Don’t forget– if it helps, turn the closed captioning on! =)

When I say “open tradition,” I mean a culture-specific practice of a magical system and set of doctrinal beliefs integrated into that practice that anyone at all can work with for themselves, that it’s free and open to the public.

When I say “closed tradition,” I mean a culture-specific practice of a magical system and set of doctrinal beliefs integrated into that practice that can only be honorably accessed if certain conditions are met, such as initiation, heredity, clan or ethnic group membership, or a formally established master-student bond.

Esoteric Taoist practices, broadly speaking, are openly accessible to anyone and all, but not anyone and not everyone who seeks it will find alignment with this Path. It’s for anyone, but it’s not for everyone.

But when we’re having this conversation about esoteric Taoist traditions here in the West, then to be clear, the conversation is probably more about cultural appropriation, spiritual gatekeeping, and how to engage respectfully with living traditions.

Taoism is, by the nature of the philosophy, even occult philosophy, is syncretic. It absorbs indigenous shamanic traditions, other established religious traditions, and in terms of the values that are the compass for how to navigate the syncretism, it’s nature. It’s the study and understanding of qi in nature.

It’s about nature, but humans are part of nature, and humans have minds that formulate ideas that become aggregated into establishments, you can’t ignore the establishments. So in reality, a human – the practitioner – will study how the many establishments engage with the qi in nature and then work with what works, for them. Since that’s Taoist mysticism in a nutshell, it’s an open practice.

Lineaged traditions, on the other hand, are unequivocally closed. Some are initiatory. Some are hereditary. Some are a combination of both. The premise is a group of people have cultivated an elite access to potent qi in nature through a highly-specialized methodology, and they aren’t about to share that methodology with just anyone. So there are very limited ways to access that specific methodology. Some form of ritualized transmission must take place to receive access.

But what about non-lineaged individuals crafting, say, Fu talismans, performing Taoist rituals, be that ones they’ve made up themselves or followed step by step from a canonical grimoire, or working with Taoist ritual tools? To be fair, that’s where it gets a bit more complicated, and political.

You’re going to encounter folks who say no, unless you’re lineaged, you cannot. That or it’s more of a warning that if you’re just chaotically doing it on your own, it’s way too easy and too high a risk of going off the rails and getting yourself into spiritual hot water. There’s a kernel of truth there, in my opinion, which is why I believe strongly in being religious and cultivating a strong moral compass and code of ethics first before dabbling with the occult. If there isn’t going to be a teacher there to rap your hands with a stick when you’ve been bad, then you’ve got to be disciplined enough to self-monitor.

Whereas I’ve always made my personal opinion clear. It’s open access with an asterisk. It won’t be me (and I don’t believe it should be another human) who puts up walls or locks the gate to keep you out. It’s gonna be the gods. It’s The Craft itself. The Esoteric Tao lets in who it lets in.

As for cultural appropriation, I’ve always taken the view that, you’ll know it when you see it. It’s hard to come up with a one-definition-applies-to-all-case-analyses metric for determining what’s okay and what’s not okay. Not to mention each person’s appetite for something possibly appropriative is gonna vary. Plus, overly-worrying about whether you yourself are culturally appropriating is more demonstrative of caring too much about yourself than actually caring about the cultural tradition you’re working with. If truly your heart is with the culture, you’ll naturally focus on its people, its communities, with an organic passion to learn as much as you can. I don’t have to tell you to be reverent; you just will. And if somebody has to remind you to be reverent, then buddy, I think you’re already in the wrong.

My third book, I Ching, The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes, published by North Atlantic Books, is forthcoming mid-2023. It’s my translation and annotations of the Oracle with cultural and historical references that honor the shamanic origins of the I Ching.

What it really is, though, is a magical grimoire. I began with an aspiration to write a grimoire on Taoist mysticism and magical practices, and then decided to do so through the framework of the I Ching. This is going to be a practical hands-on primer on East Asian modalities of witchcraft and folk magic. A deep-dive learning experience into the history and mythological references found in the Book of Changes is the bonus.

Leading up to the release of I Ching, The Oracle will be this series of videos where I lay the foundation for working with this third book. If this is of interest to you, stay tuned! ❤