Magickal Karma Fix

If you read my previous post, you'll know that I had a recent run in with a music store over an owner's failure to train her employees properly around the costing of items. After she accused me of trying to trick her employees, I became enraged and refused to pay any more for a transaction that was completed in the store. The whole situation has left a bad taste in my mouth and I've decided that I'm going to rectify this with magick and ritual. I need to transform the negative interaction based on money into something positive. So, I'm donating the money that she says I owe her to charity. If I financially benefited from someone's mistake, then I figure that I'll send that energy (and financial benefit) back into the universe.

I've been researching different charities and trying to figure out where to send it. My partner thinks I should send it to a charity that deals with music. I know there are some inner-city initiatives that give students free music lessons which I think is wonderful, so I will consider that. However, with the recent oil spill I feel that I should do something to help that. Mother Earth is crying out for healing! I found a wonderful American Charity Matter of Trust that is collecting human hair because it can easily absorb oil. There are Canadian hair salons that are helping and I figure that this American charity must need money to help transport all these materials. The only down side of sending to an American charity is that I don't think I can get a Canadian tax receipt for that . . . but I don't think that should matter when I'm doing it for my karma.

Please feel free to suggest what you think I should do or suggest any other charity. Here is a video that shows how effective human hair is separating oil from water.

Name that Karmic Lesson

Being a professional musician I have quite a few instruments in my collection. Purchasing a new instrument is usually an exciting venture . . . but sometimes awful things happen to me . . . as happened just recently. Let me explain what two purchases and then I'll explain my recent incident and I would like your opinion. I feel that Karma is trying to teach me something but I'm not sure what.

1) I was a young university student at the time and I was visiting a Celtic Festival. I wanted to purchase a harp but didn't have a lot of money. I negotiated with a harp builder explaining I was a student and I worked a church musician (at that time). He agreed to sell the harp for a lower price of $3000 because he wanted to help me. Also during that festival I met a lovely bodhran (Irish drum) builder. She had some amazing drums and offered to sell it to me for $60. I borrowed some money from my mom and picked that up as well. When I got home I had an email from the harp builder telling me that he had spoken to the bodhran maker and I was cheating him out of money. He was angry and told me that I didn't seem "Christian" at all . . . as I worked in a church. I was angry and wrote back and explained the situation.

2) I had acquired my first full-time job and decided that I had to have a piano. I answered an ad in the paper and visited an elderly man who wanted to get rid of his piano that his deceased wife had played. I decided that it seemed reasonable and gave him a cheque for the full amount of $500 and would send movers later at a mutually agreeable time. We agreed on the weekend but then the man phoned me screaming and yelling how I didn't leave enough time for the cheque to clear and that I was trying to cheat him out of money (they cheque had cleared). I had to get the police involved . . . I finally got the piano but the old man gave the movers a big sob story and the movers thought I was a criminal and asked me many embarrassing questions.

3) I recently wrote to a store asking about the price of a harp. The store owner told me the harp was one price and the case was another. I had also been talking to other stores across North America about their prices. Since this store was in Toronto I went to try it out. I really liked it and thought that I would just buy that one. The store owner wasn't there but the two sales people told me that the case came with the harp at no extra cost. I did not remember the price quoted in the email and I had no reason to dispute the employees, so I paid for it and left. The next day the store owner emails me that the employees had made a mistake and she wants to invoice me for the case. I write an email explaining the employees should know the costs of the instruments/cases as anyone could have come in and bought it and the transaction has been completed. This was a mistake on her part for not putting price tags on the cases and not training her staff properly. I explain that this is a really bad business practice. She then writes and tells me that it was unacceptable to "test her staff" like that. Now I'm furious!

Two questions: (1) What is the universe trying to teach me in terms of karma? Why does it always involve instruments? (2) What would you do in case scenario #3? All of my friends have given me the same answer but curious what you think.