I keep seeing people approach spirit work like it’s no big deal. They’re drawn to it through companionship, demonology, angels, contact with the dead, faerie craft, tulpamancy, servitors, thoughtforms, deity worship, etc. There’s a lot that can fall beneath spirit work or be related to it in some form where people eventually end up looking at spirit work eventually.
What is spirit work?
Spirit work is the act of working with and communicating with spirits. Spirits can range in variety from fae, mermaids, demons, angels, dragons, etc. Then there’s subspecies of whatever species you may be able to come up with off the top of your head. They can be malicious or benign, humanoid or inhumane, lifelong presence in your life or a passing existence. They can be immortal, deities, sexual or nonsexual, weak and strong. Spirits are so diverse, it’s hard to label them all as a whole because of how many different species there are and societies with their own politics and way of life. They’re incorporeal and can be found around you or in the astral, some even within your dreams. They are as real as you and me. Generally, you want to be respectful and not treat them like Pokémon to be tamed. They are wild and free. This doesn’t mean you should let them walk all over you especially when they become a negative influence in your life.
Do you need to do spirit work?
Even if a lot of the craft comes back to spirit work in some shape or form, you DO NOT have to get into spirit work. When you get into spirit work, it’s like opening a door that’s near impossible to close once opened. You invite one spirit into your life, twenty more will come knocking on your door. It’s perfectly possible to cohabitate with a spirit and you not even know it was there. Especially if you’re not looking for them or actively working with spirits to learn to recognize its presence. Like any other skill, there are pros and cons to spirit work. It can be rewarding just as much as it can be dangerous. It’s very dependent on you and what you plan to do while exploring spirit work. Just because they are generally incorporeal doesn’t mean you’re invincible or immune to the consequences that come with working with spirits. You’re not a god and so long as you exercise caution, spirit work can be a great skill to have. If you choose not to get into spirit work, then awesome! Your path isn’t any less than anyone else’s just because you decide this line of work is not for you.
Discernment
Before you run off into the magical land of spirits, you need to be sure that what you see or experience is real. This is the single most important tool anyone can have and that is to be skeptical, to exercise critical thinking, and test it. While it’s nice to take people at their word, you should be questioning their information and confirm it with other sources and/or with personal experience. Research and understand what it is you want to get into and what it is you’re trying to interact with. Spirits can be tricky beings and lie or change their form to appear as other things. They will try to scam you for offerings or even mess with you because they’re bored and think it’s funny. Not every spirit is going to be like this yet it happens. And being able to discern between the lies and what you deem as real will be essential in your interactions with spirits.
You want some form of physical communication with spirits that’s beyond only using telepathy or what you think you heard. Two or three different forms of divination would be ideal to check your results against and even confirm. Personally, I like to check and double check for personal assurance. I use tarot/oracle as my main form of divination and check if what I’m interpreting is correct with my pendulum. I use this a lot to confirm that what I’ve experienced happened and to gauge a spirit’s wants or needs.
How adept are you with protection? This is personal protection, wards of a space, more wards to prevent lying, glamor, teleportation, etc. Finding just the right amount of protection because there is such a thing as too much. Protection is a huge part of what you want to have around you to avoid a lot of potentially large problems before they can become one. There are preventative measure for a reason. There’s loopholes you want to avoid in the making of your wards like ‘only beings with positive intentions can come through’ or using only light as protection. The problem with the first notion is that it’s too open. A spirit with the intention to ‘fix’ you can be considered positive because this being has the intention for the highest good for you by its standards may not be the highest good by your standards. That’s a very weak premise to build a ward. The problem with the latter is that it won’t stop a being of light from just walking right through your ward. Again, it’s weak. Wards can be tricky business. The best way to build them is to write them out on paper and then try to find a way around them to break your own wards.
Banishment
If you’re going to be interacting with spirits, you want a way to banish them if they break your rules or become volatile. Why would you interact with a spirit you can’t get rid of? It’d be pretty asinine to willingly come into contact with a spirit you can’t banish and then have that spirit refuse to leave. How can you get it to stop escalating and becoming a worse situation? You want different methods of banishment as well from energetic intent to physical means of banishment. You want tailored banishment methods for the spirits you plan to contact. If you don’t know how to banish a spirit, then you probably shouldn’t be looking to interact with them.
Spirits can leave behind residue that can attract parasites. They can bring parasites. What you’re doing can attract more spirits or more parasites. It’s a good habit to get into to cleanse a space before and after interacting with spirits. It keeps you energetically clean as well as your space.
Energy Work
I’ve heard of people weak at sensing energies being able to do spirit work. It can be very hit and miss. Energy work is what you use to be able to sense a spirit and identify them. Personally, I recommend you have some basis in energy work before getting into spirit work. It’s an invaluable skill that’d provide an extra form of protection and open up new avenues of interacting with spirits. It’d help to learn what a spirit feels like, their energy signature, and alignments to better be able to single them out.
This is a skill that’s more optional yet I always recommend having it in your skillset if you wish to get into spirit work. A lot of what you learn when getting into astral travel overlaps with spirit work since you’re opening yourself up to traveling into different realms that may have spirits. Much like spirit work, you’re opening a door that’s near impossible to close once opened. Astral travel provides you with a space you can work in, to be able to travel to a spirit’s homeland, observe their way of life, direct interaction, and being able to ‘see’ what the spirit may look like.
Like I’ve touched on throughout this post, there are dangers to spirit work. You’re opening yourself up to spirits and allowing yourself to interact with them. You don’t know this spirit and they likely don’t know you. They can and will mess with you if it strikes their fancy. Spirits can hurt you in creative ways, pose as a deity, pretend to be from your past life, abuse you and use you. Spirit’s personalities and motivations are as diverse as interacting with people around you. You can’t predict how a spirit will act nor how things will unfold between you by beginning interactions. All you can do is take the precautions to protect yourself, your space, and those that matter to you the best ways you can. Be cautious and don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger just because you decided to see what happens. If you go out looking for danger, you’ll find it.
I hope this post has been helpful. I’ve seen different answers to this question of what you should or shouldn’t know when stepping into spirit work. I was never satisfied with the answers I’ve seen and often disagree with them. I hope that this post puts it into perspective what you should know if you so choose to get into spirit work. Better to go into it informed than to lack a basic skill because you were overzealous and ran ahead before you were ready.
teakepp 