Part 2: Yin Magic: How Rituals, Divination, and Protection Change During Exhaustion or the Winter Season
How does magic change with Yin energies?
Continuing on from my blog post about exhaustion and magic, while there may be some truth to this, working in Yin is not simply just “doing less” or “slowing down.” It is adopting the formats of magic altogether as a different set of spirits are involved, along with their mechanics. Below is an overview of what the magic looks like, what actions belong here, and what forms are no longer viable under Yin governance. (I elaborate MUCH more in Finding I Ching Clarity, a 24 part series on understanding the spirits of Yin and Yang, and how their lines interplay within the hexagrams of the I Ching, the oldest oracle still in use).
1. Magic shifts from “casting” to “conduction.”
The idea that magic begins with projection, intention, and will is largely a Western formulation. It emerges from Renaissance ceremonial magic, Enlightenment-era notions of individual agency, and the belief that the practitioner’s mind is the primary instrument of power.
Part 1: Magic When You’re Exhausted: A Change in Spirit Governance
The assumption that magic relies on clarity and elevated mood is largely a Western inheritance, an artifact of the idea that power should be linear, solar, upward. But in animist and Daoist cosmologies, exhaustion and depression are not “blocks” or something “wrong”. They are transfers of jurisdiction. Your field is being resonating with a different set of custodians, entities or energies who specialize in depth, slowness, dark clarity, and the intelligence of submerged or subconscious-making.
To work magically in these seasons, you must work with the spirits, elements, and hexagrams that govern this terrain. Any other approach is simply the old problem: trying to perform Yang inside a Yin moment.
Low Mood as a Change in Cosmic Jurisdiction
There are phases when your rituals stop responding the way they did during your bright seasons. It’s not because the spirits “left,” and it’s not because your energy is “low vibration.” It’s because your field’s governance has shifted. (Arthur Edward Waite discusses the hierarchy and governance of spirits in The Occult Sciences).
In bright seasons, you’re under solar, upper-world or Yang influence: spirits of fire, breath, clarity, forward movement.
In depleted seasons, you fall under the care of Yin’s jurisdiction…
Field Notes on the Meaning of Yin
This first, introductory piece sets the stage for better understanding and relating with the Yin principle in Daoist theory and practice. It will help you see that Yin is not simply rest or collapse, but a distinct way that magic, spirit, and matter move. It also opens a three-part blog series:
Across the series, I explore how depletion, exhaustion, and winter alter our relationship to spirit work and map the actual behaviours of Yin in the world. Below are my field notes gathered from mediumship, ritual practice, working with the I Ching, and the lived mechanics of Yin governance: how she moves, how she influences, and what she requires. Rather than a definition, what follows is the sensorial, relational, and often hidden architecture of Yin magic.
Before AI, There Was Divination
The I Ching and the Search Engines as Parallel Languages of Knowing
Long before the I Ching (the Book of Changes) was read as a cornerstone of Confucian ethics, it was used as a practical, inspirited / ensouled / necromantic method for decision making. People cast yarrow stalks or coins, recorded six lines, each either solid (Yang) or broken (Yin), and read the resulting hexagram as a snapshot of how conditions were moving. According to archaeological evidence, early hexagram divination served to consult the dead and other spirits. Over time, it became a way to study how the universe’s force also called the Way (Dao) behaves in order to determine one’s proper place within that larger order, and thereby avert catastrophe, make strategic decisions, or garner good fortune. (And if you’re looking to learn i ching online, this is the approach we’ll study: practical, animist, and strategic).
Why Vampires Show Up In Homes When Ancestor Work Stops
Are Vampires Real? Across cultures vampire lore survives because it diagnoses concrete problems, be it neglected graves, missed offerings, and the frictions of family memory. Vampires also tend to suggest ritual remedies.
Monsters point us to failure. They gather around a household where obligations have not been fulfilled. Perhaps offerings stopped, stories untold, burials hurried or omitted, seasonal observances let go… often they dramatize the imbalance in ways we cannot further ignore. The vampire, the revenant, the restless ghost… these spectral figures (three dimensional or apparitions) function as alerts, telling a community where to look and what to fix. And they may not necessarily be vampires or ghouls. If you consider it, Medusa’s story sits beside these traditions, as her “monstrosity” covers over a violation. By turning the violated into the terrifying, the myth lets a society avoid naming its own culpabilities. Reading these tales as diagnostics shifts the response from fear and banishment to attention and repair.
How NOT to Spiritual Bypass: A Practical Guide to Avoid “Love and Light”
Following my critique of ‘love and light’ spirituality that has become so prevalent in New Age communities, I also wanted to offer some actionable suggestions.
Critiquing “love and light” doesn’t mean rejecting care. It means refusing sentimental shortcuts and committing to the full work: the luminous practices of compassion and clarity and the difficult, necessary labour of shadow work and death work. Shadow work asks us to notice what is hidden, such as rage, grief, structural harm, and to sit with it until it can be transformed. Death work teaches endings, ritual closure, and how to make space for what must be released. Both are essential if compassion is to be accountable and real.
These are behaviours and habits you can adopt personally, in groups, and in ritual spaces to make sure compassion isn’t merely performative.
1. Slow the sentiment; act the responsibility.
Before offering a platitude, ask: what concrete step can I take right now to address this harm or need? Say that first, and follow through. Feeling warm and fuzzy is not a substitute for labour.
Wait, Are We Talking About “Love and Light” Spirituality or White Supremacy?
“Love and light” pairs two shorthand ideas—love as compassion or goodwill toward others, and light as clarity, healing, or guiding energy—and is commonly used as a benediction in spiritual contexts. You’ll hear it in New Age and online spiritual communities, in ritual send-offs, in entire ideological tenets, and as a quick way to offer positive intent. Its true meaning depends on usage and user: for some it’s a sincere invocation, for others a polite, albeit vague phrase.
When the phrase turns from offering into an instruction or lacks concrete care or practice, it can function as an avoidance of reality, insisting on a performance of positivity that erases pain, shadow, imbalance, and systemic injustice. It becomes a tool of spiritual bypassing, often wielded by those with social advantage to shame or silence expressions of anger, grief, or truth: be high-vibe or be silent.
How Can a Clear Witchcraft Definition and a Deeper Witchcraft Meaning Lead to Better Results?
I’d like to offer a different, and more embodied definition of witchcraft:
Witchcraft and spirit work are not just wands, herbs, moonlight, and psychic sensing. They’re not limited to the confines of altars, spell surfaces, mirrors, and cauldrons. Witchcraft and spiritwork can, and I will argue, should, be approached with anything and anywhere.
Witchcraft and spirit work are ways to engage with the Seen and Unseen, where responsibility, respect, consent, and agency are approached with both intent and impact in mind. They’re about observing truths that simply are, and resisting falsehoods that have been forced into so called “truths”.
The History and Practice of Having Sex with A Ghost, Spirit, or a God
Can Spirits Have Sex with You? The idea of sex with spirits, gods, and even sex with ghosts is ancient and widespread. Greek myths speak of Zeus taking mortal lovers in many guises. Daoist alchemy tells of adepts who reported having sex with a ghost in dreams as initiatory encounters. In Tantric texts, yogis unite with dakinis to attain awakening. Christian mystics like Teresa of Ávila describe ecstasies that are unmistakably erotic.
Yet the notion continues to provoke curiosity and unease: what does it mean for a human to have sex with a ghost, a god, or other spirit non-physical entity? Contemporary occultists who report such encounters are not anomalies; they stand within many long lineages of mystical eroticism.
What does Zìrán (自然) mean? & How does it relate to animacy?
Zìrán (自然), literally “self‑so” or “what is so of itself,” is one of Daoism’s core principles. It’s made of two characters—zì (自), “self,” and rán (然), “so” or “thus”, and points to the idea that everything has its own innate way of being.
Zìrán, also translated into English from Mandarin as ‘natural’, describes how things unfold when left to their own accord: rivers carve their courses, plants reach for light, birds migrate without a map. There’s no forced drive or contrivance; each phenomenon simply follows its inner nature.
Where wú‑wéi (無爲) teaches “deliberate action through non‑action”, zìrán shows us what that looks like in practice: behaving as the world behaves, moving with its rhythms instead of against them. It’s magic without applied force; power born of alignment rather than manipulation.
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.
Is Your Magic Extractive?
Signs of Extractive Spirituality
Approaching spirits, deities, planets, or plant beings only when you need something
Casting spells solely to gain without offering thanks, tending, or relational presence
Treating spiritual allies as utilities or energetic tools rather than beings with agency
Summoning deities in times of crisis and forgetting them afterward
Asking for support without asking what you might offer in return
Neglecting to ask for consent from spirits or spaces before entering or engaging
Assuming access to all spirits or entities without relationship or permission
Using animal parts, herbs, or ancestral names without offerings, humility, or context (including having regard for tradition)
Collapsing the Unseen into a service role for your will or outcomes
Failing to acknowledge what spirits, ancestors, or the land might need or carry
How to Protect My Energy (Especially Now)
There are times when protecting your energy means choosing silence over sharing, or stillness over movement, even when everything around you suggests the opposite. Energy protection means being able to register your own nervous system before you respond to someone else’s. This isn’t always easy. Many of us have been trained in attunement as a form of survival, conditioned to read the room, then shape ourselves accordingly. (As a trusted psychic and occultist, offering shamanic readings / psychic readings online, I find it’s especially easy to fall into patterns of over-attuning and have had to work on consistent energetic hygiene).
Protecting your energy from others, spiritually or psychically, asks you to unlearn that as the default. Or at least to recognize when it’s happening, and then to choose in the present moment if that is what you would like to keep doing.
That said, energetic protection is NOT cliqueness, being hardened, or invulnerable, sealing yourself off from the world. I’ve found that it’s more about noticing how easily you can disappear inside someone else’s needs, how quickly your system can contort out of a desire to meet what hasn’t even been asked for explicitly. If you tend to overextend, or mirror back what’s expected before you’ve even checked in with yourself, then it’s likely your energy has already left the room before your body has. This is vitally important to have awareness on, because when auric and physical body are operating from a place of separation or disassociation, there will invariably be an energy leak or an energy leaching. In extreme cases, when aura and 3D body are not in tandem, it can even invite unwell spirits to latch. Here is the thing: protecting your energy is a direct form of protection from spirits that harm.
There’s a certain politeness that’s mistaken for care. A kind of over-giving that looks generous on the surface but runs on depletion underneath. If you’ve been that person, you’re probably exhausted. You’re probably reading this hoping for permission to do less. You have it.
How To Tell A Real Psychic From A Fake
So are mediums for real or fake?
Coming from someone who professionally offers spirit mediumship readings (psychic readings), I realize that my line of work is naturally under more scrutiny, as it should be. That said, there are quality professionals in every sector, and unfortunately, also ones who aren’t. So if you’re in need of deep spiritual and psychic work and support, here are some suggestions on what to look for.
Tips for spotting a legit psychic versus a fake medium
Clarity: Look for someone who, even on their website or marketing materials, communicates clearly and doesn’t over-rely on buzzwords or trend-based spiritual vocabulary that’s vague or requires interpretation on your part. A trustworthy psychic and spiritual educator will use occult terminology with specificity and context, and will also be able to translate concepts into everyday, accessible language. I do my best to share a term and then define it so the querent is clear.
Specificity: If a psychic medium only speaks in general or vague terms with unverifiable information, those are red flags. I offer spiritual guidance that is specific to a person, situation, or social/familial dynamic, and can often provide time frames as well.
Impractical or unrealistic advice: It’s important that the psychic stays on topic and doesn’t distract the querent with unhelpful or intangible advice. They should attune to the heart of the matter, cut through distraction, and provide actionable or otherwise practical guidance.
The History of Friday 13th and Its Symbolism
Friday the 13th, often shrouded in superstition and unease, traces its connection to witchcraft through both ancient tradition and modern understanding. At the heart of this link lies the number 13, long cast as unlucky in Western cultures. Yet, the suspicion surrounding it belies its deeper, older association with the rhythms of the moon. With 13 lunar cycles marking the year, many ancient cultures, including those who practiced the craft, saw the number as a reflection of the moon’s power—mysterious, watery, Yin-based, and deeply sacred. Witches revered 13 as a symbol of fertility and magic, bound to the ebb and flow of the moon, and thus, to the unseen forces of nature.
What Happens to Your Energy Field When You Live Online
Are you wondering, how will AI affect us?
Living online, especially in an AI-saturated environment, doesn’t just affect your focus. It shapes how your energy is held, scattered, or absorbed. The shift is real, even if it’s invisible, and understanding it is the first step in protecting your field and maintaining clarity. I wanted to speak to what I’ve noticed with the advent of LLMs (large language models).
So how will AI affect us negatively? Or at all?
A few observations and thoughts I’ve been having lately are…
Oversaturation of Synthetic Frequency
AI operates at speeds and densities that do not match the organic rhythm of the human energy system. It delivers compressed, data-heavy interactions that can overwhelm the etheric field. Over time, this leads to low-level psychic interference, reduced clarity in intuition, and a sense of being constantly stimulated but rarely aligned.
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!).
How Conjure Oils and Ritual Candles Work in Spell Casting and Mediumship
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.
History of Playing Cards for Divination: Origins of Tarot, Mahjong, and Cartomancy
Playing cards are believed to have originated in 9th-century China during the Tang Dynasty, where they were used both for entertainment and as a form of divination or gambling. Early Chinese cards resembled paper dominoes or money-suited cards and often reflected social structures and economic metaphors.
By the 13th and 14th centuries, playing cards had travelled west via trade routes, reaching the Islamic world and eventually Europe. Mamluk Egypt produced ornate, hand-painted decks, which likely influenced early European designs. When cards arrived in Europe, particularly in Italy and Spain, they evolved into suits representing the social classes: cups (clergy), swords (military), coins (merchants), and batons (peasants).
Reimagining Freedom: A Reflection from the Body
What do you mean by freedom (from a Taoist perspective)? When we hear the word freedom, especially in the West, it often conjures political definitions—rights, autonomy, liberty. And while freedom is political, I believe there’s a deeper, more embodied way to explore it. One that’s rooted not just in theory, but in practice.
Too often, freedom is equated with “doing whatever we want.” But from a Taoist lens, I’d like to gently challenge that notion. Because if freedom means acting on every impulse, how is that different from having no impulse control at all? In many ways, being ruled by urges is the opposite of freedom—it’s being held hostage by them.