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How much is good ritual worth?

I have a friend who's a shaman. (That's not the term that she would use, but it will suffice for our purposes here.) She's the real thing. Anyone that knows her knows that she's the real thing.

She charges $400 an hour.

When people come to her for ritual or for teaching, she tells them: My fee is $400 an hour. How many hours do you think you'll need?

Unlike the ancestors, a lot of modern pagans are squiffy about paying for ritual. In a situation in which few traditions have much time-depth, and anyone who declares herself an expert can pass as such—at least for a time—that's perhaps understandable, but it also explains the currently low standard of so much contemporary pagan ritual.

What it doesn't explain is why so many people who are willing to pay a trained expert to fix their cars, their plumbing, or their wiring, expect ritualists to work for free.

Few pagan ritual experts receive a salary from a congregation. Like everyone else, ritualists have families to raise and bills to pay.

With ritual—as with most other things—you get what you pay for.

My shaman friend was invited to be a guest at a local festival. When she arrived, she introduced herself to one of the festival's organizers, a woman widely known in the local community as a notoriously incompetent ritualist.

“Oh, I know who you are,” the woman told my friend. “You're the one who charges for ritual.”

“Hi, this is Julie calling from Such-and-So Bank. I'm looking for Steven Posch?”

Uh-oh. The bank is calling, but Julie sounds amazingly chipper. Something's not right.

“Speaking,” I say, dubiously.

“Congratulations, Mr. Posch! You've won this year's drawing for a free organic turkey!”

I start to laugh, partly in relief, and partly in amused appreciation of Wyrd and her screwy sense of humor. Ah, the cussedness of things.

“Mr. Posch?” Julie sounds puzzled. Obviously this isn't the reaction that she expected.

“Sorry,” I finally manage to get out. “Of course it makes perfect sense that the vegetarian would win the drawing for the turkey, right?”

A few months ago, my fellow blogger Deborah Blake wrote about establishing a daily divination practice, something which I have have been doing, first with my personal coin divination system and more recently by using the Lymerian oracle. Recently, in response to the question of, "What will today bring me?" I drew kappa, which means, according to the translation of Apollonius Sophistes, "To fight with the waves is difficult; endure, friend."

Usually that one doesn't give me a super-good feeling.

Depression Comes Before Acceptance

Better you die than I.  - Katerina Petrova, The Vampire Diaries

I have spent decades talking to Pagans about the perceived “culture of poverty” within the Pagan Community.  That is the belief that “I can’t afford that and I never will be able to” or “I can’t go to that festival for $70, even though they will feed and house me for 3 days.”  I have spent the last year telling anyone and everyone who will listen that the Pagan Community needs a professional media corps.  If you’d like to see some of my arguments for why, check our website – www.PaganTV.org. 

I realized something a few weeks ago.  Pick the euphemism you prefer – “put your money where your mouth is”, “put up or shut up”, or “if you talk the talk you need to walk the walk.”  It is true that I spend a fair amount of money every year attending various Pagan events and festivals.  Like many of us, I also buy plenty of Pagan goodies from incense to altar tools to books, books, and more books.  All of those activities are good for our Community economy but really aren’t enough to help us get to where we need to go.