Not Everything Calling Your Name Deserves an Answer

One of the things I have noticed over the years is that people often mistake discernment for indifference.

They see what I choose not to engage with and assume I do not care. They see my absence from certain debates, controversies, and discussions and conclude that I must be disconnected from the community, uninterested in the conversation, or unaware of what is happening around me.

And sometimes, they are absolutely right.

There are many things I simply do not care about. I do not feel compelled to invest my time or energy into every passing argument, every hot take, or every topic that happens to be consuming social media at the moment.

Then there are the things I do care about deeply: my practice, my studies, my creativity, my family, my spiritual growth, and the life I am building. Those are the places where discernment becomes necessary. Caring about something does not automatically mean I need to speak on it. Sometimes I engage. Sometimes I contribute. Sometimes I do the work quietly behind the scenes. And sometimes I decide that my energy is better spent elsewhere.

As I have grown older, I have found that one of the most valuable skills a person can cultivate is discernment. Not just spiritual discernment, but discernment about where we place our energy, what deserves our attention, which voices we allow into our lives, and which ones we simply allow to pass by.

We live in a time where every opinion seems to demand a response. Every day there is a new debate, a new controversy, a new argument over labels, definitions, and identities.

Is it glamour magic or beauty magic? Am I a witch, a practitioner, a rootworker, a conjurer, or something else entirely? Who is right? Who is wrong? What should everyone call themselves?

While I understand why these conversations happen, I have found that people can become so occupied with discussing a practice that they never truly experience it. At some point, the discussion becomes larger than the work itself.

A person can spend years debating glamour magic without ever cultivating glamour. They can spend years discussing beauty magic without ever transforming their relationship with beauty. They can spend years arguing over titles without ever developing a meaningful practice.

But eventually, the practice itself must matter too.

The deeper I have gone into my own studies, the less interested I have become in collecting labels and the more interested I have become in collecting understanding.

After all these years, I still consider myself a student. I still buy books, study history, and seek wisdom from experienced elders and practitioners whose lives reflect the things they teach. I still find myself following one question into another, and then another after that.

A spell leads to a history. A history leads to a culture. A culture leads to a philosophy. And a philosophy can lead to another doorway entirely.

The deeper I go, the more expansive the landscape becomes. The more I learn, the more reverence I develop for how much remains to be discovered.

There is another layer to this for me personally, especially as a Black woman. Culturally, there can be very strong ideas about who you are supposed to be, what you are supposed to practice, what you should believe, and which spiritual paths are considered acceptable for you to explore.

I do have cultural practices that are personal to me and part of my own life, but that has never stopped me from being curious about the wider world of spirituality and the occult. I study, research, read history, and explore different systems, philosophies, and forms of magic because I am genuinely interested in understanding them. Some of those things become part of how I think. Some simply teach me something. Some I observe and leave exactly where I found them.

If that approach is not for someone else, I am perfectly comfortable with that. I have never needed another person to approve of the way I express myself, what I choose to study, or how I move through my own spiritual life. If my work, my concepts, or my philosophy are not for you, then they are simply not for you.

Everyone does not need to arrive at the same conclusion. What matters to me is having the freedom to discover who I am, what I believe, what I wish to practice, and how I want to express that for myself, while allowing others the freedom to do the same.

What I find far less useful is the tendency for people to discover what feels right for them and then immediately begin measuring everyone else against it. Once someone has decided, this is my path, this is my philosophy, this is what I believe, there can be an almost irresistible urge to turn around and explain why everyone who chose differently is wrong, misguided, less spiritual, less knowledgeable, or somehow beneath them.

I have very little interest in that.

Everyone has their own journey. Two people can arrive at a similar understanding through entirely different experiences, practices, teachers, cultures, mistakes, and revelations. One person may already be standing somewhere another person has not reached yet. That does not automatically make either one superior.

To me, constantly comparing practices can become yet another distraction from actually doing the work. It becomes another hierarchy to build, another pedestal to stand upon, another opportunity to feel spiritually superior rather than becoming spiritually deeper.

And I see a great deal of that online. Much of spiritual social media seems less concerned with living the practice, sharing knowledge, exploring history, or teaching something useful than with discussing who should not be doing what, who cannot be trusted, why someone else is practicing incorrectly, which group is better than another, or why one person's path supposedly invalidates someone else's.

Eventually, my response becomes very simple: do your practice.

Show your work. Share what you have learned. Explore what fascinates you. Embody what you believe. Let people see what your philosophy produces in your life without needing someone else to be wrong in order for you to be right.

What another person chooses to practice does not diminish my own practice. Their journey does not interfere with mine simply because it looks different. I do not need to place myself above someone else to feel secure in what I have chosen for myself.

There is enough work involved in becoming who I am. I have no desire to waste that time policing who someone else has decided to become.

That brings me back to attention.

My practice is profoundly influenced by the way I think about energy. For me, energy is not merely an abstract spiritual concept. It is something exchanged constantly through our focus, emotions, actions, and interactions with the world around us.

Attention is energy. Time is energy. Emotion is energy.

Over the years, I have become increasingly intentional about where those resources are invested. Every argument, outrage cycle, controversy, and reaction asks for some portion of them.

The question I eventually learned to ask myself was simple:

Is this worthy of receiving mine?

Many times, the answer is no. Not because I am unaware or because I lack opinions, but because I have learned that not every invitation deserves acceptance. Not every debate deserves participation. Not every opinion deserves a response.

One of the lessons my practice has taught me is that whatever we repeatedly feed grows. Whatever we repeatedly engage expands. Whether we intend it or not, our participation lends energy to the things we touch.

I see this happen constantly online. Someone says something outrageous, and people rush to respond. They stitch it, tag it, share it, argue with it, condemn it, and mock it. In doing so, they often give more life to the very thing they claim they wish would disappear.

I learned long ago that I would rather invest my energy elsewhere. I would rather spend it studying, creating, practicing, raising my children, refining my work, and deepening my understanding of the things that genuinely matter to me.

 

This also leads into another distinction I have become increasingly aware of: visibility and mastery are not the same thing.

The internet has created a world where a person can become highly visible almost overnight. A few viral posts, a rapidly growing audience, a recognizable name, and suddenly thousands of people are listening.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Visibility is a tool, and in many cases it reflects genuine effort. Building an audience requires consistency, communication, creativity, persistence, and an understanding of how to capture and maintain attention. People who successfully cultivate a following may spend years refining those skills.

What visibility measures, however, is not always what people assume.

A large audience may be evidence of someone's ability to communicate or market themselves. It may demonstrate consistency in showing up and creating content. It may show that someone has intentionally pursued visibility and become skilled at obtaining it.

What it does not automatically measure is mastery of the subject being discussed.

Those are separate things.

One person may devote ten years to building an audience while another devotes ten years to studying a craft. Sometimes those paths overlap. Sometimes they do not. The mistake is assuming they are always the same.

Perhaps that is why I have never been particularly interested in visibility for its own sake. Not because I fear it or believe there is anything wrong with it. It simply has never been one of my primary goals.

If I am being completely honest, there have been seasons when I tried to convince myself that visibility should matter more to me than it actually does. I would look around and see what seemed to be working for everyone else: post more, show up more, share more, be more visible.

And for a time, I did exactly that. I posted more. I showed up more. I made myself more visible. Eventually, all of that effort “paid off,” at least by the measure we are so often given online. Some years ago, I built a large following.

And then one day I realized, wow, this is pretty fucking awful.

I hated it.

I did not enjoy having that many eyes on me. I did not enjoy the access that came with it, the expectations, or the feeling that because people were watching, I somehow needed to keep feeding the machine.

So I deleted the page.

Not announced a hiatus. Not disappeared for a few weeks so I could come back refreshed. I deleted it and started over from scratch.

And I have been so much happier ever since.

There is a peace in knowing that I do not need a million eyes on me. I do not need to be seen as the biggest or baddest practitioner in the room. I do not need strangers to regard me as an expert on everything I discuss. None of those things are measures of success that hold much value for me.

These days, I am far more intentional about curating the audience around my work. I share my voice. I share what I create. I share the things I genuinely feel called to share, and I trust them to reach the people they are meant to reach. I would much rather have that than collect attention simply for the sake of having it.

I do not find joy or purpose in speaking just to remain visible, nor in having something to say about every topic that passes through the social media cycle. The pat on the back for me will never be how large the audience becomes or how many people are listening simply because I have managed to keep talking.

That experience forced me to ask myself a much more important question: Do I actually want this, or do I simply think I am supposed to?

The answer was surprisingly simple.

I do not.

Visibility is not a requirement for my spiritual growth, my practice, my creativity, or my relationship with the sacred. Most importantly, it is not a requirement for the life I am trying to build.

What I value is embodiment.

I care more about creating than speaking. I care more about building than reacting. I care more about living a practice than performing one.

I would rather spend six months building something beautiful in solitude than six months arguing about it.

Much of my work happens quietly, through research, study, experimentation, reflection, and countless hours that no one ever sees. There is no applause or audience for most of that process. There is simply the work itself.

Some of the most meaningful things I have ever created have emerged from those unseen hours. The finished product may be visible, but the process rarely is.

The work speaks long before I do.

If someone wants to understand how I think about glamour, beauty, energy, discipline, womanhood, creativity, luxury, spirituality, or self-transformation, I would encourage them to look at what I create.

My thoughts on beauty, glamour, women, magic, and what it means to cultivate a meaningful life are woven into the work itself: the products, rituals, writing, imagery, details, and experiences I create.

The philosophy is already there.

Perhaps that is why I have never felt particularly called to stand on a pedestal and preach it. I would rather create an experience than deliver a lecture.

Teaching, speaking, and guiding others are highly respectable roles, and I believe some people are genuinely called to them. Perhaps that is something I may feel called to answer more fully one day as well. Until that time comes for me, I am perfectly content creating, embodying, studying, and allowing the work itself to speak.

I would rather embody an idea than argue for it.

For me, creation has always felt like a more honest form of communication.

Perhaps that is another reason I have chosen this format. I have no great desire to become a constant voice in the endless stream of opinions that fills the modern world. Most of what I have to say is already woven into the things I create.

Still, I recognize that some people are curious. They wish to know the person behind the creations and understand the philosophy that shaped the work.

So perhaps these essays will serve as simple notes left behind along the way. Reflections, observations, memoirs of a sort.

Not instructions. Not doctrines. Not declarations of absolute truth.

Simply the world as I have come to understand it.

Through my eyes.

Through the eyes of the Vampiress.

As for the deeper pieces of me, you are unlikely to find them scattered across social media. You will find them in what I build, what I devote myself to, and the things I spend years quietly creating when no one is watching.

That is where I have always spoken most honestly.

Not through constant visibility, but through creation.

My silence is not always indifference.

Sometimes, I simply do not care.

And sometimes, I care enough to choose discernment.

Either way, I know what deserves my energy.

And that, at least, is the way I see it.