Hi Reader,
You’ve probably heard the phrase “doing shadow work.”
But what is the shadow, anyway, and why does it matter for magic?
The idea of the shadow is ancient. Across spiritual traditions, from Egypt to Tibet to the Americas, initiates were taught that wholeness required more than prayer, sacrifice, or devotion. You had to face the parts of yourself you wanted to ignore. The rage, shame, fear, doubt.
Not to get rid of them.
But to integrate them. To reclaim the power you exiled.
It’s all over mythology, too:
The goddess who descends into the underworld.
The hero who confronts the monster.
The medicine person who walks into darkness to find the cure.
Then, in the early 20th century, Carl Jung gave this ancient truth a new name, “the shadow.” He described it as all the parts of yourself that got pushed underground because they weren’t acceptable to your family, culture, or society. (The whole “witches have known since forever and it became a thing now that a white dude stole it” is a story for another time, but it has to be named here).
Anyway, some folks think that shadow work means looking at your “negative traits” and writing about them in a journal under the moon. Which, sure, can be part of it. But that’s not the whole story.
That’s the wellness-industrial-complex version.
The watered-down, aesthetic, safe one.
Your shadow is everything you’ve pushed away, buried, or labeled “too much.” It’s the anger you weren’t allowed to show. The competitiveness that got called unladylike. The sexuality you learned to shrink. The grief that no one made space for, so it hardened into silence.
But working with the shadow is often a rite of passage, because you have to descend before you can rise. You have to meet the monster inside you, name it, and understand it, so you don’t spend your life trying to fight it from the outside.
That’s why it’s so essential to magic.
You can’t cast a powerful spell if half of you is in hiding.
You can’t manifest your desires if your unconscious is full of stories about how you’re not allowed to want things.
You can’t become whole using only the parts of you that look good on Instagram.
You can’t shape the world if you’re at war with your own inner world.
You can’t cast spells with power if you’re afraid of your own depth.
You can’t liberate your life without liberating all of you.
So if you want to actually work magic, real magic, the kind that changes your life from the inside out?
You have to get to know your shadow.
So how do you do this?
Let me give you 3 ways to start accessing your shadow right now—not in some abstract, mystical sense, but in real life:
1. Pay attention to what pisses you off.
That influencer who makes your skin crawl? That friend you secretly judge? Your reaction says more about you than them. Ask yourself: What part of me does this bring up that I don’t want to see?
2. Notice what you overcorrect.
Are you constantly performing “nice” or “helpful” or “humble”? That’s often a clue. Your shadow might be holding the voice that says no. The truth-teller. The part that wants what it wants, not what it “should”.
3. Watch who you become when no one’s watching.
Not in a performative way, in a real, honest way. What do you fantasize about? What would you say if you weren’t afraid of being “bad”? That’s not your flaw. That’s your doorway.
Here’s what I want you to know:
Your shadow isn’t here to shame you.
It’s here to restore you.
To bring back the pieces of you that got left behind in order to survive.
When you make space for those parts—not to act them out, but to understand and integrate them—you don’t just feel more whole. You become more powerful. Clearer. More magnetic. More honest. And yes, more magical.
That’s the work I do.
Not love-and-light bypassing.
But real magic—the kind that liberates your whole self.
And it starts in the dark.
Let’s go there together.
Because you don’t need more light.
You need your whole self.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
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I don’t believe in magic, but I know that it works!
Magic is not a belief system, it’s a practice that works. Don’t believe me? Come try it out. If it doesn’t work, you lose nothing. But if it does… your dream life is about to begin!
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“El poder está en la acción.”
— Maritza Schafer