This commentary sums up my responsive thoughts to a certain heated, well, highly-engaged – we’ll call it – provocative discussion that was going on in my social network. The assertion presented was: Magick is not a replacement for therapy and definitely not a form of trauma therapy. By extension, anyone making such claims is unethical, misleading, and hurting vulnerable populations.

Just for the full context so you can catch me if I’m off, the quote was:

“Guys, Magick IS NOT a replacement for therapy and it’s DEFINITELY NOT a form of trauma therapy. Please do not listen to anyone who tells you differently. Such a claim is unethical, misleading; and even worse, hurtful to vulnerable people who seek healing. I am a licensed therapist with 20 years of mental health experience and an occultist. I hope this means something. . . . Jessica says magicians posing as ‘magick healers’ are no different than evangelical faith healers who prey on the vulnerable. She say the key is EMDR, not LBRP.”

I want to start by saying there is nothing there that I disagree with. In principle, the author of this original post is right. And also, this is the right messaging.

“Magick,” beyond Aleister Crowley’s definition of “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will,” is use of ceremonial rituals, sigils, visualization meditations, meditations in general maybe, mantra work maybe and so by extension, affirmations (?), herbalism to an extent, and various other “woo-woo” practices like candle magic, spell jars, spellwork, trying to time certain forms of workings to seasons, lunar phases, or planetary movements, and/or using divination as a form of diagnostics tool.

So what do I really think? Can such modalities that we categorize under “magick” replace trauma therapy administered by a licensed, qualified healthcare provider?

I recognize that applicable laws and regulations oblige me to say “no,” but everything in my heart, soul, and the guts of who I am down to the genetic, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional core says “yes, of course, but obviously, with critical caveats.”

The critical caveat is – in the exact same way that quality and efficacy of healthcare providers vary dramatically, the quality and efficacy of shamans, mystics, mediums, diviners, and spirit workers vary just as dramatically. When they’re good, they save lives, change lives for the better. When they’re bad, there’s a special place in hell for them.

As a general “best practice” rule, I agree with disqualifying “magick” as a form of legitimate therapy, because the chances of you encountering a scam artist if you pursue “magick” and the lack of effective legal recourse you’ll have is way, way higher than the chances of encountering a bad apple licensed therapist.

If things go south with a scammy or even just incompetent spiritual practitioner, you’re shit out of luck. If things go south with a bad licensed therapist, you can go after their license, take them to court, there’s recoverable money via a malpractice claim because to practice they need to have insurance, so there are ways to mend the damage, at least financially. With a scam mystic, we’re talking irreparable harm. And another hard truth is if you get swindled by a healthcare provider, you are treated as a victim; if you get swindled by an Etsy or TikTok witch, people look at you like you’ve got egg on your face.

Statistically, and in terms of risk mitigation, you’re just better off seeing a licensed therapist. Full stop.

And yet I’ve often said, admittedly half in jest, that shamanism, spirit mediumship, divination, talismans, ceremonial magical rituals, and spell-crafting are forms of behavioral health in certain communities, especially marginalized communities today that otherwise do not have access to covered benefits, such as counseling, crisis intervention, or psychosocial rehabilitation.

What falls under behavioral health? Forms of mental health and substance use disorder treatment, psychological and emotional well-being interventions, and yes, trauma therapy. Clinicians use all methods available to them, be that forms of counseling, recommending mindfulness practices to their patients, or prescribing pharmaceuticals, to help with both emotional and nervous system regulation.

That scope is absolutely covered by tried and true historically-documented enduring forms of, yes, magick. Though I’m not a big fan of using the term “magick” with that “k” so let’s just say indigenous folk healing modalities and knowledge systems. Mysticism. Holistic medicine. I dunno, words and labels are hard.

So yes, whether clinicians and modern, licensed healthcare providers like it or not, a truly expert herbalist, a master of Traditional Chinese Medicine, someone knowledgeable in mindfulness practices (that are heavily ritualistic, no less) is going to be just as competent, and in many cases more competent, than the clinician. And these folk traditional practices are being used as replacements for trauma therapy, especially by the vulnerable populations who are uninsured and wouldn’t have access to a licensed therapist anyway.

I don’t believe that outright condemning that reality is a productive approach. It’s probably gratifying to a licensed healthcare provider to say their clinically-proven (and not always!!) methods are superior to indigenous folk methods, but it’s not helpful to the actual patients that these providers are pledged to care for.

I can cite countless firsthand observations of how these indigenous folk practices akin to behavioral health therapy were effective, and in many cases, more effective than the clinicians who attempted to treat these patients. Clinical research now confirms that stress and trauma can cause fundamental changes to your nervous system function, which then worsens the behavioral health issues that come out of stress and trauma. Well this is something TCM has known since time immemorial, and acupuncture that treats the nervous system is often used to help regulate stress or trauma through restoring regulation of the nervous system.

Again, words of caution against any extreme positioning. When some profit-driven egomaniacal and reckless shaman is bad, they’re baaad. They do the kind of harm that, if you’re a believer, injures at the soul level. And in the systems of belief I grew up with, that kind of harm is so gnarly that another practitioner isn’t going to be able to undo that without sustaining some hits to themselves, catching stray bullets. And so there aren’t going to be that many credible practitioners who will want to go within fifty yards of that situation.

But the claim that magick (or folk magical practices) is something that is categorically unethical, and any form of faith-healing is a scam is a bit short-sighted, and also, can be perceived as not culturally sensitive. Or socioeconomically sensitive, for those who only have modalities of folk magical practices availed to them for healthcare.

For example, one thing I have always appreciated is how Eastern mystics approach autism. For starters, you don’t “treat” the person with autism, because there’s nothing to “treat” there. You treat the loved ones who came to you in the first place who think there is a problem. Because the spiritual perspective of someone who we today diagnose as having autism or on the spectrum is they’re someone more attuned to an other-worldly realm than our mundane world. If anything, they’re here to teach and guide us. We’re the ones with the problem that they are here to help fix. And goodness, you tell me how many centuries it took Western clinicians to finally arrive at a similar enlightened understanding.

Or using the vocabulary of soul fragmentation and soul retrieval to talk about PTSD, clinical depression, or substance use disorder. The more I learn about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), the more I’m like, okay, that’s just another modality of “soul retrieval.” Or the concept of supplementing with pharmacotherapy — used for millennia in TCM.

There are forms of qi gong practices that mystics will often teach those dealing with trauma, which remind me a whole lot of principles found in EMDR therapy. A mystic voicing over and narrating a visualization practice for the affected individual, a step by step journey, walking that person through a form of processing that becomes a metaphor for the traumatic memories, reminds me a lot of the currently prevailing clinical approaches to trauma therapy.

So I guess what I’m saying here is yes, you should tow the party line and clearly declare, “magic and mysticism are not replacements for therapy” and maybe backpedal just a bit to add, “but it can be a highly effective supplement to clinically-proven modalities of trauma therapy from a licensed professional.” And then insert your legal disclaimer: “This is for entertainment (or educational) purposes only…this is not a substitute for medical or mental health advice … nothing herein should be construed as diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease or medical condition…please consult a licensed healthcare provider…”

And then off the record? …

Honestly, I’m not convinced that current institutionalized clinical frameworks have any idea what people — especially, especially the ones who fall through the cracks of a broken system — actually need to survive, or even to heal.