Embracing Shadow Work for a Transformed Practice

My dearest witches, if your journey into the magical world has led you to connect with other practitioners, you've likely heard talk of shadow work. For some, the very name brings up ideas of dark spells and secret midnight rituals. But I promise you, shadow work, while deeply life-changing, is much less wild than those imagined stories. It is, however, an exciting way to explore yourself that I and many other witches have found essential for real personal growth.

Today, we're going to make these strong practices clear, explaining what they are, why they're so important, and how you can start using them in your own magical life.

What is the Shadow, and Why Do We Work With It?

At its core, shadow work comes from the field of psychology. A smart Swiss mind doctor, Carl Jung, talked about the hidden parts of ourselves that often stay out of sight in our subconscious mind as the "human shadow" or shadow self. When we, as witches, work with this shadow side, we're not just looking inside ourselves; we're mixing our spiritual and magical ways with methods for understanding and improving ourselves. The good things that come from this are many. It doesn't just make our spells work better, but it's also a powerful tool for feeling happier overall and connecting with the world around us in a healthier way.

The shadow itself is many things. It's made up of every experience we've ever had, every thought, every belief we hold about ourselves and the world. Much of the shadow is formed very early in life. Our first few years help to set in our subconscious mind what we see as "normal." That idea of normal is what many of us then use to judge the rest of our experiences throughout our lives. For example, if you grew up in a home where your parents were very busy and rarely had time for you, it will feel normal as an adult when your romantic partners never have time for you. More than that, a partner who actually has time for you might feel strange, and you might accidentally ruin these good relationships without knowing why. This might be what your subconscious thinks is "normal," but it's far from the best! By finding these kinds of patterns, old hurts, and hidden ideas, we can change them to let ourselves be happy and comfortable in a new normal that we choose – for example, with a partner who is caring and pays attention!

Magic connects deeply to this process. We can use magic to help find, work with, and change these shadow parts of ourselves, and also make our magic stronger by doing this work. In many magical traditions, learning about yourself is a key part of becoming a strong magician. Witchcraft is the same.

Don't get me wrong, while shadow work might sound like boring therapy talk to some, this is powerful stuff! I rarely say that ALL witches should do something, because witches and their practices are very different, but I truly believe that all witches should do some form of shadow work. There's simply no better way to understand yourself and how you connect with the magic you do.

Why Shadow Work is Essential in Witchcraft

The reasons why we do shadow work as individuals are very different. But they all come down to the same simple goal: to be better. To be better in our magic. To be better for the people we love. To be better as human beings. This is a process of finding the dark, hidden parts of yourself – the parts that are ignored, unwanted, and damaged – and learning to not only look at them and change them, but also to fully accept them as a part of you. This is self-love at its deepest. Love not just for the parts of yourself that are easy to love, but also for those parts that the world doesn't want you to love.

This is not a fight against the darker sides of yourself. We're not here to cut off pieces of ourselves or to hide our feelings to try and be some perfect idea of who we should be. Our true goal is to uncover all the forgotten and hurting parts of ourselves and gently care for them until they thrive. In this way, we gain the freedom to be completely who we are, to create the life we want without holding back, and to let go of any shame in doing so.

When we do magic, our beliefs are key to the results we get. Have you ever cast a spell for something you really wanted or needed, only to have it do nothing? Do you have a certain kind of spellwork that you just can't seem to make work for no clear reason? These kinds of blocks are, most often, a result of beliefs we hold in our subconscious mind.

For example, if you feel stuck in your dead-end job, barely making enough money, and you find that every money spell you cast doesn't work while the rest of your magic is fine, you likely have a belief about money or your worth that is holding you back. Maybe deep down you believe you don't deserve money, that you can't make money, or that money is the source of all bad things in the world.

With beliefs like these, it's no surprise that the magic doesn't work! While you might be putting a lot of energy into your money spell consciously for a short time each day, your subconscious can keep putting energy into that "Money is bad and corrupting" belief all day, every day. Which do you think will win? 99 times out of 100, it'll be our shadow selves.

This is why we as witches do this kind of inner work. Yes, it's great for us to know ourselves and grow self-awareness and self-acceptance as people, but in our magic, this stuff is powerful fuel. Instead of trying to climb a mountain, fighting against the hidden beliefs of your subconscious to make your magic work, you can simply start things moving and watch your magic come true with wonderful ease.

Four Ways to Start Using Shadow Work in Your Craft

Hopefully, by now, you're more than ready to jump right in and start trying out shadow work for yourself. There are so many ways to begin your shadow work journey. I could easily write a book on this and still not cover all the ways shadow work can be done. To start, we're going to talk about three ways you can begin using shadow work in your craft and one ritual you can try today.

1. Make Room for Your Unpleasant Feelings

The first and most important part of shadow work is making room for the parts of yourself that feel bad or uncomfortable. This can be really hard to do. We've been taught our whole lives that we have to hide, ignore, and push down the parts of ourselves that are unpleasant, difficult, or not nice. This step might seem simple or too easy, but it is by far the most important and possibly the hardest step in shadow work. You have to learn to be with yourself even when it feels bad and even when you don't like yourself very much. Because let's be honest, we all have pieces of ourselves that we don't like very much. It's those pieces, the ones that we've pushed away and that we wish didn't exist, that need our love and care the most. I want you to start thinking about those unpleasant or difficult parts of yourself like small children or an untrained pup as it were.

If you saw a child or small animal having a problem, crying, upset, or showing behavior that meant something was wrong, you wouldn't likely immediately blame that child or animal. We know, without thinking, that small children and animals haven't yet learned how to handle strong feelings and the hard parts of the world. It's too big for them, it's too scary, and it makes sense why they would be having these difficult reactions. This is the mindset I want you to take toward your own negative feelings. These difficult feelings are basically parts of you that never learned how to deal with and understand the world around them. They are confused, scared, hurt, and just generally freaking out. Your job is to approach that feeling or that part of yourself with kindness and understanding, and let it just be.

This means that if you're sad, let yourself cry. Don't try to hold back the tears, don't try to push through the emotional pain, don't try to stop it so you don't make other people uncomfortable. If this means you have to go to another room or go home or whatever you need to do, do that, but let yourself cry. If a part of yourself hates someone else or something else, you need to allow that hate to come out freely in a way that cannot hurt other people. That last part is very important. Shadow work is not about just letting all your feelings out on the people around you. People can absolutely help you work through your feelings, but you shouldn't be taking your feelings out on other people. If you're feeling strong emotions like hate or anger, let that anger and hate out on paper or record yourself talking freely about that part of yourself. The best way to do this is to find a safe space where you can move and let the anger and hate out of your body by shaking, thrashing, and moving with whatever it is you're feeling. If you need to break things, you can go to a second-hand store and buy a bunch of cheap dishes, take them somewhere you can easily clean up like an unfinished basement, and go wild. Break stuff!

The idea here is just to let the feelings be shown. We are so used to hiding our feelings, trying to change how we feel, and trying to be someone we're not, that many of us haven't truly felt our feelings since we were very small children. Again, it's important that you set this up so that you can do it in a healthy way that won't hurt other people. This is the whole reason why we've been taught to hold back these feelings in the first place, instead of being taught how to let them out in a good way. It's easier to just teach us to bottle it up inside, even though this causes huge amounts of harm to each of us. When you let your unpleasant feelings out, do it in a way that isn't going to harm the people around you. Don't yell at people, don't make big confessions that are going to ruin other people's lives, don't hit things, don't break other people's stuff. If you need to say something, say it to yourself out loud or on paper first so that you can come back to it with a clear mind and decide whether that is something you need to say to the other person. If you need to express yourself physically or break things, do that in a way that doesn't hurt other people and doesn't break anything important to anyone else. As I said, you can just buy some cheap dishes from the thrift store! I cannot tell you how good it feels to break a bunch of dishes and know that there are no bad results from doing so.

Finally, when it comes to showing these unpleasant feelings, don't be surprised if memories, unexpected thoughts, past hurts, or physical movement like shaking comes up. Often, when we've been holding back feelings for a long time, we're holding back a lot of other things too. We're holding back the memories and thoughts that created those uncomfortable feelings, and often we've stored all of this held-back energy in our bodies. This is one of the reasons why I tell people to express their feelings physically in whatever way feels good to them. The body holds a huge amount of feeling and hurt, and moving the body is a very good way to move those stored feelings and hurts out of the body so they can be shown, felt, and resolved. The body's most natural way to process things physically is to shake, so if your body starts shaking, let it! This is often a sign that deep healing is happening.

2. Journal Your Inner Landscape

The next thing you want to do is start putting your feelings into words and learning to talk with those feelings so that you can begin to understand them. There are so many ways you can go about showing your feelings, and you can use any method you like as long as it lets you express yourself.

Journaling is, of course, the usual way. Journaling lets you get your thoughts down on paper in a private way and lets you look back on what you've written to better understand what's happening inside you. It lets you see your hidden patterns and shadow traits that you might not be able to see in the heat of the moment. I suggest that pretty much everyone try journaling, but you need to journal in the way that works best for you. Many people think that if you're not journaling every single day, then you might as well not be journaling at all, and that's not true. I've been journaling since I was 13, and my journaling is very on and off. There are some months when I journal almost every day, and then there are some months where I don't have a single journal entry for that whole time. I journal when I need it. You might find that journaling when you need it works well for you, or you might find that having some kind of schedule helps you keep up with it. It doesn't have to be every day if that's too much for you at first, but even a once-a-week journaling session can be very helpful. Also, your journal doesn't have to be a notebook with a pen. I like my Moleskine journals, but you might prefer to keep a journal on your computer or even use voice-to-text or just a voice recorder for your journaling. It doesn't matter how you're journaling as long as it works for you. If you don't know where to start, you can use shadow work journal prompts to get things going.

3. Express Through the Language of Art

Most of us are fairly good with words, but not everyone is, and not everyone shows their feelings with words as well as they might express a logical idea. Art journaling is a great choice if you find that showing part of your hidden mind visually with pictures works better for you. You can do this with any materials, in any way you choose. It doesn't have to look good, it doesn't have to follow any art rules; your only goal is to show whatever it is that you are feeling. Your art journaling doesn't have to be done in a physical book. You can create your art on canvas, large pieces of paper, butcher paper, using photos, on a computer, whatever you like. And you can use any art materials you like. Collage, painting, drawing, cut-out poetry, sculpture, video-making — it's totally up to you.

4. Embrace the Wisdom of Movement

We talked about this a bit earlier, but movement is a great way to express ourselves, and it's one of the ways of showing feelings that is pretty much held back in Western society. As children, we're taught to sit still and not run around and not fidget, and this takes a lot of the natural expression of movement out of our lives. Movement expression can be anything you need it to be. You can dance, you can wave your arms and legs around, you can run until you're tired, you can do gentle yoga stretches, you can pause and take a deep breath, you can add sounds to your movement. Don't worry about making it look good or presentable for other people. I would suggest doing this in a place where absolutely no one is going to see you, because you want to be able to express whatever your body needs to express without worrying about how it looks to other people. You can put on music, and I would suggest picking music that matches the feeling you're trying to express. If you're angry, put on music that sounds angry. If you're sad, put on sad music. For me, I find that there's usually music that really fits whatever it is that I'm trying to express through movement, and I'll take my time to find that music before I get started. Don't be afraid to just put a song on rep¹eat too. If you find a song that is exactly what you need, just play it over and over and over again. No one else is watching, remember?

The important part of this is that you can let out and express your feelings in a way that leads you to a new understanding of yourself. That's what you're trying to do in this exercise; you're trying to get a better understanding of what's really going on beneath your conscious awareness. If you journal, you can read back what you wrote and gain new insights into what's happening in your mind. If you create art, you're able to look at your feelings visually outside of yourself and gain new understanding that way. If you decide to use movement to express your feelings, you're likely to get a very strong understanding of how these feelings and thoughts are showing up in your body and affecting you physically in your daily life.

Again, you might get thoughts, memories, or unexpected physical movement with any of these ways of expressing yourself. If you think of a way to express yourself that we haven't talked about here, try it! There are tons of ways you can go about showing your feelings and learning about your feelings, and the goal is to find the ones that work for you.

Taking the Journey a Step Further: The Alchemy of Emotion

So far, we've talked a lot about letting your feelings out. This is a very important step since pretty much every single one of us has been taught to reject, hold back, and ignore our feelings. You have to be able to feel the emotion and show the emotion before you can do anything useful with that emotion. But that's not where shadow work ends.

If shadow work were just about letting your feelings out and being able to express yourself, we wouldn't need all the different shadow work practices we have today. Letting your feelings out and learning to show them is only one half of the process. If all we do is express the feelings, then we do end up with far fewer feelings bottled up, which is good, but we never truly move beyond that simple feel and express process. There's no real end, no real change, no real learning happening. We would end up stuck in a cycle of feeling and expressing forever, never finding the root cause or the path that leads out of our pain and to a place of inner peace. This is where shadow work gets good.

The True Goal of Shadow Work

The true goal of shadow work is to take your feelings, your pain, and all of your worst thoughts and personality traits and help you turn them into something new. Learning to feel and express sadness and anger and worry is all well and good, but if you never do anything with those feelings, you will simply stay in the cycles that led you to feel those emotions in the first place. The point of your shadow work practice should be personal growth and greater self-awareness. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it a million times more, but witchcraft is all about action. We come to the craft because we want to change our lives. We don't come to the craft just to feel better. We become witches because we want our real, clear lives to be different. This is the real goal of the shadow work process as well.

Feeling your feelings and learning to express them is a good thing, but unless you are actually doing something with that, you're just going in circles. Shadow work is a powerful way to take those feelings, help you understand them, fully accept them, and change them into something that makes your life truly, clearly better. This is the real goal of shadow work. It is taking the worst parts of yourself, the painful parts, the parts that you've been told you shouldn't have, the parts you hate, and finding a way to turn that pain into growth and happiness. We are taking what's unwanted and using it to create something that is wanted in our lives.

The Alchemy of Your Emotions

Alchemy, in a very basic sense, is turning one thing into something else. In popular talk, it's turning lead into gold, but for our purposes, we're going to use this word to talk about changing our feelings from something unwanted into something that is wanted. This is a very big subject that we are going to touch on quickly, so please know that if this topic interests you, you can go much deeper into it.

To change your feelings through alchemy, you have to do what we call "going into the feeling." This is basically what I've been teaching you to do so far in this article. Feeling your feelings and showing your feelings is what people mean when they say you need to "turn into the feeling" or "go into the feeling." Basically, this just means that you are being present with the feeling instead of holding it back or running away from it or being impatient wishing it would just end. We cannot change what we don't know about and understand, so knowing about and understanding our feelings is the first step to changing them into something nicer to feel.

After this, how we move forward with changing our feelings through alchemy depends on the feeling we're dealing with. For example, if you're feeling anger, you'll want to express that anger and let it out of your body, figure out what is causing that anger, and find a way to use that feeling to move forward into a state of being that feels better. Anger is always a reaction to someone crossing your boundaries. This means that if you're going to change anger through alchemy, you need to first learn what boundary has been crossed and then use that anger as a way to change the situation that created the feeling in the first place. Maybe you didn't set strong enough boundaries with someone. Maybe you have someone in your life who doesn't respect your boundaries, even when you set them. Maybe you don't know how to set boundaries. You would then take your anger and use that energy to find answers to these problems and then use them in your daily life. Anger is great for making real change because it is a very active energy; it can give you the courage and push that you need to make a real change in your life.

If you are dealing with something like heartbreak, you would want to fully express that heartbreak, really let it out in every way that felt right to you, and then use that feeling to lead you into something that feels better. In this case, it might be digging down into your heartbreak to find out what is causing this deep feeling of loss. Often we will get stuck on a certain person, but the heartbreak is not just about an individual; it is about some deeper need that they met. Did they meet your need for human connection? Physical touch? Understanding? Being seen? Look through the relationship and think about all the good things that you miss from that lost connection. This is your roadmap forward. If you can find these qualities in other people – not necessarily romantic partners if you're not ready for that yet, but perhaps in friends – then that feeling of loss is slowly replaced with wholeness.

This is the real key to shadow work. Every single unpleasant feeling, unwanted part of yourself, every bad thought, or bad belief is a bright flashing sign telling you what you do not want to experience in this world. And if you learn to read the signs correctly, it gives you the roadmap that leads you to what you do want. Changing your feelings through alchemy is all about letting your feelings go beyond the limits we've placed on them to become the very thing that will lead us into greater happiness, deeper connection, and more good things.

A Ritual: Releasing Regrets

To finish off today, this shadow alchemy ritual will help you to start feeling what this process can truly do for you and your craft. This ritual is made to help you work through and let go of old stories that are holding you back in your life. These can be old sorrows, anger, ways you wish your life had been, and things you wish people hadn't done. We're going to work through all of this in today's ritual.

You will need:

• Loose paper

• A pen or pencil

• Somewhere safe to burn your pages (like a fire-safe bowl or outside)

Find somewhere quiet and private to do this ritual. Take a few deep breaths to calm yourself. You don't need to empty your mind of thoughts. Just come into the room and be present with yourself. When you're ready, begin to think about all the parts of your past that you wish had been different. Let the pictures and memories of these past regrets come to the surface. Feel them in your body. Think about the ways you wish your childhood had been different. The ways you wish your parents had raised you. The things you wish your parents had not done. Think about the ways you wish your education had been different. The college you wish you'd gone to or the degrees you wish you'd gotten. Think about the friends that you wish you'd kept or that you wish you'd gotten rid of sooner. Think about the lovers that you regret leaving and lovers that you wish you'd never met. Think about the experiences that you wish you'd had, the travel you wish you'd done, the risks you wish you'd taken. Think about the hobbies that you wish you hadn't forgotten and the chances that you wish you hadn't let pass you by. Think about how you wish your health would have been. The things you wish you'd done to take care of yourself and the things that you wish you hadn't done that hurt your health. Think about that skill that you wish you learned, that instrument you wish you learned to play, or that book you always planned to write. Think about how you wish you'd raised your kids differently, words you wish you hadn't said, or words that you wish you had said more often. Let all of these past regrets fill you up and wash over you. When you're ready, open your eyes and write down everything you can remember from this exercise.

What you've just written down is a list of your stories. These are the stories of how you wish your past had gone, but the truth is that your past did not go this way. None of these things happened the way you wish they had, and holding onto this made-up past, the sadness and anger that come with these stories, is holding you back. You've allowed these stories to build up in your body and your mind and tell you that you are not living the life that you're supposed to be living. We cannot build a better life from this state. The only way to make real change in our lives is by being fully and completely in reality, and these stories are twisting your reality and draining away your power to create a life that you truly love living. It's time to let go of these stories.

Take your sheets of paper somewhere that you can safely burn them. Take a moment to thank these stories for all they've done for you, and then consciously decide to let them go and burn the pages. As you watch the pages being eaten by flames, feel the weight of these stories falling away from you. Feel the energy of these regrets coming off your body, leaving you lighter, brighter, and ready to move forward.

What do you think? Are you willing to give it a go?

BeWitchy

BeWitchy Magazine

If you found this article helpful, please leave us a 5 star review and explanation as to why you left it. We appreciate your support and grateful you found us here. When you give to the universal energies that be, they give to you.

Warrior Strength to those who deserve it & Destruction to those who need it!

International Psychic Medium Witch Madame Verveine+

Witchcraft Practitioner Demonologist Author Artist Mentor Owner and Founder of BeWitchy

BeWitchy® ©Copyright Protected 2025. BeWitchy is many registered trademarks. We take violations seriously. We service and sell worldwide!

Thinking about copying or using the term "BeWitchy" or similar variations... first think... are you original? The answer will be no. Do you want to gain a reputation for riding on someone elses branding, name and presence? Stealing brand identity is a serious offence and shameful!

Medical & Mental Health Disclaimer

The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as, nor should it be considered, medical or mental health advice. It is not a substitute for professional diagnosis, treatment, or therapy by a qualified healthcare or mental health professional.

Always seek the advice of your physician, psychiatrist, therapist, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental health condition. Never disregard professional medical or mental health advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this article.

If you believe you may have a medical or mental health emergency, call your doctor, emergency services, or your local emergency number immediately. The author and publisher of this article are not responsible for any adverse effects that may result from your reliance on any information contained herein.