Cross-posted on my Substack.

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.

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. 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.

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 ow terms. My mission is to dismantle these unspoken class divides in spirituality (karmic class divides, though yes, oftentimes it’s socioeconomic, too).

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?

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.

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.

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. I am here for the ones who don’t need it.

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.

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’m not here telling anyone that they don’t need a teacher or that, if you’re being taught within a closed tradition that my books like Tao of Craft and I Ching, The Oracle are for you. No, they’re not for you. And frankly, what are you even doing here? Go listen to your teacher and stay in that lane.

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.