Feeling silly for being a witch?

Ever feel guilty for playing with energy instead of checking off to-dos or scrubbing the kitchen?

As someone who spends a lot of time engaging with the subtle, I sometimes run into the old, familiar feelings of guilt and shame — as if devoting so much energy to my practice were somehow indulgent or irresponsible.

That saddens me, because this work is also one of the greatest sources of joy and richness in my life.

Study of a Witch by Luis Ricardo Falero, 1878, Spain

I recognize that this is the harmful conditioning bundle entering the chat.

Inside the bundle, the usual suspects:

• Patriarchy, which devalues feminine arts (along with the internalized misogyny that comes with it)

• Capitalism, which dismisses anything that cannot be commodified

• Organized religion, which often discredits spiritual practice (and personal power) outside institutional frameworks

• The remnants of an older era, when the Earth's frequency was denser, freedom and creativity were harder to access, and survival demanded relentless hard work. Today, we live in diverse virtual spaces, and it has become much easier to move energy, to create, – and to play.

Without falling into the trap of justifying my practice — which is not the aim of this article — I spent some time contemplating how it has strengthened the more yang-coded areas of my life — the parts that can be observed and quantified.

Of course, magic shapes our material lives in many ways — but here, I'm focusing only on the transferable skills, not on reality-shifting itself.

Perhaps you, too, have experienced profound growth in unexpected places through engaging the subtle realm, through nurturing a magical practice of your own, and through reclaiming your energetic agency.

If you want, you can have a look at some of the skills and capacities I noticed along the way — and see if there’s anything you recognize in yourself, something you can (and should) claim and celebrate as well.

Of course, we all practice differently. But many of us share a few common cornerstones: We work with subtle energies. We take responsibility for what meets us in life. We question the status quo. We believe in possibility and freedom.

And while these qualities might seem abstract or esoteric from the outside, the practices behind them sharpen profoundly practical life skills — skills that shape how we navigate everyday reality. Let’s explore a few of them.

1. Creative Systems Thinking

Creating a ritual, spell, or energetic choreography requires not just creativity, but also being rooted in a system. For many of us, the system comes first: we learn within a specific school of thought, and then gradually put our personal spin on it.

Many magical practices are, at their core, deeply practical. They require embodiment — and with embodiment comes adaptation. Nothing stays exactly as we learned it once we apply it to our own circumstances and way of being. True mastery comes not from perfect imitation, but from knowing when and how to adjust the structure to fit the moment.

Most people either cling rigidly to systems or rebel against them entirely. Learning to move creatively within structure is what actually creates innovation — in magic and in work.

Where we need this skill:

This ability translates directly into professional life. It makes us excellent employees, collaborators, and problem-solvers in almost any kind of work environment.

Being able to grasp external systems, understand their internal logic, and still ask: How does this relate to me and what I’m doing? How can I put this into practice? How can I take this system on a walk? — is a rare and valuable strength.

Systems thinking combined with creative embodiment allows us to move fluidly between structure and innovation — a skill many fields desperately need but few actually cultivate.

In fact, this capacity alone helped me secure several management positions, even without formal training or certifications. What mattered was my ability to quickly understand the system I was entering — and to move within it creatively and effectively.

2. Emotional resilience

If we want our magic to work — if we want to collaborate with life as conscious agents — we have to take a hard look at ourselves and how we move through the world sooner or later.

Resilience, to me, lives in the gray area: being aware of what could have been handled better, while still treating ourselves with compassion, understanding, and kindness.

Bending probabilities and spell-crafting ourselves onto timelines far from the default requires a high degree of resilience. Getting what we want is one thing; holding it, keeping it, living inside it — that's where the real work begins.

Often, this catapults us into new places, around new people, where we have to attune rapidly. We don’t fit in yet; we weren’t born into these realities — we energy-worked ourselves into them. This is ripe ground for shame, fear of mistakes, failure, and doubt.

Without resilience, it’s easy to contract, self-sabotage, or slide back into old patterns and timelines. But once we've crossed this threshold a few times, we learn how to stay the course. We build the emotional strength to hold what we called in.

Where we need this skill:

Literally everywhere — but especially in relationships of all kinds: friendships, family, romantic partnerships, and professional collaborations.

Being able to recognize, regulate, and integrate our emotions independently makes us better friends, family members, lovers, and colleagues. It lets us meet others from a place of sovereignty rather than need.

When we can hold ourselves emotionally, we’re less likely to unconsciously use other people to soothe our wounds, demand validation, or project unmet needs onto them.

Instead, relationships — both personal and professional — become spaces for genuine connection, mutual growth, and shared creativity, not survival strategies in disguise.

It’s the difference between sharing excitement with someone, versus needing constant reassurance that we belong.

3. Ambiguity Tolerance

Engaging with subtle forces — half-truths, shifting probabilities, possibilities that may never fully materialize yet already carry the seeds of reality — requires being able to hold many truths at once.

Reclaiming our power brings us face-to-face with real moral dilemmas:

– What counts as white, dark, or grey magic?

– Where should we direct energy, and where should we refrain?

– When we know how to create change, do we owe it only to ourselves — or to others as well?

Many of these questions don’t have clear answers. They are rich explorations precisely because multiple answers can be valid and true — depending on the time, the person, and the circumstances.

This same tolerance for ambiguity shows up when we confront issues like cultural appropriation.

Something that feels available and enticing may not actually be meant for us to claim, no matter how tempting its promises are. Knowing how to sit with that discomfort — without rushing to justify or deny — is part of ethical engagement with the unseen.

Where we need this skill:

I believe ambiguity tolerance makes us exceptionally good neutral listeners — something increasingly rare in a world mired in polarity and social media bubbles of sameness.

Tolerating ambiguity means assuming it exists in everyone’s life.

We become attuned to the complex interplay of forces that shape every situation long before it visibly materializes.

As a result, we are less likely to judge, less likely to rush into fixing mode, and less likely to pressure ourselves to say "the right thing."

We recognize that often, there is no singular "right" answer at all.

Listening deeply, without forcing resolution, allows us to move with life instead of against it — saving enormous amounts of energy, time, and emotional resources.

Portrait of Louise-Marguerite of Lorraine by an anonymous painter of the 17th century.

4. Owning Our Authority

Taking our desires seriously — and taking the task of connecting with the divine into our own hands — is always an act of rebellion.

There are powerful forces that have gaslit us into believing that wanting something is selfish, unspiritual, or a sign of being too attached to the material world.

But authentic desire is sacred.

Connecting with what we want, recognizing it as a movement of life force wanting to express through us, and choosing to act on it requires both courage and sovereignty.

It demands that we own our crown — that we maintain our connection to our path and our divinity, even when others try to run our system for us.

Where we need this skill:

Nowhere is this more vital than in navigating the increasingly intrusive spaces of modern life: social media, AI, and the commodification of personal identity.

We often underestimate how profoundly these forces shape what we think, what we value, and how we perceive ourselves and the world.

Staying connected to our own authority is what keeps us from losing years — or even decades — chasing other people's dreams, solving other people's problems, and disconnecting from our own innate intelligence.

The Collective Cost of Conditioning

When we internalize harmful systems — patriarchy, capitalism, religious dogma — it’s not just our personal joy that gets dimmed. There’s a collective cost.

Every time we apologize for our magic, we reinforce the lie that only measurable, commodifiable labor has worth.

Yet history’s greatest shifts — in art, activism, and science — often began as 'useless' play in the subtle realms, in spaces where imagination was still free.

Our individual practices ripple outward.

When we reclaim the right to engage with the unseen, to nourish what cannot be monetized or immediately explained, we help reclaim a birthright for others as well: the right to imagine, to create, to connect to something deeper than survival or productivity.

Tending to the subtle isn't self-indulgence. It's a radical act of remembering what makes life possible at all.