I was cleaning through old computer files when I came across these two photos, 10 years apart. The 2015 photo is from my very first Barnes & Noble author event and the first time anyone ever asked me to sign a copy of my book. It was wild. What does one even write when autographing a book. And since I use a pen name, I couldn’t even get my own (new) signature right. The 2025 photo just happens to be a similar snapshot of me signing books, which I thought made for a nice “then and now” side by side. Like, holy cow, I’ve been doing this for 10+ years.

This is going to be a ruminating, reflective sequel to an old post I wrote right after finishing I Ching, The Oracle: “Author’s Thoughts After Three Books.” Reading that before this post will provide background context. For anyone interested in yet another layer of subtext, there’s this old video and companion write-up: “To the New Pagan Author.”

I do confess to not having the best experience with publishing Book #3, and honestly I don’t think anyone is at fault. The last time I had gone through the publishing process was 2015 and 2016 (actually, beginning 2012…it took that long to get the gargantuan book Holistic Tarot out to market). The editing and book design process, role of editors, all of it had somehow changed a lot between 2015 and 2023. So I was going through the process in 2022 with a 2012 mindset and assumptions. Ooh, okay yeah, I guess someone was at fault: Me.

Random funny aside on memory: I can easily remember the publication year for Holistic Tarot and The Tao of Craft. 2015 and 2016 respectively. But the book of most recent memory, I Ching, The Oracle, I always struggle with recall of exact publication year. Was it 2022, 2023, or 2024? Strange. I wonder what that signifies.

After Book #3, because it left me discombobulated, and especially with the world as we know it changing at the rapid pace it’s been evolving as of late, I seriously questioned whether publishing books was the optimal format for sharing what it is I want to share. If I were to undergo the process of publishing a Book #4, what would be the purpose of it?

If the purpose is educational on the niche subjects that are my specialty, well, people these days are learning via short-form video content, not 700-page unwieldy books. Do books even matter for educational purposes the way they once did? I dunno. I suspect theoretically it makes us feel good to believe they still matter, but realistically, to learn the Thing, these days people are heading over to YouTube.

I thought long-form video/multi-media content was the way for me to go, which is what you see over on my YouTube channel—copiously researched, primary or canonical source based educational content specifically for occult practitioners and those with an interest in East Asian mysticism and folk magic. I still have tarot video content I want to create, but my reasoning for devoting more time to Eastern esoterica is the lack of native practitioner-centered perspectives. Whereas in the tarot space, anything I can think of that I’d want to make a video on, easy access to that information and knowledge, eloquently put, is already out there. So, like, what’s my value-add.

And so if the purpose is to provide educational content on niche subjects, then do I just create a series of YouTube videos on the subject instead of writing and publishing a book on it?

Then there’s this whole New World Order AI situation. All three of my past books were done and dusted before AI became a Thing (thank gawd). Now, veteran authors pre-AI have to compete with new authors augmented by AI. And as an aging woman there’s a parallel experience I would compare this to. Here me out… !!!

It feels a bit like being someone who has never gotten any cosmetic “work” done, getting compared to peers who have had lots of “work” done, but nobody’s being transparent about the “work” they’ve gotten done, so you just end up feeling defeatist. You can’t help the frustration when you’re at the gym struggling with those weights trying to ward off the body fat accumulation that aging naturally puts on your belly while everybody else is micro-dosing with GLP-1s, or being horrified by all that sagging you see in your mirror reflection while the majority of people you know are going under knife and needle to get that all tightened up. And not that it’s relevant, but in case you’re curious, I have never gotten any work done, no knife, needle, or even prescription pills, I don’t even get facials, no Korean skincare regimen for me, nada. Hell, most of the stuff I put on my face is homemade. Makeup of choice? Drugstore brands. Though, sigh, it’s starting to show. So it’s not like I even have to declare it.

That said, the au naturale one’s response shouldn’t be to condemn the ones who opt for augmentation. Me adhering to my own self-imposed values and principles that has the consequence of it being a setback doesn’t mean the solution is to tear other people down. But also, because I am only human, how do you help yourself from playing the comparison game, which then results in you feeling defeatist.

Which brings us to brainstorming for Book #4.

Those who have been tracking my journey for years now know that I have had this 1,200+ page astrology encyclopedia-ish manuscript on the back burner since 2016. It’s 1,200+ pages because I managed to write out entries for all the traditional and modern planetary bodies, key personal sensitive points, and Arabic Parts for every house and sign, and the meaning of the main angular aspects. It’s been something I’m rather proud of… until the dawn of AI, and now this book I painstakingly, tediously wrote can be generated by AI in 30 seconds. Granted, hopefully, my human-written version is far better, but is it really? Which is to say this New World Order AI situation makes me feel like I don’t even want to bother publishing that encyclopedic astrology book.

I also have half-baked manuscripts on that back burner for feng shui (that’s been an open work-in-progress since 2012) and one for BaZi (Saju, or Four Pillars of Destiny) where most of the meat and bones of these books are already done, but need to be structured into a coherent book format, could benefit from some serious copyediting, and are missing opening and closing chapters.

But then I wonder…do I want to produce that material in the form of traditionally published books? Or would they make more sense as online course offerings? What would be my purpose for authoring published books on those subjects? What would be my purpose for presenting them as course offerings instead?

And if we’re talking about “dream books” I want to author, one is nonfiction in the same ballpark of my past work, and one is to write that proverbial All-American Novel. Before ending up in law school, what I had wanted to pursue was an MFA in creative writing, to write Asian American literary fiction. A tarot primer being my debut book was never on my lifetime Bingo card.

When I was working on Holistic Tarot, I intentionally embedded details that would relate to an epic historical novel I started to write around that time, a novel that would have tarot elements. Because I thought, how clever would it be once people saw how they cross-referenced each other. I finished a complete first draft of that novel around 2020 and I have a couple of old blog posts documenting that journey, here and here. I think that novel was too ambitious, trying to do way too much and without focus. I lost steam for it, and then pivoted to create and illustrate the full-color SKT III: Revelation. Even with my Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, I embedded details in the art that could potentially be “easter eggs” to that novel, but again, the novel never happened. Sigh.

As for the nonfiction ballpark one, I don’t quite know how to tee it up to explain to you what it is, but basically, I want to write a book-length letter that reads like an elder guiding the younger through learning the Craft. It’s me envisioning a teenager by my side who I train, from zero to proficiency, in the living cultural traditions I was born and raised in. Unlike any of the three previous books I published, this would be one you have to read in page order, because the subsequent section would necessarily build upon the previous section. It’s me trying to replicate, in book form, one-on-one mentorship, so that I might be there next to the reader in spirit, but a fully engaged spirit actively monitoring you to make sure you’re on the track of becoming the best version of yourself. The book itself would have to be magical, consecrated, one generation’s blessing passed on to the next generation.

Now, one thing I quite like about this nonfiction book idea is that I don’t think it can be replicated by AI. Because it needs to feel like a human to human one-on-one apprenticeship, me in spirit right there by your side. So, magically mystically speaking, if you will, how do I, like, I dunno, invoke me in spirit to be there when I’m invoked in spirit, while I’m still fully fleshed and living, to somehow hold residence on some astral realm beyond space-time so I can traverse to any point of space-time needed of me? Here’s a book project where I know for sure what my purpose is, but it’s so daunting of a purpose that I don’t even know where to start in terms of effort to achieve it.

There’s also a whole lot more to the premise than I’m sharing here at this point, and I wonder whether now is even the right time for me to be taking on such an endeavor, or whether this is an undertaking to defer for a little bit further down in time.

And so if this nonfiction ballpark “dream book” isn’t to be Book #4, what is? Or maybe there isn’t a reason to be working on a Book #4 right now?

I do still have the Etteilla deck to finish. 2026 is more than half over and I haven’t done even one single card from that deck this year. Not even one. Serves me right for ending on the Ten of Swords in 2025 though. Should have thought that one through. For someone who claims to be a diviner, I sure do lack foresight.

Not too long ago Serena Saint-Sinclair hosted an AAPI Esotericism Panel where I was one of the panelists, alongside Angela Yuriko Smith, an award-winning Ryukyuan-American writer and poet, David Shi, a North Asian shamanic worker, and Yeong-Tae, a baksu (Korean shaman).

Earlier this year I posted “Are Asian Folk Traditions ‘Pagan’?” I also have an old blog post on my website showcasing Asian voices in the tarot community. At the end of that post I reflect a bit on AAPI activism as I’ve experienced it through the decades. Just some related links in case you’re interested.

Anyway, to dovetail on the AAPI Esotericism Panel, I wanted to add an afterword to remark on this newfound popularity of Asian Americans returning to their ancestral spiritual practices. I see it on TikTok and Threads, and I see it among the local AAPI youth.

From Buddhism and Taoism to folk religions, shamanism, and spirit work, a growing number of huayi 華裔 and Diasporic Asians are reclaiming traditions their parents or even grandparents had abandoned.

Quick Note: While I use the terms “Asian” and “Asian American” and want to be inclusive, I am only able to speak to the East Asians of the Sinosphere, so the references I make are going to be specific to the East Asian experience, and not necessarily reflective of all of Asia.

As an Asian American, when I was a young adult, there was little to no interest from our community to reclaim, return to, or even honor the spiritual and religious practices of our ancestors. Which often left me feeling ostracized even within the Asian American community. I was more “at home” among pagans, occultists, ceremonial magicians, and witches from other parts of the world than I was with my own people, due to the religious/spiritual disconnect.

But in this new generation of young AAPIs, I’m seeing a lot more interest in engaging with and practicing our folk traditions. I see it among Asian American youth, but we also see it taking hold in Asia. I also see it in the increasing presence of AAPI in pagan, witchcraft, New Age, and occult spaces.

To understand this Return, I think we need to start by examining why ancestral traditions were left behind by parents or grandparents in the first place.

In terms of discovering (or re-discovering) ourselves, a lot of us Asian Americans have started examining how Christianity entered our ancestral lands, and specifically its entanglement with Western imperialism, colonization, and White cultural dominance. And I do think that’s where many AAPIs need to start in terms of the deconstruction that will then lead them on the spiritual path that ultimately will feel more “like home” for them. Spiritual identity, for us at least, cannot be separated from history, politics, and power.

Christian missionaries came to Asia, propped up by colonial powers, and built hospitals, universities, and Asians associated them with prestige and upward mobility, whereas local folk religions became more and more stigmatized, associated with the lower class and the uneducated. During war and famine, Christian missionaries here from Europe controlled our people’s access to shelter, food, and water, and would condition giving them on conversion.

Conversion to Christianity also granted Asians proximity to whiteness. Being Christian as an Asian signaled that you were educated, upper class, and more cosmopolitan. Resisting conversion signaled lack of education, lower class, and folksy-- you must be a peasant. However you dice it, the introduction of Christianity in Asia caused social division, even division among family members.

What resulted was Asian Christians being pitted against Asian non-Christians. Ancestor veneration, spirit mediumship, indigenous practices of shamanism, divination, folk healing traditions were all referred to as superstitions.

If you’re Asian, then whether you were Christian or not wasn’t entirely a neutral, purely spiritual decision; it was tethered to unequal geopolitical power dynamics and frameworks that positioned Western culture as superior to indigenous traditions.

Likewise -- and I say this simply because it’s close to home -- Hubby and my in-laws are mainland Chinese -- state-sponsored secularism that is the legacy of Communism and the Cultural Revolution need to be examined as to why many Chinese Americans are so staunchly atheistic. In China’s modern history, both the KMT (Nationalists) and Communists would portray our folk practices as superstition and relics of the past to be eradicated.

It’s only in very recent years that the younger generation of Chinese Americans, and also Taiwanese Americans who are KMT legacies, are beginning to deconstruct that modern inheritance and seeking out what came before.

Which Taoist lineages survived and thrived, and which ones had to retreat underground through the dynasties was almost entirely dependent on political capital. Which lineages decided to bend the knee to foreign imperialists and which did not, ultimately, brought privileges still enjoyed by their legacies to this day... and consequences legacies are still paying for today. So, for example, if you’re Asian and you know you’re from generational lineaged Taoism, whether there’s a whole institutionalized construct that you can turn to for resources or it’s totally fragmented and your parents don’t know anything beyond “your great grandpa was a Taoist priest and exorcist but now all of us are Catholic” tells you a lot about how politics affected your clan.

As AAPI, our religious identity is tied to geopolitics. While others might have the luxury of not having to deconstruct identity politics to find their spiritual path, I think part of the personal karma of being born into the hyphenated experience is that you have to. Identity politics is part of how we find our spiritual path. And for sure, each one of us will come away from that deconstruction with possibly very different even contradictory perspectives, and that’s okay. But it’s still inner work we each need to do for ourselves.

And what’s different about this new generation compared to my generation, is that the kids are doing The Work. They’re doing it. They’re questioning these influences that held down their parents, or their grandparents, and getting out from under the thumbs of those 19th and 20th century forces.

Now seeing young AAPIs yearning to return to their ancestral roots, to reclaim what had been long stigmatized, is one of the most incredible things I’ve gotten to witness.

Btw, yes, saying something like “Asian ancestral traditions” rather than getting region-specific is reductive. “Asian ancestral traditions” is by no means a monolith. Heck, even references to “Chinese” can get sociopolitically triggering. Finding the right words and descriptors is a challenge. Lumping all West Asian vs. East Asian, North Asian vs. South Asian cf. Southeast Asian under a generic term of “Asian” is -- to use an understatement -- imprecise, and in a well-intentioned effort to be inclusive, we end up erasing. Not to mention the point that the term “Asian” itself is a product of a European framework of geography.

One of the enduring problems I still see is infighting and divisiveness within community, and funny enough, I wonder if a large part of this is because an “Asian” native framework for categorizing ourselves would get really granular, by clan or ethnic groups, by the language we speak, or at best, by province. Heck, in Taiwan, in a tiny province called Miaoli, how the Hakka on one side of a mountain practiced spirit mediumship and ancestral veneration was diametrically different from how the Hakka on the other side of the mountain practiced it!

A global 21st century reality, however, is that we need to seek out our commonalities rather than squabble over our differences, toward a mission of unity, but in a manner that sincerely honors the differences and maintains balanced representation. And step one is, instead of saying, “You do it differently from me, therefore you are practicing our tradition wrong,” say, “That’s beautiful. It’s different from how I learned it, but I honor and respect your ways.” Because maybe you’re Hakka from one side of the mountain talking to a Hakka from that other side of the mountain, and no one is doing it “wrong” per se; it’s just the evolution of different perspectives, but all under the uniting banner of the Hakka. Extrapolate that out to the global Asian diaspora, and at some point, we need to set aside differences — not to forget history — but to say, instead of continuing the conflicts of our parents or grandparents, we need to be more collaborative to tackle our shared 21st century problems.

I also think panel discussions like the one Serena hosted is a start to fostering the much-needed unity.

Chow and his family own a gas station convenience store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. A boy came in to the store and was alleged to have stolen bottled water. There’s a whole lot of he-said she-said over what else happened, but the end result is the boy was shot in the back while he was running away from the store and a semiautomatic pistol was found on Carmack-Belton’s person during the incident.

The prosecution asserted that (1) the boy was wrongly accused of stealing, (2) the Chows, father and son, chased down Carmack-Belton while he was already leaving the altercation, (3) even though there was a pistol, the pistol was never pointed at anyone, wielded, or shown, and had fallen to the ground during the chase. The defendant shot the boy in the back after chasing him over 130 yards, which is roughly the length of 1.3 football fields, or the length of a 30-foot skyscraper. Thus, the evidence would suggest that the shooting was motivated by rage and intent.

Chow’s defense was that Carmack-Belton pointed the gun at his son, Andy Chow, and in a split-second judgment, the defendant Chow fired his own gun and shot Carmack-Belton.

The trial was, in my most professional and eloquent opinion, a shitshow.

It’s taken me a while to get to this writing because the conversations, as it should be, are happening in-person, in-community, so by the time we get to something like a written reflection, this becomes a post-mortem. I’m located in California, where the nature of this incident hits close to home. (The 1992 fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl Latasha Harlins by a Korean convenience store owner, who alleged that the girl stole a bottle of juice. The store owner was found guilty of manslaughter, but the judge gave her a slap on the wrist, i.e., community service, a nominal fine, and no prison time. Then came the L.A. Riots and a really dark time in L.A. with Black and Asian communities resorting to violence.)

There is a lot within the Asian community, especially East Asian, that’s toxic and problematic. It’s one thing when the family is huddled together for an intervention and we’re working out the issues internally. It’s another when it’s put on blast for the world to see and comment on. But here we are, so let's talk about it. This case is forcing both the Asian and Black communities to confront long-standing racialized tensions, and unfortunately, what’s not being addressed as loudly as it should, which third party stoked that fire and has for centuries fanned the flames of that tension.

The Asians defending Chow: On one hand, I get that we should be ride or die for our community. It feels wrong to openly speak ill of one of our own. But what do you do when our own was morally wrong? This isn’t “we have a difference of opinion” or “I maybe wouldn’t have done that.” It’s “oh my god you shot a kid in the back and now a child is dead.” And it happened because in that split-second moment of decision, racism-driven impulses took over. In a split second, racial assumptions and fears that haunt Asian-Black relations drove the decision-making.

Also, as an AAPI, it often feels like we’ve got these MAGA Asians who make a ruckus on the internet, pick a fight they can’t win, and then average, level-headed Asians stumble onto the scene and now everyone’s mad at us and we have to defend a fight we didn’t start, but also, I get why we’re responsible. It’s just a tough pill to be the target of vitriol for holding views you don’t hold, and having to pay for a transgression you didn’t commit. But as a fellow Asian, throwing that culpable Asian under the bus without my support, empathy, and loyalty doesn’t feel right either. It’s a pickle any way you dice it.

Even as an advocate of our own community, I think the approach to take here is: This should not have happened. One of our own has done something indefensible and we need to figure out where we go from here so we can heal Black and Asian community relations.

The question that keeps surfacing in community conversations is: If the same exact events unfolded, but the 14-year-old boy was white, or even Asian, would the outcome have been the same? How would that split-second decision have looked if Carmack-Belton wasn’t Black?

Also, the rumor mill within the Asian community has been on overdrive. There have been these utterly unverified whispers that actually it was the son, not the father, who shot Carmack-Belton. The whispered conspiratorial-esque notions ring true for a lot of Asians, though, because it checks out culturally. Heck, I personally know of a case where a friend, a fellow Asian American, snuck out of the house, stole his parents’ car, was drinking underage, hit another car, and injured some passengers while not even having a driver’s license. It was near home, so his father was able to rush to the scene while it was still unfolding, wearing the same-colored clothes, told the son to leave, and then pretended it was him, that he was the driver in the collision. They gaslit the heck out of the other car’s passengers who kept railing on and on during court, no, no, no, it wasn’t an old guy, it was a young guy. And the Asians were just like, oh, what, all Asians look alike to you?

Horrible story, yes. The point, though, is just to say that it’s not outside the realm for Asian parents to take the fall for their kids. All I’m saying is, in some alternate parallel universe of fabricated realities, if Andy Chow the son was the one who chased after Carmack-Belton and then brutally shot his peer, and then his dad ran toward the scene realizing what had just happened, it is well within cultural norms that the father would tell the son what their story would be, and the father would take the fall.

To be clear, there has been zero evidence supporting the crazy rumor. I’m mentioning it because it is notable how fast that rumor spread across the Asian community. I think it’s worth unpacking these cultural norms around parental sacrifice and familial loyalty.

Now, as for the trial itself. It was a miscarriage of South Carolina’s justice system. I’m not a criminal attorney, but the prosecution banking the whole case on just the charge of murder (where proving “with malice aforethought” beyond a reasonable doubt is required) is wild.

Not saying it wasn’t murder. I’m saying strategically as a counselor of the law, taking manslaughter off the table is... a choice. And one cannot help but at minimum ask the question, are there racial undertones to that choice? It feels so intentional, or at the very least, so lacking in ordinary diligence.

The most disappointing public reaction I saw, personally, was witnessing the dismissal of defense counsel Sean Kent as a “token.” Maybe it’s because I’ve had similar experiences, but I was so insulted on his behalf. Did we not all watch the same video of Kent’s closing argument? He is one of the best litigators I have ever observed at work. His words were so powerful, his demeanor so magnificent he cast a spell over that jury. Are you kidding me?

We can certainly talk about Kent’s decision to represent such an unpopular client. Though he is by trade a brilliant criminal defense attorney, and so you’d also have to have the larger more philosophical conversation on why brilliant criminal defense attorneys routinely represent, let’s put it gently, “unpopular clients.” And do so in ways that causes the rest of us to question the value of integrity in this world.

No, wait, I take that back, actually the most disappointing thing to witness would be the comments sections in general. People emboldened by anonymity on the internet have gotten so ugly and vicious, apparently doing their part to make things worse. I guess the reason the online vitriol didn’t initially strike me as the worst of all is because it didn’t surprise me. On the other hand, there’s also a whole lot of people willing to spew ugliness showing their face, with their full chest, which I suppose on some level I can appreciate, but also, yikes.

This tragic case, and Chow’s split-second decision, has deepened a wound that has existed since Asians immigrated to the United States. White America benefits from the conflict between ethnic enclaves, especially between Blacks and Asians. Throughout the 50s, 60s, and well into the 80s, Black entrepreneurs were systematically excluded from commercial loans, mortgages, and financing, and those very opportunities to open businesses in Black neighborhoods that white entrepreneurs did not want to enter were given to immigrant Asian entrepreneurs via discriminatory lending practices. When Asians tried to buy property or open businesses in white neighborhoods, they were denied, and therefore the only avenue for livelihood they were given was to open their businesses in Chinatown or in Black neighborhoods. Similarly, to spite the repeal of Jim Crow laws, redlining, white flight, and taking money and investments out of Black neighborhoods were the strategies employed to maintain the status quo for whites. And then what better way to foster interracial resentment than giving those financial opportunities to the Asians, with the added benefit of keeping these Asians out of white neighborhoods. The very cringe model minority myth then helped spread the messaging, “What’s your excuse?”

The U.S. system has been structurally designed in such a way that it pits Asians and Blacks against each other. And I’m not saying racial tensions weren’t already there, but it sure doesn’t help when a sneaky meddling third party is behind the scenes fanning the flames of that fire.

None of that shifts the blame from us Asians, who need to take responsibility for anti-Blackness. The historical and sociopolitical context is to help us understand how these tensions got exacerbated even further, and maybe with that education and awareness, we can more actively work to neutralize it. The Asian yearning for proximity to whiteness breeds the anti-Blackness, and that's a front we within community need to combat.

Then there’s the social media movement pushing for an Asian businesses boycott. If you’re boycotting East Asian owned businesses, that actually makes some sense. I am not condoning it; I am just saying I can empathize with that logic. But boycotting the Viet nail tech or the Pinoy restaurant down the street for what Chow, a Chinese American, did is its own level of complexity, given the ethnic tensions between the East Asian communities and the Southeast Asian communities.

Ooh, another random intrusive thought. A part of me was scratching my head over the superstar defense lineup. That looked like a very, very expensive legal defense team. Chow is a convenience store owner. Where the heck did all that money for attorneys’ fees come from? There was like, what, four or five high-profile, prominent, senior seasoned defense attorneys, and not from the same firm, but from multiple different law firms all working together to defend Chow. You’re looking at billables of $700 to $1,000 per hour per attorney, a murder trial averaging 1,500 to 2,000 hours… You do the math. For a mom and pop store owner that, what, on statistical average nets between $40K and under $100K per year, how the heck…? Guess one of the incidental key takeaways in this mess is, who you can get for your attorney(s) to go to war for you matters, and it matters a lot, dare I say a little too much for Lady Justice’s sake.

I was an undergrad and then law school student, and political activist, in the wake of the L.A. Riots and I remember the community leaders that came together and tried to build bridges. Black and Asian coalitions collaborated to host dialogues and tried to foster education of Anti-Blackness within Asian communities, and Anti-Asian racism. It looks like this generation faces its own cycle and are now reckoning with how they want to write this chapter of community relations and how they want to navigate healing.

If you know me, then I don’t see you being surprised that I’d want to talk about this incident. As Asian Americans, we have a moral obligation to do our part to rectify wrongs within our community, and to rectify wrongs our community has caused in harming other communities. For everybody else who might be perplexed at what such an incident has to do with the Benebell Wen platform, well, it’s because ultimately, the mission to facilitate awakening and spiritual transcendence is the same healing work we have to do around racial wounds and how to dismantle socially-taught biases and fear.

Do you need a lineaged master or teacher to practice Taoist or Buddhist occultism? Is the whole “you must have a master teach you The Way or else danger, danger” true or a myth? Can reading books replace live teachings and direct transmissions from a master?

Here’s where we’re going to start:

I’m Here for the 99%, Not the 1%

Hubby was telling me how it’s necessary to have a 1:1 personal trainer or fitness coach with you at the gym. It’s necessary for safety reasons, to make sure you’re handling the gym equipment safely and to ensure proper form. You need a seasoned expert to be designing your workout routine, to make sure it’s covering everything it needs to cover, to make sure it’s comprehensive enough, but customized to your very specific individual needs, in short, you can’t just pick up arbitrary gym equipment or hop on a treadmill and hope for the best. You can’t do it on your own based on general knowledge, because you won’t know how to be efficient with your routine. We are never as self-aware as we think, and unchecked errors can solidify into permanently bad workout habits. You won’t improve at an optimal rate, what you’re working out might be imbalanced, and also, is your dietary intake and your workout routine reconciled. And that’s the best case scenario. Worst case scenario is you physically injure yourself.

He’s not wrong. Except the ability to have a 1:1 personal trainer and fitness coach is a privilege. It’s not something accessible to the majority.

Whether it’s the privilege of being a mega corporation vs. a small family-owned or sole proprietor business, or it’s the ultra-wealthy 1% vs. the middle class American, the hallmark of privilege is having on retainer subject matter experts for every stripe. You hire specialists to provide personalized guidance and counsel to you on everything you do. You have an interior decorator, home art curator, you have a CPA, a CFA long-term investments advisor, a realtor, an attorney, a concierge physician on call who shows up at your penthouse within 30 minutes of your text, and yes, a 1:1 fitness instructor, a dietitian, and if you please, a spiritual advisor, also at your beck and call.

Meanwhile the masses, the not-1%-elite, either end up with a shit version of one of those professionals because they can't afford the best of the best, or they're resigned to doing it on their own. We're not saying "you never need a CPA." We're saying it's probably a bit tone deaf to assert "everyone must get a CPA or else."

And so if your karma is such that time, place, and resources align for you to be blessed with that 1:1 personal tutelage from a bona fide and sincere lineaged spiritual master who is genuinely doing this for your good, not theirs, then congrats, you are in that rarefied 1%. Of course that is going to be the path for you to take. Bless you, off you go! What are you still doing here?

In no way would I ever say don’t seek out a spiritual teacher. In fact, I am totally co-signing those prominent voices asserting that as the ideal approach, assuming you’ve found the right spiritual teacher for you and one who is selfless, self-sacrificing, and sincere.

What I share isn’t for that rarefied 1% with karmic privilege. I’m here for the other 99%, because I believe with a little boost, they, too, can get to where they want to go.

I’ll even take it one ambitious step further and say my mission isn’t just to uplift the 99%, but to give that 99% an edge over the 1%. Access is not limited to the privileged, at least that’s the premise of my mission and purpose for being here.

So I am not here to say you don’t need a teacher to facilitate your access to Buddhist and Taoist esoterica.

I am here to say, if you don’t have access to a teacher but the calling is still there, I’ve got you, and I’ll show you how to find your way on your own. I’ll share with you the tools and resources you need to craft your own key and gain access on your own terms. My mission is to dismantle these unspoken class divides in spirituality (karmic class divides, though yes, oftentimes it’s socioeconomic, too).

My mission is to prove to you, so that you can prove to yourself that you don't need to wait for a lineaged master to transmit empowerment to you, when you can go straight to the divine source to receive it. Let not the flawed human, but divine source itself, decide if you are worthy.

Of Course There Are Gatekeepers, But Do We Need the Middleman?

This is not a commentary on spiritual gatekeeping. If anyone ever claims that I, Benebell, am against gatekeepers or assert that there are no gatekeepers, they are grossly misrepresenting my perspective. Of course there are gatekeepers. If a path isn’t meant for you, nothing about it will be open to you. The Fu talisman will just be ink on paper, lacking that supernatural charge. Recitation of that mantra will just be a fun, feel-good affirmation, and that statue of deity just some Eastern-inspired home decor.

All Mysteries have Gatekeepers. My question to you is, do you really need a middleman?

I want to be super-clear here, because there's been rampant misrepresentation by bad faith critics of what I'm trying to say: I am not criticizing, discouraging, or disparaging the concept of teacher-student relationships, and in fact, it's the opposite. I consider that relationship so sacred that it shouldn't even be joked about. What I do do is not romantize the actual teacher-student commercialized relationships we see today in the 21st century, especially as transacted online.

I've always been clear that I'm not a teacher, I'm not your teacher, I'm not teaching. I'm a researcher and a practitioner who sources historical, canonical material, and also who put my boots on the ground going to these places in the world to learn the practices, to practice myself, and then I do my best to share that materials to those who might not otherwise have access. And for the most part, I share it for free. Or I put it in a book that somebody else has published, and literally I'm getting pennies on the dollar for it.

And let’s say Eastern mysticism isn’t the right path for you but you try it out anyway, follow some ritual in a grimoire and try to invoke Vairocana. Have you invited danger and harm into your life?

No, the gods and spirits of Taoist and Buddhist traditions aren’t going to harm you for trying, not unless you’ve done something horrifically, intentionally, and maliciously disrespectful, in which case, shrug, I dunno, maybe you deserve it.

Could you unwittingly attract unwanted attachments or cause depletion of your soul/spirit in ways that present a health risk to yourself? Well, yes. Which is why we take preventive measures and precautions. Which is why we stay pure and true of heart.

“It’s Dangerous Without the Guidance of a Spiritual Master.”

You may have heard that engaging in Taoist ritual and mystical practices without the guidance of a master can risk mania, hallucinations, losing your grip on reality, and straying from the path of light and stumbling onto more self-destructive paths.

That’s true. I don’t disagree. But make no mistake, that still happens to those following a master teacher in a lineaged tradition.

If you’re being discerning, you’ll see that the real issue is untreated mental health crises. Paranoia, dissociation, delusions of grandeur, instability, becoming distanced from ordinary life, and cult indoctrination happen far more frequently to those in initiated closed practices than those traditions would like to admit.

Not to mention, I would be irresponsible and remiss to not point out that among the more visible so-called lineages, predatory practices are rampant. You have to be hyper-discerning of self-appointed gurus who eat the vulnerable. Sure, there are dangers associated with solitary spiritual cultivation practices, but there are equivalent dangers associated with joining something that may or may not be a cult.

In my view, the risks of indelible personal harm to you that you’re exposed to if you meet the wrong teacher (or more accurately, a con-artist posing as a spiritual teacher) or get involved with the wrong religious group, that harm far far outweighs any measure of harm you risk by going at it alone while staying grounded by personal practices of virtue and continuous preventive monitoring of your mental health and wellness. Which is why, in a cost-benefit analysis, it just makes practical, rational sense to say you are so much safer going at it alone than you are trying to find a spiritual teacher and obsessing over being lineaged. (Heck, not to mention, richer, too. Save your money!)

Now, for those going at esoteric Buddhist or Taoist occult paths as a solitary practitioner without a master’s personalized guidance, my one big caveat for safety is this: your conscience must be clear. If you undertake these sorts of practices with unclean hands, that’s when you’re swinging the high-bars without a safety net.

Let’s also deconstruct what we really mean when we say you need a spiritual teacher to guide you or else it’s “dangerous.” In the same way that strenuous physical exercise requires adequate replenishment through dietary protein, intense ritual work is fueled by (what we might reductively call) energy. If you do anything to deplete your body’s energy reserves and don’t do anything to replenish them, it’s going to cause serious deterioration to your health. So if your ritual work is effective, where are you sourcing those out-of-the-ordinary levels of energy from? And are you then being intentional about replenishing those levels of energy?

How to Stay Safe When You’re a Solitary

You might find this old 2019 article, “Cultivate Qi and How to Strengthen Your Life Force: Essential Guide to All Metaphysicians“ helpful. You may or may not need a teacher or be sheltered by a closed lineaged practice, but you definitely need some form of energy cultivation practice (qi gong), meditation, understand food as both medicine and magic, understanding how karma works, and warding practices. For me, personally, I would make the case that ancestor veneration is essential, but I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s right for others. I don’t know your family situation.

A good teacher, like a good fitness coach, is intelligently monitoring your health holistically. That’s the “safety” part you often hear the fear-mongering practitioners talking about. And so these practices are “dangerous” without a teacher if you aren’t properly monitoring your energy intake vs. your energy consumption, and also, where you are pulling energy from.

So yeah. Unless you’re highly intelligent, extremely self-aware, and demonstrate elite levels of discipline, this stuff’s gonna be hard without a proper teacher.

It’s just that I’m the eternal optimist and have all the faith in the world in your abilities. I operate from the starting assumption that you’re highly intelligent, extremely self-aware, and can demonstrate elite levels of discipline. And if you’re not all of that already, then I have faith that you know that about yourself and are thus actively working on it.

In your self-study path, start with core principles. You need to understand theory. I’ve compiled a playlist of my video lectures on Taoist and/or Buddhist mysticism, intended to be a good place for the beginner. When you feel ready, try out some of the canon-sourced rituals I share both from that video playlist and scattered across this website (apologies in advance for content not being as well cataloged as it should be).

Speaking from within the religious framework, nothing will ensure your safety quite like the backing of a patron deity, which you attain through cultivating an attunement to that divinity. Perhaps that is the Queen Mother of the West, Lady of the Nine Heavens, the Jade Emperor, one of the immortals you feel a particular inexplicable affinity with, Yamantaka, or Kuan Yin.

Practices like taichi, forms of qigong, meditation, and applying Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) principles to what you eat help you to strengthen your inner reservoirs of energy, which is what you draw from when you engage in occult and mystical ritual practices.

Astrology or Ba Zi (Four Pillars of destiny) are methods to help you better know and understand yourself, to achieve the astute level of self-awareness that’s required. Honing your abilities in divination also help you to tap in, engage with, and be able to rely on your intuition.

I’d also strongly recommend learning feng shui basics to make sure your space is adequately fortified and to help you ensure that there aren’t harmful influences in your personal space that are slowly draining your life force in a way that you aren’t even aware of.

Document your work and progress like you’re a lab scientist and you are the experiment. Often, writing things out externalizes it, and then in a few days, when you re-read how you’ve perceived an experience, you can be more scrutinizing, critical, and can give yourself high-quality feedback.

While the term “shadow work” might get so overused these days that it seems to have lost its teeth, in the framework of Taoism and Buddhism, fearlessly and compassionately confronting your inner demons is also a requisite.

Healing soul fractures, ensuring a deep well of positive karma to draw from, or in mundane terms, prioritizing your mental health, is of utmost importance. Being a benevolent person and diligently striving for excellence in all that you do are absolutely part of mental health and the spiritual work required, because you can’t fool yourself, and if you aren’t benevolent and diligent, it will cause rot at the subconscious level, and rise up as guilt, fear, paranoia, and insecurities. It’s not a spiritual teacher that’s required; it’s everything I’m talking about in this paragraph that’s required, no matter what path you choose.

“You Cannot Learn the Craft From Books”

When practitioners say dismissively, “You can’t learn from books,” they’re not wrong. You can’t learn only from passively reading books. But if you apply what you’re learning into actual practice, and your heart is pure and true, you will excel.

Plus, at least when we’re talking about Buddhism and Taoism, the lore around masters, Taoist alchemists, priests, priestesses, immortals, and legendary mystical figures has always historically and culturally been about finding some book, studying some text, applying what you’ve learned, and leveling up as a result. So it’s especially perplexing to me when Buddhist and Taoist practitioners claim that you “can’t learn the Craft from books.” I mean. For many, it’s certainly a fantastic place to start.

One thing I’ve noticed about the specific practitioners who dismiss books: they tend to be the ones intimidated by difficult texts. They don’t like reading. They don’t have the focus for it. And that’s okay. Not everybody is built for reading. For them, maybe books aren’t the way. But for us nerds who are also occult practitioners, it certainly is.

Just be careful not to get into that complacent state of assuming because you’ve read all the books, now you know how to do the thing. The only way to know how to do the thing, is to do the thing.

Level-Setting the Realities

All this being said, you are at a disadvantage without a teacher. To arrogantly believe otherwise would be foolish. Like working out at the gym, if you’re doing something wrong, who’s going to be there to tell you you’re doing it wrong? Who’s going to keep you in check? Which is to say you’ve got to be alert and self-aware enough to audit yourself and you’re the one who has to keep yourself in check.

Without a teacher, what trusted authority figure is going to be there to hype you up? Who is going to give you the positive feedback you need to build confidence in yourself? Who’s going to be there to let you know you’re ready? Which is to say one of your hurdles will be overcoming imposter syndrome.

And so if you don’t have a teacher, then what you need is discipline. You need an extraordinary level of discipline. You also need to be your own harshest critic and you need to know how to use criticism to motivate you, and not let criticism defeat you. You need to possess the fortitude and sense of self to build confidence on your own. You can’t be the type who depends on external validation. But also, you can’t be the type who misses the important signs and omens, who is so self-absorbed that you can’t see the mistakes you’re making. You need to build up a keen sense of intuition, and the first person you use that intuitive knowledge on is yourself.

So, another example. Do you need a shi fu to teach and train you in martial arts? Yeah most likely that’s the optimal route to go.

If you don’t have access to a master teacher and you diligently train on your own in the back woods of your village, oh and also you stumbled upon some phenomenal illustrated books on the topic and are using that to guide your daily, dedicated self-training, can you excel at martial arts? Not as easy. Your probability of success and the learning of proper forms goes way down. But it’s not a definite no. It can be done. It has been done. But it’s the exception, not the rule.

Initiating or Ordination into Closed Traditions; Receiving Transmissions

In the spaces of Eastern esoteric or mystery traditions, you’ll need to sort out for yourself what makes sense for you. Do not let other people’s judgments, biases, or ulterior motives influence your decision for what’s best for yourself.

Whatever you choose, it must be after you’ve fully interrogated yourself hard on why you want to be lineaged, receive transmission, or rely on a third-party with presumed authority to give you whatever it is you’re looking for. What is your objective? Is it because you’re insecure about your authenticity? Do you need someone of some important to validate that you’re doing it right? Initiation isn’t going to heal your inner wound around authenticity and legitimacy.

I grew up around family who were steeped in closed lineaged traditions and my personal takeaway was I would be better off untethered and free. Why that is, isn’t my story to tell, not fully, because it impinges on other people’s stories. Maybe an imperfect analogy would be like growing up as a bystander direct-witnessing alcoholism and that having such an indelible impact on you that you vow never to touch even one drop of alcohol ever.

Per my understanding, initiation into a closed tradition has certain legitimate purposes: A working group of practitioners cultivating similar or complementary powers intended to harmonize with one another as a collective for the purpose of attaining a certain stated mission. And what that mission is, is part of the secrecy.

I also think it’s about continuity of a certain legacy, and that’s super valid. It’s like making sure a certain family name gets carried forward, but also there’s, shall we say, “brand protection” around what that family name stands for. Keeping the tradition closed is vital for achieving that objective and preserving what that legacy stands for.

Thirdly, it’s about lifelong dedication to public (or community) service, by sending in to your community a very, very specific imprint of energy, which can only be honed and passed on via lineaged transmission. You’re not supposed to be doing what you want to do; you’re supposed to be nothing more than an order-abiding vessel.

See, if you are being called to a Path to become one dedicated to and ordained into spiritual servitude, then that’s a different story. That’s a karmic inheritance, and then you need to decide whether to claim it, and yes, to claim it, initiation then becomes part of your destiny. But make no mistake: it’s a servitude. You’re agreeing to be a servant, though maybe, like, a favored servant who will be granted certain powers, abilities, and access, but a servant nonetheless.

So those are the three purposes for initiation into a closed tradition. Healing inner wounds and insecurities around your sense of authenticity is not one of them.

If you are wounded and enter a closed tradition (which also means it is not transparent and auditable, where there is public oversight and healthy scrutiny), you are more susceptible to indoctrination, corruption, losing personal autonomy, and straying farther from liberation. Unless you are able to find a selfless, honorable teacher who isn’t doing it for the money who walks their own talk where their life purpose is your success, I just think in a personal risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, you’re better off solitary.

For me personally, my north star is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the Divine and, for me, the karmic attachments and tethers of closed lineages aren’t going to help facilitate that specific aspiration.

On the other hand, if it’s community and social belonging you’re after, then that makes some sense. Though also, why not just join a book club. A book club may or may not be less toxic.

Or perhaps it’s the equivalent of a spiritual resume you’re looking to curate, so you can present yourself with credibility because you plan on making spirituality your whole personality, brand, and professional platform. And this is why we end up with the commodification of spirituality that opens the doors to predatory practices that prey on people’s religious faiths... and mental imbalances.

My main point here is you need to have interrogated yourself hard on why you want to be initiated or receive transmission from a particular master. And maintain crisp clarity around what exactly it is and is not. I don’t personally see it as “spiritual” or in pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the Divine; to me, it’s more of a social, community thing.

Funny, people often associate acceptance into a closed tradition as a door opening for them, whereas I see it as perhaps one door opening, but a whole lot of other doors now closed to you.

Most of the elder folk lineaged into long-established traditions view it the same way too-- they acknowledge it’s about one door opening but many doors closing off permanently to you, and that it is a burdensome commitment. You are irrevocably choosing one predetermined path and while it blesses you with a unique set of opportunities and gifts, it now makes you ineligible for other sets of opportunities and gifts. And if you don’t see it that way? It means you don’t fully understand the commitment it takes, from the traditional perspective of these lineages.

All of that being said, within the framework of our cultural beliefs, you don’t choose these types of Paths; these Paths choose you. And that may or may not be fundamentally different from Western constructs. At least as I’ve understood it, a Western belief might be that you can choose to be a witch, choose to study and learn the craft. Strictly relaying the Eastern belief system, we would say either you are chosen by the gods to walk this particular path of spirit practice or it’s your karma that has brought you here. We decentralize will and intent, and instead, center fate and destiny.

That belief is also why I don’t make judgment calls on who can or cannot walk these spirit paths.

My Mission

Where I aspire to be of public service is to be here for those exceptional few from the 99% - and not the 1% - who don’t have access to a teacher, who seek to reconnect with their ancestral heritage, who are willing to do The Work on their own, and who are pure and true of heart.

I’m not here for the ones who need lineage to access Taoist and Buddhist mysticism. If that’s what you believe you need to ascend, then I’m not here for you, so I’m not quite sure why I’m ruffling your feathers. ;-)

I am here for the ones who protect and defend their sense of personal liberation, in every sense of the word. That's spiritual liberation, existential liberation, liberation from oppressive social structures and coercive relationships or cultural expectations, and most importantly, psychological liberation-- affirming for yourself that your attainment is not dependent on anyone else's hand.

I’m not here for those who want to subscribe to orthodox traditions. I’m here for those who the establishment deem heretical, but who are divinely blessed and thus have been granted protection from the gods.

I’m not arguing against orthodox tradition. In fact, I’m a huge proponent of preserving our orthodox traditions because that’s my cultural heritage. Traditional lineages are our most reliable keepers of inherited knowledge and hard-won wisdom. Nothing in what I say should ever be interpreted as dismissing that value.

What I am doing is showing that there is a path for those who, for reasons of geography, economics, family history, culture, or personal circumstance do not otherwise have access to those traditional structures but still feel that sincere spiritual calling.

I’m not here telling anyone that they don’t need a teacher. If you need one, you need one. If you want one, go get one. If you desire to be part of an establishment because that’s what you need in order to feel worthy, books like The Tao of Craft and I Ching, The Oracle are probably not for you. And frankly, what are you even doing here? Don’t you have your conservative and orthodox doctrines to be upholding?

I am here for those who are not so privileged, who keep coming upon a wall, not because these practices I write and lecture about are closed to them, but because they don’t have the karmic privilege of learning how to build a key, or getting gifted a key.

I’m here to hype them up, to say fuck privilege. There is a Path that can be open to you, and here’s how to build the key. I am not here as your teacher. I am a map maker. You are on your own to use or not use these maps. I’m not here handing out keys. I’m handing out design plans encoded such that for those who have the will, can; and for those who are divinely ordained, will.

There was a fun witchy banner I scrolled upon with this happy, inspiring message of “Pagans and Witches Unite!” It then featured Stregheria, Feri, Cultus Sabbati, Luciferian, Haitian Vodou, Santeria (Lukumi), Palo Mayombe, Wicca, and then a catch-all “Indigenous Shamanic Paths.”

No special call-out to Asians?

And by “Asian” I really do mean continental, islander, north, south, east, west, there was NO representation there at all. For the largest most populated continent in the world, making up more than half the global population of magical traditions and practices, people just decided to tuck all of that under “Other”?

It seems like Asian magical traditions are always getting left out.

Though quick shout-out to Cory Hutcheson and Mat Auryn, who both included Taoist traditions, Cory in North American Folk Magic and Mat in Mastering Magick.

As an Asian American, I’ve spent decades trying to find ways to include or have included diasporic Asian folk magic and mystical traditions in Western pagan, occult, witchcraft, and magical spaces.

And it’s because I keep hoping one day I’ll scroll upon a fun witchy banner that finally remembers to include Asia. Literally any part of Asia getting included would be an exciting win.

In recent years there’s been many emerging voices in the AAPI magical space. Coven of the East: Reimagining Asian Women’s Magical Histories, edited by Angela Yuriko Smith and Pauline Chow is an incredible anthology of 22 writers exploring Asian magical traditions, folklore, ancestral wisdom, and mysticism. Such an anthology is pioneering and significant, yet didn’t seem to receive much visibility in the broader pagan and witchcraft community that comparable works often do. And in a somewhat tangent genre was Unquiet Spirits, an Asian anthology of narrative essays on personal experiences with the magical and mystical. (Btw, I contributed nonfiction essays to both, and in Unquiet Spirits, you’ll find a true ghost/demon family history story from me.)

We’ve also had fresh, new perspectives on magical practice at the intersection of our hyphenated experience, from Chaweon Koo’s Spell Bound: A New Witch’s Guide to Crafting the Future to Pamela Chen and Samantha Blossom’s The Mandarin Tree: Manifest Joy, Luck, and Magic with Two Asian American Mystics, alongside more focused spiritual expositions, like David Shi’s Spirit Voices: The Mysteries and Magic of North Asian Shamanism. Zachary Lui, a practitioner of Buddhist ritual magic and shamanism, has also been putting forth lots of really cool work for North American pagan and witchcraft communities.

Mudang Jenn, who I’m really finding myself liking a lot, has a strong social media presence and is well recognized within the Asian American arts community. Shaman Seo (Seo Choi) helped bring to life an incredibly important and historic memoir, Kim Keum-Hwa’s I Have Come on a Lonely Path: Memoir of a Shaman.

… Though I guess perhaps Korean and North Asian shamanism were included in that inspirational banner under “Indigenous Shamanic Paths.” …

I’ve also come across some rising young stars over on WitchTok, like Orion @thatasianwitch, an Asian folk practitioner and who talks a lot about Asian folk magic, and Emma Peng @emmapeng0619, who has a broader scope of content, but posts a lot of great stuff on Chinese witchcraft.

On the other hand, sometimes Asian holistic health and wellness practices with this tangent dotted line to folk magic and Taoist or Buddhist mysticism (think: Traditional Chinese Medicine, feng shui, tai chi or qigong, BaZi and Chinese astrology, Taoist shamanism, Taoist alchemy, esoteric and/or tantric Buddhism) is its own standalone Thing. You’ll even notice those types of books tend to get published by a different cluster of publishing houses, and aren’t getting picked up by Llewellyn, Weiser, and so forth. I’m thinking of the Eva Wong, Sarah Jane Ho, and Mantak Chia types. So, what I’m seeing here is, what would be stronger united under one category is getting fractured into two, one half leaning toward the pagan/witchcraft camp and the other leaning toward the holistic health and wellness camp. Am I even making any sense?

Now admittedly, here’s the thing.

If we want to put on a more serious hat, be that academic or the seasoned practitioner, and we’re going to be splitting hairs, yeah, a strong argument can be made that, insofar as the East Asian esoteric traditions I am knowledgeable in, categorizing them under paganism or witchcraft aren’t good fits.

When we consider how the word “witch” is used culturally in the Americas, there is no really good direct translation in Chinese, and as I understand, same goes for Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. In many of the Asian magical traditions, the cultural concept of “witch” is too vague that there is no one word for it; rather, all the various subset practices we might associate with “witch” are standalone identities. Our common terms break it down at the subset practice level: a word for someone who is a spirit medium entering trance states to engage with spirits of other realms; a word for someone who leads ceremonial rites and rituals (ceremonial magician-ish), a diviner or fortune-teller, an initiated priest or priestess in a clearly defined lineaged tradition, an alchemist (a term that can cover either practitioner of inner alchemy or outer alchemy).

From my firsthand observations, even if an Asian practitioner does all of the above in terms of magical practices, they will have specialized in one of them, and then they self-identify in that one specialty, such as “spirit medium,” even if in actual practice, they’re also doing fortune-telling and divination, folk (or faith) healing plus TCM, and crafting Fu talismans. Likewise, someone who specializes in feng shui will lead with that title, but in actual practice, are also doing natal astrology, BaZi readings, and exorcisms.

Not to get into a discussion on the Chinese term “wu 巫” again, because I’ve talked about it ad nauseum in dozens of places at this point, but in short reductionist summary, the term in modern cultural usage can mean shaman and it can also mean something close to the Western cultural concept of witch. The only problem with using “wu 巫” and witch synonymously is when used, in Chinese, in the context of witchcraft or sorcery, it is unequivocally culturally attributed to baneful magic, gu poison magic, hexing, and cursing, even though historically in Chinese traditions that was not the case, although Millennial and Gen Z Asian practitioners are reclaiming the term “巫” to mean something positive. (It’s messy and complicated.) The polarity to “wu 巫” interpreted as “witch” in older generations of practitioners was “xiangu 仙姑,” which very narrowly means using those same powers of the wu 巫 but benevolently, specifically implying spiritual lineage from Xiangu, the shaman-priestess among the Eight Immortals. Which then devolves into this debate over binary separations of good vs. evil, and you’re going to find Asian practitioners from varying generations on both sides of that fence adamant that their perspective is right and the other is wrong.

In an effort, here in the West, to find common ground and to be inclusive, I had always treated the term “witchcraft” as a catch-all that we might be able to use cross-culturally, to identify and explain a particular category of people that you find in nearly every community or society. After all, can’t we define witchcraft as an intentional, ritualistic, and often methodical use of sound as power (invocations, drums, etc.), script and symbols, herbs, elements such as fire and water, to wield unseen energy in accordance with will, often involving altered states of consciousness. It’s also an identity that’s marginal, referring to one who occupies liminal spaces.

And so, although fully conscious that it’s an imperfect catch-all moniker, in English, we pool all of those very different practitioner hats under one umbrella—paganism and witchcraft, witches and pagans.

Nature-based practice and pantheon of deities? Check. Longstanding traditions of spirit communication and trance states? Check. Mediumship and divination practices? Check, check. Spell-crafting, talismans, altars, ritual tools, comprehensive methodologies in baneful sorcery? All of the above. So we Asian American practitioners can call ourselves pagans? Yah sure why not.

But then the minute I’m in these pagan and witchcraft community spaces, immediately I realize, the energy imprints here are totally different. I don’t actually belong here. Perhaps they’ve kindly included me for, I dunno, diversity optics, but it feels as if I’m not here because attendees would actually be interested in my topics or that Asian folk traditions belong; I’m here to fill a quota.

Even when I get invited to a pagan conference where I feel a genuine warmth and welcome, it’s coming primarily from the organizers and the handful of people already familiar with me or my work prior to the conference. But once I wander out into the wild, it’s not that anyone is malicious or even insensitive, it’s that the difference is palpable. And genuinely, I don’t believe it’s intentional exclusion. It’s more like…like I said, I don’t belong here. I’ve been misclassified? Maybe I’m not a pagan, or a witch? Maybe there’s a fundamental misalignment that’s nobody’s fault?

Also, it’s hard to fight for inclusivity in Western pagan and witchcraft spaces when we Asian Americans can’t even put on a united front. We’re so busy feuding amongst ourselves, how the heck do we negotiate for visibility or a seat at that table? Like Asians creating blacklists of fellow Asians in semi-secret Discord groups accusing one another of not being legit shamans because blah blah blah, and so-and-so isn’t a real mudang/priest/shrine maiden. This person isn’t Asian enough to understand indigenous Asian folk practices; that person isn’t American enough to understand the identity politics and therefore labels we have to contend with. This fellow Asian is problematic; that fellow Asian practitioner is known for toxic behavior (important call-outs when they turn out to be real; except in a couple of instances, when you pull on the thread, it unravels to the true ulterior motive: business rivalry). “Pagans and Witches Unite…” Maybe I’m putting the cart before the horse, and maybe step one is “Asian Practitioners of Folk Traditions Unite.” Before we meet with the wider assembly of pagans and witches, we need to meet internally to heal generational and regional divides, arguments over lineage and legitimacy, and settle the squabbles over who is authentic and who isn’t.

Of course, there’s a reason unity is tough: so-called “Asian folk traditions” is by no means a monolith, and one facet of it compared to another facet is about as different as practices and philosophies can be. East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia, South Asia… we need to be sensitive to the diversity and differences, and yet also, we need some sort of shorthand, however imperfect, to be able to have conversations. We have our own internal diversity and inclusion complexities to resolve before we demand diversity and inclusion in the wider community. Which now makes me realize I’m kind of a hypocrite for critiquing that meme.

Do I think Asian folk traditions (disclaimer: shorthand) belong under the umbrella term of paganism so that we have some semblance of visibility when relevant social discourse is taking place? Are our regional folk magical practices considered “witchcraft”? Or do I think Asian folk traditions don’t belong because for all the Reasons, we’re not pagans or witches?

Ultimately, I think I land (at least as of this writing) in the position of “let’s just keep calling ourselves pagans and witches” because there’s enough commonality to work with, and it’s our most viable route to inclusivity and representation. We’re demeaned enough by mainstream society, we shouldn’t be doing it amongst ourselves.

And hopefully if the AAPI community keeps showing up, one day one of these fun memes will remember to specifically call out Asian folk magic.

“A lot of contemporary so-called occultists seem uneasy about affirming that they actually believe in magic. They soften the term to mysticism, which in fact is not the same thing as magic, or talk about psychology or abstract, areligious spirituality, something safely secularized. I wish modern magicians weren’t so embarrassed to admit they believe in magic. Magic is real, not symbolic or psychological, and I’m not embarrassed to declare that. Are you? Why are so many from modern esoteric communities so embarrassed to say they actually believe in magic?”

Okay, I’ll bite. Here’s my perspective, my response.

If you truly want to communicate something effectively, HOW you say something is just as important as WHAT you say. Lord have I learned THAT the hard way…

The author of that commentary is most likely not someone who has to wear a suit to work, code-switch on the daily, and straddle diverse worlds.

Meanwhile those of us who move between different cultural and professional spaces understand that language can be used as currency. How you speak, just as much as what you say, can buy you entry or keep you from entering.

The savvy ones learn how to translate, or code-switch. Like it or not, agree with it or not, that’s the only way to be a bridge between worlds. It’s how you ensure you’ve got a seat at the table, and only from that table can you effectively help bring about the systemic change you seek.

For me, it’s not that I’m embarrassed to admit I believe in magic; it’s that I know that fundamentally, my world view of what “magic” even is differs so diametrically from what most people think I mean when I say “magic” that the word itself is rendered ineffectual.

Using the word causes more confusion than clarity. So why use it?

When I say magic, I mean science that none of us fully understands yet. And funny enough, many mages today critique the explanation of magic as a form of science, and want to keep the two as separate and apart as possible.

I don’t view science and magic as two distinct and separate roads that never meet. I see both on the same continuum. It’s magic until it’s science.

On the other hand, there are phenomena that some people call magic that I call magical thinking. To me, that’s a totally different thing.

No, I do not subscribe to magical thinking.

I enjoy the temporary temptation of it as much as anybody else, but it’s not the same as magic. Magical thinking is an illusion and delusion of true magic.

Which is why I like the word mysticism, and yes, I use it interchangeably with the word magic. Mysticism is about disintegrating illusions and delusions. Mysticism is revelation and surrender that results in an effortless control of forces to align with your Will. To me, that’s true magic. That’s what I mean by magic.

That said, medical explanations don’t take away from the spiritual implications, at least not for me. Ocular migraines and severe astigmatism are both known to cause a person to see a halo-like glow around people. Chronic dry eyes and corneal irregularities compounding ocular migraines and astigmatism can then make the glow appear to bear color.

Synesthesia can also be another culprit for what we think of as seeing auras. Your senses get cross-wired, so you see color when you hear sounds, hear musical notes when you see colors, and feel notes and numbers on a musical scale in different bones; likewise, someone’s presence — which we can all sense, it’s the “vibes” you get off a person — can get color-coded, and that’s the aura color a synthesthete might see.

Having not just one or some but all of the aforementioned conditions is probably why, medically speaking, this is what I see when I look at people:

Or at least when I make an intentional point to look. I don’t usually pay attention to people’s auras. That’s probably just a me thing, however, as I find I can be face to face with someone for hours, walk away, and have no recollection of what color shirt they had on. I don’t typically pay attention to eye color or shoe color. Likewise, I don’t pay attention to people’s auras. It’s only when I’m being asked to look and to be intentional about it do I see it.

Although… girlies often do this with fellow girlies, where you are going to compliment someone who’s remarkably pretty, like, “Omigod, you have the prettiest eyes!” It’s not a matter of intentionally checking out people’s eye color, but sometimes you just meet someone and you feel compelled to share with them, my goodness, you have the loveliest most winsome smile! So yeah, I acknowledge I have at times done that with auras. Billows of efflorescent color are a beautiful sight to behold (the most beautiful auras are when they look like those halos you see at night around street lights, tinged with jewel-like colors), and just like noticing someone wearing a really cute dress that they look great in, sometimes I’ll comment on a particularly radiant aura.

Fortunately, most of the time they think I’m just using a figure of speech. =D

Auras, in case they need an explanation, are subtle, luminous fields of glow that can emanate from living beings. It looks like a translucent, shimmery, wavy distortion in the air surrounding a person. Focus your eyes a bit and then you start to see color. Sometimes it’s very pale, almost with a grayish tint to it. Other times it’s bright, lustrous, and you can even feel it, like a palpable force field. Often it’s just that translucent haze, like seeing heat rising from concrete on a hot summer day, and with the tips of the rays frosted a certain color. There are a few people I’ve encountered who have an aura like a poisonous force field, where you feel sick if you are in close proximity for too long. (This is why you need to shield, blah blah blah, yeah yeah.)

Dating back to the Han dynasty (200 BC to 200 AD), we have Taoist texts describing the colors and glow of Qi and/or Shen that can radiate from the human body. Qi is your vitality and verve, the force you possess for driving dynamic action. Shen is like a heightened level of consciousness or your level of awareness and thus mindful control over what you’re doing. Qi is ascertained by the intensity, chroma, and strength of the aura; Shen in the hues and values of the colors.

Adepts who have undergone training and cultivation are able to assess a person’s Qi and Shen from looking at the aura. So if you want to see if a certain spiritual teacher is legit, just look at their aura (allegedly). A person’s aura will reveal their practiced virtue and attainments in energy cultivation, and lacking of practiced virtue or weak, chaotic energy also gets revealed. And also (allegedly), any spiritual practitioner worth their salt can see auras and spot bona fides and frauds through their auras.

At least that’s the conventional wisdom among Taoist practitioners, which I’m not saying I believe or don’t believe. It’s maybe more nuanced than that. (I say that while simultaneously and hypocritically getting a bit tired of people throwing around the word “nuance.” Everything is “nuanced” but nobody’s rhetoric actually is.)

When I was in junior high there was this martial arts Taoist shi fu (teacher) guy, who I believe was famous (!!!). People addressed him as shi fu (meaning “master teacher”), but Mom said I should just call him Gege (“elder brother”). So he was just Gege to me.

Anytime I get in a discussion on auras, I recall this exchange with Gege. He was telling me about my aura and what it meant, and I thought, oh, I didn’t know we could talk so openly about people’s auras. (I had thought maybe there were etiquette rules around talking about auras because no one ever did).

While he said very kind and generous things about my aura, he was saying less kind and generous things about other people’s auras, judging people by the aura’s colors, intensity, that kind of thing. His purpose for raising the topic of auras was to talk about my karma and past lives (a story for another time I suppose). But I was too hung up on wanting to know, how can you do that? How do you judge a whole person’s life story, let alone their so-called past life stories, by their aura that day, that hour?

So I pushed back. I said aura colors and even how visible they are can fluctuate based on the person’s mood that day, even as temporary as a mere moment. Hell, I can shrink my aura or make it real big at will, kind of like posture, I can sit up tall, chin up, shoulders back, and pretend to be confident when I’m totally not, or I can slouch and come across appearing blah, because I am intentionally trying to make myself look small and unassuming.

Also, I said I wasn’t quite sure that one person’s blue aura meant exactly the same thing as another person’s blue aura, so then if I can’t even standardize what a blue aura means, how can I judge a person for having a blue aura? And sure, most people have a default setting for aura color, but if I’m meeting someone for the very first time, how am I to judge what that default setting aura color is? Today it’s blue for reasons, but maybe it’s typically red, how would I know.

Not to mention, him rattling off about my aura, certain aunties’ auras, when no one asked, or certainly I did not, also got me questioning whether that was even ethical. Judging people by their auras makes me uncomfortable and does not pass my vibe check. Judging people by their eye color, hair color, skin color, or even by things like blood type or astrological sign has never sat right with me. I’m not saying I don’t subscribe to natal astrology, clearly I do, given that I’m an astrologer. What I mean is we shouldn’t be judging someone’s character by their natal astrology.

He looked amused, excited, and also, strangely validated. You can see auras! Of course you can! He then asked me to read his aura. I did, and because I’m an overachiever, I also told him about some other intangibles I was seeing and sensing. See the difference? He asked. It was solicited. If he didn’t explicitly invite me to do it, I wouldn’t. I’d have kept my impressions to myself.

“What you’re seeing about me, and sensing, what do you think it means?” he asked, clearly testing me. Bro, didn’t I just say I don’t think we should be judging people by physical traits? Not that I’m certain that auras count as “physical” traits, but I just don’t think I have enough universal baseline data to judge what a particular aura means. A big bright aura means they’re feeling great that day; a more faded one means they’re not. I don’t see how that has any relevance on their character.

“But someone who has mastered spiritual cultivation can maintain a big bright aura even when they’re sad,” he said to me.

We’ve now arrived at the first point for discussion. Do you agree?

I mean, let me clarify. I would say sure, I agree as a matter of theory, but I don’t know that I agree as a matter of realistic practice, and let me explain what I mean by that. Just because you allow yourself to feel feelings, emanate with sadness when you’re sad, emanate with anger when you’re angry, I don’t see how that makes you any less “spiritual” than someone who’s an unmoving wall of zen.

His questioning continued. “Have you ever seen any of the shi fu (other master teachers) with a grayish cloudy aura? Or do you notice a pattern in the character of people who you see having that grayish cloudy aura?”

It’s true, to the very limited extent I’ve been able to observe, legit shi fu have big, bright glowing auras. I’ve never seen one, who was legit, with a grayish cloudy aura. But maybe being a tween meant I wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction.

“I just don’t see how somebody’s grayish cloudy aura is any of my business,” I said. “Unless they share that with me and invite it to be my business.”

“If you see a spiritual teacher trying to lead people down a particular path and you can see that person has a grayish cloudy aura, what would you do?”

“I would stay away from that person.”

“Nothing else? You would do nothing else? You wouldn’t say anything to prevent other people from getting led astray?”

There’s our second point for discussion I suppose. Would you?

I wonder if how we think through that question is not unlike the Trolley Problem in classical philosophy: if there’s a runaway train down the tracks about to hit and kill five people but you have control over a lever that can divert the train to a side track that will only kill one, do you pull the lever for the greater good (saving more lives, five vs. one) or do you do nothing (because first, do no harm, and it’s not your place to decide)?

Oof, that’s a tough one for me. My final answer to the Trolley Problem is I would do nothing, because first, do no harm, and it’s not my place to decide, even if it means this is going to weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life, and that’s the burden I’ll bear for choosing to do nothing.

Also, whether you would judge a spiritual teacher’s sincerity/abilities by their aura depends on how you interpret auras. Because personally? I don’t think that information is all that useful.

There seems to be this prevailing view - especially among spirituality communities - that aura reading is like a diagnostic tool - you can use it to ascertain someone’s spiritual development and the character of their subtle energy bodies.

Whereas is this kind of like pretty privilege? Like judging whether someone has good karma by how pretty they are? We all see how people’s competencies get unfairly judged all the time by whether they have pretty privilege, and we know that is very, very bad decision-making. Are we seriously going to judge the content of a spiritual teacher’s character by whether or not they have aura privilege?

All that is why no, I would not say anything to anybody about what I see in another person’s aura. Because at the end of the day, I just don’t know what that aura means. Indulging my own ego to believe I know what it means and then telling other people about it seems like bad decision-making.

While sure, I have never personally seen a spiritually transcendent master teacher with a grayish cloudy aura, I also don’t know as a matter of fact what that indicates. To take that and then leap to wild conclusions is where I differ from Gege, and by extension, the majority of mystics.

To be fair Gege wasn’t telling me to shout anything from any rooftop. He was just trying to teach me how to be wary of certain types of people in the types of communities he anticipated I would encounter in my life ahead.

That’s actually what inspired this post. I’ve been reflecting on Gege’s teachings and realizing that three decades later I still don’t know how to navigate these waters. If I see someone in our community holding themselves out with a particular authority whereas I can see their aura, have seen their aura many times now and have a sense for their baseline, even if I don’t shout anything from the rooftops, to what extent do I “keep it to myself”? Do I tell nobody? I do nothing at all? Just drop it? Pretend I saw nothing?

Before tackling whether I have a responsibility to say or not say something about someone of authority’s aura, there’s the deeper issue of whether aura perception is even an objective verifiable phenomenon. There’s no rational or scientific basis for it, goes popular convention.

Do I even know whether seeing auras is a stable enough objective reality? Is assessment of someone’s blue aura more like how I like to interpret the tarot Moon card in a reading or is it more like Traditional Chinese Medicine holistic health diagnostics? What category of experience does seeing auras belong in?

Seeing aura colors is my reality, and sourced from my vision, so it’s more about me than it is about that other person. I speculate that the aura I see in another has more to do with my relationship dynamic with that person than any objective, fair commentary about that person as a character. Therefore no, Gege, I would not say anything to anyone if I saw a master teacher with a cloudy gray aura; it would be nothing more than a signal to me only to stay away.

I anchor myself with the understanding that the root cause of me seeing auras is because I’m a synesthete with an irregular cornea and retinal malfunction. Grounding my subjective experiences of seeing auras in plausible physiological and psychological causes keeps me sane. And personally, I think it’s an important mental exercise for spiritualists, especially for spiritualists, to do.

I see way too often spiritualists rejecting physiological and psychological explanations. They immediately default to the most extravagant mystical interpretation possible. “I can do X because I am spiritually enlightened and specially tasked by the gods to do X, this is my calling” rather than temporal lobe hyperactivity or stress-induced dissociation.

To circle back to the top, the spiritual implications of seeing auras. I don’t assign any spiritual significance to being able to see them, and to the extent that the auras I’m seeing hold meaning, it’s only information I need to know for myself, privately, about how I should or should not engage with that person. What I see in another person’s aura is a data point for calibrating my own boundaries only, not a verdict on their spiritual standing.

If auras speak, they speak only to the person who is seeing them, and carry a message only for that seer alone to know.

A hapa (that’s the term the AAPI community used back in my day) who is half-white, half-Chinese, who likes to be comedic but has a very subtle, ironic sense of humor (so if you don’t get it, you won’t get it… this is relevant) posts this TikTok “rant” saying how when she goes into H Mart (a Korean grocery store here in the U.S.), she side-eyes white people at Asian grocery stores because, like, what are you even doing here, this is our space. But if you watch the video to the end, she realizes the “white person” she’s side-eyeing is also hapa like her, and that hapa is reciprocating the side-eye back at her. So you get the joke, right? It’s meant to be self-deprecating and self-aware of her hapa-ness in Asian spaces, but in that circular journey, lightly pokes fun into some serious sociopolitical topics the Asian Diaspora often comments on.

But somehow, the Asian Diaspora on TikTok didn’t get it. At all. Enter some really big-name established, popular Asian TikTokkers (often with predominantly white audiences) who came down hard on the original (intended to be comedic and self-deprecating) commentary. In-fighting lines in the sand were drawn. (Apparently the political theme of the day is implosion; civil wars everywhere.)

And then because social media and the ring of influencers will do what the ring of influencers do, old rivalries resurface and other Asian TikTokkers who don’t like those big-name established Asian TikTokkers enter the chat, and now everybody who is anybody is taking sides (I am not included here; I’m literally just a tarot reader who writes about Taoist mysticism).

The issue of tensions between Koreans and the Chinese communities arise, along with commentary on whether some of those big-name KoreAm TikTokkers coming after this Chinese American TikTokker has to do with those tensions. Are these big-name Asian TikTokkers pandering to their largely White audience? Are Korean Americans coming down particularly hard on the original post because she’s part Chinese? There were even uncomfortable tensions around whether she, a hapa, has any right to speak on behalf of Asians. Is the original hapa TikTokker and those on her side posting commentary asserting, yeah— why are white people in Asian spaces, please get out— are they woke-leftists being unreasonable? Who, here, is being unreasonable?

Or what about the non-Asians declaring flippantly, I’ll do what I want, take what I want, you can’t and won’t stop me, thanks bye. There are also the non-Asian sociopolitical commentators joining in, either saying, that’s right I don’t belong in Asian spaces or this is sad, why am I not welcomed at Asian grocery stores, I love H Mart! The finger-pointing wag in all directions. And it feels like only 1% of any of the commentary acknowledges that the original video was trying to be self-deprecating ironic-funny, meanwhile the internet has made a mountain out of a mole hill.

However, I see a deeper thread here, connecting to what I do, and the fundamental premise of what I share. It’s perhaps not unlike Asian Americans who might side-eye non-Asians practicing magico-mystical or religious traditions indigenous to Asians. Cultural ownership questions come up that are even more layered than first meets the eye. For example, H Mart is an American grocery store originating from Queens, New York that sells Asian grocery goods for Asian immigrant communities here in the US. It’s Korean focused, but you can also find many of the Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Vietnamese / Southeast Asian goods you’re looking for.

And this whole conversation on H Mart is relating to places rooted here in the United States. So you would assume the proprietors of the H Mart store itself are aware of, expect, and thus welcome (or at least anticipate) non-Asians to be patrons of the store, even if the target market is Asian Americans. (The spirituality community reading this is following so far, yeah? You see the relevance? Why I might have thoughts?)

Let’s hypothetically assume the original video comment was being serious. It made a valid point: historically, it is not uncommon for white people to enter Asian cultural spaces here in the U.S. and openly make fun of, demean, make faces at, or be grossed out by what they see, because it’s too different from what they’re used to. That in turn makes the Asian patrons at the Asian grocery stores feel uncomfortable in their own space, and feel feelings directed at these non-Asians: you know what, why don’t you just let us be; this is for us anyway, not you.

Literally a few days ago someone from our community here on Substack, who is not ethnically Asian, posted about how Eastern philosophies and religions like Buddhism and Shinto get overhyped by the West, and actually, Taoist magic is not as powerful as [insert Western mystery tradition]. I’m deidentifying and not naming names because it’s not relevant and will only distract. But real talk, the ethnocentric cultural superiority rhetoric is divisive and contributing to the problem.

Reasonably, that kind of public commentary can lead Asian Americans to think, you know what, you clearly don’t understand what you’re looking at, so why don’t you just butt out. Stay in your own lane.

But then, if you apply that reactionary sentiment generally, that’s not fair either. Are we saying no non-Asian should ever practice or even try to learn about Eastern magico-mystical traditions? (I struggle with finding accurate labels and translations, but that’s a discussion for another time…)

Who gets to be keepers of shamanic ritual knowledge and by the way, on that note, who gets to use the word “shaman”? Because on one hand, it’s now a loan word that means intermediaries between the human world and spirit world via altered states of consciousness for the purposes of healing, divination, or restoring temporal-spiritual balance, and then specific traditional names will identify what cultural or regional lineage of shamanism, but also, on the other hand, is use of the word “shamanism,” which by now you’ve heard every other religious studies academic harp about, appropriative in and of itself, because Shamanism is a culture and region specific tradition so we should not be using it as a loan word?

Where is the distinguishing rationale between “please do not misinterpret and disrespect our cultural spaces” and “you cannot be trusted therefore we are going to wall off our traditions from you entirely”? What about Western mystery traditions that have taken heavily from Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism without attribution, or who peddle misinterpretations that end up causing confusion with native historically-documented cultural practices of those traditions? And so maybe there is some logic to keeping outsiders from entering because they often cause the dilution of the sanctity of these traditions? But also is that even fair? Is that even true to the primordial spirit of these traditions? And also, a content creator like me who is disseminating knowledge of these East Asian traditions in English is a rather intentional choice, no? Similar to H Mart being founded right here in the United States catering to those here in the US?

So when we ask, “Who gets to shop at H Mart?” we’re also asking the bigger question of, “Who gets to partake in a culture not originally theirs?” Are we going to let the minority few desecrators ruin it for the majority of earnest seekers interested in cross-cultural exchange? How do native practitioners in a globalized multicultural society navigate the dueling responsibilities of protection vs. openness?

When pressed, their explanation collapses onto itself in circular reasoning. “It just sounds New Agey.” Or “Well it’s because she’s an occultist so she can’t possibly be unbiased, neutral, objective, and scholarly.” They’ll say it doesn’t sound like “ancient Chinese wisdom.” And that expectation is problematic.

Calling a native practitioner’s work “New Age” is not a neutral critique. It’s a microaggression cloaked as an academic judgment. The speaker is always intentionally, knowingly using the term “New Age” as a condescending call-out to discredit me, without actual proof, to imply that I lack intellectual rigor, or authenticity to tradition, or even seriousness, without actually being able to bring the receipts. Please explain how I’m not being faithful to the current Chinese scholarship on how we are to interpret classical Chinese terms and grammar. Please cite your sources and prove how you’re not being uncomfortably ignorant and maybe even a bit misogynist or racist, I’m not quite sure which one. See, these sorts of accusations are never about the work itself, but about who these people perceive me to be.

Calling my work “New Age” is erasing my ancestry in a knowing, intentional, insidious way. You’re assuming Eurocentric Western interpretations of Taoism as a philosophy is more “authentic” than shamanistic, divinatory interpretations of practical Taoism, and so anything that diverges from Wilhelm or Legge, who were both Christians by the way, must be “New Age.” The speaker assumes they are superior to me because somehow, they know “real” Taoism, or authentic Buddhism in a way that I don’t.

Even to say that what I’m transmitting about esoteric Buddhism from Mahayana traditions is “misinformation” because it departs from what a profit-driven egomaniacal self-identified guru who isn’t even purporting to practice the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism native to my part of the world has “taught” you is conflating the illusion of authority with religious or cultural authenticity, and commonly-accepted and popular with what is spoken from a native, lived practice.

Here’s what I know. I was born and raised in these traditions, and not just born and raised, but fully immersed, intensely enveloped and deeply entrenched in these religious and cultural communities. And then on top of it being what I was born and raised in, I do my homework. I do my research. I research how to do research before I do the research. I leverage my juris doctorate degree and my learned experience with research and writing peer-reviewed scholarship. I leverage my personal connections in these communities, someone with deep family ties to lineaged Taoism and esoteric Buddhism. Just because I chose not to be formally lineaged — precisely so I can speak this openly about esoteric Taoism and Buddhism — doesn’t mean I lack deep, culturally authentic and academically true familiarity with lineaged Taoism or esoteric Buddhism.

It’s also evident that some of these people are not so much judging the substance of my work as they are judging that work by my identity. I am a woman, a tarot reader, and don’t quite “look the part” per their expectations of what a serious Taoist practitioner should look. I’m called “New Age” not because something about my work is verifiably diluted or lacking rigor, but it’s because I’m a tarot reader and I like to bake cookies and take Instagram photos of said cookies. And somehow you can’t possibly be a scholar and a tarot reader, oh, and female to boot. So many female scholars feel this same pain or some variation of it. Research consistently demonstrates that woman scholars are scrutinized way more harshly than men. Calling my work “New Age” functions as a proxy for these biases, and not as a genuine, actual critique of the fidelity of my translations.

I don’t even know if I can fault the individual haters dismissing my work as “New Age” simply because of their bias against me as a person. Because it’s structural, it’s systemic. When a hater calls me “New Age,” it’s less about my work and more about me, as the person doing the translation. They’re not commenting about the work, though they’re trying to pass it off as if they are; they’re revealing a bias against my identity markers. It’s ignoring my deep study of classical Chinese texts, my methodology, my native immersion in Taoist and Buddhist practices, my deep familial ties to those communities, and my careful attention to historical and cultural context — it’s about reducing my scholarship and my lived experience in a catch-all Western stereotype about who I must be simply because of how I’ve presented myself. The label of my works as “New Age” is not only inaccurate, it is intellectually indefensible.

Academia and the esoteric community alike are still deeply entangled by centuries of patriarchy (and I know at least a segment of the naysayers hate-reading this now are rolling their eyes at the mention of patriarchy). How could I possibly have a strong culturally authentic and academically rigorous command over complex historical sacred texts? If it wasn’t my face or my name credited as the author, and it was an old white guy with a PhD who was credited with the same exact work, would his book be called “New Age”? I’ve spotted so many citation errors in the published academic works by old white professors but then when I go to read the critical reviews, no one calls them out. Women, though – critics are hell-bent on discrediting female scholars for some reason. Dismissing my work as “New Age” is cultural erasure, gender bias, and reliance on past Eurocentric authorities all wrapped up in one. And they won’t even admit it’s a subconscious bias that’s motivating their critiques.

My translations are not “New Age.” They are the continuation of inherited knowledge and understanding, which I’ve endeavored to articulate in a way that reconciles academic approaches to classical Chinese with living traditions and contemporary practice.

Personally, I prefer communicating in writing. Unfortunately, I’m not very competent at articulating myself through speaking. Here’s an analogy: It’s like a calculus problem with three pages of work that you show and then at the end of the three pages of sequential operations, your answer. I can see the whole three pages of functions in my brain, but then if you ask me to talk about it in real time, I don’t know how. I don’t know how much detail to include, and maybe something needs a sidebar tangent explanation, I’m never quite sure. I don’t want to just give you my sound bite answer without any of the nuance, because frankly, the end answer makes no sense without the explanation. Whereas in writing, I can take a very prolonged pause without anyone getting impatient and sort out what exactly I want to say and in what sequence.

Also, my first draft of stating something is never very eloquent. When you’re talking, such as in video form, if it’s off the cuff, then you don’t get second drafts. Well, unless you edit or script, which I do, but then you lose authenticity. Funny enough, editing your writing doesn’t immediately mean your words lose authenticity, whereas editing and scripting video – I dunno, it always feels… not quite personal enough.

While a handful of us still have Wordpress blogs, it doesn’t have the strength in numbers to have an effective blog feed, not the way this Substack platform does! (Yay!)

So for this first Substack blog post, let’s do a statement of purpose. This is going to be my space for personal reflections, and a place where I can connect with other bloggers writing personal reflections on subjects I’m interested in. I’m hoping my use of this platform can be more community-oriented.

My YouTube channel is strictly education-focused, as is my author website, though I’ll post book and deck reviews on there as well, and of course, landing pages to my various creative projects.

My Instagram is surface-level everyday mundane stuff: what I ate for breakfast, garden show-and-tells, my go-to home remedies, arts and crafts, hiking and vacation photos, the occasional selfie.

A lot of the personal or social commentary that’s essay length, which I typically post on my website blog, will get cross-posted here as well.

And then in addition to that, I’m intending to use my Substack platform to share my personal spirituality-focused ramblings.

In short, what I would have posted on LiveJournal or Xanga back in the day is what I will post here, but, you know, matured to where I am at now in life, compared to where I was then.

Finally, more for me than for you, I am loving that there seems to be lots of kindred spirits with Substack blogs that I can now follow and have their posts aggregated in a one-stop-shop feed thingie in an app on my phone! LOVE that! Happy reading (for me)!!