Discernment Matters: Choosing an Ethical Reader or Practitioner

Discernment Matters

Social media has made it incredibly easy to find spiritual practitioners. Within minutes, you can find tarot readers, psychics, witches, healers, teachers, mentors, spellworkers, and people offering all kinds of spiritual services. I think that can be a wonderful thing. There are genuinely talented, knowledgeable, ethical people sharing their work online, and I have learned from some of them myself. At the same time, social media has also made it very easy for someone to present themselves as established, experienced, or authoritative before you really know much about the person behind the account.

A large following does not automatically mean someone is trustworthy or ethical. Someone can have thousands of followers and still have very little actual experience behind what they are presenting, while someone with a much smaller following may have spent decades studying, practicing, learning from others, making mistakes, and developing their craft. A polished social media presence, impressive titles, a large audience, or confident language can create an image of authority, but none of those things tell you how someone actually behaves when things do not go their way.

That is where discernment becomes important.

Look Beyond the Following

Before spending your money or putting your trust in a spiritual practitioner, I think it is worth doing some research. How long have they actually been practicing? Who taught them? If they claim a particular lineage or certification, can it be verified? What kind of training have they completed? Do they have clear policies about their services, refunds, communication, and turnaround times? What do people say about their experiences with them?

I also pay attention to how someone responds when things are not going perfectly. How do they handle an unhappy customer? Can they admit when they made a mistake? Can someone ask a reasonable question without being treated as disrespectful? Do they encourage people to develop their own judgment, or do they create the impression that clients need them in order to be spiritually safe? These things tell me much more than a follower count ever could.

I also think patterns matter. One unhappy customer does not automatically mean someone is unethical. People misunderstand each other, businesses make mistakes, orders get lost, and sometimes a practitioner simply is not the right fit for a particular person. Practitioners are allowed to have boundaries and policies, and clients have responsibilities too. But when you start seeing repeated complaints about unfulfilled orders, continuing to take new work while carrying a large backlog, public arguments with customers, shaming people who question them, intimidation, threats, or a pattern of turning every disagreement into an attack, I think it is reasonable to take a step back and look more closely.

You do not have to decide that someone is a terrible person. You simply have to decide whether you want to give that person your money, your trust, or access to vulnerable parts of your life.

My Own Experience

This became very real for me after I hired a large spiritual creator I had found through TikTok. I paid for a custom report on her live event and initially tried to be patient. After several emails went unanswered, I happened to join one of her live events and asked about the report. I was told to email her directly, so I did.

She explained that she had made a mistake with my information and would need to redo the report. I was told I should have it within a couple of days. I was understanding of the mistake and waited.

Two or three weeks later, I still had not received the report, so I followed up again. This time, I was told by an assistant that the report had not been completed and that there was no way to know when it would be finished.

At that point, I no longer wanted the service. I had already waited more than 50 days from the original purchase, had been given a delivery expectation that was not met, and was now being told there was no estimated timeline at all. I formally canceled the order and requested a refund.

That is when everything changed.

Instead of simply processing the refund, I was accused of being aggressive and threatening and was told that a cease and desist would be issued if I continued contacting the business. This happened immediately after I requested my refund. I was stunned because, from my perspective, I had been trying to resolve a straightforward customer service issue. I had asked where my paid-for service was, was told there was no timeline for receiving it, and then asked for my money back.

I never threatened her, threatened to harm her, or attempted to intimidate her.

When the promised refund still did not arrive, I eventually had to involve my bank and file complaints with the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission. I did not do that because I wanted to create drama or punish anyone. I did it because I had already tried to resolve the situation directly, formally canceled the order, been promised a refund, and still had not received my money. I also knew that waiting too long could potentially affect my ability to dispute the charge through my bank.

Ultimately, I did receive my money back, but only after I took those additional steps.

After the refund was finally issued, I also received a response from the practitioner regarding the complaint I had filed. Reading her version of what happened was honestly frustrating because several parts did not match my records or my experience. She described my communications as hostile and harassing and said the cease and desist language was related to disruptive behavior and contact with her volunteers. That was not how the situation happened from my perspective, and I had the email chain documenting my attempts to resolve the issue.

What made this even more frustrating was that she later contacted me and acknowledged that those accusations were unfounded and based on incorrect information. She told me that she was including that retraction in her response to the Attorney General, so when I received her response and it was not there, I responded with the documentation and pointed out the contradiction.

Instead, she then told the Attorney General that she felt scared for her life and claimed that I was using the Attorney General as a way to communicate with her through a third party. That was completely false. I was responding to the complaint because I had been given the opportunity to respond, and I was providing documentation to correct statements about my conduct that I knew were not true. I was not using the Attorney General to communicate with her, and I was not attempting to contact her through anyone else.

At that point, the situation felt completely different from the original problem I had started with. I had paid for a service, waited more than 50 days, asked for a refund when I was told there was no timeline, and then found myself being accused of increasingly serious things when I continued trying to resolve the matter. That was honestly one of the moments when I had to step back and ask myself what exactly I was looking at.

People can remember events differently, misunderstand something, or make an accusation when they are upset. What matters to me is what happens when you realize you were wrong. If you make a serious accusation about someone's behavior and later acknowledge that the accusation was based on incorrect information, I think the ethical thing to do is correct the record.

The experience also made me wonder whether I was an isolated case or whether other people had experienced similar problems. After everything happened, I started looking more closely. I searched Google, looked through reviews, and found a handful of other complaints and discussions, including one on TikTok. Considering the size of the practitioner's following, I was surprised by how little public information I found. With hundreds of thousands of followers, I expected there to be a much larger public record of customer experiences, both positive and negative. Instead, there was relatively little information available.

I also came across several videos in which the practitioner talked about hexing or using witchcraft against people who disputed charges or otherwise challenged her. One of those videos was posted after my own situation had already happened. I am not going to speculate about whether she actually intended to do anything to anyone, because I cannot know that. What stood out to me was hearing a spiritual practitioner talk about using magical retaliation against people involved in a consumer dispute.

That gave me pause.

For me, this is another part of discernment that is easy to overlook. I do not expect every spiritual practitioner to think exactly as I do, and I am certainly not going to tell someone what they can or cannot believe about magic. But I do think it is reasonable to pay attention to how someone responds when they are angry, challenged, criticized, or involved in a disagreement with a customer.

There is a difference between having strong spiritual beliefs and using those beliefs to frighten or intimidate people. If someone is publicly talking about hexing people because they disputed a charge, that is information I would want to know before deciding whether I felt comfortable giving that person my money, my personal information, or access to something as personal as my spiritual life.

None of this proves that every complaint or allegation I came across is true. People have different experiences, many customers never leave reviews, and not every dispute becomes public. But I think it is worth paying attention when things do not add up or when multiple pieces of information begin to form a pattern.

Later, two former volunteers publicly shared their own experiences working with this practitioner. They made allegations involving undelivered orders and unpaid work, including one person who claimed they were owed approximately $10,000.

I want to be careful here because discernment applies to this part too. Those were their experiences and their allegations, and I cannot personally verify every detail of what they shared. I am not going to present their claims as things I personally witnessed or know to be true.

What I can say is that hearing their stories made me look back at my own experience differently. When you have already experienced contradictions firsthand and then hear similar concerns from people who had their own direct relationship with the person, it is difficult not to take notice.

That does not mean I automatically believe every allegation someone makes. It means I pay attention when things do not add up. I look at patterns. I look at what people say, what they actually do, and whether those two things match.

That, to me, is discernment.

It is not blindly believing someone because they have a large following or an impressive reputation. It is being willing to look at the whole picture, even when the picture is not what you expected to see.

Spiritual Does Not Mean Above Accountability

There is sometimes an unfortunate idea within spiritual communities that people who have been practicing for a long time, have a title, have a large following, or are considered teachers should somehow be trusted automatically. I do not believe that. Experience matters. Training matters. Knowledge matters. Lineage can matter. None of those things, however, make someone incapable of being wrong, dishonest, manipulative, or simply human.

Someone can be spiritually gifted and still behave badly. Someone can teach valuable things and still have terrible boundaries. Someone can have decades of experience and still make mistakes. Being a spiritual practitioner does not place someone above accountability.

This matters even more because people often seek spiritual services when they are vulnerable. They may be grieving, frightened, confused, going through a major life change, or desperately looking for answers. That creates a responsibility for anyone working with them. There is a huge difference between offering spiritual guidance and using someone's vulnerability to create fear, dependency, or urgency.

If someone tells you that you are cursed and then conveniently offers to remove that curse for several hundred dollars, that deserves scrutiny. If someone constantly creates fear around your spiritual life and then happens to have the paid solution to that fear, pay attention. If you are made to feel like something terrible will happen unless you keep paying for more work, I do not think you should ignore that simply because the person uses spiritual language.

There is nothing wrong with charging money for spiritual work. Practitioners put time, energy, study, preparation, materials, and labor into what they do, and they deserve to be compensated. The problem is exploitation. There is a difference between charging someone for your knowledge and making someone feel like they have to keep paying you in order to be safe.

Ethical guidance should support a person's ability to make their own decisions rather than slowly replacing it. That principle is reflected in ethical standards for spiritual practitioners more broadly, which emphasize boundaries, client autonomy, honesty, privacy, and avoiding exploitation or dependency.

Clients Have Boundaries Too

Practitioners are allowed to have boundaries. They can refuse a client, establish policies, limit communication, and decide that someone is not a good fit for their practice. Clients should respect those boundaries.

But clients have boundaries too.

You are allowed to ask questions about what you are purchasing. You are allowed to disagree with a reading or interpretation. You are allowed to seek another opinion. You are allowed to stop working with someone because their approach no longer feels right for you. You are allowed to ask about a refund when you are entitled to one, and you are allowed to use appropriate consumer channels when a problem cannot be resolved directly.

You do not owe someone lifelong loyalty because they taught you something. You do not owe unquestioning devotion because they have a spiritual title. You do not owe silence simply because someone has a larger following than you do.

At the same time, clients have responsibilities. Do not harass practitioners, ignore clearly stated policies, make threats, or expect unlimited access to someone's time simply because you paid for a service. Ethical practice is not a one-way street. Both sides have responsibilities, and both sides should be accountable for how they treat the other person.

Discernment Does Not Mean Expecting Perfection

I am not looking for perfect practitioners. Nobody is perfect, and I do not expect every teacher, reader, witch, healer, or mentor to get everything right all the time. What matters much more to me is what happens when someone gets something wrong.

Can they admit it? Can they say, “I do not know”? Can they apologize without immediately turning the apology into another accusation? Can they handle criticism without humiliating the person who raised the concern? Can they respect someone's decision to walk away?

Those things matter to me far more than someone appearing completely confident all the time. In fact, I trust someone more when they can acknowledge the limits of their knowledge than someone who seems to have an absolute answer for everything.

Discernment is not about assuming everyone is dishonest. It is about not assuming everyone is honest simply because they present themselves as spiritual, experienced, or trustworthy.

You Do Not Have to Fight Anyone

One of the biggest things I have taken from this experience is that discernment does not require a public battle. You do not have to convince everyone that someone is unethical, and you do not have to spend months arguing with a person online. Sometimes discernment is simply recognizing that something does not sit right with you and choosing to step away.

You can research more. You can ask questions. You can look for patterns. You can seek another teacher or practitioner. You can decide not to spend your money somewhere. You can leave a community. You can change your mind.

That last one matters.

Sometimes we become attached to people we learn from, especially when they have taught us something meaningful. We want to believe the best about them because we value what they have given us. But appreciating something you learned from someone does not require you to ignore behavior that concerns you. You can be grateful for what you learned and still decide that you no longer want that person involved in your spiritual life.

You can also realize that you were wrong about someone.

There is nothing shameful about that.

Trust Your Judgment

There are so many wonderful spiritual practitioners out there. There are people doing beautiful, ethical, meaningful work who genuinely care about the people they serve. There are teachers who understand that having experience does not make them superior, practitioners who respect their clients' autonomy, and spiritual workers who can admit when they do not know something.

Those are the people I want to support.

But spirituality should never require you to turn off your common sense. Research the people you work with. Ask questions. Know what you are paying for. Read the policies. Pay attention to how someone treats people when everything is going well, but especially pay attention to how they behave when something goes wrong.

Look beyond the follower count and the title. Look beyond the polished social media presence and the image someone has created for themselves. Look at their behavior, their patterns, their accountability, and how they treat people who no longer agree with them.

Most importantly, remember that your spiritual path is still yours. No practitioner, teacher, reader, healer, mentor, or spiritual authority gets to own your judgment for you.

Discernment does not mean believing everyone is bad. It means understanding that people are capable of being deceptive and being willing to look closely enough to notice when something does not add up. It means asking questions, paying attention to patterns, and being willing to change your mind when new information comes forward.

You do not have to shut off your intuition to be respectful. You do not have to ignore your common sense because someone has more experience than you. You do not have to surrender your boundaries because someone has a spiritual title.

You are allowed to think for yourself.

And honestly, I think that is one of the most important parts of walking a spiritual path in the first place.