Alright, folks... I have a bit of a grievance.
I've been a Witch and Pagan for many years now. I started practicing in the late '90s, and I've been active in the community that entire time. While there are certainly gaps in my knowledge, I learned most of the fundamentals decades ago, so there isn't a whole lot that people can talk about in a Pagan context that I have absolutely zero understanding of, at least in terms of fundamentals.
Then, a few years ago, I started seeing a particular phrase popping up everywhere. "Shadow Work."
I had never heard of that, at least not in the context of Witchcraft, so I started taking mental notes. Although the groups this came up in were typically the more New Age, "Stay Wild Moon Child" groups I lurk in just to keep my finger on the pulse, it certainly wasn't limited to that, and people were bringing this up in less "fluffy" spaces as well. Clearly some sort of trend was happening... one I was not in on.
I've seen Pagan and Witch trends come and go, so seeing people suddenly talk about a thing I had barely ever heard about before isn't that odd, but usually it's fairly obvious what they're talking about. When the more New Agey groups were all doing simmer pots, I hadn't necessarily heard of that concept, but it was pretty obvious from context (and their many photos) what they were doing. I didn't need to have heard about moldavite to know New Agers were all following some new trend in pretty rocks. Shadow Work, though, was something else... people were constantly bringing it up, as a general recommendation, with absolutely no context for what it is, how you do it, or how it's relevant to Witchcraft at all.
People would ask for advice on some divination result they were confused about. You need to do ~Shadow Work~!
Somebody does a cord cutting ceremony (another trend New Agers like) and something weird happens during it. Do ~Shadow Work~!
I'm just starting Witchcraft, do you have any tips? ~Shadow Work~!
And nobody ever gave any fucking context for what they were talking about. Once I made a comment about this on BlueSky, remarking how people in the Pagan and Witch groups were all talking about some thing called "Shadow Work" and recommending it, but everybody is super vague about it and nobody ever says what they actually mean. Funnily enough, I got a number of comments from people raving about Shadow Work and how great it is, but not even one of them actually explained anything about it. I found myself in an environment, as a decades-long-practicing Witch, where people were constantly talking about this thing I'd never heard of while treating it like it was some fundamental, basic skill even the most novice Witch would already know about. And, yeah... I thought I was going fucking crazy. How could I have missed such a fundamental thing?
It turns out, I hadn't. Because—as I spoiled in the title—Shadow Work is not Witchcraft. It's part of Jungian psychology, and while Jungian psychology has absolutely influenced modern Witchcraft and Paganism, there's nothing about it that is fundamental to either of them. Hell, in my opinion Jungian psychology has kind of poisoned the way people think about both of them, but I'll go into that a bit later. In a nutshell, Shadow Work is identifying traits you have that conflict with your perception of yourself (your "Shadow") as a way of dealing with them, whether that means integrating it into your whole self or learning healthy ways to cope with them or improving the way you work with others.
Nobody has really been able to explain to me why a trendy psychological exercise would be fundamental to Witchcraft.
This is because it isn't.
And I'm going to be dead honest with you for a second... it's actually really weird to me that people think it is. And listen: I am not saying that you can't utilize these techniques to improve your life, including how you practice Witchcraft, just as any self-improvement in theory could improve your spiritual practice. But the practice itself isn't particularly spiritual nor even that aesthetically "Witchy." Which honestly begs the question... do the people who constantly bring Shadow Work up as if it is a fundamental part of Witchcraft we all need to be doing really understand what it means themselves? I suspect that, for a lot of people, the answer is "no." And I know this is going to seem really superficial—and maybe it is—but I strongly suspect that one of the reasons so many people suddenly became enamored by the concept because (sigh) the phrase "Shadow Work" seems dark and mysterious, it's really trendy in pop psychology right now, and it sounds like something a Witch would do if you don't understand what it is.
But there's also another option I want you to think about: How many of these people don't understand what Witchcraft is? This is a long-time beef I have with certain paths under the Pagan and Witch umbrella, and what I was hinting at earlier when I talked about Jungian psychology's negative effects on our community. Jungian psychology has taken the Gods and the mythology written around them and boiled them down into psychological concepts, treating them as nothing but archetypes representing human nature. The effects of this for religious people are numerous and complicated, but one dramatic effect is that a lot of Pagans do not treat the Gods like Gods. In the same way, a lot of "Witches" do not really believe in Witchcraft, they are going through the motions as a sort of motivational self-help exercise.
To be clear, I do not have any desire to mandate people believe the same things I do. It is of absolutely no concern to me if you worship Gods you don't truly believe in or practice Witchcraft without believing in it because you think it will subconsciously influence your own behavior. Plenty of religions are orthopraxic; belief is kind of irrelevant, and room is made for people to practice those religions and participate in their practices for cultural or mental wellbeing reasons without sincerely believing in them. But it is absolutely ridiculous how many people behave as though this is the default explanatory model for Paganism and Witchcraft, to the point where people would jump to the conclusion that psychological exercises and Witchcraft are simply interchangeable.
In conclusion, if you think Shadow Work is useful, there's no reason not to do it, whether you put a Witchy "spin" on it or not. But it's really important that we recognize that not all practices that sound spooky and mysterious are "Witchcraft," that Witchcraft is not by default just a psychological placebo, and perhaps most importantly, normalize context when giving recommendations to others.
Happy Trails,
Wolfpeach