Welcome Aboard… the Flying Dutchman
You boarded this ship because it came with certain promises, stated right in the contract: fair pay, benefits, and a crew. But it turns out that you’ve actually boarded the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship that is cursed to sail forever, never reaching port.
Welcome aboard to your toxic corporate job.
I’m going all-in on this sea witch theme today, because frankly the state of this job market is basically one wildly stormy ocean with waves of unpredictability and random sinking ships.
So let’s set the picture up.
You’ve sailed through stormy seas and seen many fair days, but you’ve started to notice that even though you’re technically moving… you’re not really going anywhere.
You’ve heard whispers from former crew, now retired in Tucson and lamenting the years they gave to the ghost ship. The work is draining your life force, they say.
You’re surrounded by other trapped souls. And the longer you stay, the more you start to wonder if you’re becoming a ghost yourself.
Your people are the ones standing at the railing, looking out at the ghostly sea of a brutal economy, knowing they have to jump but terrified of what’s down there.
They’ve heard about the monsters in the economic waters — hundreds of applicants per listing, AI screening out their resumes, months of silence, offers rescinded just days before a start date, the slow erosion of self-worth.
They jumped anyway. Because in the distance is a siren song, a call. That there’s more to your life than being stuck on this fucking ghost ship.
Thank you for entertaining my metaphor. I hope it shows you that the toxic job you’re in is a curse, not just a “bad fit.” And yes, the economy is basically haunted. It’s hard out there.
As you start to shift uncomfortably in your current role and look at the horizon for a new one, I want to say that I see you not as a desperate job seeker. (Even if you feel like one.) You’re someone with courage. You’re already entertaining the idea that you deserve better, and that’s big on its own.
Consider me the sea witch waiting below, but kind of the opposite of Ursula. She likes to steal voices. I’d like to give yours back — as well as the agency, autonomy, and identity that the Flying Dutchman might’ve co-opted via fine print.
In this post, I’m going to break down four practices to help you make that jump, swim to shore, and preserve your soul in the process.
This is for women, queer folks, and BIPOC professionals who know they need to leave (or have been pushed out!) from a toxic job that’s killing them slowly. You don’t want to start a business. You want a better role, but you’re staring down the worst job market since 2008 and need practical support AND magical fortifications.
Four Corners of the Earth Magic
We know the job search these days is basically designed to exhaust you, humiliate you, and ultimately make you forget your value. (My theory is this is to trick us into accepting crumbs and pennies while the billionaires continue to devour the cornucopia of shared prosperity. But what do I know.)
These practices are to help you keep your head above water while you swim. We’re going to cover four bits of magic that, together, will change the game:
Voice in the Shell
A word witchery practice. Before you translate yourself into their language, write yourself in YOUR language. Remember who you are before the sea tries to dissolve you.
The Lighthouse
Simple candle magic. You’re swimming in fog. This is how you call the right shore to you — and make sure you don’t wash up somewhere just as cursed.
Staying Afloat
Raising energy. The swim is long. The water is cold. Rejection tries to pull you under. This is how you keep your head above water and your spirit intact.
Navigation by Stars
Basic dreamwork. Your intuition knows things your LinkedIn doesn’t. This is how you read the signs, trust the timing, and recognize the shore when you see it.
If you’ve read this far, you’re swimming. Now let’s get you to shore.
Voice in the Shell: Word Witchery for Your Resume
Word magic is some of the oldest, most reliable magic. You see it in virtually every ancient system — this idea that what is spoken or written can be made real. Speech and the written word is how we pluck things out of the ether and anchor them into reality.
Your job application is an opportunity for word witchery. But most people squander it because they’re writing in a dissociated state, trying to sound like what they think employers want, abandoning their own voice, forgetting what they actually did and why it mattered.
So before you write a single bullet point for a hiring manager, you’re going to write something for yourself.
The Base Resume
Typically, when people think of a “base resume,” they mean the most generic version that you then tailor to each listing. That’s not what we’re doing here.
This base resume is written for your eyes only. It’s a sacred document. To make it visually distinct so you never accidentally send it to anyone, I recommend:
- Change the background color of your Google Doc (mine is purple)
- Use a font you genuinely love, even if it’s not “professional”
- Write in a text color that feels like yours — navy blue, forest green, whatever speaks to you
This visual distinction signals to your brain: this is mine. This is not for them.
Now, instead of the typical 1–2 page limit, give yourself 3–4 pages. Give yourself room.
What goes in it
For each role you’ve held — and I mean each experience, including university clubs, volunteer work, that weird freelance gig — you’re going to write down:
- Stories. Things you remember. Specific moments.
- People who stood out to you, for good or bad reasons.
- Problems you noticed that no one else seemed to see.
- Things you did that you’re proud of, even if they weren’t in your job description.
- Things that pissed you off. (Often the things that anger us reveal what we actually care about.)
- What you learned — about the work, the industry, yourself.
This is pure memoir, diary-like reflections. You’re not trying to impress anyone or spice up the story. You’re trying to remember, because this is going to be gold when it’s time to get your STAR stories prepped for interviews or when you want to switch out bullet points to match a job listing.
How to get it out of your head
If you’re like me, you might find it easiest to verbally process. I record voice notes and talk to myself, then listen back while I write. You could also talk to a friend, mentor, or coach who asks good questions. Journal by hand if that unlocks more for you, or just type in a stream of consciousness. Try looking away from your computer screen if you can. This helps you reduce the urge to self-edit. Gaze out the window, type away, and deal with the need for actual sentences and grammar later.
Why this is magic
When you’ve written through your stories, several things happen:
First, when you’re asked about these experiences in an interview, you’ve already thought through them. The words come naturally because you’ve practiced them — not rehearsed a script, but actually processed what happened and what it meant.
Second, when you tailor your resume for a specific listing, you can ensure there’s a clear throughline. Your cover letter, your bullet points, your interview answers — they all tell the same story because you know the story. You’re not making it up on the fly.
Third — and this is the real magic — you start to see patterns you couldn’t see before. The thread that connects your “random” career moves. The thing you keep doing in every role, whether or not it was in your job description. The value you bring that you’d forgotten because no one ever thanked you for it.
The Translation
Once you have your base resume, then you translate.
You look at a job listing and ask: What do these people actually need? Not just the bullet points — what’s underneath the bullet points?
They want to trust someone to take care of things. Where have you taken care of things? They want someone who can build something from nothing. Where have you built from nothing? They want someone who won’t make their life harder. Where have you made someone’s life easier?
Every job listing has unspoken needs. Your job is to read between the lines, then find the stories in your base resume that speak to those needs — and translate them into their language.
This is spellcasting. You’re helping the hiring manager visualize you in the role. You’re planting an image in their mind: this person belongs here. This person will solve our problems. This person is already one of us.
Most job descriptions are poorly written. Most hiring managers don’t fully know what they need. You’re going to do the work they couldn’t do — and that’s how you stand out.
The Lighthouse: Candle Magic for Calling in the Right Role
You’re swimming in fog. You can’t see the shore. You might wash up somewhere just as cursed as the ship you jumped from.
The Lighthouse is a simple candle spell to call the right opportunity to you — and to clarify, for yourself and the universe, what you’re actually looking for.
What you need
A candle with at least 40 hours of burn time. (40 representing a typical work week, but also practical — this spell is going to last a while.)
Color and scent are up to you. Yes, there are traditional correspondences — green for money, yellow for success, etc. — but here’s the truth: most of our ancestors did not have access to a rainbow of fancy candles. They used what they had. Plain white works beautifully. Choose what feels right to you.
You’ll also need something to carve with (a pin, a knife, a chopstick) and oil to anoint the candle (olive oil works fine — this doesn’t need to be precious).
The Carving
You’re going to carve your job title intention into the side of the candle. But the order matters.
Here’s the principle: What you want MOST goes at the bottom. What you’re more flexible on goes at the top. The candle burns down, so the top burns first — and what’s at the bottom lasts longest, staying with the spell until the very end.
Example 1: You want a Head of Marketing role. But honestly, you’d take Head of Content or Head of Brand — it’s the seniority that matters most to you. You’d carve from bottom to top:
HEAD OF (at the bottom — this stays longest)
MARKETING (at the top — this burns first)
Example 2: You want a role in product, and you care more about the function than the seniority. You’d be happy as a Senior Product Manager or even a Product Lead — you just want to be in product. You’d carve:
PRODUCT (at the bottom)
MANAGER (at the top)
You can also carve symbols, sigils, or other words that matter to you. Some people add runes. Some add their initials. Some add a dollar sign for salary intentions. Make it yours.
The Anointing
Rub oil on the candle while speaking your full intention aloud. This is where you get specific: the job title (what you carved); if it’s remote, hybrid, or in-person; the pay range you want; the industry or type of company; the culture you’re looking for. Focus on what you want the work to feel like, and state aloud anything else that matters: relocation support, flexibility, learning budget, a team you actually like.
Speak it like it’s already happening. “I am offered a role as Head of Marketing at a company that values sustainability. I am paid $150K or more. I work remotely, with a learning stipend and occasional travel to New York. My team is collaborative and sharp. I am respected.”
The Burning
Every time you do job search work — scrolling listings, tailoring applications, prepping for interviews, responding to emails — light the candle. Let it burn while you work.
This does two things: it keeps the spell “active” during aligned action, and it creates a ritual container around your job search. Instead of doom-scrolling Indeed at midnight while dissociating, you’re lighting a candle, stating your intention, and doing the work with presence.
When you light it each time, briefly restate your intention. You can say it aloud or silently. Some people clap at the end, some say “so it is” or “so mote it be,” some ring a bell. I like to ring a small bell at the beginning and end — it marks the container of the spell.
When the candle burns out
Your spell isn’t “done” when the candle is gone — it’s released. The intention has been sent. Now you trust and stay alert for opportunities.
If you’re still searching when the candle finishes, you can absolutely start a new one. Refine your intention if needed. Sometimes the search teaches you what you actually want, and your second candle reflects that clarity.
Staying Afloat: Raising Energy to Survive the Swim
The swim is long. The water is cold. Rejection pulls at your ankles like an undertow.
If you’re applying to jobs without tending to your energy, you will drown — not literally, but spiritually. You’ll start to believe the silence means something about your worth. You’ll lower your standards just to make the rejection stop. You’ll wash up on the first shore you see, even if it’s just another ghost ship.
Raising energy before you do any job search work is protection. It keeps your head above water. It reminds you that you are a whole person with a life force, not just a resume hoping to be chosen.
What “raising energy” actually means
Raising energy is one of the most important foundational practices to working your magic. It’s all about shifting your physiological and emotional state, getting in touch with your spirit, and feeling the webs of connection between you and others: people, nature, economies, communities.
Job hunting is a stressful and often dehumanizing process, so you’re going to want to get this into your routine.
Raising energy can look like:
- A 20-minute walk, preferably outside, preferably without your phone
- Dancing to music you love, in your kitchen, like no one’s watching
- Singing, chanting, or humming — your voice in your body, vibrating
- Doodling, drawing, or making something with your hands
- Stretching, shaking out your limbs, moving stuck energy
- Tending to a plant, petting an animal, making tea with presence
I raise energy primarily through dance, breathwork in the sun, and reading my poems or prayers aloud at my altar. For me, grounding and raising energy are often inseparable; I can’t do the latter without the former.
So find what grounds you in the moment, what makes you feel rooted (or “anchored”, to stay on theme!) then raise energy from there.
If you have a more formal practice, you can also cast a circle and call in the elements or directions. Many magical folks invoke ancestors, guides, or deities. Some pull a Tarot card for guidance after they’ve raised energy but before they’ve spent it, and others focus on grounding meditations and rooting into the earth.
The point is to arrive at your job search from a place of aliveness.
A note on chronic illness and disability:
I have chronic migraines. Some of my favorite ways to raise energy are sometimes impossible. On those days, I watch the birds. I doodle and listen to meditative chants on YouTube. It’s enough.
The practice has to meet your body where it is.
When to raise energy
Before you start a job search session, before an interview (even a quick call), and after a rejection to stop it from draining your field. Anytime you notice you’re inching closer to despair or a spiral, get back into your body. Ground yourself. Then raise energy.
Think of it like putting on a life jacket before you get in the water. You don’t wait until you’re drowning.
Raising energy makes your spells more potent. It makes you more magnetic to opportunities.
But the main reason to do this is so that you don’t lose yourself in the process. The job market wants you to feel desperate. Desperation makes you easier to underpay, easier to exploit, easier to trap on another ghost ship.
Raising energy is how you stay sovereign. It’s how you remember that you are not a beggar. You are a person with skills, experience, and a life force that existed before this job search and will exist long after.
Navigation by Stars: Dreamwork and Intuition
Your intuition knows things that LinkedIn’s little “You’d be a top applicant” feature will never know.
I admit that this section is a little different from the others. Dreamwork is less about manifesting or spellcasting, and more about listening. Developing your capacity to receive guidance, recognize signs, and trust your own inner knowing.
In a job search, this matters more than most folks realize. You can do everything “right” — perfect resume, strong interviews, good connections — and still end up in the wrong role or rejected because you ignored the quiet voice that said something’s off here.
When my intuition made me quit on day 1
In 2018, I was headed to my first day at a new job. I really needed it, and had just completed 2 weeks of unpaid training. It was 9am and I stood at my front door, ready to get on the train to Osaka. But I just could not get myself to move through the threshold. My body simply would not let me go.
I tried to override it. I took a step into the street. I felt myself shutting down. I stepped back to the threshold and just stood there, watching the minutes tick by.
Finally, when I knew I’d be late anyway, I called my new employer and said I wasn’t coming. Not today, not ever. I was apologetic, but naturally he was irritated — I’d just done training, met my colleagues, and they’d called around to three references. He had every right to be angry. But I knew I couldn’t go.
I went inside. Made tea. Changed clothes. Sat down at my computer and, for the first time ever, searched for remote contract work.
One job had been posted an hour earlier. It was perfect. Everything I wanted. I even called my mom, gushing about how it was all my passions rolled into one. “Just apply!” she said, “And talk to them like you’re talking to me right now.”
I wrote an overly passionate but sincere email and got the interview. And I got the job.
That job changed my life. It let my husband become a stay-at-home dad. It allowed us to have two kids without childcare costs. It gave us the opportunity to move to London — something I’d always dreamed of. It changed everything.
All because I listened to my intuition telling me that the new job in Osaka was not where I was meant to be.
Developing your intuition
Dreamwork is one of my favorite ways to develop this inner knowing, and there are certainly many others. If this doesn’t work for you, keep digging!
With dreamwork, you learn to pay attention to symbols, feelings, and the signals your psyche likes to send when your conscious mind is busy.
Some ways to practice:
- Keep a dream journal. Write whatever you remember as soon as you wake, even if it’s just fragments and feelings. Over time, you’ll start to recognize patterns and symbols that are meaningful to you.
- Set intentions before sleep. Ask a specific question: “What do I need to know about this opportunity?” “Show me what this company is really like.” “What’s blocking me from finding the right role?” Then see what comes.
- Notice your body’s signals. The threshold feeling I described — that’s intuition in the body. Start paying attention to when you feel expansion (openness, lightness, yes) versus contraction (tightness, dread, no) in response to opportunities.
- Track synchronicities. Not everything is a sign, but some things are. If you keep seeing the same company name, hearing the same phrase, dreaming of the same symbol — pay attention.
The mundane foundation
Dreamwork and intuitive knowing both require rest. You can’t access your intuition if you’re running on fumes.
Sleep deprivation in particular tanks your inner knowing. Screen time before bed floods your subconscious. Anxiety can bind up your nervous system so tight that subtle signals can’t get through to you.
If you want to navigate by stars, you have to be able to see the stars. That means protecting your sleep like the sacred practice it is. Give yourself the gift of screen-free time before bed: resist the urge to scroll job listings on LinkedIn at midnight, or dejected job searcher’s TikToks, when you’re exhausted and vulnerable.
Rest, even when the urgency of the job search tells you to just push harder. Rest should not be a luxury.
You jumped off the ghost ship because something in you knew you had to. That knowing didn’t disappear. It’s still there, waiting to guide you to shore.
You just have to get quiet enough to hear it.
Your First Week: A Simple Ritual
If you’re staring at this post thinking, “Okay, Bree. These are lovely but where do I actually start?” Here’s the on-ramp:
Day 1–2: Get a candle (40+ hours of burn time). Find or buy a journal if you don’t have one. Change the background color of a fresh Google Doc — this will become your base resume. Choose a color that feels like yours.
Day 3: Carve your intention into the candle. Anoint it with oil. Speak your full intention aloud — title, salary, culture, how you want it to feel. Ring a bell, clap, say “so it is.” Let it burn while you do the next step.
Day 4–5: Pick one past role — just one. Set a timer for 30 minutes. Write everything you remember: stories, people, problems, things you’re proud of, things that pissed you off. Don’t edit. Don’t censor yourself. Repeat with another role tomorrow.
Day 6: Before you open a single job listing, move your body. Walk, dance, stretch, shake. Arrive at your job search from aliveness, not depletion. Light your candle. Then scroll, save listings, or send applications.
Day 7: Rest. No applications. No job boards. Protect your sleep. Before bed, set an intention: show me what I need to know. Keep your journal by your bed. Write whatever you remember when you wake.
And repeat!
This isn’t a one-time spell, and that’s intentional. Looking for a job right now is hard, tedious, and dehumanizing. This is a practice that helps you search without being turned into a ghost.
The Shore You’re Swimming Toward
The water is cold and the fog is thick and some days you’re not sure you’re making any progress at all.
But you jumped. You’re swimming.
Voice in the Shell reminds you who you are before the sea tries to dissolve you. The Lighthouse calls the right shore to you so you don’t wash up somewhere just as cursed. Staying Afloat keeps your head above water when rejection tries to pull you under. Navigation by Stars helps you trust your inner compass when you can’t see the way.
Keep swimming.
Want to go deeper? Read the companion post: How to Enchant Your Job Search: Career Design as a Spiritual Practice → — 7 ways to weave magic into your resume, LinkedIn, interview clothes, and professional network.
And if you’re still deciding whether to jump:
Pocket Witch is high-touch coaching for navigating career transitions and identity resurrections. We work with Tarot, ritual, and strategy to figure out who you are now, and what you want to build from here.
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