By looking at narratives and practices of the self that enable ordinary Javanese to approach the ‘invisible world’, this article brings to light some fragments of a moral economy that unites understandings of the nature, extent and limits of the human will with political expression. In interacting with the spirit world – whether through the playful jailangkung or Nini Thowok games, or the tragic and violent stealing-spirits (thuyul) or the lynching of suspected sorcerers – ‘magic’ designates the moment when the frontiers of the visible become blurred and the will itself is de-individualized in the circulation between human and non-human agents. In this way, the article reflects on the paradoxical affirmation and denial of self of, on the one hand, meditation and ascesis, and on the other, communitarian ‘autochtonous’ violence, and asks how this specific expression of the political subject is to be understood without either reducing bodily processes to speech events or essentializing an ‘Asian’ view on individualism.