Greetings. Very often I’m asked by other folks who practice either Metaphysical sciences or Magical religions why I charge donations for my services & products. They premise this question on the teachings that many of them have taken over the years from book authors and actual physical teachers.

The answer lies in the foundation of day to day life. It comes as ‘nothing is free’. Now many of you reading this will argue that there are many things in life that are free such as the air we breathe, free will & personal choices, personal checking and so on. While those are all well and good examples, they are not accurate examples of the murky world of Metaphysics.

Now I could offer to do workings for people for free and for many years I did not charge a dime for my time but only for the materials used. I was charged by my teachers (yes I had actual, physical teachers) who said I need to perform Divinations for free (as practice) and spellwork for free (for a set period of time) because this would give me a chance to utilize my skills for someone else so that I could judge whether or not my Sorceries worked and it was not just my own wishful thinking.

The next reason is that while there are different types of Magic that may not use ingredients like Sorcery does, the time one extends in ritual is costly. Why you may wonder because time is the least amount of something you have to spend, right? Wrong. Time is the most precious commodity you have! Think about it: what one resource do you have that is never renewable? What one part of a spell that once it’s used, it can never be replenished? The answer: Time.

When do you work your own Magics, friend? Do you work them at work? Probably not. Do you work them while sleeping? Some may say yes but those are far and few who actually do that. Do you work them while you’re doing your normal routine of household chores, time with the kids and making/eating dinner? Most likely no. So when? On your FREE time! And how much free time do you actually have? Not very much.

For humans, time is finite. You cannot create time you must rob time from something else to use. Hell I know people who tell me they’d love to be my apprentice BUT they have no time to spare in their lives and yet these same people want to learn Sorcery and practice it? Impossible. You must ‘make’ time by borrowing it from something else. Why? There are only 24 hours in a day. 8 of those hours require sleep to function normally & keep your body healthy; 8 hours is dedicated to work to earn your income for you and family; the finally 8 hours is your ‘free’ time and most of it is not free to do as you will. Rather you have responsibilities such as:

Time with kids & loved ones

Time to mow & maintain your yard and home

Time to cook and eat meals

Time to study (if you’re a student)

Time to unwind and watch a favorite TV program or two

Time for your church, temple, synagogue or coven

Time for your volunteer work in the community

What’s left is geared for spellwork, meditation, reading, studying your Metaphysical disciplines and so on. That’s it. Thus your FREE time is really the most valuable of all time you have, wouldn’t you agree?

The next area we need to look at is cost of ingredients. Okay some of you are saying, ‘Gee Moloch I do all my Magic in my mind’ and I reply, “Yeah? Well goody for you!” I do certain things that way but that doesn’t cut the mustard when doing Magic for the real world for practical ends and for clients.

Just like I would not expect you to go to take your care to a dealership where their mechanics buy their tools from Wal-Mart, do not expect great results using ingredients of shitty quality. You buy those crappy candles from the dollar store? Ok in a pinch and dead broke, if that’s all  you can muster, then go for it. However I prefer to purchase the best I can for my clients and myself. Why? I know I deserve it and they deserve it!

Again I’m not knocking anyone on a TIGHT budget but in truth how tight is your budget? I’ve always noticed that the folks who cry ‘poor’ are often the ones who have more expendable income than others. The poor folks always seem to have money for non-essential items such as: Cigarettes. Beer & liquor. Candy & Junk Foods. Pizza, Eating out, Concert & Movie tickets, Movie Rentals, CD’s & Music Downloads, Hobbies, Illegal Drugs, Magazines, and etc.

And the list could go on and on. Essentially stuff that folks do not need but rather they want. Some things you need on occasion to remind you of the hard work you’re doing but when you’re crying ‘poor’, then you should mean it.

When I first started in Metaphysics, I lived in a cramped, ONE room apartment. My rent was $180 per month and yes it was a shit-hole of an apartment. I had no telephone, no television not even a microwave. I had one pot, one frying pan and service for two. I had an old Murphy bed (folds down out of the wall) that squeaked a lot and my clothes. No car just an old piece of crap motorcycle because it was chap on gas. I was a full time college student putting myself thru college without any assistance from mom or dad and when not studying or doing college homework, I was practicing Metaphysics! So do NOT sit there and tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be BROKE & living on whims of the Gods. I’ve been there, friend.

My income was a part time job as a convenient store clerk. Yessiree I did that to pay for my rent, electric bill & fuel for my motorcycle and obviously, food. (My tuition and books was thru Pell Grants and student loans.) And I didn’t dare charge a dime for anything Metaphysical – not yet at least! I did get some donations when I did Psychic fairs and would walk home with a couple hundred dollars for an afternoon’s work. Later I got tired of the convenient store clerk’s life and went to work for myself – washing windows. There I made double what I made for a whole week on a Saturday morning and afternoon.

That’s when I began to develop my Occult library by going thru all of the used bookstores and purchasing every Occult, New Age, Metaphysical book I could buy. Then I began to buy items to build my practices – herbs, roots, candles, oils, incense, waters, sprays, washes – and began to make my tools. (My sword didn’t come until I moved to Ohio and paid an Amish blacksmith to make it for me)

The point I’m trying to make here is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you really want something, you’ll find a way to get it. However when you ask for someone else to do spellwork, divinations or other such Metaphysical practices, you NEED to force yourself to look at the bigger picture.

IF you really want work performed then figure you’re going to have to pay for it somehow. It may be in trade such as you know Reiki and offer to do healing sessions for the Metaphysical Worker who you want to do your spellwork for you. Believe it or not, sex is often bartered for spellwork. I’ve only done that once and while it was enjoyable, it wasn’t my thing. My Obeah teacher traded sex for working all the time.

Money is often the simplest exchange of means. If you go to someone and they charge you $100 + cost of materials, that’s pretty cheap. I prefer to do more than a one time thing for folks. For instance, my candle rituals are not a one shot deal – they are performed daily for an entire month using the finest quality candles money can buy and the highest quality Metaphysical oils I can get my hands on.

When someone says, “Gee Moloch, your prices are high” and I reply that 30 taper candles from A I Root candle company cost $108.50 + S&H. Expensive? They’re worth every penny as they burn without dripping (as long as there’s no wind/drafts) and each inch burns an hour long thus a 12” taper is a 12 hour burning candle. These are way better than those crummy 7 day glass encased jar candles with colors that are questionable and bubbles in the wax.

Thus out of the $225 for an Uncrossing results in $116.50 left over for my time and if you divide that up by 31 half hours you come up with 15.5 hours of actual work time. Divide that into the $116.50 and you get roughly $7.50 per hour. Wow. Just barely above minimum wage. So much for big fees.

You see? You folks look at the end cost of $225 and think that’s a LOT of money but that doesn’t include the incense used, the wooden matches, the oils used and if the job is complex, then obviously the cost of the materials & time increases.

Let me tell you here and now I got into this for Power and Money. I often do work for free but not from people who write me begging for it telling me how poor they are. No one except those in Third World countries is ‘poor’. That’s right, bub, you’re NOT poor – you’re broke. There’s a difference. You’re broke because you don’t know how to manage your income to debt ratio very well. That’s not a slam against you as I realize that LIFE can be a real prick at times an throw us curve balls that hurt financially. But you’re not poor, you’re broke. Years ago I learned my lesson and went to Consumer Credit Counseling (a division of United Way) in the hopes they could help me alleviate some of the debt I was under. They guided me and I got back on track. So too can you.

Money is a tool, a medium of exchange. I value my free time and I do not use cheap ingredients. Thus if you choose to want to hire me, you’re going to pay for it. I have clients who have no problem having me do their work for them again and again and again. Some folks have me do multiple readings at one time for several ventures and areas of their lives. (THAT’s why I get backlogged!)

In closing I’d like to say that I prefer to do my free work for little kids who need life saving operations and their families are broke or their insurance companies refuse to pay. That sort of thing hits at my heart so I prefer to channel my philanthropic efforts into that rather than helping Joe & Mary Sixpack who come crying to me that they’re broke. Hey it’s tough times for all of us so just knuckle down and do what you can do to survive.

Think about what I said earlier and ask yourself, “Do I really need beer? Do I really need pizza? Do I really need X?” and very often you’ll find that you do not. Learning to live without some luxuries in life is very humbling and it allows our minds to get more creative.

Brother MOLOCH 969