I realized Friday was the second anniversary of opening up my Etsy shop, Blue Flame Magick (I’m original with my naming conventions, what can I say?). It’s been a lot of fun running (more than I thought), while I’ve made items and done magickal work for trade with friends and associates for a while in the past this was the first time I publically offered it. I love the variety of different requests I get, the little insights I get into how people live when they ask for divinations, or the variety of different reasons people have behind a custom mala, or just the challenge of crafting a magickal solution for someone’s problems. For everyone who has supported my etsy, be it through purchasing a good or service, or by signal boosting it, thank you.
As a celebration and thank you, for the next week you can use BLUEISTWO as a coupon code to get 15% off on my etsy.
For a few months I’ve been authorized to perform some new services, and I have privately for people, but I never got around to blogging about them, or adding them to my etsy and I guess now is as good of a time as any.
Every time I try to write about this it becomes too involved with me explaining too much of the background information. So I’m splitting this into two posts, this one talking about what I’m adding to my services, and one in a day or two explaining the cultural/historical background of my practice within Buddhist cultures, and the spiritual reasons for doing it, both for me, you, and all. So if stuff is unclear hopefully the next post will clear it up.
What I’m offering now is the opportunity to sponsor sadhanas, or Buddhist rituals. Essentially when a ritual is sponsored that means I’ll be performing it for you on your behalf. This might seem unusual to a lot of people, but is actually very common in Buddhist cultures, but for a variety of reasons (addressed next post) it didn’t catch on as Buddhism spread out of Asia in the last century. You can sponsor in three different ways, I don’t know if these ways have traditional names, I’ve never heard them, but for sake of ease I’ll call them Open, Specific, and Targeted. Sponsoring a ritual has a variety of benefits: the merit or blessing, accumulated in the ritual is directed towards you rather than me; with a Specific or Targeted sponsoring that can be towards a certain goal/arena; and you help in my development. (More on all of these in the upcoming post)
With an Open sponsorship you’re just sponsoring whatever ritual is coming up, whatever is on my plate, is what you get. You sponsor and I’m doing Medicine Buddha that day, you get Medicine Buddha, if I’m doing Vajrayogini that’s who you get.
With a Specific sponsorship you pick what ritual is being done in your name. This has the benefit of giving you a blessing in a specific area of your life depending on what the ritual was for, so if I’m doing Medicine Buddha then the blessing is geared through his healing essence.
With a Targeted sponsorship you pick what the ritual is, and it is performed directed at you. With a Specific sponsorship (or most ritual practices in general) there isn’t a personal target for the work, you’re offering the benefits to all beings. A Targeted sponsorship has you become the target of the ritual, it’s not just being done on your behalf, it’s being done on you. This means you’re not just getting the blessing of the ritual, but the full effect of the magickal work behind it. To put it in a way that makes sense to more Western understandings: Open and Specific sponsorship transfer the “good karma” from performing the ritual to you, where as a Targeted sponsorship makes you the focus of the ritual, not just the “good karma” but all the magick and energy work that builds up to that. You’re both the recipient of the action and the reaction. So again using Medicine Buddha as an example, you’d get the blessing from me performing the ritual, but you’d also be the person I direct the healing of the ritual towards.
I’ve been doing these sponsorships for a while for my local community, but figured there is no reason not to open up the practice to a wider group of people, especially as my lama said when not everyone has access to a community that offers and performs such things. I figure I’ll do them for a few months as a trial and see how they go with people. So if you’re interested in it, or want to learn more about what is being offered just click this link to get to my etsy.
Anniversary and Sponsorships
