Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawna Temple.
Hi Shawna, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised in Texas, the daughter of a Baptist pastor and counselor. Faith and service were the language of my house before I could name them as that.
I went to Baylor for undergrad and started out studying religion. During that time I met a group of Turkish friends. I set out to introduce them to Christianity. Instead, I found myself studying Islam to understand them better, and at 21, I became Muslim. It backfired in the best way.
For the first three years, I didn’t meet another Muslim. I studied and practiced almost entirely alone. That built something in me early on: the discipline to seek understanding without needing a room full of people to validate it. I stayed an orthodox Muslim for about twenty years.
Eventually I went looking for something deeper. Not a departure from my faith, but a way to feel more grounded in it. That search led me back to things I’d known as a child without having a name for them. I realized what I was reconnecting with was Hoodoo. From there I studied ceremonial magick and elemental magick, building a real foundation in spiritual practice and tradition.
By then I already had two master’s degrees and almost two decades in mental health and special education. Those two worlds, spiritual tradition and clinical training, weren’t competing. They were the same instinct: help people find their footing.
OshunsLight didn’t start as a business plan. I opened an Instagram account just to post for fun, mostly about tarot. People started asking for readings. When those readings kept turning out accurate, word spread, and what began as something I did for enjoyment turned into people actively seeking me out.
At the time, I was working in district-level administration in public education. I had built a career there. But the demand for my readings and spiritual work kept growing until I couldn’t do both well. So I walked away from that career to do this full time. That wasn’t an easy decision. It was a leap of faith, backed by two decades of clinical and educational experience I wasn’t willing to leave behind.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all. Running a business is hard on its own, but running it alone adds a layer people don’t always think about.
There’s no team down the hall to bounce ideas off of, no one to catch what you miss. Every decision, every piece of content, every client interaction runs through one person. That’s isolating in a way that doesn’t show up in the outward-facing side of the business.
Beyond that, the work itself carries weight. People come to me with the most serious things in their lives; grief, marriages falling apart or trying to be saved, plans for their livelihood, questions shaped by cultures from all over the world. I’m holding space for that, one person at a time, session after session. It’s draining. There’s no way around that.
But it’s more than worth it. Every difficult day is outweighed by watching someone walk out lighter than they walked in.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
At OshunsLight, I help people move from problem to prosperity. That’s the throughline of everything I do, whether someone comes to me for a tarot reading, a Hoodoo-rooted ritual, classes, spiritual counseling, mentorship, or one of my books. I meet people at whatever crisis or crossroads brought them to me, and I work with them until they’re standing in a different place.
My practice blends traditional Hoodoo and folk spiritual work with formal psychological frameworks. I hold two master’s degrees and spent almost two decades in mental health and special education before I stepped into this full time.
So when someone comes to me with grief, a relationship falling apart, or a business they’re trying to build, I offer something grounded in real clinical training alongside generations of spiritual tradition. That combination, practitioner-credentialed and rooted, not just aesthetic, is what I think sets me apart in this space.
I am most proud of the community I’ve built. My audience is made up of people from every spiritual and religious background you can imagine, from all over the world. Christians, Muslims, people practicing traditional folk paths, people with no religious background at all. Watching that community learn that they have far more in common than they think, and watching them show up for each other across those differences, means more to me than any single milestone. Being able to speak fluently across that many faiths and traditions, and hold space for all of them without asking anyone to abandon their own path, is something not many people in this work can do. That, along with my formal background, is what makes OshunsLight what it is
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I think the next five to ten years are going to separate the practitioners who are built for this work from the ones who were only built for the aesthetic of it.
A lot of people entered this space because it looked appealing online. But the people who come to us aren’t bringing light, easy questions. They’re bringing grief, marriages falling apart, real fear about their future. That weight is heavy, and I’m already watching aesthetic-only practitioners burn out and leave the space because they weren’t equipped to carry it.
At the same time, I think people are moving away from commercial spiritual apps. Those apps can offer convenience, but they can’t offer connection. People want to feel truly seen and known by the person guiding them, not matched with an algorithm or a stranger on a script. I believe the next decade favors practitioners who can build real relationships with their community over time.
Where those two things meet is where I think this industry is headed: toward practitioners with actual depth, whether that’s formal training, decades of lived practice, or both, who can sit with people in the hard moments and stay. Not everyone who enters this space will be able to do that. The ones who can will be the ones still standing
Pricing:
- readings start at $100
- Services start at $42
- Indepth work over time (6 weeks) starts at $525
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.oshunslight.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oshunslight
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Oshunslights-Boutique-100076216381418/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@oshunslight
- Other: https://oshunslight.substack.com
