Response to an email asking me to “prove I’m for real”

…Or why legit workers aren’t even slightly interested in doing Psychic Pet Tricks for free to convince you to be their client, and what you should do instead of playing Test the Psychic.

Q: I was wondering if there was a way you could help me to prove you are genuine by maybe stating something about me that i have not told you. I want help, but I am tired of encountering all these fake psychics when i search.

A: [Name], what you need to do is not search but *research.*

There is a lot of good advice out there to help you avoid getting scammed. There is also a lot of bad advice, given by scammers themselves on their scam websites and ads. Then there’s a lot of well-meaning advice that is inaccurate, biased, or just plain ignorant. So it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when you don’t know the warning signs and don’t understand the principles of spiritual work.

Alas, asking a professional rootworker for a free reading, even a tiny one, is not going to be a good method to determine who is and isn’t a scam. It might be a good method to determine who is actually busy with real clients and who has time on their hands to send cold reading tidbits out to whoever asks because their time is not taken up doing any actual spells or readings, though.

If a worker gives *every single person who writes* a sales pitch, without even knowing what that person is after, that worker should make you wary; legitimate spiritual workers will not take every single case every time. But it’s safe to say that the willingness to work for free in order to tantalize new clients will never be on a legitimate list of things to look for when looking for a good worker.

I am a firm believer that only the open hand can receive, and I have seen firsthand the miracles that can be accomplished from the kindness of strangers, so I try to play some part in all that by doing some pro bono work for clients in urgent situations who are unable to pay my regular rates. We never know where our miracles will come from.*

But like many professional workers, I generally have a queue at least a dozen deep of people who have booked work or consultations who are waiting their turn, so it makes absolutely no sense to go out of my way to try to “reel in” an unknown client, especially one who has had the sorts of bad experiences that tend to indicate lack of knowledge about the principles and realities of spiritual work. (This is not a jab at you – a lot of very good people have been ripped off because very bad people preyed on their emotions, hopes, and desperation.)

It’s not because they are bad people or want unworthy things, but because their expectations are usually coming out of left field, and they need to learn some basic principles of spiritual work and research before they pay anyone else (including me) to do any more spells or readings for them.

So most legitimate spiritual workers aren’t receiving emails like this and feeling any sense of “oh my god, I’d better convince this person I have never met, whose case I might not accept anyway, that I’m for real.” (Most of us probably get at least twenty emails like this every day, as well; even if I wanted to, I couldn’t oblige all the people writing them.)

I’m sure you’re a great person, and I am positive you do not deserve the treatment you have received. But I’ve found that clients who have been repeatedly scammed are too often seeking very unlikely or even impossible results that make them vulnerable to the unethical who will promise anything (e.g. reconciliation with an ex in a case where the ex has decisively moved on, a huge lottery win on a short lead, a drastic change to their physical appearance through spellwork). They don’t know much about how spellwork actually works and instead have lots of misconceptions in their heads that they’ve picked up from a variety of dubious sources online and in the media.

But you can’t just be a passive consumer. You need to understand the difference between voodoo and hoodoo, between wicca and rootwork, between an empath and a card reader and a clairvoyant and a high priestess, to be able to recognize liars and cheats.

You have to do research, which should start at the very least with reading what a reader or worker has written about their own work and practice and seeing what there is about them online. How long have they been doing this? Do you know who they are and where they are, or is all that obscured under some grandiose language about “powerful covens” and “we” and “dual casting” and “spellcasting awards”?

“Psychic” means so many different things to so many people that it’s nearly useless as a word. Some people think all spiritual workers are psychic or that all psychics are spiritual workers. Some people think psychic = empathic, or that psychic = clairvoyant, or that psychic = medium, or that psychic = returns lovers. None of that is necessarily true. Not everyone gifted for doing spiritual work is also gifted for doing the type of readings that many clients are looking for. And not everyone gifted for doing readings has even a modicum of ability as someone who can perform a given type of spiritual work. Finally, not everyone who *can* do certain types of things is therefore *willing* to do them in every case.

If you’d done research on me, for instance, or even just skimmed over my blog page about me, or my website pages on altar work or consultations, you’d know that I do not refer to myself by this useless term “psychic.” I am a rootworker, and I do traditional rootwork. I do consultations for clients seeking rootwork and those involve divination, but I don’t even do what you’re asking for, which is tell total strangers, whose cases I might not even accept, something about themselves.

In addition, even if I wanted to convince you of my ability to do whatever it is you’re looking for, you haven’t given me enough information to do it. When you read about “psychics” who don’t need you to tell them anything but they can just tell you what’s going on without you saying a word, you are usually reading about a classic scam called a “cold reading.” Here ya go:

You have a box of unsorted photographs in your house, you see yourself as an independent thinker, you had a scary experience with water in your childhood, you haven’t quite lived up to your full potential, someone has broken your heart, you aren’t naive but people have taken advantage of you in the past, you’re having problems with a friend or relative, you are sometimes insecure with people you don’t know very well, you are close to someone whose name starts with a J.

All of these statements are statistically likely to apply to a majority of any given United States or UK sub-population, and with some minor alterations, to the Latin American and southern European populations. That’s not a reading. It’s a game of throwing darts and seeing what gets a reaction.

The kind of person you are looking for — one who can tune into anyone immediately from a two-line email and see a particular recess of their lives in detail that will be relevant to them and put it into words in a way they can immediately understand and see the value of — does not exist. I say this as someone who’s given (and received) thousands of readings over the last almost 40 years. While you should not fork your cash over to scam artists, you won’t get far knocking on doors and introducing yourself by saying “prove you’re real.” *You* have to do research on *them,* just like you would (I hope) before you choose a veterinarian or mechanic or attorney.

A final point is that established workers are not generally desperate enough for new clients to do free readings upon demand to get them. Professional workers do not take all comers. I personally refuse more work than I take. This stuff requires significant investment in energy and time.

For example, I generally have no more than a dozen clients’ mid-to-longer-term/intensity work or issues in various stages on my desk or altars at any time (not including vigil lights and paid consultations). That’s all I want to handle at once, since I’m not a corporation, a company with employees, or a front for a marketing scheme, and since I do other things with much of my time besides just readings or just altar work.**

But I get more emails than that every day inquiring about work. And I’m more likely to decline to work with a client who doesn’t understand how spiritual work and readings actually work rather than take lots of extra time educating them, when what they probably need is to stop spending money on “spellcasters,” period. So here’s what I suggest.

Stop searching and start researching.

What you find at the top when you search are people who know how to have their sites turn up high in results due to search engine optimization. That’s all. They may or may not be legitimate, but they have good tech guys. Those sites that handle thousands of clients in a short period of time are owned by a group of people who know how to write their own testimonials and who know how to send out dozens of “readings” and “spell work reports” a day that are all the same vague thing but with the name changed.

Second, have a look at my FAQ here and pay particular attention to these:

My blog also links to other readers and workers whom I personally know to be reputable and ethical. You will find, at their sites or blogs, photographs of work they have done that *they* took and uploaded, a glimpse into their background that doesn’t sound like it came from a made-for-TV movie, some mention of what types of work they do and what types they do not do, You’ll see a person, not just a bunch of vague, generic marketing copy.

Third, pick an area of spiritual work or readings to learn about, just something small to start, and learn about it from a variety of places, not just one so-called authority. Even this small step will help you begin to learn to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Until you know how to do that, until you know enough about what you’re venturing into so that you can be sure your hopes and emotions aren’t putting you in a place where you are vulnerable to scam artists, don’t buy any more spells from anyone. Learn the principles of candle magic and spiritual bathing instead, spend your money on a few simple and inexpensive supplies, and learn how to use them for the types of spell you want to do.

I offer you my sincerest best wishes for your pursuit of your goals.

photo credit Jose Antonio Gallego Vazquez, unsplash.

*So I actually do occasionally work for free, or for extremely discounted fees. When I was a member of AIRR, I’d regularly do work for indigent clients who were accepted into AIRR’s pro bono program, and I have always tried in some way to help people in crisis situations who couldn’t afford my usual rates.

I do a lot of pro bono and reduced rate work for the following:

people with legal trouble because someone else is abusing the legal system to harass them or force a certain action, esp. when children are involved
parents trying to get child support and/or cooperation from the child’s other parent
people trying to leave abusive relationships
people facing charges for non-violent drug offenses
people, esp. single parents, facing housing difficulties
people who badly need spiritual cleansing or uncrossing and need help getting that work done
people in populations historically or habitually targeted by law enforcement and government for profiling or harassment who need protection

And I regularly set lights on several community altars on a pay-what-you-can basis. These don’t come with light setting reports or anything like that, but anyone can ask to have their name and petition paper added to my community work for getting steady work, for blessing, and now in the era of COVID, for health/safety and protection from illness. (Anyone interested in doing that can just contact me via the website. I’ve been trying to post it as its own product all week and keep getting derailed by various things, but I’ll get it eventually…)

In addition, for years I hosted local events (local to me, but people traveled from other states for them frequently) in which I did in-person consults and then performed whatever spiritual cleansing, spiritual bathing, headwashing, footwashing, censing, etc. the client needed. (If the world doesn’t end first, I’ll do them again one day when COVID cuts us some slack).

But what I don’t do is free work for just anybody on just any situation just because they asked or showed up in my inbox. Love work and gambling work will never be eligible for pro bono consideration, for instance.

**People who do only readings and no altar work can do more readings; people who do no readings and only altar work can do more altar work. But I do consultations, readings, altar work, teaching, translating, writing, and research, as well as make and ship products, answer crap-tons of email every week, design and make jewelry, and run a small farm. I am not sitting in front of the computer all day.

how to spot a fake, redux

How to spot a fake: they plagiarize and steal from established workers, artists, and serviteurs. Theft of my text by ConjuredCardea, aka Sarah Best, aka Moma Sara, on Etsy, here. See my 2002 store listing or 2009 blog post. I sent her a cease and desist note via etsy, but here’s proof if she takes it down and denies wrongdoing, theft, and fraud:

black destroyer theft

For comparison purposes, here’s my 2009 blog post:

A client writes to ask how to use Black Destroyer Oil.

Black Destroyer formulas are designed to help people clear serious messes out of their lives, protect their homes, and stop curses, evil, and resentment dead in their tracks.

Basically, you can use it for long distance candle work, to dress candles; you can dilute it in mineral oil and use it as a sprinkle on messes that people have laid for
you (like if you find powders in your yard); stuff like that. When I’m dealing with somebody who is aiming stuff at me, I like to dress a candle with Black Destroyer and/or Reversing oils (depending on what I want to happen), set their photo in a low, wide dish, set the candle on top of the photo, and then fill the dish with a dash of Black Destroyer and a lot of vinegar. (This works best with wider candles like small pillars, votives, and 7 knob candles, rather than the kind you have to put in a candle holder. You want to stick it right on top of their photo, and you need the candle to be able to hold it down.) You can add whatever herbs and stuff you want, appropriate to your case. Then let the candle burn down ’til the flame reaches the liquid. Don’t do this unless you’ll be right there to keep an eye on it though.

I find Black Destroyer to be an excellent “first aid” application when under attack, and often it kills the hell out of stuff without you having to do a whole lot more, though of course this depends on who is throwing for you and what they are using to do it. But I keep Black Destroyer Oil in the glove compartment of my car, along with Fiery Wall of Protection powder, my Safe Travel mojo, a Mag-Lite, a map, a Gerber multi-tool, a tampon, and a protein bar. Never leave home without it!

***

I am not one to get involved in conjure drama and name-calling. I tend to make private jokes on twitter when I see somebody being stupid and playing mix and match bullshit and pretending to be traditional hoodoo workers and telling people to cleanse mojo bags with oil, and then I leave it alone. But this is simple, demonstrable plagiarism, fraudulently passing off someone else’s work as her own, and is theft of my intellectual property which is my means of making a living. It is against the law. It’s also just shitty.

She didn’t just steal from me. She also stole from cat yronwode’s Hoodoo in Theory and Practice. Here’s just one example:

conjure cardea fraud

And here, for your comparison purposes, is cat yronwode’s page on railroad spikes.

***
ETA: But wait. there’s more.

devilshoestring fraud
Stolen from cat yronwode at Lucky Mojo.

And then she joined the tired old bandwagon of people who have been stealing from my chicken foot listing for over a decade now.

chicken foot plagiarism
Stolen from the same damned copy I’ve had in my chicken foot listings since 2002, though she did add some stuff of her own invention, with no basis in any Southern conjure lore that I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been doing this a long damned time, about using chicken feet to gain favor with judges. I’m not even going to comment on how impossible it would be to carry a standard-sized mojo containing a chicken foot of this size, which should tell you a lot right there. It’s funny – I have a blog post about how often my writing on chicken feet gets stolen and plagiarized. Silly bint. These tricks are NOT for kids.

***
ETA: an observant client has informed that she has noticed for some time that many of “Moma Sarah’s” oil descriptions are taken verbatim or nearly verbatim from Lady Rhea’s The Enchanted Formulary.

on “bulsh*t” spells, scams, “impossible” magic, consultations, and budget spellwork

More questions I've gotten…

Q: "so i came across your site and ive been scammed several times [etc, snipped, the usual] so i want to know if your legit and if you can take me serious than others and help me . if there is a spell you kno or ritual to grow taller to the height i wish too grow."

A: Sweetie, there is no such thing as a spell to make you grow taller (or grow your body parts, or be irresistible to any person ever and always no matter what, or to reunite lovers in 24 hours guaranteed, or to get a vampire demon lover, or to get a ring with a wish-granting genie in it, or any of that other sounds-to-good-to-be-true stuff you can get on ebay), and anybody who tells you that they can make you grow taller with magic is lying to you (and making six times the money I make, because I won't prey on people who don't know better). Magic simply does not work that way.

There ARE spells to work on your personal presence, your self-esteem, the way you carry yourself and the way you appear to
others, your sense of mastery and confidence, your physical health and strength, etc. If you are young and have not finished growing, there are ways you can focus on maintaining the peak of health and maximizing your potential. But if you are done growing, you are done growing. If you have a medical condition and/or are undergoing medical treatments to effect your physical stature, there is work that can be done to boost the skill and wisdom of your physicians and keep your own health and receptivity at top levels. Aside from that, you are looking for something that exists only in Harry Potter books and such. And you should run, not walk, away from anyone who would prey on your naivete and desire in order to profit on it by promising to do something that is in violation of the basic principles of magic.

Same family as an earlier one I got this month:

Q: "what oil will make me beter looking and grow my penis?"

A: No product will increase your penis size or physically change your features, and most of the people who advertise that kind of thing are better at writing advertising copy than casting spells. But there are spells that will boost your confidence, charisma, sex appeal, and aura of glamour, and many products in those lines, when used as body products, also are good for hair, nails, alluring scents, complexion, or stuff like that too, depending, and with a well-designed spell, will change the way you project yourself and the way people perceive you. Buying a bottle of oil itself isn't going to do it, but you could build a simple, "pre-night-out" attraction/grooming ritual with candles, oils, and powders with things in the Attraction, John the Conqueror, Samael, Rubeus, Kaliprix, Kiss Me Quick, or Follow Me Girl/Boy type families, depending on what you're after.

Q: I read a spell site that said no real spellcaster would charge for curse removal, so how can you charge for curse removal?

A: You read one person's opinion. If you want my opinion, here it is: what you read is judgmental, and frankly pretty ethnocentric and ignorant, and I say that no real, professional spellcaster who actually does this for a living would say something demonstrating such ignorance about the myriad magical/spiritual traditions that differ from – and probably significantly predate – their own tradition. I don't know where you read it or what they do all day, but I do this for a living, and if I worked for free, I would not be able to do any work at all; I'd be closing up shop with a quickness. The supplies I use cost money, no matter what type of spell I'm using them in, and I charge for my time and work, no matter what kind of work it is. I have to eat. That doesn't make me unethical and it doesn't make me "fake." I just don't work for free – I'm not independently wealthy, and I charge for my time and work.

Now, if you are a customer or client or have been reading for a while, you already know that because I am a worker who also makes/grows most of her own product/product ingredients, and because I come from a rural background where we mixed up stuff with what we could get, not what was for sale at the drugstore with a hoodoo label on it, I am able to accommodate all kinds of budgets. For clients who want to do their own spells, I do consultation sessions to coach them. For clients who want to make their own oil or bath or the like, I will do consultation sessions to coach them too, and the "coaching session" is a path I recommend for clients who are hurting for money, because if you need me to stick to things you can get at the grocery store, i will.[*] If you need to get uncrossed and you are broke, there IS help for you.[**] However, this is not the same thing as my doing a full-blown Uncrossing ritual for free.

But I DO work with folks. In fact, working with folks is what this is all about – being a professional worker is not about handing out "one size fits all" spells. If you write me and want free advice, that is what you are going to get – a general recommendation for an approach that may be helpful for what you describe but may not be given any number of unknown factors that I can't look at (or, honestly, read a long email about) without a consultation. But if you book a consult with me to talk about your case, you will get recommendations specific to your situation. I tell folks all the time, when they ask "what is the best spell/product for me," that the best spell/product is the one they can and will use properly and that the case will be responsive to. No point in me sending you some incense if you can't use it because you have asthma, or prescribing baths if you won't take them – nor in setting you up with Commanding work if the cards show that it will backfire, or with Reconciliation work if your case is hopeless. But the bottom line is I do this for a living, which is part of what "professional" means. [***]

Q: How do I avoid getting scammed by a fraud or unethical worker or reader?

Watch out for anybody who guarantees their work with a money-back refund. Watch out for anyone who promises a 100% success rate. Watch out for people who promise to reunite lovers within 24 hours. Watch out for people who offer to do spellwork that fixes your problems with no effort on your part. Watch out for anyone who offers to sell you a trapped wish-granting powerful sexy vampire genie for $100 that is bound to an antique ring that came from a voodoo priestess's house, or the pyramids in Egypt, or someone's dead great aunt who was a sorceress from Atlantis and/or related to Marie Laveau and/or the Salem witches, etc, and who passed it down to the favorite grandchild (etc). [Think – if you had that kind family heirloom, would you *sell* it? And if magic were as easy as buying an enchanted item and never having to lift a finger, well, I wouldn't be working 🙂 ] Watch out for someone who claims to be world-renowned psychic to the stars but who you can find no record of existence for that predates the one-month-old website.

Watch out for someone who never calls you on your shit. If they think everything you propose is a great idea, all the time, and never give you another perspective, or make an alternate suggestion, or let you know that what you want is going to be hard to do, or suggest that you may have had some role in your breakup but encourage you to jump on the "everybody is out to get me" pity-party, then you may not have a fraud exactly, but you do have somebody who will flatter you to get your money and who will thus be of limited assistance in the big picture. Now, it's possible that you may never get a reading or work done where this becomes an issue or where you'd even have a chance to see if this was happening – it depends on the nature of your case or issue. And I"m certainly not saying your worker or reader should try to make you feel bad or small. There is a real need for a reader / worker to be able to give you even bad news in such a way that it does not crush you or belittle you, or that is at least sensitive to the effects of the bad news. That is not what i mean. I'm talking about people who only ever tell you what you want to hear.

Watch out for anyone who judges all readers/workers of all paths by standards that are applicable only to a certain path or religion and says stupid things like "No ethical reader would ever recommend an uncrossing spell" or "no ethical worker would ever do hexing work" or "no ethical spellcaster would ever use animal bones" or "no real priest or priestess would ever charge money." Those are ethics belonging to a few people, not everybody, and they are profoundly ignorant about and dismissive of/insulting to traditional Southern-style rootwork as well as many religions of the African diaspora. How much somebody charges is not a reliable index of whether they are fake or not. Whether they post their birth name and a physical address is not a reliable index. Where they were born is not a reliable index. Whether they have a psychic grandmother is not a reliable index.

But there are quite a few things you can look for when searching for a reliable, ethical reader or worker. Here's a page from Lucky Mojo outlining some common scams. Here is the AIRR code of ethics, which I personally subscribe to as does every member of AIRR. While there are good workers out there who may not susbscribe to every item on these lists exactly as written, a worker with any real experience should be able to outline some sort of code of ethics or terms or principles for you if you ask, so that you know where they are coming from — this may be outlined in a bio, or listed on an FAQ, or they may write about it less formally on their blogs or sites; the point is that you should be able to get some idea of where they are coming from somehow, either in something they've written and provide, or by asking them questions about how they work.

Happy hoodooing!

_________________________________________

[*] This does not mean you can book a consultation and say "give me your formula for Fiery Wall of Protection" and I will go "Ok, here you are." It means you approach me with a list of what you have and I tell you what of it you can use to make what you want. Or you say "I need to make an inexpensive uncrossing formula with stuff I can get today, at the local market," and I will work with you, even if takes more than one trip to the grocery store or more than one email.

[**] Crossed conditions can be serious, and can prevent a person from getting ahead in all kinds of areas of life. I will work with you to figure out some way for you to get back on your feet no matter what your budget (but seriously – between this blog, luckymojo.com, the lucky mojo forum and other forums run or hosted by real workers, and the blogs of all my colleagues that I have linked to, it is a question of a little bit of time spent researching. You can get an uncrossing ritual with a few clicks, so it's not really reasonable to expect someone to do the research for you for free when you can do it yourself, you know? But if you come to me with an idea already in mind and want to run an ingredient substitution by me, and you can send me a short, direct email, then I am likely to respond without your needing a consultation — if you are talking about a serious condition or emergency. But not every desire merits reduced rate of pro-bono work. If you are looking for Reconciliation, for instance, that is not an emergency – no matter how much you may feel like it is, sorry 🙂 Neither is lottery work.

[***] The other part, in my opjnion, refers to ethics and bearing, as in "conducts self and business professionally," but that is 1. another post, and 2. hardly cut-and-dried, not open to interp, and not disputed at all in all circles. Obviously the unnamed worker who said "no real spellcaster would charge for this" actually meant "no professional/ethical caster would, in my opinion and according to my code of ethics, charge for this." How one charges has absolutely no direct, causal effect on whether or not one is capable of doing effective spellwork, though how and what one charges can sometimes be part of a matrix of warning signs.

I actually do take pro bono work, but you have to either be an existing client who I already know, be referred to me by another worker that I know, or get accepted as a pro bono client by the AIRR Pro Bono Fund and program, which I participate in. The Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers, or AIRR, has a pro bono fund to help clients in dire straits who cannot afford to undertake work that they really genuinely *need.* You can read more about it here. If you send me an email out of the blue saying "Can you help me for free," you are going to get a form letter giving you some links, but you are not going to get a personal response. This is not because I'm mean and ugly – it's because I get about 50 emails a day from people "with just a quick question." There is no such thing as "just a quick question" unless it is about work that is currently ongoing and contracted and therefore not you asking for free spell advice.

A *great deal* depends on impressions here; folks who write simply assuming I will read a long, involved email and reply to them with personalized recommendations are likely to try my patience b/c they give me the impression they have no idea how this job works and are not able to put themselves into my shoes for a sec. When in doubt, ask – a simple, to the point email saying "I have some questions about what product to use to get a promotion" will probably get a response saying "Great, go ahead." If the next email is short and to the point, you will probably get a friendly response making suggestions. If you send me a first email that is long and tells me the whole story about something and you want advice on that complicated relationship or job situation, you are going to get a form letter telling you how to book a consultation. Bottom line : check your assumptions before writing, that's all! and ask before sending me a long complicated email, because it would be a shame if you spent all that time typing it and I don't read it. I owe it to the clients who have booked consultations to get back to them ahead of new stuff, you know? And those first two question on this post? I get fifty like them every day. If you don't want to book a consultation, that's fine – I'll put your question in my queue of things to answer on the blog when I have a chance.