Hello Occulties,
Let's be honest. We all know I think review sites are some smelly turds that hurt more than they help. Well, if you didn't know that, now you do. I especially cringe when I see a whole boatload of people have written originalninjacat review because I cleared my history and Google showed me it was a common search. Used to be, people came to my blog, or were on my blog. Well, now the whole internet is infected with smelly turds and the dingleberries they leave when they shuttle through the interwebs, so I probably shouldn't shudder. Review NinjaCat. Review OriginalNinjaCat. Review Real Spells. Real Spellcaster Review run by people who don't know anything about spells.
No, ladies and gentlemen, instead I am getting a big jar of internet bleach, and I am cleaning this gas station toilet out so we can all not wretch at the horrors past of people who didn't know better. Let us sanitize this area (despite my writing this article at least three, - if not more - times over the years,) and for goodness sake, I'm going to try and help the HONEST CONSUMER who has been forced to put their buttocks down on this soiled shitty seat thinking it was the only rest stop, and that's the best they could do for themselves...you need not sit around with this lot of junkies and horrible people and think that all toilets (er, review sites and reviews) are this way, so it must be.
Instead I give you knowledge. Knowledge is power.
Why should you avoid those places? How can you actually do something to help yourself find a real person? Read this. It will help. At least I hope it does. And honestly, I don't need your business so if it makes you sad that I wrote this or makes you think I'm judging you in particular (instead of, for the most part, vastly generalizing,) that's fine. I am sure you meant well in your own aims, and I hope you find what you are looking for, and I even hope that my observations (through people burned by such sites, and through observation of said sites at times) are not going to be your experience, because I don't want you to get burned. I don't want you to invest your money with someone and not get what you want. That is why I want you to just consider and read the following, and then see if it makes you reconsider using those sites...
5. No one with a lick of sense would advertise on there, or want to be on there.
The best clients I've ever had found me because they were long time readers of my blog. The worst applicants (very few were ever clients) I've ever had came from LordGameOver forums. The pedophiles, would-be child killers, wanna be rapists, absolute psychotic weirdos, people who sent me death threats for declining to accept their (almost-always horrifying) requests and my refusing take their money? LordGameOver almost every time. But the worst ones almost always come off of a review forum, even if not that one.
This isn't to say there aren't nice folks on there. In fact, I may have taken your case or referred you to a real person if I thought you were a nice person that was mentally sound. And I don't want to be a dick, but the mentally-sound great clients coming off of review sites were probably one out of every 25 or so applicants coming off of those forums.
Let's keep that in mind, (that the bad ones came off of a particular place, but that the majority of scary people I basically told to leave me be and never talk to me again were forum-people from varying forums,) and then ask ourselves "Would I advertise my business in a place that would bring me 95% horrible people who I can't let hire me, so I never get paid for dealing with them, despite several stalking and threatening me after I declined, for that tiny percentage that would come in and not waste my time?" The answer is probably no, you would wisely not want to be advertised there. Not all business IS good business. It's why legit workers hate review forums...I've never had any legit worker friend express anything more positive than disgusted amusement at them, and most find them awful and something that exacerbates the scammer issue. In fact, in the recent past it's been something where a jealous worker advertises someone else on there to get them back for something. So, maybe you did find someone honest, because someone else put them there to get them back for doing better than they were.
Keep in mind, as a worker, I actually have a contract you sign when you apply that says you can't discuss me in any place like that...not me, my business, my emails, my readings, my spells, and etc. If someone breaks their contract, I can basically sue them. Even if they compliment me. That's a binding contract. The reason isn't that I don't like compliments (I LOVE WHEN YOU SAY NICE THINGS!!!!) it's because about 10 years ago, before these review sites were a thing, a whole legion of people went and started discussing me in a forum I was not a part of, and then got in fights over how I would feel about this or that (yes seriously) in this being in another worker's forum, and I had to ask her to please talk to them because it was starting to upset people to the point that I had to comfort them that so-and-so did not rat so-and-so out about saying this or that in that forum. She and I were embarrassed for those people. But I saw the drama it caused, and I said "Eff this," and I put it in the contract that what is between you and me (that is your entire case) is to stay that way. I don't mind if you tell your sister or your best friend or your mom that I worked for you - in fact, I like that. Please discuss me privately off the internet with friends and loved ones. I don't mind what you say about me privately. When you post it? Well, then it's out in the public eye forever, and I am bound by my own rules of discretion, too. Now I have to deal with that drama while trying to stay discreet.
That, and there is something really disturbed about a lot of people who talk behind someone's back in a forum. When I ran a forum years ago, you could not discuss practitioners, or disparage someone on a personal level if they were an author. So as much as I hated this person's work and thought she was a miserable you know what, I wasn't going to discuss how she was a rotten human being...I'd just say I wasn't overly fond of her book and leave it at that. If only others ran their forums the same.
So, while I initially made the rule to stop melodrama, now it's also that I don't really want to be advertised in the worst places possible for advertisement. ;) I would rather people find me from my blog. I know NO legit worker who actually likes review forums. I'd love to find someone who is a practitioner I respect who does love them because I'd want to know why. ;)
4. You can't really review something unless you have a strong understanding of how it works.
I have never in my life seen a single review site (even the well-intentioned ones,) where anyone was an expert spellcaster, and then not only that, but a spellcaster familiar with at least 4 or more popular paradigms of spellcasting, with this person (or people, since it really should be juried by at least ten) have all personally worked with each worker they review, much less have I ever known the vast majority of these people to have even spoken to whoever they are speaking of. It's like a bunch of people who've never eaten any food other than kibble, and who have never eaten at a restaurant reviewing cooking at a restaurant. They back up their claims because this lady who never ate Indian food tried this Indian restaurant not knowing what to expect, and now she's their source of info, plus there's that guy who also never tried Indian food, and these three people who went to the Indian restaurant just to drink booze but didn't eat reviewing the food as well. Wow, that sounds like the kind of experts to trust (and that's sarcasm.)
The occult is a HUGE topic. So, even if someone knows Wicca, that has nothing to do with Hoodoo, and even if someone understands how to use Hermetics, that's not going to be the same as Santeria. Not at all. So, without a strong understanding of what you're trying to review (which is to say, you know enough about it to instruct others who know nothing at all,) the best you have is "So and so is a bitch," or "So and so is very nice" and "It didn't work" or "It worked."
And apparently spell-failure (which is not implicative of a scam or lack of talent,) means you're fake. It doesn't mean someone did everything opposite to their worker's instruction (even if they did) and it doesn't mean the worker did all the work they said they would (which even if they did, that's not considered relevant,) it means that someone confuses spell-failure (and I've had other good practitioners fail when I asked them to help me, and I know they are not full of it,) with "real" and "not real" because they live in a fantasy world where if you push the right button on a machine, what you want falls out, and if it doesn't, it's "Fake."
Let's learn something kids...you know if you go to a lawyer, and you ask him or her to help you with your case, that if this person loses that case that it doesn't actually make them a bad lawyer, much less a "fake lawyer"? Or did you know you can go to a great oncologist for your cancer, and still die? Spellcasting is a bit like that. I've worked on cases where there is no plausible reason that my client is not getting what they want...in fact, they should get this without spells. It's rare, but I've seen it happen a handful of times, and thankfully I usually had done something else for the person and succeeded for them so they didn't hate me for not getting this other thing. :( I've worked on cases where I thought I'd have to be God to fix this situation for someone, and it wraps up in a week. So, like anything else, you're asking someone to try to fix the situation, and they can apply their knowledge, and fix something for you a good deal of the time. It is not a guaranteed outcome. It's putting the odds in your favor as much as possible. So a good lawyer might get you less jail time even if you get jail time, but the fact you went to jail does not mean your lawyer is fake. Maybe that oncologist saved someone with a stage 4 glioblastoma, but your cancer still manages to get you, despite being stage one and very trivial-seeming when found, and that doesn't make them a "fake doctor," it means that a whole host of issues created this outcome, and this doctor, while gifted, could not overcome them.
How nice the spellcaster is would not be relevant to how well they can help you, so cross that off. If you need someone who pets your head and reassures you all of the time, you actually need a therapist. If you want someone who does good spellwork, well, it's best you get along with them yeah, but they aren't a therapist, and you might have to hear things you don't like hearing (for example, I've told at least 4 people in 2016 alone to knock off drinking so much because they are acting out and chasing off their love interest, and it's no one's fault but theirs this keeps happening.) So, if you are going to someone because they are "super nice," that is nothing about "Super effective."
How quick they respond might not be relevant. When part of my house burned down, my response times became terrible. This wasn't because I'm a bad spellcaster, - rather it was because I had noise and disruption happening constantly for weeks at a time. ;) If you're concerned about response times, it's valid to say that to your caster. He or she will generally be glad to explain why there is a long turnover if there is. However, I've known quacks who replied in an hour, and I've known really good spellcasters who, even with me as their friend, took a week...and I was getting service faster then their clients for my replies, and my questions were not about any spell they were doing for me, no less.
If it didn't work, what in the actual heck did the client do? Did you ask that? Did they think it to death? Did they want to be a werewolf (someone asked me that once)? Did they chase their ex around with an axe? What did the practitioner say to them about the chances of it coming together. Do you know how many times I've told someone there is maybe a 20% chance it would work and they said "I'll take those odds?" Well, if it didn't work, was I bad? I told them it was unlikely. Remember, anyone pissed off enough to write a rude review aleady has a huge chip on their shoulder, and is about as reliable as someone asking an ex lover of yours who you just dumped about whether or not you're a good person. 95% of my complaints come from people I never even worked for. I had a woman tell me I was a "Fraud" because she didn't read the application (or anything she agreed to in her contract,) when I'd clearly stipulated on that application that I don't accept cases of the type she asked me to help her with, and when I pointed out to her I said I don't cover that on the application, she threatened me and called me names. I had another guy tell me I must be in this for a quick buck when I said I couldn't help him. OK, what money did I get in either case? None. I said no to both. One of them took several hours of my time up needing to be calmed down after she threatened me. I wish that was uncommon. But instead, it's quite common to get threats, be called names, or the like for NEVER WORKING FOR THE PERSON.
So, you trust people like that to give you an honest review? I wouldn't. It's why I don't believe any online reviews of anything. It's either a joke because it's a slighted person (so it's completely off,) or it's overly gushy and overly positive (and that's probably an exaggeration, too!)
It worked or it didn't work isn't relevant then until you know everything about the case, what the worker did, what the client did, and etc, - you need BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY. And you probably don't know that - you probably have one partial, completely slanted side of the story, if that person is telling the truth. And who's leading this review site or forum? Is it several people all of whom have at least 10 years of intense practice and study in different paradigms who are not selling any services themselves? And have these people personally worked alongside each worker to gauge their effectiveness and honesty? If not, then there is no way you can jury these claims properly or believe them valid. Do they have people prone to self delusion on their forums? I remember one woman telling me there was a silly bee on those forums saying she knew a guy was real because she'd get a migraine every time he cast a love spell. Um, hmm...that probably means she just gets migraines from stress. My love spells (and anyone else's I know of) have never caused blinding sick-headaches. And others bought into this and helped carry the delusions around. My client who brought this to my attention thought it was the most hilarious thing she ever heard of, - used to laugh herself silly about that forum. It's still one of the most popular ones to this day.
See, what I mean, kids? If you're blind, why are you letting people who are blind and deaf at the same time lead you around?
3. If you think about it, this is a great way to hook the perpetually ignorant.
If I didn't know a damn thing about cars, and for some reason cars were some topic that a lot of people knew nothing about (apparently we've gone back in time to when the automobile first came out,) I might think that asking strangers about cars was brilliant. Of course, bad people have existed since the dawn of time, and perhaps there a bunch of people who are going to tell me that if I buy this kind of car from them, it will give me amazing powers, like time travel, and the ability to cure all diseases, and perpetual youth. Since the willfully stupid have existed as long as the bad people, there would, no doubt, be a devoted band of followers telling me YES YES YES, I must get this car because then I will have these amazing powers. And maybe, if I've never seen or known anything about this new-fangled automatic horseless-carriage, I might even buy into it. There's a whole group of people who do. So, when I purchase an automobile I find myself greatly disappointed when all it does is roll around without a horse pulling it. I wanted to fly. I wanted to be young forever. I wanted to cure all diseases. All these people said this is how this machine works, goddamn it! I must have been scammed.
I see you rolling your eyes, some of you, but guess what? This is what those forums are like. Some more so than others. So, if you have people who really want to live in a fantasy, this feeds the fantasy. This does not educate. I wish it did. Does that sound odd to you that I want you to be educated? It shouldn't. I've written this blog for over a decade, and while I've taken month's long breaks in the last few years, I've written this blog mostly with the intention that I want to educate people so that they can understand how they can improve their own work for themselves, or even help along work that someone else is doing for them. There are spells you can do FOR YOURSELF here. This is almost a third of my life spent writing this for you, and it's free for you. Doesn't seem to me that I want my readers to be ignorant.
So people who want to believe certain things about spells - things which are blatantly false - they are very attracted to these places...these "review sites." This means if you're the honest consumer, much like as I said with the car example above, you don't realize that you've now fallen into a den of people who are willfully ignorant, and you believe (as do they) that they are "helping you." Meanwhile other people who enjoy the same kind of fantasy are coming in and remaining. They have a kinship to their own kind. This reinforces the idea that you are around people who know what they are talking about. Well, er, if you read #4, none of them (at least that I've seen, and by all means show me one where this is true that someone or many someones with a decade or more of intense study into several paradigms are the judge and jury, and with no motives to sell their own services or supplies,) are being run by anyone with the intellectual authority, much less the practical working knowledge of the occult, to make such decisions. But they grow and grow, because the perpetually ignorant are attracted...and that brings in the scammers to leave bait on those sites to squeeze those people for money.
2. They convince you to do stupid things when interacting with a worker.
I remember reading a forum where it was the opposite of what you should look for or ask a worker being told that someone should ask those things. Like "What is your success rate?" as a question. I've answered that here. I always ask "Well, do you mean for myself where I am the person casting spells for myself? Or are we talking about others? If it's others, am I allowed to not acknowledge people like the woman who broke into her ex's house and got arrested for it when I told her she had to stop contacting him entirely (which she also didn't do) who then blamed me for "failing" while admitting she constantly did the opposite of my instruction? What about the lust for results crowd? What about the people who screamed in the face of someone I was supposed to reconcile instead of being loving towards them? Do they count if I did not get them what they wanted? Or do we just count the people who followed my instructions and didn't think things to death? Also, what is success? Some result? Full result? Unexpected better result? Person who realized their ex is a dick, but is now a dick that loves them and wants them back?"
Another recommendation was to see if the person had a money-back guarantee, as only a "real worker" has that. (Actually it's usually that the reverse is true.)
Or even one where they said x was the right amount of time for manifestation...something ridiculous like 3 days, but...
There is no standard time for manifestation. So, if someone tells you there is, - someone who isn't your worker - you might think, "Well fuck this didn't happen in a day! SCAM SCAM SCAM!" Yeah, but it's not. So you've just basically told off a worker who is a very nice person, who is doing their best, and who didn't do a thing wrong because (read the above) you let someone else convince you that's not how this work. This is a bit like not listening to what a doctor tells you, but instead asking that weird guy dressed as a chicken that hangs out in front of a convenience store every day begging for change how long it will take for your boil to heal if you see a doctor. The guy in the chicken suit has a lot of mental illness issues, and probably can't tell you the right answer to much, but you're taking his word over a doctor's. Really. Who's the fool? Who's the quack? It must be the doctor, right? ;)
So, in reality, you should just be polite to the worker, and speak to him or her regarding your concerns. Ask them what to expect. If it doesn't pan out that way, ask them why or if something could be improved on. I'd rather someone just tell me I'm a bitch and that they are angry about (x thing,) because while I don't really appreciate my time being wasted with emotional asshattery, sometimes I have unintentionally slighted someone, or they've misunderstood how something works, or I identify a problem that can be addressed and fixed, and it gives me the opportunity to correct this or help them understand why things aren't working right, which is benefiting us both. If you feel results are not happening, talk to me (or your worker if it's someone else,) and let's look into that. That's the right way to handle things. ;)
But if you or someone else were to go ask a group of ignorant people (see #4) if what happened was "normal," or if it implied a scam, you might not give me that opportunity. Whereas it might have been you initiated contact with your target when I told you that would stop this from working for you, and you'd forgotten that and made contact, now I'm being roasted by a bunch of people (well, and you just breached your contract and I can sue,) who have no idea what I did, what you did, and what you were supposed to expect. So, they are basically telling you to not give me any opportunity to examine the situation and see if I can help. That's not helping you or me...but especially not you. ;)
"Well, but if there are scammers out there, why would I trust the worker?" Fair. So, here's what you do. Don't hire me. I don't need your business. Then you can take this advice, and apply it to finding a real worker. Look at that. Here I am, with 25 years of spellcasting experience here, and I am making not a penny from you taking this advice I've given, and so I've no motive to lie. But, if I suddenly became able to spend nothing but time with you helping you find a worker (you'll want to see #1) and I could just take hours of my day out without pointing you in a SPECIFIC direction (I work for a lot of people so I actually don't have this spare time,) I could still tell you what to look for. Now, I obviously understand spellcasting, especially in my own paradigm. Where is my motive to mislead you? I've not offered you any pointing in any direction to any peer or friend or anything of the sort. No profit for me.
1. If you really want to find a real spellcaster, to know if you're being "scammed" it means actually making an effort to understand a few things, and damned if that is too much to ask of the Google-addicted generation this world has become.
Oh. Em. Gee. Not WORK!!! Not when you can hit up Google!!! But people really good with using Google AdWords have been grabbing suckers for years like that, and Google then makes it even worse because they can't guarantee you're not just finding "popular bullshit," since they use algorithms, so now being good at AdWords means you've found a savvy marketer who may not even be selling you what you want! But Google is so easy! How dare I ever remind you that it doesn't make it the right way to find what you want.
Well, but this is kind of easy, kiddos. MOST legitimate workers in this day and age have written a book and/or have a blog, have spells you can do for yourself published somewhere OR if they don't, they have all this free literature on spellcasting (not just on their spells that you purchase, but on spellcasting and how to spellcast for yourself.) Now, some fakes have some (laughable) books and sites, too, so that's not a guarantee. Hell, I can think of one chap who's gone on some of those review sites pretending to be his own client, and who has still plastered his name onto some very gifted people's work all the same, - he might very well have convinced some of you reading this that he's super magical awesome. Still, he's one of two, maybe three, people who I can think of off of the top of my head who's very present with the real workers, who's published, and that being out of easily 100 people. So, look how much you've just narrowed down the pool to "people I can probably trust." I'll even adjust that number to it being less than it is, - say that gives you a 9 out of 10 chance you're not going to get a fake.
Before review sites were a thing, I'd just be like "If you don't think I'm legit, there's x amount of years of my work online for free for you. Read it and if you think I'm still full of shit, that's fine, because I don't need your business." I've actually kept the design of my blog always different from that of my business site in an effort to make it so those who want to do this on their own feel like it's separate entity. That way, they see me as Teacher Cat, rather than a business. Some people don't want to learn. That's cool, too. That's why I sell services. ;)
It still helps if you understand spellcasting. I think Jason Miller's Strategic Sorcery (and Mr Miller and I do not always agree on a lot of things, mind you,) is a good start. So you invest probably $10 or so on Amazon, read this book (and it's a pretty quick read,) and then you have at least some grasp of what's going on. That's a lot cheaper than handing money over to a fake, then complaining they were fake. You're arming yourself with knowledge. Knowledge is power, kids. And there's a lot of primers out there that you can get, some bad - some good, but that will help you at least begin to get some idea of what is going on when people cast spells. So, here you are, you've learned something, and now you're ready to find a spellcaster. There's still going to be a glut of them online. Still, you're already legions ahead of a lot of those review site people, but you say "Cat I love review sites like you love Ryan Gosling, or Chris Hemsworth dressed as Thor. I love them like you love a good Stoli and Tonic. I love them like you love ice cream." Fair enough. So go on there, and see who everyone is chirruping about the most. Where are the hens clucking about what is best? ;) You see one where you kind of like the news about that person, though you're starting to see a lot of these people are like what I'd mentioned...that's OK though - you love review sites like I love ice cream, so fuck everyone who's going to tell you to stop using them, - and so you visit this worker they are all mooing about. You ask the worker some questions. You ask a few more. You start to get this idea that this person is reading something to you out of a Dungeons and Dragons book. And wait, did they just say what? They do what? They are a Grecian Gypsy Santeria Palero Goetic Invocator with a specialty in fairies? What? Wait that doesn't sound right. They can fix it in 48 hours? But you read that's the exception and a rarity, not commonplace. Hmm... So you go to this next person you liked that everyone reviewed. But then you realize they are accepting all business and have a static price up for everything (including spells) which...wait, you know you can't trust someone that casts the same love spell for every love situation. That's not how this works. So, you look at this other person, and...
And you've made it. You've learned how to determine who's real and who's fake within some degree of respectability. Sure, you might fall for someone who's a very good scammer, but you're not going to fall for these obvious fakes. You're no longer that "person who uses review sites" that legit workers despise and scammers love. You're a discerning consumer. Congratulations. :)
The bottom line is...I would rather have someone who wants to ask me some questions, who wants to know why I do things x way and not this other way, and getting the information they need than I ever would want someone blindly coming in assuming I'm some sort of god or wish granting fairy. Almost every worker I know feels the same. If it meant NEVER EVER EVER getting another client, but preventing people from getting their money taken by someone who is obviously not doing the work for them, I think that might be a fair trade. And I know - I KNOW THIS - that if any one of you understands spellcasting just a tiny bit on your own, - that if you realize that getting a ritual oil isn't a magic potion but it's more like buying a hammer (and not thinking that means the hammer only works if it builds a house for you the moment you touch it, but rather that you need to use the hammer appropriately to build the house you want,) or another tool, that you won't be losing your hard earned money by being naive or unknowing about what you are looking for.
So what is my "Review about people who use review sites?" Simple. There are a lot of really great, honest, wonderful clients hiding on there, thinking they are being smart consumers, and they are getting a bad name because of the people who's advice they're taking. It's making them bad consumers. It would take a concerted effort for all of us to shut those down. My review is that the good people need education, not review sites. Let's leave the bad people, the crazy people, and the people that I would honestly cross the street to avoid (and I get at least a handful of these terrifying types in my inbox every month,) on those sites, and help the discerning consumers, the good people, the people who just want some help get off of them. Just like living in a crime ridden neighborhood doesn't make you a criminal, or growing up among willfully uneducated people doesn't make you stupid, well...using a review site just means you went to the wrong place to figure out how to do this right (at least in my opinion.)
It might surprise you, but in the 12+ years I've been around online, I've actually helped people figure out if a worker they want to use is "real," by reading that worker's site, by examining their literature...and I never once asked this person to hire me.
And if you wanted to cast the spell yourself, I even offer one on one education sessions. Hell, the moment my publisher gives me the news, I'll be telling you when my book is ready for release. Then you don't even need me, you've got my book (which is still less costly than hiring me, haha.) So, please know, I want all of you to get what you want in life (well, not the pedophile people or that guy who asked me to get someone to rape his wife, or the people who want me to kill children...so most of you,) even if it means I am not getting your business. I hate scammers as much as you. They make the honest among us look bad. BUT, I also hate online reviews. I've yet to find them - regarding most anything, and not just spells or spellcasters, - to be a very informed way to make a decision about anything.
I do hope this is some help. I see far too often the good consumer getting the shaft. You all deserve better. :)
Beast witches!! :)
~Cat
This site, and all content therein is copyright OriginalNinjaCat, except where noted, and cannot be used, transmitted, copied, copied and pasted, or etc without my express written permission. I will prosecute all violators to the strongest extent of the law (and then some.)
My book is forthcoming, and I've been rootworkin' and spellcastin' for 25 years now. If you have questions about spellwork, please check the archives under Questions You've Asked Me section, or click on the varying links to spells that you can cast on your own, too! :)