#asian magic

Feb. 20, 2025

TLDR; Casted a siphoning spell on some people, reaping the benefits 🪭

In Asian spiritual practices, a single term can have many definitions and implications, with its exact meaning changing within different contexts. This isn’t because our ancestors sought to confuse us- instead it’s meant to reflect the interdependence and interrelations between many aspects of our lives. Each aspect of our lives is connected, and the power of connection is very, very important to…

Hello :) Hope you're having a good one too.

I can't remember in which post I talked about it, but it seems I did not explain very well! Let's give it another try.

The short answer is yes, you can do magic without other spirits. Because you have a spirit. And though you are oriented to the physical plane, which gives you an advantage on the physical and a disadvantage on the spiritual plane, you can still learn to do everything that spirits can do.

In other words, everyone does have their own capacity for doing magic, and that is tied to how developed a person's subtle body is. In Taoism they talk about qì, jīng, shén and meridians; in Buddhism they talk about the movement of prana through the chakras, or the channels, winds and drops. I'm just speaking broadly, because there are various systems that focus on different numbers of energy centres and channels, and I don't know the half of it tbh. But these are the things that give rise to what you know as clair senses.

The longer answer:

In East Asian traditions, performing magic requires mainly three things:

1) a well-developed subtle body, whether this is for channeling energy or for being possessed by gods in trance

2) a good relationship with the powers you favour, whether that be gods, buddhas or spirits

3) instruction and training by a human teacher, from an established tradition in or outside of your family

You can do magic through any one of these things, but it is not as effective/powerful and not considered 'professional'. If you haven't acquired spiritual authority and training from being part of a lineage, the gods and spirits may ignore your attempts to call on their power, or it simply wouldn't work because you have not received the blessing that gives you the ability to do so.

Without initiation, you would be doing what is considered laypeople's folk magic and cultivation. This has a more devotional approach, is done for general well-being, and does not involve commanding spirits or creating magical amulets and talismans.

There's a lot you can do even as a layperson that can have a real impact on your quality of life. Venerating one's gods and ancestors, attending seasonal festivals, practicing virtue, meditation and breath work. There are also folk magic methods that rely on the virtues of plants, minerals, etc, that are informed by traditional medicine and fēnɡshuǐ.

For lay Mahayana Buddhists there are plenty of sacred mantras and scriptures. The 6 syllable mantra, Golden Light Sutra, Heart Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Great Compassion Dharani, Kṣitigarbha Dharani, Ten Small Mantras, White Robe Guan Yin Mantra, etc... These are popular ones.

Lay Daoists can recite Bǎogào (寶誥) for various deities, as well as the Eight Great Incantations (八大神咒). There are plenty of spells and invocations for protection and purification, which I will not list here. And of course there's studying the Dàodéjīng.

To the Western view, these are all very magical things even for a layperson, and indeed they are. But to us, it is not a separation of magic vs mundane (because there is no separation) rather it's professional magic vs lay magic. This is the defining aspect of being a magician or shaman-priest in East Asia; it's a profession and a societal role like doctor, scientist, musician, writer.

Not sure about other languages, but magic in Chinese is 法, literally 'method'. A Daoist magician is called a 方士, 'method master' – they would be expected (in antiquity, at least) to study not just occult methods but also chemistry, medicine, science, politics, astrology and astronomy.

So this is really the main point of my answer. It's not gods-power vs personal-power, because the reality of both these things is included in our spiritual philosophy. I don't believe there are any traditions of Asian magic that do not involve the concept of spirits both within and without us 😅 this idea of secular magic doesn't really exist outside of the West, as far as I know.

☽ Asian magic ✧

Hello hello! So the majority of my Chinese craft comes from my mom/family, in the form of what Westerners call spirit work, divination, and herbalism, if only because that’s what my family/cultural region mostly does or knows about (Han Chinese from the Southeast/city). The best resource for Chinese and East Asian magic is to find your nearest Chinese ancestor, ideally one who’s grown up on the Mainland, in Hong Kong, or Taiwan, and grill them over tea and biscuits about everything, everything, everything they know. If you don’t have a handy grandma or parent, here’s some ideas for getting started (keep in mind this is very broad and only skimming the surface on where to start):

- Divination: We’re biiiig on divination. If you’re into that, the easiest Chinese method accessible in the Western world is to learn the I Ching. It was originally meant to be read in the palace to determine broad scale subjects, so you may be getting some generalized ancestral answers. There are also a TON of regional divination methods - I can’t remember what it’s called in English, but in my grandma’s town there was a thing where an old lady made a canary pick out your fortune on a bamboo stick, which was the widely accepted “pop” fortune method out in the nearby-Shanghai area. Your specific area of origin will have a fortune-telling method specific to it, as well.

- The Elements: Unlike in Western magic, we’ve got five of them. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Metal. Get to know these guys because the whole fundamentals change when you consider the components on a five-point shift.

- Ghosts Ghosts Ghosts: You probably know by now that Chinese magic is hugely dominated by ancestor and spirit work, pretty much the “fundamentals” of Chinese spirituality. This is probably why I recommend finding your nearest grandmother. You probably have a place where your ancestors lay, and it’s culturally important to bring them the right presents and offerings. Generally you’ll want to figure out what your family’s ancestor sitch is, where they are, and make nice with them. Your family probably also has a religious or semi-religious tradition in place for honoring your ancestors, but if not (or for my Asian Americans out there): Rule of thumb, you gotta burn it so it gets up to Heaven (Tian). The releasing of the matter into the air as smoke and ash releases it into the ancestor’s plane, much like the fundamentals of many Western and Eastern magical theory. Ancestors like receiving gifts they liked in life, like a special pastry or cigarettes. Paper money (folded money facsimiles) is also burned, because, and I’ve never figured this one out, ancestors need money in Heaven to spend. If you’ve never been to pay respect to your ancestors, spend a day finding burnables of things they liked fold some facsimiles or money, and buy or use the incense sticks (which are joss sticks) provided at the crematory/graveyard (not sure what the word is here, the place with all the urns and your ancestors in shelves and stuff outdoors. Chinese Outdoor Cremation Graveyard? Ahem.) Once you’ve made nice with incense and offerings, you’ll be doing the most important work in Chinese spirituality, and have your whole line of ancestors having your back. You may also like to have an ancestor shelf in your house if you can’t access their resting place. 

- Energy Work: Both tai chi and kung fu utilize the same methods to find, center, and move your chi, which Westerners refer to as energy work. Find some old ladies practicing Tai Chi in a park, probably near Chinatown, or see if your local gym or YMCA has classes. It’s a great way to keep connected with your energy and learn to move it as if it’s second nature, and I consider this one of the fundamentals. Most folks growing up in China don’t even realize this is energy work, as it’s so common (think “yoga in the park”).

- Superstitions: I say “superstitions” like I mean “unreasonable facts”. Ghosts can’t walk in a straight line. Dragons and monsters hate noise and the color red. Hang your Fook sign upside down This is kind of a nebulous category, but you’ll find many Chinese cultural beliefs fall neatly into your correspondences and rulesets.

- Festivals: All Chinese festivals use the Lunar calendar. Get in the swing of treating Chinese New Year like the rebirth of your year, and participate in things like the New Year and the Midsummer Festival. Do all the prerequisite traditions per holiday like eat mooncakes, light firecrackers, set out a candy box, give out lai see, etc etc. This’ll help you get attuned to the Lunar year cycle, which, you’ll handily find, is the basis for almost every magical calendar in the East and West.

- Herbalism: TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, is pretty much herb healing. It’s some weird intense shit though, and works best in conjunction (def not in place of) Western medicine. If you can, find a TCM practitioner in your town and ask for a check-up. They’ll give you a full body scan and recommend which herbs and traditional materials work best with your personal physiology, and you’ll also learn some basics about how to fend off a cold, make a soothing poultice, etc. You might have to dig a little hard to find one of these guys if you’re outside Asia. If you’re not ready to have an old due tell you to smear root paste on your spine, start with something lighter: Tea is an age old tradition, and while not considered strictly magic, there’s a special set of ceremonies and correspondences that teach basic elements of respect and ritual that you can look up.

- Astrology: If you were born in Asia and your parents were Hella Chinese ™, chances are, you got a birth chart done by an astrologer. My mom’s essentially the WASP of Chinese Moms and she still got my date of birth checked out by an astrologer. See if you can find any clues about your lineage by asking your parents if they picked your date of birth for a special reason.

- Court Magicians: There’s a WEALTH of info here, even though a lot of it was destroyed or moved during colonialism, WWII, and the Cultural Revolution. Court Magicians were in the employ of the emperor for a whooooole lotta dynasties, and you’re gonna have to learn Mandarin and read a scroll top-down-right-to-left, but a lot of it is recorded by well-meaning British Empire scavengers who have no idea what it is they have on their hands. Look at old calligraphy, and examine the dynasties to get a handle on the evolution of what was considered the basics. Some of the dynasties overlap with trade in the Middle East and Europe, and this is when the juiciest stuff gets written.

Apologies if this is all stuff you’ve heard before! I don’t have any reading materials, unfortunately, as all this is from growing up in Hong Kong before moving to Singapore & my mom/grandma/heritage. I’m super happy to answer any more questions, or talk more about it, or offer more resources - I just don’t wanna step on any toes if you’ve got a parent or auntie waiting in the wings to tell you all about Chinese culture! If not, hit me up anytime, and I’ll blast you with facts!

Indeed, Guanyin's story is one I find especially poetic. Guanyin / Avalokitesvara is known as the Lord of the World. They have many emanations (forms of the deity with different functional roles) and they seem to be involved in just about everything.

Actually, if you get into Vajrayana (the esoteric, initiatory branch of Buddhism) you encounter a distinctly hilarious problem of wanting to do spiritual networking and get to know new gods, only to find out many of them are just Guanyin in a different guise.

Tara is not considered to be one of Guanyin’s emanations (at least in my tradition). Tara is a bodhisattva in the story where she was born as a princess in another universe, who famously vowed to always be reborn as a feminine being to spite the idea that femininity is somehow a barrier to enlightenment. However in Vajrayana, Tara is considered to be a Buddha, because she fulfilled her vows as a bodhisattva.

As I was saying, Guanyin’s presence is ubiquitous in the Asian sphere. Even Taoist deities sometimes trace their origin story back to Guanyin, Sun Wukong being the most famous example.

One of my favourite Taoist folk goddesses, Lady Línshuǐ 臨水夫人 was initially born as a human named Chén Jìnggū 陈靖姑. She inherited spiritual gifts from birth because her mother accidentally consumed the blood of Guanyin.