Flattery & Education Don't Mix

This article originally appeared in our July edition of Witch, What?, a newsletter for witches of all experience levels which you can pick up in person at our stores or receive for free with an online order. It includes information like that month's full moon, any Wheel of the Year holidays coming up, what is in bloom that month, and helpful articles like this one! These articles will not appear on our blog until the following month, so if you want to get them right away, make sure to drop by our booth at the 400 Market!

Flattery - we all like to hear it! You like to hear that you’re smart, that you’re destined to be on this path, that you are the reincarnation of someone whose name you recognize. But when you’re reading a book, or being approached by someone else in the spiritual community, you need to take a moment and think about what they said, and why they said it.

There are lots of scams, cults and other sketchy things that will ‘love bomb’ someone they view as a newbie or vulnerable in some way. If you just met someone and they suddenly have a message from their deity or from the spirits for you... well, when exactly did they do that work? Are they telling you the message right away? Or are they trying to get you to pay to do a reading? Is the message something encouraging you to follow a certain path, or join a certain group or buy a book/a deck/a crystal/something else?

If you’re reading a book and something doesn’t make sense, but earlier in that chapter, the author was praising their readers for being intelligent, for seeing what other’s can’t see... Well, this is often a way to help gloss over something that doesn’t add up, to encourage you to not think about it too deeply.

We all like to hear praise. But that helps insidious things slip past our guard, and we can end up having done something embarrassing at best and dangerous at worse.