The Meaning of Wu Wei (無為)
Wu Wei is often translated as “non-action” or “effortless action,” Wu Wei (無為) is far more subtle and alive than these terms suggest. In the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, it’s not about passivity or withdrawal, but about deep attunement, moving in accordance of the seasons, cycles, arcs, and other patterns rather than imposing upon it.
I’m particularly interested in how Wu Wei shows up in witchcraft, particularly spellworkings that utilizes the Yin aspect. This is also essential in understanding how to cast spells in a way that feels sustainable for the practitioner and the materia magica.
Wu Wei isn’t the absence of doing. It’s action that arises from alignment with nature, with timing, with spirits. Sometimes this means waiting. Other times it means striking at the precise moment, with clarity and grace. It’s a practice of discernment, restraint, and responsiveness that is rooted in trust so one does not waste energy resisting what is already in motion.
It’s not always comfortable. Wu Wei asks us to release control, to trust emergence over agenda. It challenges our conditioning around productivity, certainty, and force, in fact, Wu Wei challenges white supremacy and the Empire in every way. It unravels and leverages the binaries: active/passive, speaking/silent, intervention/withdrawal and invites presence, timing, and relational awareness. As I shared in my blog post on witchcraft and extraction, if we haven't done the deep work, it's almost guaranteed we will approach activist magic with the same extractive mechanisms we are resisting.
How to Cast Spells: Effigies as Ritual Tools
What is an effigy? This blog post outlines their function, theory, and practice
What is an Effigy?
An effigy is a constructed figure or representation, most often humanoid, animal, or spirit-form, used in ritual, spellwork, or spirit mediumship. Effigies can be made from wax, clay, wood, cloth, paper, or even roots and are charged to act as a vessel, proxy, or link in magical operations.
How To Cast Spells with Effigies?
In occult and animist practice, effigies serve as intermediary bodies, giving shape and density to an intention, a morphic field, a spirit, or a target (human or non-human). This is grounded in sympathetic magic: the belief that actions performed upon the representation directly affect its referent. Effigies make the immaterial tangible, localizing and concentrating energy for magical working, ritual work, and mediumship (hint, this is a key to good psychic readings!).
The Purpose of Ritual Tools in Witchcraft and Spirit Readings
How to Cast Spells, Effectively: Function, Methods of Application and Best Practices for Candles, Conjure Oils, and Other Ritual Tools
The Purpose of Conjure Oils and Magic Candles in Witchcraft and Spirit Reading (Mediumship)
In both traditional and contemporary occult work, ritual tools act as technology—deliberate interfaces that structure and anchor the practitioner’s will, intention, facilitate altered states, and mediate spirit contact. Materia magica such as plants, minerals, body fluids that are then made into oils, candles, and effigies (I’ve written a dedicated post about effigies) serve multiple functions: focusing the practitioner’s intention, marking liminal thresholds, storing energetic charge, and offering a “body” through which spirits or energetic currents can be attracted, contained, or banished. Their use is especially pronounced in witchcraft, where precise handling of energy is critical through a spell.
Casting Spells: The Spell that Heals is the Spell that also Destroys
My body is harnessing a current of power I had not yet touched. Not simply the generative force of Wood feeding Fire, Fire turning to Earth through its ashes, and so on, but the degenerative cycle—the one that reaches across the pentacle rather than moving along it. Fire melting Metal. Metal severing Wood. My voice and body, in the context of my magic, are not just constructing; they are deconstructing in the same breath.
The spell that heals is the spell that destroys. The invocation that calls something into being is the same that banishes what was. (An example - if we are sick, the virus must die for us to heal). There is no birthwork without deathwork.