TOP TEN REASONS DIVINER HOPPING IS A BAD IDEA
1. You will confuse yourself and the situation you need guidance on.
2. You will at some point get taken advantage of financially (look up “gypsy candle scam”).
3. Like #2, you will find a reader who will tell you what you want to hear, but it won’t be the truth.
4. You are in essence avoiding a deeper issue with yourself and not incorporating the advice when you got it the first time.
5. You risk offending your spirits or the spirits of the person who reads you.
6. You risk a trickster spirit causing more confusion and mayhem in your life.
7. You lose the continuity of working with a skilled diviner who both they and their spirits really get to know you and your life and serve as a guiding force for your greatest good.
8. Unethical readers will fabricate problems that don’t exist and place you in a state of anxiety about your life or spirituality or both.
9. Unless you know that person’s tradition well, you may find yourself saddled with spirits and tools that you should not even have.
10. You are approaching your spirituality from a mindless and non-mindful place, which will make your growth difficult if not impossible.
The list above is by no means exhaustive. I am sure people reading this can think of other reasons why hopping around for divination sessions is a bad idea that I didn’t think of. Every now and then a friend, colleague or student will tell me horror stories of instances where they or someone close to them went to several readers on a situation, or just because they like to get lots of opinions. I myself have never hopped around, largely because I have trust issues and do not trust the majority of people out here to read me or open up my life to them. For me, having access to my personal life is a privilege, as it should be for everyone.
I want to tell a personal story related to number two on the list. I had an issue come up with a spirit that was outside of the ATR spiritual house I belonged to, but within the general realm of ATR traditions. So my godfather at the time gave blessings for me to receive a reading from a priest of that other tradition.
The reading looked like it was going well. Then the person told me that not only did I have that spirit in question, but there was a series of spiritual issues and problems that I had to spend $7,000 for them to fix. And that was not for an initiation, just for them to fix said problems! Little did they know that I had a recent reading in my own tradition for another issue and was told all systems were go in my life, so I knew that was bullshit. But I was also surprised that this person was bold enough to try to sucker me out of 7Gs knowing I was a santero and KNOW how much a major initiation in an ATR should cost. I politely declined and thanked him for providing me with the information that I actually asked for. Spirits will sometimes bring up other issues than what you go to a diviner for, but not under the agenda of hustling you for tons of money. Hard nope.
Number 9 on my list is one of the biggest reasons I discourage diviner hopping. Most people when it comes to ATRs simply do not know enough about these traditions to competently engage readers and know when you are and are not being taken advantage of. Even in my spiritual journey, most of my knowledge of this boundary comes from hard knocks, losing money, and trusting treacherous people. Unethical behavior comes with the territory of spirituality and religion.
But then there’s you/us. My wisest elders tell me routinely that lots of times when they read people and their problems, they are not being cursed or thrown at. Most clients are causing a lot of their own problems. This is a hard pill to swallow for many, sometimes even for myself. In the spiritual cultures of the ATRs I practice, however, I come to a reading expecting there is a very real possibility I will get called out by a spirit on something related to myself that I have no one else to blame BUT myself. You just know that this is how it is. This is what makes our divination systems differ from others that sugar-coat, always put the spin of niceness on everything like Frank’s Red Hot, or in some cases outright avoids telling hard truths. But I want to grow and learn and progress. So if there is something in myself I am not facing, hard as it may be to hear, I know if I work on that issue I will be stronger and more powerful on the other side of it.
My greatest advice for those seeking divination advice it to make a list of your questions. Go with an open mind. Expect to be challenged and know that there are things about yourself that may need to change. If you carry these things into the session, you will get what you need the first time.
