There’s a prob­lem I see with most neo­pa­gans and mod­ern prac­ti­tion­ers….

First of all, let’s be real. There IS some­thing to some of the claims prac­ti­tion­ers make. One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things I’ve found about the mag­ick I prac­tice is that it’s usu­al­ly traces about 90% of all the same lines as sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly backed psy­chol­o­gy. You don’t even have to go too far into the transper­son­al realm for most of it. Spir­i­tu­al psy­chol­o­gy, exis­ten­tial psy­chol­o­gy, and human­is­tic psy­chol­o­gy are all look­ing at things humans have been doing for for­ev­er to see why they help us lead more ful­fill­ing lives.

Med­i­ta­tion is good for you, even if it takes the form of a guid­ed jour­ney to meet your guardians, spir­its, ances­tors, gods or high­er pow­ers. Keep­ing a phys­i­cal metaphor of your inten­tion on your per­son to remind you of your objec­tive can help you focus whether you call that a charm or a psy­cho­log­i­cal foci. Your uncon­scious mind can be influ­enced with visualizations—whether you call it affir­ma­tions or glam­ours; by repetition—whether you call them mot­tos, slo­gans, or mantras; or by intense focus on your desires—whether you call that auto­sug­ges­tion or man­i­fes­ta­tion.

Parts work in psy­chol­o­gy is SO much like shad­ow work that the first time I did the lat­ter my shad­ow was already well devel­oped and already wait­ing to talk to me. Habit stack­ing is use­ful to add things you want to do as a dai­ly rou­tine even if you call it rit­u­al prac­tice. Jour­nal­ing helps you think straight and keep track of your long-term thought arcs whether you’re doing it as an intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise or a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Time in nature is ground­ing and reju­ve­nat­ing to most humans whether or not you hug a sin­gle tree. High­er pow­ers and pur­pos­es don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be sen­tient beings to give our lives mean­ing and pur­pose. Ser­vice gives us emo­tion­al resilience whether we do it as a call­ing or sim­ply because we see the need to reach out and bridge the divides that wound the human fam­i­ly.

Yes, you can trans­form into a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self if you believe in your­self and are con­fi­dent. And con­fi­dence affects every­thing from per­for­mance to men­tal health to body image and the ener­gy you exude that peo­ple find com­pelling. It does­n’t mat­ter if that is com­ing from pos­i­tive self talk into a mir­ror or a spell to “bring out your inner light.” And it does­n’t mat­ter if your “reminder” that you are awe­some is hooked to some music or a scent or some­thing wrapped around your neck that gets in your way, repeat­ed­ly nudg­ing those thoughts (or “ener­gies”) to the fore­front of your mind.

Code switch­ing into “Skep­ti­cal™” is entire­ly too easy with most of spir­i­tu­al prac­tice.

Now…I’ll admit that ten per­cent that goes towards the woo…I can’t explain and have stopped try­ing. I’ve had expe­ri­ences I don’t claim to understand—I have seen things I can’t explain, I have walked around feel­ing like I was being yanked like a pup­pet when doc­tors said I should be in a coma, I have expe­ri­enced zero pain dur­ing the worst parts of pro­ce­dures as a patron deity declared “You’ve been through enough for a while,” I’ve chan­nelled things that VERY clear­ly were not me and that then made pre­dic­tions about the future that turned out to be SPOT on accu­rate, I’ve learned about things in dreams (from said deity) that turned out to be pre­cise­ly the rit­u­als of a prac­tice I’d nev­er heard of, and I’ve expe­ri­enced a num­ber of coin­ci­dences so large as to give even my skep­ti­cism pause that I’m start­ing to sound ridicu­lous to try to explain it away. But if ratio­nal­iza­tions that sound like “light­ning reflect­ing off of a swamp gas wreathed Venus” help you sleep at night know­ing the world has no mys­ter­ies, won­der­ful. And if my drug addled visions of a sto­ry that has some­how been told enough times that it forms a neur­al net of humans until it becomes sentient—conscious of itself and its puri­ty and it’s tellers, draws pow­ers from humans’ belief, and can influ­ence human­i­ty… Well, if THAT is what helps you sleep at night, won­der­ful.

What­ev­er.

It is in that 90 per­cent that leans towards the “mun­dane” side that I see big prob­lems among mod­ern prac­ti­tion­ers though—problems that trace the lines of the rest of our cul­ture and its pro­cliv­i­ty to silence the voic­es of the pow­er­less. These “mas­ters of tran­scend­ing human lim­i­ta­tions” for­get what the rest of a human being is.

Yes, your per­cep­tion can affect your reality—that’s not real­ly even a note­wor­thy obser­va­tion these days (the sci­ence done on how our brain begins to trick us dur­ing hunger, sleep depri­va­tion, the influ­ence of music, or even the abil­i­ty to solve a math prob­lem that dis­agreed with one’s pol­i­tics)—but to fun­da­men­tal­ly change per­cep­tions in a way that alters our real­i­ty for longer than the song with the eight­ies pow­er chords is on, some­one has to CREATE that prac­tice and do the work and it takes time and ener­gy and prob­a­bly won’t work tomor­row. So you do it for your­self and teach if asked. But what you DON’T do is spew it AT oth­ers like a cere­al box plat­i­tude of weaponized tox­ic pos­i­tiv­i­ty. (“If you’d just see this as a good thing….”) A grat­i­tude prac­tice isn’t going to polyana some­one through chron­ic illness…injury…systematic injustice….or even just a REALLY bad time in their life.

Fuck absolute­ly all the way off with that shit! Let peo­ple tell you they’re hurt­ing. Hear them with­out try­ing to guilt them that their mag­ick ought to be pow­er­ful enough to over­come any hard­ship.

A prac­ti­tion­er who is seri­ous about mag­ick will work to cre­ate a world where those things do not lim­it the range of ALL our poten­tials, not cas­ti­gate those who have obsta­cles to over­come for “bring­ing down the vibes, man.” A true heal­er knows the world is caus­tic and has some empa­thy about that. A true heal­er does­n’t try to claim that an inabil­i­ty to reframe means a wound is actu­al­ly kind of self-inflict­ed.

I feel like the live, laugh, love prac­ti­tion­ers aren’t look­ing around and notic­ing that they’re start­ing on third base by being mid­dle class (usu­al­ly upper­ly so) and most­ly white, and are using their mag­ick and “inten­tions” to jus­ti­fy silence…and silenc­ING oth­ers. In a chill­ing echo to the lack of empa­thy we find every­where in cap­i­tal­ism, they sim­ply wrap it in a mag­i­cal lan­guage “skin” and keep doing what the rest of soci­ety is also doing. But the shad­ows can’t be denied in mag­ick. (Actu­al­ly “ESPECIALLY in mag­ick”) And so try­ing to keep every­thing pos­i­tive always is just more of the same social hier­ar­chy crap and “isms” and “pho­bias” as ever. It’s gate­keep­ing with woo. It’s just dressed up in robes and talk­ing about ascend­ing to the fifth circle….or some­thing.

It’s bull­shit. And of all peo­ple, we ought to know bet­ter than to deny the whole soul.