the course of the month and are invited to a private Discord chat for participants for that month.
Some of y’all testers and critics are really mean!
Coffee at Midnight smells like coffee, for real, because it contains coffee oil, cold pressed from the seeds of Coffea arabica L. I source the best ingredients I can manage for this formula, and they’re expensive.
But some of you are not impressed. One reviewer’s verdict:
“Smells like pumpkin seeds covered in raccoon poop.” – Jane, age 4
Get a real job, Jane.
(I’m just kidding, sweetie. You’re good. And I’d probably be worried about you if you did like coffee at the age of four 😉 )
Fortunately, most adults who appreciate both coffee and conjure have reviewed it much more favorably:
“This is my favorite love/lust oil. It smells fantastic and quite delicious! I feel like this is an excellent oil for helping get my mind in the right place when I’m doing love work. The coffee smell is…
I sliced my right index finger open and the cut is pretty short but also pretty deep (for being on a fingertip anyway), and it’s slowing me down on pretty much everything, especially typing. So I’ve been moving at glacial speed, but I am moving.
What’s funny is that I didn’t do this with a kitchen knife or a machete or any gardening implements, and I didn’t do it working with tinplate or metal flashing or barbed wire or aviation snips or any of the other sharp and often unwieldy things I deal with every single day.
Nope, I did it while taking the safety cap off of the blade on one of Martha Stewart’s infernal and overpriced crafting contraptions (a circle cutter). I will probably think this is hilarious one day. For now I’m just annoyed ’cause I have a lot of typing to do.
The rewards program is free – you just need an account with the shop so there’s somewhere to track your points. You’ll see the little Rewards icon in the bottom right of your screen and you just click it to open it up.
I can’t count the number of references I’ve seen over the past 15 or so years to Santa Muerte being a “narco saint,” with the implication (or even the straight-up assertion) that she’s a saint for drug dealers, boom, like that’s the whole picture. This kind of statement is incredibly reductionist and oversimplified. It ignores nuance, never mind facts, and it betrays a lack of respect for the (sub)culture(s) from which she springs and a total lack of concern for understanding folk religion – in Mexico or in general.
Seriously, it’s insulting and dismissive even if you *are* a drug dealer. It would be reductionist even if it were true that only those associated with the drug trade in Mexico venerate this folk saint. That it’s not even true just makes all that rhetoric exhausting (and those who uncritically repeat it lazy).
I still haven’t been able to make heads or tails of the bluehost hosting I paid for six months ago and am not using because I can’t make it go. But I was finally able to upgrade this blog, at least, to a WordPress plan, which means you shouldn’t be annoyed by outside advertising any longer. And if it wasn’t annoying you, it was annoying *me* anyway, so I’m happy!
I know it’s too easy and not sportsmanlike and all, and I really try not to reach for the low-hanging fruit *all* the time, for real. But sometimes you just run into stuff **and you have to say something** or you’ll actually **bust.**
Exhibit A:
THE STUPID. IT BURNS.
Or how about the proud declaration of some energetic young entrepreneur:
– After I finish blending my oils, they are charged under a full moon before being sent to you.
– All of ’em, huh? Every formula you make is ‘charged under a full moon’?
– Uh-huh!
-Your Road Opener and your Crossing and your Get a Job and your Hot Foot and your Cancer Zodiac oils, all ‘charged under a full moon’?
Cat over at Cat’s Rants/Original Ninja Cat is offering her course on love spells for the first time in years. Enrollment is open now — and limited.
It covers pretty much everything you could think to ask about practical love magic over the course of 10 weeks. In addition to the weekly course material, you also get a weekly private half-hour chat session with your instructor and access to the course Discord chatroom. Bit more info about materials and access here.
Cat is a plain-talking, straight-shooting kind of worker who calls it like it is. You won’t learn a lot of airy nonsense here where you just glue a quartz crystal to your forehead, smudge your butt with sage, meditate on some kale, close your eyes, and just think positive thoughts real hard, preferably widdershins. She knows her stuff and she has 25 years of professional experience, so *she has seen it all* when it comes to love work in the conjure tradition. This won’t be a waste of time.
Work begins Monday, November 16th. This service, focusing on goals related to prosperity, work, income, and career, has your name/petition added to a sweet jar with the names/petitions of other community members having similar goals. I work these community jars on my altars for a month, from new moon to new moon, with special attention to pertinent moon phases, astrological transits, holy days, etc. as applicable. Participants receive a link to my client calendar detailing the work over the course of the month.
This is an especially good time for work like this if you’ve been having trouble, because Mars, which has been retrograde for two months, will have just gone direct on the 13th, so you might find that you can gain a stronger or clearer sense of where you want to go and how you want to get there over the course of the coming month.
And it should be easier to communicate your needs, goals, plans, and thoughts now that we’re emerging from the shadow of Mercury retrograde. In addition to the usual scheduled setting of lights that is typical of honey jar work, I also work in accordance with and in response to other relevant events, dates, phases, and transits for these services, so for this month’s community honey jar, I will be incorporating additional elements to focus on personal power, confidence, and effective communication.
And the calendar will show you key dates and times that you might choose to take advantage of on your own, as well. For instance, you’ll know I’m focusing on confidence and mastery on a certain day, and you’ll learn why I made that choice, and you can get some tips on what would be good work for you to do on your end if you’re so inclined. I’ll explain some simple but effective work you can do during the December eclipse to help you further your goals and even create a powerful magical curio/supply of your own that can help you in your spiritual work even months later. And if you have questions about this work, you can ask them and I’ll answer them in a private forum just for community altar work participants. It’s altar work but it can also be a sort of magical education with the opportunity for some coaching and consultation over the course of the month. You don’t get my personal cell phone number, but this is just about the next best thing.
Now if you have a rough weekend emotionally with the moon in Scorpio and half the world feeling like it’s on fire, that wouldn’t be surprising. If you have trouble articulating your petition as a result, I can help you troubleshoot it, but it’s really ok to keep it simple. And hang in there. You should feel the chaos smoothing out as the month progresses and you might just find you get a burst of motivation and drive that helps propel you towards better things in a brighter 2021.
Because COVID sucks and is screwing up people’s lives and careers, I am currently offering this as a Pay What You Can service.
If you can’t, that’s ok, too – I’m doing this so people who need help but can’t afford to book private, custom spiritual work can get some help, so it’s absolutely fine to choose the reduced rate option here or here.
If you can afford to pay more than full price as a charitable contribution to help offset the costs for those who can’t, you can do that too, here or here.
If you want to book on behalf of a friend or loved one, that’s fine for this type of work, even if they don’t know about it.
If you want to pay for booking as a way of making an offering to thank a saint but you don’t need the service for yourself, just mention that in the intake form. It won’t take me four minutes to find a grateful recipient of your charity who needs some spiritual help here in the twilight of 2020 and can’t afford even a few dollars. People are suffering greatly. I will also publish your prayer/statement of thanks to your saint or spirit on my blogs/sites for you, as well, if you’d like me to. Just provide that info in the intake form.
If you want to participate but want to pay a different amount than what is shown below as the normal booking rate, you can choose from three options at seraphinstation.com, or you can choose your own amount via this Paypal link.
If you can’t afford to pay even a token amount for participating but are in dire need, contact me. There may be an available pro bono slot for you depending on what participation looks like so far.
Click the link in the caption of this image to participate in the Prosperity Community work for November.
I will begin preparing for the altar work after 11:07 p.m. my time (Central) on Saturday November the 14th with the new moon in Scorpio. I set the first light on the jar on Monday, November 16th, so it’s ideal to get your petition in before then. However, you can join at any point during the month.
After you have checked out and received your order confirmation email, go to the Community Sweet Jar Intake page to fill out and submit the intake form.
Once I’ve got everything set up, you’ll get a link to my client calendar where you can see specifics of the working along with any pertinent days/dates/times/events that might have a spiritual influence. This can help you time things if you want to do work on your own over the course of the month, or even just help you understand some of what’s going on in your spiritual environment.
At the conclusion of the altar work, I ritually dispose of the contents of the jar in an appropriate manner to encourage continued movement in a positive direction and ongoing gain for participants. Community work does not come with individual altar work reports, though I will post at least one photo (with any potentially identifying info obscured for client privacy).
Note:
I reserve the right to cancel and refund any booking of this or any service at my sole discretion, per site Terms of Service. To see what my reasons might be for such a thing, see the Commonly Requested Altar Work page.
Your booking of this service indicates your understanding of the Client Agreement and acceptance of the Terms of Service, to include the following:
That the buyer, having an informed belief in spiritual work and its traditional practices, wishes to engage the services of a rootworker to perform traditional hoodoo rootwork as part of an attempt to resolve certain life issues and herewith acknowledges that due to the nature of spiritual folk magic, Karma Zain makes no guarantees that the work will result in the desired outcome within the desired timeframe or at all.
By law, these services are available only to adults 18 and over and are provided for educational or entertainment purposes only. Karma Zain does guarantee that the work will be performed as outlined here and to the best of her ability, and that if obstacles are divined during the course of the work, she will relay them and make suggestions for appropriate remedies.
The service fee covers the materials and dedicated time and altar space needed to prepare and perform the contracted services. Once preparations for the work have begun, no adjustments or refunds can be processed.
This service is of a spiritual/metaphysical nature and is based on the ancient teachings of the aforementioned traditions. In keeping with the principles of metaphysics, all information of a spiritual nature is meant to be a guide, to assist you in making a more informed decision on matters affecting your life. No spiritual consultation, divination, or spiritual work is intended to replace the advice or services of medical, financial, legal, or mental health professionals. Karma Zain is a professional reader and rootworker as well as an ordained minister and consecrated bishop, but she is not a lawyer, a doctor, a psychologist, or a financial advisor. Any advice offered falls under spiritual/metaphysical guidance and should not be interpreted as medical, financial, legal, or mental health advice.
