We are beings of light and energy. Our materials bodies, as well as our spiritual bodies, are composed of light and energy. The basic act of living is a constant exchange and processing of energy. To a witch and healer, the basic act of living is, as we are always transforming and changing energy and it’s flows in our bodies and our web of life. Our bodies and other physical energy is “frozen”, moving so slowly and in such a particular program that to our unrefined senses the object and parts of our bodies seem unmoving in relation to the rest of the world. What is important to people working with magick is that we begin to consciously recognize when and how we work the energies we already do.
Energy is energy. While there may be different qualities to energy, such as light, electricity, heat and mass, each type has the ability to change into another type through some kind of chemical or natural process. But the amount of energy converted will always stay the same. Magick or healing energy is no different from any other type of energy. The application of energy is perhaps different in magick, prayer, positive thinking, and healing than it is for lighting your light bulbs or running your engine, but we are still using some type of energy. As Einstein pointed out to us, the effect of energy is extremely relative to your point of observation and comparison. While sitting here reading this, we are unaware of the implications[level-dracowolfs-circle] of the energy acting on our planet from it’s orbit around the sun and we are even unaware of the energy acting to run our bodies on a cellular level. As we talk about energy and its effects we should be aware of this fact. Our bodies are constantly going through multiple energy conversion processes throughout the average day. Amazingly, this science provides a kind of basis for the belief if animism. From Wikipendia (2): Animism (from Latin animus, -i “soul, life“)[1] is the religious worldview that natural physical entities—including animals, plants, and often even inanimate objects or phenomena—possess a spiritual essence. If we can measure our the energy fields and flows of our organs and the organs and bodies (aura and subtle body) of animals, and even to some extent plant life, we might be nearing a time when we can demonstrably measure, the energy fields of other physical things, like stones and crystals.
All energies behave the same way, they move in waves and their speed of oscillations (the range of ups and downs the energy takes from the baseline) and is measured by the wave’s frequency. The more oscillations the higher the frequency and vise versa. Everything has it’s own frequency, and the frequency of one solid thing, like a chair, is actually composed of many frequencies. Every part of the chair has it’s own frequency, the upholstery, the stuffing, the wood, the paint, the hardware; and all those together create the whole frequency of the chair, it’s singular energy harmonic.
We are only the tip of iceberg with energetic studies and findings. As Oschman states, “You will see that I focus on magnetic and bio-magnetic fields. This is because we know a lot about these fields and they are relatively easy to measure. But this is not meant to exclude other kinds of energy from the inquiry. The body also emits light, sound, heat, and electromagnetic fields and, like all other matter, it has a gravitational field. (1)”. There is still so much to learn about what healers, psychics, and witches, are experiencing. But finally, we are getting the validation of our experiences from science.
While all the academics is fascinating, let’s take a more magick based practical exercise for learning to get the hang the of using your body energies. My favorite place to start are exercises that help you learn to read or sense energy, and charge an object.
To charge is to infuse something with energy, usually, for a specific purpose. You can charge an object for pretty much anything; attracting money, protection, luck, or just charging a piece of jewelry you wear often so you have an extra reserve of energy to draw upon if needed. Many forms of magick rely charging such as candle magick and stone magick etc. Sensing is feeling energy within objects and things.
Sensing your own energy: Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Hold your hands about a foot apart, then close your eyes. Very slow begin to bring your hands together. Stop when you first begin to feel something happening in your hands. Open your eyes and see how far apart your hands are from one another! If you have problems with this, then begin with your hand close together, where you do feel some sensation in your hands. Then slowly move then apart, getting a feel for where the edge of your personal energy boundaries are. Have fun with this! Run your hands along your body and sense where there might seems to be spots where your hands feel different things. Try it with a partner, try it on a pet!
Sensing An Object: Get an object such as a stone or key or piece of jewelry. Place it on a flat clean surface. Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Put your hand over it and see if you can sense the objects energy. Pass your hand over it and see if you can tell a difference from when your hand isn’t above the object to when it is, try from different distances away. It could feel like a pressure, magnetism-like effect, tingling, coldness, etc. Try this with both hands. See if you sense better in one hand then the with the other hand. Try with different objects. Note how the different objects’ energy feels. Does it vibrate fast? Slow? Cold? Hot? Warm? Piercing? Keep track of all you sense. Hold the object in one hand, and take a few minutes to really cast your energy over and into the object. Try this with both hands. See if you sense better in one hand then the with the other hand. Try with different objects. Note how the different objects’ energy feels. Does it vibrate fast? Slow? Cold? Hot? Warm? Piercing? Do you see flashes of things in your mind, or have any new emotions you are feeling? Keep track of all you sense. What you sense could be content sensitive or time sensitive, meaning you may get specific feelings or messages for certain reason or only at certain times. The more you work this the more sensation or information you can get.
Charging An Object: Take the object to be charged in your hand(s). Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Raise personal energy and center it in your stomach as usual. Direct that energy up your chest and down your arms to your hands where the object is. Visualize the energy seeping from your hands into the object. Visualize the object glowing brighter and brighter as you place more energy into the object. When you have put as much energy as you want into the object, see the energy stop going into the object and recenter your energy. Leave the objects energy alone; you may wish to put it down before bringing your energies back into yourself. Sense or feel energy, is there a difference in the objects energy? Do a test. Sense the object before charging and then after, have fun with it!
Charging An Object For A Specific Purpose: Take the object to be charged in your hand(s) that you have already read. Think about the kinds of sensations or information you received from the object. If you don’t know what to think, then sense or read the object again with the thought in mind to understand what the object is for or what it does. When you have an idea, such as this piece of rose quartz reminds me of my mother and how she loved me unconditionally, think about how you can use that object’s energy in your life. In the rose quartz example, having that feeling of unconditional love would really help to give you a boost when you are down. Hold this thought in your mind. Then stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Pick up your object in both hands. Go back to that memory of, say your mom comforting you, and feel where that emotion comes from in your body. Move that energy to your chest and down your arms to your hands where the object is. Visualize the energy seeping from your hands into the object. Visualize the object glowing brighter and brighter as you place more energy and emotion from your memory into the object. When you have an energy flow into the object turn your visualization to it’s purpose. For instance, if you have an object that feel strong or protective, you can charging the object for protection you might visualize fire (or whatever feels like it would match with the objects energy) coming from the object and surrounding and protecting you whenever you carry it. When you have put as much energy as you want into the object, see the energy stop going into the object and bring your energy back into yourself and shake out any access energy. Leave the objects energy alone; you may wish to put it down before bringing you energies back into yourself.
If you are using crystals and stones, another word for the process of putting energy and intention into stones is programming. This term is more used by crystal healers or people who tend to be more New Age spiritual, rather than witchy.
From the Mesa Creative Arts (3), we have a nice little preliminary list of things you can or might feel when working with energy. It is recommended to record in a journal or Book of Shadows your progression of sensations and techniques you use to sense energy the best and the most accurately. Here are some ways we use to describe how these energies feel to us that might help you increase your awareness of them.
“They may be sensed with the hand or all over the body:
- Buzzing or tingling, like when your leg is asleep.
- Prickly, like static electricity.
- A feeling of heat without a heat source. (Usually denotes a LOT of energy moving.)
- A feeling of cold without a physical source.
- A sense of a rising or falling pitch without any audible sound.
- A feeling of something flowing through you like wind or a stream or current of warm water.
- A feeling like a wave passing through you.
- A sense that some other Being, like an angel or ghost has stepped inside of you (“incorporation”)
- Pressure or a pushing sensation with nothing touching you.
- A pulsing sensation that is not in time with your heartbeat. (Usually a balancing “Healing Pulse”.)
- A sensation of bubbles rising like carbonated water or Alka-Seltzer.
- A “clanging” sensation like striking a piece of metal held in your hand with a hammer.
- A spinning or spiraling sensation.
- A fluttering or shimmering sensation.
- A sensation like a change in altitude or barometric pressure.
- A sense of lightness that wasn’t present before.
- A sense of expansion in some way.
- A shift in consciousness like meditation or falling asleep.
- A sudden sigh or yawn. (Denotes that you are getting relieved of something by what you came into contact with.)
Many people don’t recognize the signs of their energy system in movement or release. Here are some signs that built up energy is being released from a person’s system on the physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual level (note from Lindsay, take this within the content of when you are actually trying to sense energy of someone or something.):
- Crying
- Laughing
- Muscle twitching/releasing
- Yelling
- Coughing
- Burping
- Flatulence
- Shaking or trembling
- Sighing
- Yawning
-
Vibrating or buzzing, especially in the feet, hands, head, or sex organs”
Take your time with these exercises and build a solid foundation for feeling energies out and attempting to ferret out information from things. In my experience of magick, this is a foundational practice that has extremely wide application. For once you being to open up and work with your hand chakras (which are connected to the heart), other chakras can begin to open and/or flow better, leaving you healthier, stronger, more full of energy, and perhaps opening to other gifts of our energy system.
Lastly, if you feel all charged up from doing this kind of work, you will need to ground your energy. For now, this can be eating some carbohydrates, going for a walk, taking a shower, exercising, or getting intimate with a partner. We will cover more about grounding and centering in the next lesson.
Assignment:
Write, at least 3 paragraphs about your experimentation with these exercises! What did you learn about energy? What did you learn about yourself?
Bibliography:
- Science and the Human Energy Field. James Oschman, PH. D. interviewed by William Lee Rand. Reiki News Magazine, Vol. One, Issue Three, Winter 2002. ©2002 Vision Publications. www.reiki.org
- Animism. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
- Sensing Energy. Copyright ©2004-11 All Rights Reserved by Mesa Creative Arts, Inc. http://www.mesacreativearts.com/html/sensing_energy.html
[/level-dracowolfs-circle]
[level-current-students]
of the energy acting on our planet from it’s orbit around the sun and we are even unaware of the energy acting to run our bodies on a cellular level. As we talk about energy and its effects we should be aware of this fact. Our bodies are constantly going through multiple energy conversion processes throughout the average day. Amazingly, this science provides a kind of basis for the belief if animism. From Wikipendia (2): Animism (from Latin animus, -i “soul, life“)[1] is the religious worldview that natural physical entities—including animals, plants, and often even inanimate objects or phenomena—possess a spiritual essence. If we can measure our the energy fields and flows of our organs and the organs and bodies (aura and subtle body) of animals, and even to some extent plant life, we might be nearing a time when we can demonstrably measure, the energy fields of other physical things, like stones and crystals.
All energies behave the same way, they move in waves and their speed of oscillations (the range of ups and downs the energy takes from the baseline) and is measured by the wave’s frequency. The more oscillations the higher the frequency and vise versa. Everything has it’s own frequency, and the frequency of one solid thing, like a chair, is actually composed of many frequencies. Every part of the chair has it’s own frequency, the upholstery, the stuffing, the wood, the paint, the hardware; and all those together create the whole frequency of the chair, it’s singular energy harmonic.
- Kirlian photo of crystal
We are only the tip of iceberg with energetic studies and findings. As Oschman states, “You will see that I focus on magnetic and bio-magnetic fields. This is because we know a lot about these fields and they are relatively easy to measure. But this is not meant to exclude other kinds of energy from the inquiry. The body also emits light, sound, heat, and electromagnetic fields and, like all other matter, it has a gravitational field. (1)”. There is still so much to learn about what healers, psychics, and witches, are experiencing. But finally, we are getting the validation of our experiences from science.
While all the academics is fascinating, let’s take a more magick based practical exercise for learning to get the hang the of using your body energies. My favorite place to start are exercises that help you learn to read or sense energy, and charge an object.
To charge is to infuse something with energy, usually, for a specific purpose. You can charge an object for pretty much anything; attracting money, protection, luck, or just charging a piece of jewelry you wear often so you have an extra reserve of energy to draw upon if needed. Many forms of magick rely charging such as candle magick and stone magick etc. Sensing is feeling energy within objects and things.
Sensing your own energy: Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Hold your hands about a foot apart, then close your eyes. Very slow begin to bring your hands together. Stop when you first begin to feel something happening in your hands. Open your eyes and see how far apart your hands are from one another! If you have problems with this, then begin with your hand close together, where you do feel some sensation in your hands. Then slowly move then apart, getting a feel for where the edge of your personal energy boundaries are. Have fun with this! Run your hands along your body and sense where there might seems to be spots where your hands feel different things. Try it with a partner, try it on a pet!
- You can also make balls of energy between your hands!
Sensing An Object: Get an object such as a stone or key or piece of jewelry. Place it on a flat clean surface. Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Put your hand over it and see if you can sense the objects energy. Pass your hand over it and see if you can tell a difference from when your hand isn’t above the object to when it is, try from different distances away. It could feel like a pressure, magnetism-like effect, tingling, coldness, etc. Try this with both hands. See if you sense better in one hand then the with the other hand. Try with different objects. Note how the different objects’ energy feels. Does it vibrate fast? Slow? Cold? Hot? Warm? Piercing? Keep track of all you sense. Hold the object in one hand, and take a few minutes to really cast your energy over and into the object. Try this with both hands. See if you sense better in one hand then the with the other hand. Try with different objects. Note how the different objects’ energy feels. Does it vibrate fast? Slow? Cold? Hot? Warm? Piercing? Do you see flashes of things in your mind, or have any new emotions you are feeling? Keep track of all you sense. What you sense could be content sensitive or time sensitive, meaning you may get specific feelings or messages for certain reason or only at certain times. The more you work this the more sensation or information you can get.
Charging An Object: Take the object to be charged in your hand(s). Stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Raise personal energy and center it in your stomach as usual. Direct that energy up your chest and down your arms to your hands where the object is. Visualize the energy seeping from your hands into the object. Visualize the object glowing brighter and brighter as you place more energy into the object. When you have put as much energy as you want into the object, see the energy stop going into the object and recenter your energy. Leave the objects energy alone; you may wish to put it down before bringing your energies back into yourself. Sense or feel energy, is there a difference in the objects energy? Do a test. Sense the object before charging and then after, have fun with it!
Charging An Object For A Specific Purpose: Take the object to be charged in your hand(s) that you have already read. Think about the kinds of sensations or information you received from the object. If you don’t know what to think, then sense or read the object again with the thought in mind to understand what the object is for or what it does. When you have an idea, such as this piece of rose quartz reminds me of my mother and how she loved me unconditionally, think about how you can use that object’s energy in your life. In the rose quartz example, having that feeling of unconditional love would really help to give you a boost when you are down. Hold this thought in your mind. Then stimulate the energy in your hands by rubbing them together and/or clapping, this helps to open the energy centers (chakras) if your hands. Pick up your object in both hands. Go back to that memory of, say your mom comforting you, and feel where that emotion comes from in your body. Move that energy to your chest and down your arms to your hands where the object is. Visualize the energy seeping from your hands into the object. Visualize the object glowing brighter and brighter as you place more energy and emotion from your memory into the object. When you have an energy flow into the object turn your visualization to it’s purpose. For instance, if you have an object that feel strong or protective, you can charging the object for protection you might visualize fire (or whatever feels like it would match with the objects energy) coming from the object and surrounding and protecting you whenever you carry it. When you have put as much energy as you want into the object, see the energy stop going into the object and bring your energy back into yourself and shake out any access energy. Leave the objects energy alone; you may wish to put it down before bringing you energies back into yourself.
If you are using crystals and stones, another word for the process of putting energy and intention into stones is programming. This term is more used by crystal healers or people who tend to be more New Age spiritual, rather than witchy.
From the Mesa Creative Arts (3), we have a nice little preliminary list of things you can or might feel when working with energy. It is recommended to record in a journal or Book of Shadows your progression of sensations and techniques you use to sense energy the best and the most accurately. Here are some ways we use to describe how these energies feel to us that might help you increase your awareness of them.
“They may be sensed with the hand or all over the body:
- Buzzing or tingling, like when your leg is asleep.
- Prickly, like static electricity.
- A feeling of heat without a heat source. (Usually denotes a LOT of energy moving.)
- A feeling of cold without a physical source.
- A sense of a rising or falling pitch without any audible sound.
- A feeling of something flowing through you like wind or a stream or current of warm water.
- A feeling like a wave passing through you.
- A sense that some other Being, like an angel or ghost has stepped inside of you (“incorporation”)
- Pressure or a pushing sensation with nothing touching you.
- A pulsing sensation that is not in time with your heartbeat. (Usually a balancing “Healing Pulse”.)
- A sensation of bubbles rising like carbonated water or Alka-Seltzer.
- A “clanging” sensation like striking a piece of metal held in your hand with a hammer.
- A spinning or spiraling sensation.
- A fluttering or shimmering sensation.
- A sensation like a change in altitude or barometric pressure.
- A sense of lightness that wasn’t present before.
- A sense of expansion in some way.
- A shift in consciousness like meditation or falling asleep.
- A sudden sigh or yawn. (Denotes that you are getting relieved of something by what you came into contact with.)
Many people don’t recognize the signs of their energy system in movement or release. Here are some signs that built up energy is being released from a person’s system on the physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual level (note from Lindsay, take this within the content of when you are actually trying to sense energy of someone or something.):
- Crying
- Laughing
- Muscle twitching/releasing
- Yelling
- Coughing
- Burping
- Flatulence
- Shaking or trembling
- Sighing
- Yawning
-
Vibrating or buzzing, especially in the feet, hands, head, or sex organs”
Take your time with these exercises and build a solid foundation for feeling energies out and attempting to ferret out information from things. In my experience of magick, this is a foundational practice that has extremely wide application. For once you being to open up and work with your hand chakras (which are connected to the heart), other chakras can begin to open and/or flow better, leaving you healthier, stronger, more full of energy, and perhaps opening to other gifts of our energy system.
Lastly, if you feel all charged up from doing this kind of work, you will need to ground your energy. For now, this can be eating some carbohydrates, going for a walk, taking a shower, exercising, or getting intimate with a partner. We will cover more about grounding and centering in the next lesson.
Assignment:
Write, at least 3 paragraphs about your experimentation with these exercises! What did you learn about energy? What did you learn about yourself?
Bibliography:
- Science and the Human Energy Field. James Oschman, PH. D. interviewed by William Lee Rand. Reiki News Magazine, Vol. One, Issue Three, Winter 2002. ©2002 Vision Publications. www.reiki.org
- Animism. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
- Sensing Energy. Copyright ©2004-11 All Rights Reserved by Mesa Creative Arts, Inc. http://www.mesacreativearts.com/html/sensing_energy.html
[/level-current-students]
