Thoughts on Doreen Virtue's Christian conversion and whether to buy her magickal goods (and larger discussion on whether to buy/fund questionable people in general)

I wanted to get people's opinions over whether it's possible to separate the "art from the artist" when it comes to buying magickal goods from people who have renounced what they believed in.

For a bit of backstory on this personally speaking, over a year ago I was at a shop that was selling a pin with a picture on it of a woman with braids, wearing a crown. It spoke to me, so I bought the pin for a couple dollars and have worn it here and there. A couple of months ago, I met someone online who was showing me her decks, and one of them was the Goddess Guidance Oracle Deck. I immediately recognized it from my pin and started looking at pictures the deck, and I loved the style and the various goddesses. I went on Amazon to see if it was available, and to my happiness it was...but I looked at reviews and some of them said that the deck was a sham because its creator, Doreen Virtue, renounced New Age and Paganism and converted to Christianity.

I hesitated, and put the deck on my wish list.

Just within the last few days, someone on this forum was asking about the deck and so I decided to dig a bit further into Doreen Virtue, and I read her website. Boy oh boy...it's an extreme brand of Christianity. The nail in the coffin was when I read an update on her "changes" about where proceeds from her decks go (for the ones she still keeps in circulation, including Goddess Guidance):

– The money from the old new age materials is distributed in a combination of charity, paying off my back taxes, and supporting my volunteer work.

Yikes. I can't get behind the proceeds from the decks going to paying off this lady's taxes, or worse, going to a charity that may be the wrong type of Christian (discriminating against certain groups for example, or funding other things I am morally against).

Given this, my feelings at this moment are "no, don't buy a deck from her," but what does everyone here think about this topic and of inadvertently funding questionable people? How careful should we be about where we find our materials and books, and how much research should go into it?

Submitted June 07, 2019 at 02:07AM by CrystallinePhoto http://bit.ly/2I06iwR