I’m looking forward to many and different voices adding to the discussion “Social Media Witchcraft: A Community Conversation About the Things That Divide Us” via the hashtag #OcculTea. The hosts are kickstarting the conversation off with these videos from Ella Harrison, Polish Folk Witch, and The Redheaded Witch.

“All members of the occult & witchcraft community – not just content creators or big names, but everybody” is invited to participate in this discussion, with the hope that the hosts might later facilitate a live community panel.

It’s a bit of an unanticipated synchronism that just yesterday I posted my commentary on personal branding pressures on authors and social media, and then today I am posting this. Collective thoughts around the same theme often surface at the same time within a community, and I think that’s what’s happening here. Ivy The Occultist had posted “Are Modern Witchcraft Books Failing Modern Witches?” on Feb. 12 and this #Occultea open invite on Social Media Witchcraft went out on Feb. 21. I thought that was kind of cool timing.

Introduce Yourself

If you’re reading my blog in the year 2024, then you probably already know a thing or two about me. But in case you’re new here by way of the hashtag, hi! I’m the author of three books: I Ching, The Oracle; The Tao of Craft; and Holistic Tarot. You’ll often find me as a keynote at various tarot and witchy conferences.

By day I am a practicing attorney and my career obligations occupy most of my time. Writing and creating educational videos on topics I’m passionate about and reviewing books and decks to help promote artists and creatives are my hobbies.

I was born and raised in the cultural traditions of both Buddhism and Taoism. I trained in Buddhism, spent nearly every summer month from early childhood until young adulthood at monasteries sweeping floors, doing shaolin (badly), and meditating. There’s this joke among us Asians that you know an Asian kid grew up in Buddhism when they don’t know any of their masters’ names. Because they were all just shi fu to us. =)

Now let’s get started on the prompts.

1. Impact on Community

Since the late 90s, throughout my time in college and law school, I’ve wanted to share my Taiwanese, Buddhist, and Taoist practices online specifically so those who have been searching for that kind of information from an own-voices native perspective could have access. But each time I came close, I stopped myself. The most you’d get out of me would be vague cryptic code-speak.

I struggled harder than I probably needed to with whether to publish The Tao of Craft, and then struggled even more with what content to put in that book. More importantly, what content needed to be left out.

Ultimately I took a leap of faith, prayed that I would not be led astray and that at all times would be guided with discernment for what can be put out there and what is better left unsaid. At some point it became clear to me that I wouldn’t be having biological children to be passing this on to so then the many children of the world became those who I would be passing this Craft on to.

In the age we find ourselves in, the optimal medium for all that is social media.

When it comes to platforms, it’s not that I am clinging stubbornly to the old ways… it’s that I currently don’t have the time to learn about new platforms such as TikTok. So YouTube and Instagram it is. I do tweet on occasion as well. And of course, most of what occupies my time is still this blog. Back in my day, we didn’t call it social media; it was the blogosphere. 😉 [I published peer-reviewed legal research and analyses on the blogosphere.]

Also I’ve been wondering about how social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, has severely reduced our attention spans and ability to maintain focus, and the adverse effect of that on spiritual cultivation.

Most modalities of occult praxis require an enormous amount of focus and intensive concentration. That’s why almost any ceremonial magician who’s been around will tell you one of the most important training practices is meditation. We don’t have to debate which type of meditation is best; at the end of the day, it’s about meditative exercises to help us gain full control over our focus, sense of presence, and concentration.

2. Influencer Authenticity

I’m intrigued by the focus here on acknowledging how much of what we post on social media is staged. I would say anything I’ve posted on social media is “staged” insofar as you straighten out your hair and any wrinkles in your shirt, stand still, and put on your best smile when someone points a camera at you.

If you call scripting your videos “staged,” then yeah, I script my videos, but to me, that’s less of an authenticity question and more of an “I don’t want to waste anybody’s time” objective. Scripting videos helps me to rein in the scope, organization, timing, and efficiency of the content. When I don’t script, something that oughta take me 5 minutes to say ends up taking me 50.

Also, I started making my videos before automatic closed captioning, so another benefit to scripting is as soon as the video is uploaded, I already have an edited transcript ready to go. A significant segment of my viewers are those who speak English as a second language or are part of the Deaf/HH community, and so scripting means I can accommodate to that need – you can immediately upload that transcript for closed captioning.

However, other than maybe arranging the stuff so it’s neater, dusting the surface because the world does not need to know that I do not dust my home frequently enough, or angling the camera for a cooler shot, no, I do not stage my Instagram photos. None of the photos of me are staged. Either it’s a bona fide selfie or it’s a vacation photo that the hubby took of me. But also I think that’s pretty obvious because my Instagram photos aren’t that “witchy aesthetic.”

I guess you could say I stage photos when I’m sharing other people’s books and decks on my Insta. I take objects that are already displayed around my house and more intentionally arrange them on a reading mat or altar cloth. But I don’t stage ritual work or stage myself doing pretend ritual work.

There was this one video I made during the pandemic that was like a what I do in a day video where yes, everything I showed me doing in a day was genuine, but the footage itself was staged, and I felt so stupid and awkward “acting” for the camera that I said never again.

In terms of deciphering what is “appropriate” to share online vs. what to keep private, that’s an ongoing challenge. At this point all I can say is I try my best to be intuitive, thoughtful, and considerate about it.

What about reviews and authenticity? A final point worth exploring here that’s tangentially related to the topic heading is reviewing and endorsing books, tarot, or oracle decks. When approached to review or endorse a creative product, I meet the content where it is and assess it based on the objective standards that make the most sense for what that content is trying to achieve and who that content is for.

Instead of using my subjective, often irrational tastes as the standard, I try to focus on that product and its creator. What is that product and creator trying to achieve and has it achieved its own stated objective? That means sometimes the answer to that question is yes, but the product itself might not be aligned with my own tastes or my personal values. If people read that as being inauthentic, well, that’s interesting.

3. Imposter Syndrome and FOMO

It can be tough as a creator to observe what you perceive to be creators who prioritize aesthetics and popularity over substance rise to the top, while the creators who don’t have the skills to curate their aesthetics but have an important voice that we need to be listening to not get the visibility and exposure they deserve… heck, that we deserve? =) We would be the ones benefiting from their visibility, benefiting from the knowledge they’re sharing!

I like to follow witchy content creators whose paths and traditions are very different from my own. That’s the content that broadens our minds and world views. It’s inspiring to see diverse approaches to witchcraft and core shamanism.

I don’t compare my craft to what I see other people do online — and neither should you (!!) — because it’s apples to oranges (remember that!) so appreciate what someone else has shared on its face, but don’t let it distract you.

However, on a superficial and not-spiritual-related level, sure, I absolutely find myself tempted to compare my social media output with other people’s social media output. For instance when I see flawless, airtight personal branding via deadly consistent aesthetics, I’m not thinking about my craft vs. theirs, but I am thinking, “hot damn, this person is fantastic at photography!”

There is one point of reflection that isn’t categorized as imposter syndrome or FOMO, but might belong under Topic 3, and that is how observing social media witchcraft has caused me to distance myself from identifying as a witch. That is due in large part to the witchcraft community here in the United States — witches and pagans in the US don’t always make people like me feel welcomed or part of their community.

At the same time, I don’t have the luxury to distance myself from the label, because then witchy Asians and Diasporic Asians who lean occult won’t be able to find my work and discover something that might better resonate with them than what’s currently available under the hashtag “witch.” Rightly or wrongly, I often feel like I don’t want to show up on social media witchcraft circuits but I have to.

4. Capitalizing Off Community

Maybe it’s my Gen-X/Millennial cusp bias, but no, I do not consider online communities to be equal to in-person communities. Both are valid. In different ways. With different pros and cons. They are each valid in their own ways but they are not interchangeable and one cannot replace the other. Some things can be done in person that cannot be done online. Some things, if you really need to do it online and you can’t do it in person, then the approach you take will be different. Metaphysically they are not the same.

From a ritual and ceremony perspective, I think basic levels of qi cultivation means in an in-person setting, most practitioners have the power to exchange and alchemize their qi with others in the circle, but not as many practitioners are adept at working with qi across a virtual global decentralized network of digital devices. Definitely not saying it cannot be done; just pointing out that it’s gonna be harder.

Also, all we need to point out is the level of grace the average person is willing to extend to everyone around them in-person vs. the level of grace the average person is willing to extend to everyone around them in an online community. There is an intimacy to in-person gatherings that I’m not saying cannot be replicated in online gatherings, but it’s something we as a technologically evolving society are still figuring out.

Okay, now let’s talk about grifters. It’s not even just the binary of grifters vs. non-grifters in the occult/witchcraft communities. I worry that there are plenty of well-meaning good people in between those extremes who are un-intentionally leveraging other people’s suffering and insecurities for easy money. They’ll convince themselves that they’re doing it for others, but really? At $500 per head for a couple of videos about your personal religious practices and some quasi-motivational manifestation how-to handouts? When members of our community start to mimic prosperity gospel televangelists, we need to ask ourselves if this is going in the right direction and if we can simply stand by while we watch our community members get baited in to those schemes.

I also make a distinction when it comes to paid courses for technical skills. Paying to learn technical skills is reasonable. Paying to participate in rituals, paying to experience divinity, for automatic divine downloads and empowerments, or membership fees to join in sacred circles — none of that sits right with me.

As for my responsive thoughts to the other questions on the Topic 4 list, my opinions are going to be controversial in this capitalist world that encourages religion and spirituality to be capitalized on. But also, those are just my opinions. I would never and don’t impose my opinions on what others want to do.

Conclusions

I love that conversations like #OcculTea are happening. I also wonder about what the online witchcraft community is doing, actively, for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Because scrolling through the Insta pages of @ella.harrison, @polish.folk.witch, and @the.redheadedwitch, there’s a certain palpable homogeny to the presentation of witchcraft aesthetics and what it means to be a witch. And if one has a significant platform with an influential voice, do we then have an affirmative social responsibility?

Looks like I wasn’t the only one with thoughts…

It wasn’t my impression at all that the three hosts were centering themselves as leaders or as the exemplars of legitimate witchery. So I don’t think the harshness of those comments was fair. There is a response under one of those above comments that remarks on how the comments were being unnecessarily divisive, and I agree.

The wording of the comments came off as a bit mean, but I can sense where they were coming from, because that was my gut observation, too — and what I mean by that is the gut observation of a little bit of an unintentional standardization of how we are representing witchcraft. And so even if you use the word “invite,” whole swaths of people who identify as witches or occultists probably don’t feel all that invited.

This circles back to an earlier rumination. If you have been granted a certain elevated position by your society, do you then, because of who you are and where you are positioned, have an affirmative social responsibility?

And so I wonder if or when popular content creators come together, that the mere act of doing so triggers an affirmative social responsibility, which means being actively mindful of implications and appearances, and thus making sure they are setting a positive precedent of diversity and inclusion?

EDIT: To be clear, I came away with the sense that the organizers were sharing in good faith, and had no intentions of setting themselves up as the standard bearers of modern witchcraft. I am grateful that they’ve started this very important conversation. Perhaps I’m asking for too much, but I guess I just wish there was a little bit more mindfulness from the onset to ensure that the invitation call itself would have actually inspired everyone to feel invited.

As for some witchy YouTubers I think you’ll love, check out:

• The PopOcculture series on Lilith Dorsey‘s channel. Dorsey is the author of Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens: The Divine Feminine in the African Religious Traditions. I was lucky enough to preview her forthcoming book, Tarot Every Witch Way, which is AH-MAZING, ahhhh, I can’t wait for you to have it!
• Shamanic Arawak Priestess is a blessed resource for ATR and Taino native spirituality.
• Adunola the Oracle has some great videos on African and Indigenous syncretism alongside plenty of general interest witchy educational content.
• This is a great academic take on Alchemy, Witchcraft, and Trans Identity via theologian and educator arsyn0w.
• Over on TikTok. Check out Mudang Jenn and Chaweon Koo.
• You’re going to love Aly Kravetz’s “Better Witch” podcast via BeyondBronxWitch formerly known as the BronxWitch.
• Check out this interview on “Better Witch” with David Shi, author of Spirit Voices: The Mysteries and Magic of North Asian Shamanism.
• Bruja and Espiritista Lailani of The Magickal Solution has this playlist compiling her interviews with powerhouse mystics from diverse traditions that is sure to expand your horizons.
• This was such a fun group discussion to participate in with three people I love so, so much (and you’ll find shout-outs to all three of them on the Acknowledgements page of I Ching, The Oracle): Can Asian-Americans be Witches?
• Thorn Mooney is a fantastic model of what I would want to see more of in terms of witchcraft being represented in social media.
• Jack Chanek does not post frequently enough but when he does, it’s a real treat!

Polish Folk Witch has compiled the #OcculTea video responses conveniently into a playlist repository here.

If you’re like me, then for the past week, you’ve had that playlist running on your phone while you gardened, cooked dinner, did the dishes, ran on the treadmill, and during your commutes to and from work. =)

P O S T   S C R I P T

3/4/24 Addendum

Perhaps some of you reading this did what I did this past week, and that was watch the VRs to the #OcculTea prompt while going about my day. I’m grateful to the organizers for holding this space so we can get to know the diversity of practitioners who are part of this community. I discovered and immediately subscribed to many channels I had not known about before.

After watching many of the VRs, I want to revisit my blog post and add to my initial comments, reflecting on some of the patterns I spotted while watching everybody’s videos.

Yes, this will be a response to community responses to the #OcculTea prompts.

There is Hope for Community, After All

A new generation of three modern witches was able to bring together and also coax out of hiding so many from the older generation of witches, pagans, and occultists. This was a truly beautiful week of hearing voices I hadn’t heard in a while and new voices that add to the diversity and richness of our community.

There was support and kindness in both the videos and the comments sections. This hashtag hacked the algorithm and allowed us to find each other, to discover smaller channels.

Sending Each Other Mixed Signals

If you take everybody’s thoughts in aggregate to see what can be synthesized from it all, then I leave with the impression that, collectively, we are sending each other mixed signals.

We say we want more UPG, but then we gripe about lack of scholarship and citations. We say there’s too much “misinformation” and poorly researched “historically inaccurate” content but then also say there’s “too much gatekeeping.”

We complain about consumerism but then acknowledge that experts and experienced practitioners deserve to get paid. Creatives also deserve to get paid.

We want to support the economy of indie creators, but then when influencers get free stuff from these indie creators (and the traditional publishers) to help give greater visibility to these artists, we complain about that. We don’t like it when influencers promote other people’s goods, but if they don’t promote other people’s goods, those goods won’t sell as well. And those are the goods of indie creators who we say we want to support.

We’re dissatisfied with the purported lack of substance in the free content, but we’re also dissatisfied with the paywall system of access to more substantive educational or even more authentically personal content.

We acknowledge that content creators should be fairly compensated for their work, but we don’t provide solutions for who should be paying those creators. We certainly don’t want to pay them, but also we don’t want them to do paid endorsements, so we don’t want corporations to pay them either.

We declare (and rightfully so) that a large social media following doesn’t make one an expert, but then when asked how we can discern grifting, we say go look at their social media following and check who is following who.

Most of the video responses noted the yearning for social bonds, interpersonal connections, and a desire for community as why they’re on social media but then it’s social media causing us to feel the imposter syndrome, FOMO, and worry that consuming witchy content is becoming a substitute for spiritual practice.

Big content creators say that staying too plugged in is poison, so you must unplug, but then small content creators who are here for social bonding don’t necessarily want to unplug, because being online is where they feel a sense of community.

And maybe it’s not mixed messaging exactly, but more a call for balance.

The “mixed signals” when you look at our opinions in the aggregate also means we’re a really, really diverse bunch. That means in our current global climate of tribalism, we’ve got to be extra conscientious. Just because we’re all really different doesn’t mean “there is no community.” But it does mean we need to have extra big hearts and learn to genuinely get along with someone who holds a polarizing opposite opinion from you. You think you can do it? 😉

On Authenticity… Again and Again…

I’ve also been reflecting on the recurring concern with other people’s authenticity, and content creators’ concern with whether we are appearing authentic.

I wonder if this yearning to figure out someone’s authenticity comes from wanting to see if we are able to form a para-social relationship with that content creator. Which then begs the question, is the focus on authenticity healthy, if it’s not actually about true authenticity but about how well someone performs authenticity?

And if an influencer performs authenticity convincingly to the point where you’ve formed a para-social relationship with them, is that “authenticity” even a good thing?

I wonder if our collective focus on authenticity (and by that I mean the convincing performance of authenticity) is just setting people up for disappointment, on all fronts.

Were You Watching, Too? What Did You Get Out of It All?

If you, too, watched many of the #Occultea VRs, and are now reflecting back on what you got out of it, what would you say was most memorable? What are your takeaway points? What did you synthesize from the many perspectives and commentaries?