For the first question: YES

This sounds like a lazy answer, but constant practice is legitimately the best way to improve.

Your spiritual senses are directed by energetic channels between nonphysical organs, your energy centers, in your energy body. These basic channels will exist whether you participate in active communication or not, similar to how everyone has muscles no matter how often you use them. BUT. They’re also like muscles in that you can’t win a swimming race without having ever built up the corresponding muscles, no matter how flawless your technique is.

You need consistent practice to build up these skills. Practicing for five minutes a day is far better than three hours straight once a month. Think of yourself like an athlete. You want to build up your muscles to compete in x sport, so you need consistent work-outs to develop your muscles and keep them from deteriorating. You need the correct nutrition - psi vamps will need energy intake, for example. Lots of shit negatively impacting your energy system, whether it’s stress or an influx of an energy type you cannot mesh with, will affect your spirit senses. You need periods of rest to give your channels time to develop.

For actual practice methods, there’s many things to do. Do you have something particular in mind? Quick daily practices, something focusing on your tactile sense, etc? Practicing to learn spirit communication is going to be very similar to learning basic energy work. Learning the energy work is actually the most helpful thing to do beyond consistent practice. Even if your spirit senses aren’t up to par, someone with strong energy work in general will have a better time than someone who has a foundation in spirit communication but not in energy work.

Also, since you mentioned not being able to see/hear/feel things: These senses most likely will not be physical. It’s not often clarified, but the majority of spirit senses happen in the mind’s eye, not physically, like a daydream. This is why heavy discernment is important. But it’s possible that you’re already sensing things and just have different expectations than what is actually occurring. Even then there are different levels of how strong you might experience your senses, and you might not even directly experience them - instead of seeing a spirit, even in your mind’s eye, you might just have passive awareness “oh I’m seeing something that looks like a dragon” without actually seeing it in your mind’s eye. Sensing things indirectly can be a bit of an annoyance, but it’s better than nothing if it happens. 

The second question is also a yes. There’s many reasons for locations to attract spirit activity; liminal spaces, high energy concentration, a food source, and the makeup of the energy grid in that spot are common reasons. Certain spirits will want certain environments, too. City spirits will want to live in urban areas, not a forest. Spirits with high fire energy will be more likely to hang around the local restaurant district than a pond.

This question has been popping up a lot recently. Energy systems are complex and you’ll have a variety of energy types in it. You’ll have primary energies which are found in large quantities and easy to identify, then other energies which are in smaller amounts and less likely to be observed through casual readings. For me, my primary makeup is of eldritch and nonreality energies; they run through the entirety of my system and are its defining factors, shaping every energetic interaction and even psychological areas. An example of an energy in myself that I wouldn’t consider primary is death energy, as it’s restricted to specific channels and centers.

One of the simplest ways of narrowing down your energy types is your interests. If you’re a cosmic witch, obsessed with space since forever, have that as a focal point of your interests? Congrats, you might have cosmic energy somewhere in you. This isn’t foolproof, you’ll definitely want to actually examine yourself to see if you have this sort of energy, but it’s a good starting point. This stuff does reflect upon your psychology. And even if you weren’t born with x energy, your interests can lead to passive attunements.

Examine your pre-existing energy work. When you’re doing anything, even just making basic energy balls, try to identify what type of energy you’re utilizing when it comes from yourself. Dissect the energetic residue you leave behind in locations and on objects. Start experimenting with looking into your own energy system. Examining your own energy is more difficult than people expect it to be, so don’t be discouraged if you have trouble trying to figure it out from this alone.

If you have astral and/or spirit work going on, look at the patterns. What type of places do you typically end up in the astral? Is your appearance telling, do you naturally use certain types of energy there? What spirits are you drawn to / do you attract? Do you have knowledge of past lives, and the energy they had?

I’m…. gonna wave my pattern dick….. but patterns are everything. You’ll recognize the patterns belonging to your energy once you start figuring it out, and simply identifying patterns in your interests and magic work can lead you to your energy alignment. A lot of people have certain aesthetics related to their energy without even realizing it, and cultivating that can help you to connect with your energy.

For the Celtic thing: Paradigms have unique energies to them, and you can become attuned to them through working with said paradigm. But energy isn’t always a factor in what pantheon you’re drawn to, there are plenty of other woo and mundane reasons to be drawn to whatever. So I wouldn’t put too much stock into it unless it’s a big factor for you.

I recently connected with the closest thing I have to a past life - the soul traces of the guy who belonged in this body that I ate when I came in. He follows the patterns of every other mess of a facet in my soul business, with energy and themes, but boy I was not prepared for how intense this would be. I went through a recent energetic overhaul in my system, some of my centers being literally replaced because stupid nonreality soul stuff “awakening” into even more of a defining factor, and the energetic changes caused by connecting with the past life buddy has clicked everything together. 

The first time I spoke to the aspect of myself which corresponded to his soul I swallowed, I spent most of the morning in an absolute shitzone. Overbearing emotions and anxiety coming from him (hint: they were not good emotions). Dumb memories I had to go through. Past life regression shit. I’m still going through periods of regressing into him. Mental shifts, I guess? It’s all weird and very uncomfortable.

He had issues regarding intense loneliness, and I am definitely feeling that. Needing the spirit boyfriend around me for large portions of the day so I have familiar energy. I have to keep a Very Specific Aesthetic around myself atm or I’ll gradually flip my shit. Pretty sure I’m going through a shift of mannerisms even? And not sure if it’s temporary or not. 

Also dreaming ab the fuck all the time lol. The connection affected my mindscape hard, and I let loose a mental facet that I thought was my own shadow side, but it looks more to be his shadow side that’s in me now since I’m the dumbass who ate him. Sort of similar to a shadow, anyway. Close enough to refer to it as one.

[When I speak of conjuring here, I’m using it as an umbrella term to describe any act of pairing a spirit with a physical person. It doesn’t matter what your method is, if it is a prebound spirit, how often you do it, or the price you charge.]

So, offering these services has recently become a bit…. trendy.

Personally I find this disconcerting. We like to stress that taking home a spirit can be a lifelong responsibility, so being the shop should be even more of a responsibility. It isn’t something to take lightly, once you offer the service you’ve taken on a huge responsibility towards your customer. The points in this post are a few, not all, of the things you should keep in mind if you wish to start conjuring for others.

Other posts on the subject, please give these a read! x / x

[These are my own standards. Take them as you will. If you don’t care if a shop meets certain standards in this post then that’s your opinion, although I recommend having high standards for the shops you work with. If you don’t think something in here should apply to you, actually meditate and do some shadow work on why this is, laziness and impatience is not a good reason to ignore something.]

Don’t do it on a whim.

Seriously. Don’t conjure on a whim. This isn’t something to start up because you’re bored one night. There are a lot of things you have to consider when you do this, and it’s going to take more than a couple weeks to make sure you’re not making a hasty decision. Honestly, I’d put the minimum decision period at…. Six months. Does this seem long? Good. It gives you half a year to see if you’ll back out and any other thoughts which arise. If you’re too impatient to wait that long then sorry to say but you’re making a rash decision.

Know why you are offering your services.

Seriously…. Why do you want to do this? I’m not saying to think about it for a day. I’m saying to do serous shadow work to get an honest answer about why you are doing this. Is it the money? The ego boost? To look cool? A white knight mentality towards spirits? None of these are good reasons. Make sure the reason you’re doing this is something you can truthfully tell your customers.

Practice frequently

That six month decision period? You should already know how to perform your services by then and should spend that six months practicing consistently. Daily, if possible. Your consistency here will show you how you will fare when you must do it on a consistent basis for customers. It’ll also show you how you’ll handle things when you hit a fallow period or block in your life. If you can’t keep up with the consistency now then you won’t later either, and likely you’re not ready.

Don’t learn to conjure just to open a shop

This ties in with knowing why you’re offering the service. If your motivation for learning the skill (or whatever other method you use; remember that it is an umbrella term in this post) is purely to open a shop later on, reconsider things. If conjuring isn’t something you honestly love to do now, you’ll hate it even more later down the road and shouldn’t be doing it for others. Have reasons for yourself, not for others.

Know your laws

Don’t open shop without knowing the legalities. Know both the legalities of offering metaphysical services/products and of selling in general. These include both your state and federal laws (if in the US, otherwise you’ll have to figure out on your own which laws apply to you), as well as the laws which apply to your individual customers’ locations. You need to read through the laws yourself, not just google the answers, otherwise you won’t get the complete picture. Also keep in mind that it isn’t any other shop’s responsibility to tell you what the laws say. You need to figure it out on your own. And even if your services are free, there are still legal issues pertaining to you within the US. Read up because the law isn’t going to be on your side.

You need to be a legal adult

There’s a very good reason reputable shops don’t sell to people who aren’t legal adults. It’s called legality. But your services are free? Well consider that when witches, pagans, etc refuse to teach minors, this is also for very good legal reasons. If you aren’t old enough to buy from a reputable shop then you aren’t old enough to offer your service. Anyone can practice spirit work but you need to be an adult to offer services. That’s just the way it works. If you can’t bear to practice spirit work without opening a shop then you need to reconsider why you are opening a shop, because that sure sets off some red flags. Teenagers don’t have a good grasp on long term consequences.

Another part of this is maturity. Not only is the estimate for the point of full brain maturity past your teenage years, but a teenager simply doesn’t have the life experience an adult has. If you’re still in high school, regardless of whether or not you’ve already turned 18, you do not have the life experiences that give you heaping loads of personal qualities and maturity. When high school ends life starts throwing at you a ballsack of responsibilities and worries: financials, living situations, college, jobs, your future in general. Do some teenagers have to deal with these things? Sure, but there’s no way of knowing if you legitimately have the maturity from handling these things or if you just think you do. High school environment does not give you the same maturity an adult environment will.

Look, go anywhere in public and you can immediately differentiate the group of high schoolers from young college kids. There’s a certain bit of immaturity in high schoolers and teenagers that doesn’t leave until you’ve graduated. If you want to argue that you’re not like those other teenagers then that’s a bit of a red flag towards the opposite. There’s a trend with teenagers to think you know the world when you really don’t. You’ll have a different perspective on your high school years later on.

Anyone can do spirit work. But a shop’s services, and by extension running a shop, is not an entitlement and can indeed be limited by factors like legal age.

Know the community

I’m not talking about tumblr. I’m talking about the wider community. Whether or not you agree with other sides, you need to be familiar with them to be well-rounded. Furthermore, your customers will not all be coming from the exact perspective as yourself, so you need to understand your customers who have learned from different places.

Conjure for more than your friends

Your customers will not be limited to your friend group. Conjuring for your friends is easy because you’re familiar, and likely compatible, with their energy. You know their personalities for when finding them spirits. This applies to doing bindings, too. You absolutely need to have a large portion of your pre-shop practice to be for people (preferably strangers who will give honest opinions from a point of experience) other than your close friends, otherwise you’re not really proving that you can do it for others.

Know a wide range of energies

People tend to hang around similar energies. Even if you stay purely on tumblr, you will come across many of the same viewpoints and energies. Explore outside of that circle. Meet a variety of people with a variety of ideas and energies. You must be able to work with the entire spectrum of people to be able to offer this service. And this isn’t something you can do in a day, it takes years to become familiar enough with so many energies to be prepared for this. And that’s… that’s sort of the point. You need all that experience. Also remember that you’re going to need to see the inner core of energy, not just what someone gives off on the outside. It’s happened to myself plenty of times where a conjurer doesn’t look on more than the outer shell of energy, and thus their work is mediocre and the relationship doesn’t last.

Know a wide range of spirits

This is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. You only want to offer white arts dragons? Fantastic, but you need to be familiar with more than that. Cute fluffy spirits aren’t the ones who will wreck you. You absolutely need to be familiar with the darkest, most dangerous spirits if you want to keep your customers protected from them. And… no, I’m not talking about hellhounds and demons. If that’s the most dangerous spirits you know, then you may need more experience. Tricksters and shapeshifters are another issue. When they are malicious, you’ll need to be a master to recognize them.

It will be an issue even if you insist they won’t approach you. There are people in this community who have the worst kind of spirits looking for any opening to harm them, and shops are a huge opportunity. These people might not tell you about it or might not even know, but you need to be able to recognize these spirits regardless, then be skilled enough to deal with them.

Dangerous spirits will not always look like monsters. Tricksters can reach the point of mimicking a spirit’s exact personality, energy, soul energy, even some memories. Spirits who are legitimately from safe species may be unsafe. For example, I had a spirit from one of the safest species I know approach my own shop. Nothing turned up through every one of my safety measures with checking them, but one of my other measures is to seek out others who have known spirits and interview them. Learned from a relative that this spirit had murdered their entire immediate family (not extended, which is why there were others who could tell me about it) then undergone surgery to entirely remove the memories from their energy so no one could know. And I was informed that their patterns suggested they’d turn similarly violent again and would enjoy every second of it. Yikes. Those situations happen more frequently than you’d expect and you’d better be able to recognize them.

Have large experience in spirit work not involving shops

You are not reselling another shop’s vessel, you are working with your own spirits. Have several years of experience in working with non-shop spirits. Ideally this would be consistent and purposeful. I’m not talking about speaking to one ghost who lived inside your house, I’m talking about purposely meeting new spirits and learning about them. Have experience in discerning their safety on the run. If never in those years do you encounter a malicious spirit, then…. Uh. That does not give much confidence in your discernment.

Have a master safety process

I’m not saying expert. I’m saying master. The worst of the worst spirits do come to shops looking for trouble and you need to see through their hardest disguises. Just talking to them and learning about them is not enough because they will readily put on sweet faces. Like I said, there are people in this very community who have these spirits after them. It’s your responsibility to not be a wide opening.

Offering a spirit shouldn’t be as simple as meeting a spirit on the street who likes humans then offering them.

Practice discernment. Lots of it. More discernment that you’ve ever practiced before.

People are trusting that you have absolute perfect discernment. You need to have foolproof discernment that comes from a large variety of methods. And this is something that you cannot learn immediately, it comes through years of practice. I’m saying that you need years of practice and they need to involve heavy discernment. I’m gonna be blunt, your spirits had better not be purely in your head and you should have people outside your immediate friend group (as they are very biased in your favor) verify them. If you’re gonna hit a “gosh is this all really real maybe I had better check” period, it had better not be while people are already trusting you to know your discernment.

Be emotionally stable and handle your mental illness

I am not saying you cannot practice spirit work with mental illness. Many of us do it and more shop owners than you know have serious diagnoses. But you need to have a firm handle on it. You absolutely have to know when you can and cannot practice and how to involve discernment. Say you suffer from hallucinations? Plenty of spirit workers have the same and they are fully capable despite it. They learn how to discern a spirit from a hallucination and their work is lovely. But you need expert discernment in telling your mental illness apart from spirit work and not letting it influence your senses, otherwise you are not practicing adequate discernment. Imagine your mental illness like a hurdle. It’s unfortunate that some people have more hurdles than others, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to overcome it like every other hurdle.

Emotional stability comes into play because emotions have a heavy impact of discernment. From confirmation bias to letting your emotions show you what you want to see, you can’t be slacking by letting emotions get in the way of discernment, proper safety checks, and your senses in general. You also cannot be making emotionally fueled decisions. Emotionally fueled decisions almost always throw discernment completely down the drain. More than that, they hurt people very often. There have been patterns in this community for years of people getting hurt because emotionally fueled decisions are made and real discernment is left to the side. “You’re abusing your spirits!” is the most common, said to both shops and regular spirit workers. Remember, confirmation bias is a definite thing (if you want the answer to be one thing, even subconsciously, that’s what you’re going to see because you’re biased in favor of that interpretation of the evidence) and your senses can and will be altered based on a heavy wanting for a particular outcome.

Related to this is that if you are constantly involved in drama or making drama-fueled decisions, you are probably not a good person to be running a shop.

Be prepared for this to affect you later in life

I don’t know what you want to do with your life, but chances are that you’re going to need to impress people. Employers, schools, anyone you want to sign a deal with. Sorry guys, but internet privacy doesn’t exist. Your privacy only exists until it is legal to sell your history and information to potential employers and etc groups and individuals. Imagine that everyone will be able to see you doing this. How is it going to affect you later? Don’t try and say that you won’t let it happen, just imagine that it will happen because it’s very easy to slip. Be fully prepared for the responsibility of others finding out about it.

Remember… some people may just think you’re weird, but others will see it as a malicious scam, preying on the mentally ill, or even a sign of serious mental instability. Don’t take it lightly, realize the full effect of others finding out and it affecting your life. If it causes anxiety now, imagine how it will feel if it happens. You must accept this possibility before continuing.

Have an understanding of the responsibility

For those who are unaware, being comprised mainly of eldritch energy comes with Issues™, one of them being the difficulty with healing. Your energy will attempt to devour whoever is touching it, and the “healing” harms you. Not fun.

However, eldritch based major healing is definitely a thing and I fiercely want to study it.

I didn’t get to record the specifics because I was made to relax and focus on something else, but it was lots of tendrils and eating gunk. When used on fellow eldritch energy, apparently it’s able to stimulate your energy centers and ease the aggression to a more manageable state. With the sentience of eldritch, I got the impression the healer’s energy was playing therapist to my own centers, haha. There were other components to the process that I definitely did not understand and would have to focus more on the healing to catch what was happening. At one point the healer’s eldritch basically stimulated my own energy into forming automatic protections to get that all up to peak condition. It felt a lot like being jabbed with needles lol.

But I almost never have outside energy work like that because of the nature of eldritch energy and its tendency to groom itself, so I feel.... different, for sure. Clean and more balanced than I’ve felt in a long time. My emotions are completely chill and settled despite having serious emotional turbulence right up until the process began. I feel alive, like I’m standing in fresh air for the first time and realizing the extent of the pollution I used to inhale.

This feels fantastic.

More specialized energy techniques and diagrams of energetic systems 

Resources on lesser used energy types, guides for utilizing them and possibly attuning yourself to them

General conjuring and interviews, maybe experience posts

Guides on approaching specific types of spirits

UPG posts on whatever topics and concepts

Anti-uwu posts on topics which are generally fluffed up

UPG/Observation posts on nonphysical biology and ecology

Detailed guides on whatever sort of astral places y’all have interest in

Advanced conjuring and binding techniques

Meta pattern observations

I don’t know if you guys want experiences or actual information that can be applied to your own work. And there’s techniques with both spirit and energy work vs pure information on energy and spirits.

I’m also not sure how much I’ve spoken about my own research and experimentation to have that as a pool y’all know to request from. Nonphysical biological systems, the meta and closed doors behind deities and other “higher” spirits (branching off into non-uwu experimentation with source energy and deity energetic webs), shards, eldritch work and energetic experimentation, parasite utilization, webs of archetype energies and their templates, backdoor politics and agendas (primarily of deities), the fabric of space and planes, experimentation with life and varying levels of sentience for utilization and within various situations. Etc. I’m not the best at remembering lists. I also study the patterns and underlying energetic theories behind everything I can find, but that’s a lot of topics. 

But I’m up for posting plain ol’ spirit information. Cultures, species interactions, studies of and patterns between nonphysical ecological systems. Information on species that’s actual information useful for more than absolute beginners, and not just basic shit that can be easily inferred or found on wikipedia. Guides on working with/approaching whatever, whether individual types of spirits or broader categories. Nothing that’ll get me discourse for some conjurer’s ~special~ exclusive species.

So earlier this week, I came home from a trip to discover that there was a drake who had taken residence in my backyard. He was.... uh. To put it simply, this guy was the jabba the hutt of drakes. He’s covered in a slime that seems to be more of icky body filth stuff than slime that is supposed to be there, and he is big. His scales are weird and misshapen because he has fat rolls upon fat rolls pushing out from beneath them. And when he leers at you, it just makes you want to shower badly.

So the night I got back, I first met him when taking the dog outside. My night gaunts also like to go outside every five minutes at night just to go outside and of course it only counts if I’m dragged out, so I’m also going for them. Anyway, I take the dog to the backyard and before I even open the fence I can smell this fucker. I work regularly with spirits associated with disease and decay, I work with physical dead smelly animals on a regular basis, and the nonphysical smell of this drake that did not reach my physical human nose was enough to make my eyes water. The big disease and decay spirits do not do that. For me to be so affected by a spirit’s smell I’m thinking “what the fuck” and absolutely flabbergasted at what the fuckity up is in the backyard.

I open it and see jabba the drake. There’s also a pile of dog toys and balls (all kinds of balls, from ones the neighbors threw over the fence and never retrieved to balls from thirty years ago which have just been sitting in the garage for no reason) in the physical location where the drake is lying. I have no flippin idea who took enough balls to fill a kaiju elephant’s asshole and dumped them in the middle of the backyard. I really do not. Perhaps someone was cleaning the garage. Doesn’t really matter and they’re still there.

So the drake tries to do this majestic pose and says in a shouting tone to me, “BEHOLD MORTAL. I HAVE TAKEN RESIDENCE IN THIS PLACE. I AM NOW THE GRAND OVERSEER OF ALL THAT I SEE.”

I’m nodding and thinking okay there sunshine, and all I say to it is, “The fuck is with the balls?”

And he replies to me in his... grand royal bellow, “I AM THE GOD OF THESE OBJECTS. I AM YOUR GOD OF BALLS BOTH BASKET AND OTHER.”

So the dog takes the opportunity to squat down and start shitting right next to where the drake is lying. I’m laughing my ass off, and the drake huffs at me and starts yelling again. “THIS IS ALSO PART OF MY DOMAIN. I HAVE COMMANDED THIS. I AM ALSO THE GOD OF ALL OF THIS.”

When he said “all of this” he energetically motioned to the ten hundred piles of dog crap in the yard which had not been cleaned yet. Also I’m pretty sure the drake was sniffing the piles of dog crap. Don’t know why. Don’t particularly want to figure it out or focus on it.