Conscious Life Expo Recap

Over the weekend of February 22 - 24, a team from Bloodstone Studios attended the 2019 Conscious Life Expo at the LAX Hilton in Los Angeles, California.

We arrived about an hour before the exhibition hall opened to the public and set up the booth pretty quickly. I brought several items to sell at the booth, but our primary purpose for attending the expo was to promote the Angel-Evoking Tarot and network with fellow professionals in the tarot / metaphysical world.

My lecture on Angel-Evoking Magic was really the highlight of the entire event for us. Considering the fact that I was scheduled in the very first time slot, I wasn't expecting anyone to be there, but I was pleasantly surprised when I entered the lecture hall and found about two dozen people waiting to hear me speak. The lecture went very well, even though I didn't rehearse it at all, and the audience asked lots of intelligent questions.

You can watch the bulk of the lecture on YouTube:

The first day of the expo was what I expected: most of the crowd was intrigued by the Angel tarot cards, but were horrified by the stack of Demon-Possessed Tarot decks. Quite a few people expressed dismay, some whispered to their partners, and one woman even let out a yelp: "Demon possessed?! You sell demon possessed stuff?!"

I had a lot of respect for the few people who stopped to challenge me on the value of summoning demons, and we had some great debates at the booth about the merits and pitfalls of Solomonic magic. There were also a healthy number of visitors who already knew quite a bit about demon / angel summoning and quickly snapped up the decks. They were really fun and engaging to talk with, and hopefully they love their decks!

To help promote the Angel-Evoking Tarot, I had high quality postcards printed that served as prayer cards with the Archangel Haniel on the front and some information about the tarot deck on the back. These were given away free to anyone who passed by. I also gave away free stickers with the Bloodstone Studios logo on them, but a surprising number of people dropped these stickers immediately after picking them up. Apparently the drawing of a cherub carrying a severed head wasn't really to their taste. More than one person appeared to be legitimately afraid of the sticker...

Goal accomplished.

Between the good conversations and freaking people out, I'd say it was overall a pretty successful expo. We didn't make enough money in the booth to even come close to recovering the cost of attending (a booth our size was about $1,000), but hopefully we educated enough people about angels and demons to make the trip worth it for the rest of the universe.

On that note: the most popular item at our booth was the bloodstones. I bought a huge amount of these from a supplier in India, and we were the only booth in the entire expo that had any bloodstones for sale. While most other vendors were selling their tumbled stones for $5 - $10, our stones were priced at only $1 per stone. Even then, we ended up giving a fair number of them away for free.

One little boy was mesmerized by the pile of bloodstones and when he went to grab one, my mother (who was helping staff the booth) told him to take one for free. An hour later, his exasperated mother came back and asked to buy a replacement. Her son had lost his "magic rock" and was crying and inconsolable. I let him pick another one at no charge. He needed the bloodstone more than we needed the dollar.

As they walked away from the booth, the little boy held his left hand over his pants pocket so he wouldn't lose his precious magic rock.

Goal accomplished.