Energy Work: 101, 201, 301, 401 and 501

Frequently, whenever someone describes a magickal practice and they talk about a step
involving direct energy work, someone else will ask how they can learn to do energy work
themselves. Here is a complete set of exercises designed to bring anyone into full mastery of
energy work.

What do I consider full mastery? The ability to move large amounts of energy from one moment
to the next, over prodigious periods of time, with exceptional and fine-tuned control, coupled
with the ability to sense energy in the environment with enough clarity to not only feel the
energy but (in the case of enchantments, etc.) sense what the energy has been programmed to
do. If I've just described you, you can stop reading; there's nothing in the following for you.
Finally, what follows is almost certainly not the only way to develop mastery. Keep that in mind
if you hit a wall.

101: Freshman

The following is for those who have never felt energy.

Spend 2-3 seconds focusing your mind so that there isn't anything on your mind except how
you're focusing your mind.

Hold your hands in front of your waist close together, like you're holding a small ball not much
bigger than your hands.

Visualize white light emerging from your body and flowing down your arms into the space
between your hands, forming a ball. Start with imagination, but kick it up a level, projecting
onto it a heightened level of reality, where you are mentally making that light energy more and
more real, more and more substantial, with substance.

See that substantial light energy accumulating between your hands, becoming thicker and more
intense as you continue to pump more light energy into it. Every ounce of light energy you
cause to flow into that ball of light is captured, none drifts off or gets absorbed back into your
hands. It's just getting thicker and thicker, more and more real.

If you're doing this with your eyes closed, build the intensity of your visualization so high that
you practically feel like if you peeked you would see glowing energy in your hands. If you're
doing this with your eyes open, put so much intensity into it that you feel like you're on the
verge of seeing the same type of flickering distortion that you see with a heat mirage.

Spend several minutes pumping more and more real light energy into the ball between your
hands. Feel it grow as the intensely packed energy struggles to expand. Let it grow a bit bigger
without moving your hands, so that the energy ball encompasses your hands.
Let it grow thicker and thicker, more and more intense, more and more dense, more and more
real.

Eventually, your hands will feel a physical sensation. About 85% of people will perceive a feeling
akin to static electricity. About 15% of people will perceive heat. I've met one person who felt a
different sensation that she could only describe as "spikey" but not painful. Whatever sensation
you feel, this will NOT be something you imagine or project; it is not part of the visualization
exercise. It is a side effect of the visualization exercise. It is the nerves in your hands responding
to the magick energy surrounding them. Magick energy is just as objectively real as wind or
radiation, and your nerves can feel it. Triggering that physical sensation is the goal of this
exercise. It indicates success. If someone else is around and they place their hand between your
hands, they too will feel the energy. They might feel static whereas you feel heat, because
different people's nerves get triggered in different ways, but it's objectively real, and you are
controlling it.

Whether you get energy dense enough to physically feel or not, when you are done, bring your
hands to your chest and visualize absorbing the light energy back into your body. Feel it diffuse
effortlessly and easily back through your body.

If at first you don't have success, keep at it. If you do have success, keep at it - trying to build up
a ball of energy that triggers physical sensation more quickly with further practice.

201: Sophomore

The following is for those who can move energy but have never done anything with it.

Build a tangible ball of energy in your hands.

Next, put an idea of happiness in your head, like the giddy overwhelming happiness of a little
girl who just got a pony from her daddy.

Project that flavor of happiness into the energy in your hands. Feel the energy morph into the
essence of that happiness. This isn't hard; energy responds to mental control, that's how you
got the energy into your hands in the first place. It is even easier to imprint and resonate with a
state of being that you assign it than it is to move into your hands.

Next, lift the giddy-happy ball of energy to your forehead and push it into your head, not
naturally absorbing it back into yourself but rather infusing your head with the giddy happy
energy. Note what happens with your emotions.

The next time you decide to make a ball of energy, do the same thing, except this time infuse
the ball of energy with the type of deep satisfaction happiness that the father experiences upon
seeing her little girl so happy with the pony. Note the difference in the resulting emotions.
Next time, only put about half the amount of energy into your hands that you need to trigger
physical sensation. Infuse it with happiness (whichever flavor you want) and put it into your
head. Note the differences that only using half the energy creates.

Next time, supercharge your ball of energy, putting more energy into it than you've ever done
before. Give it a happiness flavor of your choosing and put it into your head. Note how the
effect is different from previous exercises.

Next time, put the standard amount of energy into your hands, but instead of thoroughly
attuning each and every ounce of energy with happiness energy, spend just a second or two
aligning the energy, so that it's nowhere near as clear of an imprint as before. Put it into your
head, see the difference.

The next time, attune the energy as it's flowing down your arms, rather than waiting to attune it
after it's gathered. Practice this until it's second-nature.

Experiment. Explore. Try different emotions. Try different variables with what you're doing. See
what happens if you try two emotions simultaneously. Have fun with it. Learn. If you have a
partner to work with (or a spouse who doesn't mind being a guinea pig), try putting the energy
ball into their head and ask them to describe the change in emotion they feel. (Don't do this if
they're a skeptic; their belief will affect the energy just as certainly as yours will; and if they
don't believe in this stuff they could subconsciously neutralize the emotion in the energy in
order to preserve their world view.)

ONCE YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY ALTERED YOUR OWN EMOTIONS USING THIS TECHNIQUE, YOU
SHOULD BE COMBINING ENERGY WORK WITH RITUAL - any time you need to charge up a candle
or oil or piece of paper or sigil or "put your intent" into something or whatever, either pump it
full of pre-attuned energy or pump it full of neutral energy and then attune it, depending on
where you are in your development. The attunement, of course, should be whatever role that
item is supposed to play in the ritual. If you're charging a candle to bring peace into a troubled
relationship, imprint the energy with "peace in the relationship".

301: Junior

The following is for those who have used energy to effect change but want to enhance
control.

The following are ideas to enhance your ability to work with energy. Once you've got the gist of
the exercises presented here, feel free to come up with your own.

3-D Geometry: Instead of making a ball of energy, make a cube. Or a cylinder. Or a pyramid.
Or... whatever. You get the idea. Don't worry about attuning it. Focus on giving it sharply-
defined edges and smooth surfaces. This is about precision. The more precise you can control
energy, the more impact your magick will have, ounce per ounce.
Bouncing Ball: Make a ball of energy. Then make it rubber. Then throw it at a wall, and see what
happens. Ricochet it off the floor into a wall, or off a wall into the ceiling. This is ridiculously fun.
Remember, no matter how crazy the trajectory of the ball, it's still under your mental control so
you should be able to catch it no matter what crazy trajectory it starts off with.

Permanency: Create a ball of energy. Put it on the table. Tell it to stay. Then stop focusing on it.
A minute or so later, find it and pick it up. Stick it to a wall and tell it to stay. Go into the other
room and then come back again. Find it. Stick it under the table and come back an hour later
and find it. Then stick it on the ceiling, go to sleep and find it the next day.The purpose is to
learn to feel energy that isn't under your direct control.

Environmental Energy: After doing the Permanency exercise above, branch out. It's a little
easier to feel energy that's being/been used for magickal purposes, but the fact is, you're
surrounded by energy, each with its own vibe. Reach into the earth and draw up energy into
your hand. Notice how it feels different than the neutral energy you create. Attune it to match
your personal energy's vibe (essentially making it your energy) and then absorb it into yourself.
Pull energy out of the air, out of a fire or body of water. Pull it out of plants and trees. Try
pulling it out of a pet or wild animal. Notice the difference. Pull it out of a wall, the tires of a
car....

Environmental Energy During Ritual: Once you've played around a bit with the Environmental
Energy exercise above, the next time you're doing ritual, try setting up two energy flows: one
drawing energy into you from the earth (or air or whatever you find easiest) and the other
pushing attuned energy out into whatever purpose you want. Notice how you can become
mentally fatigued if you do this for an extended period of time but the energy level in your body
doesn't deplete from having done magick. Use this whenever you're doing rituals requiring a lot
of energy.

3-D Geometry, Bounding Ball and Permanency with a Partner: If you're learning magick with a
partner, get them involved in these exercises. For example, one person makes a shape and the
other tell them what shape they sense.

401: Senior

This is for people that want to become badass with magick.

Energy work has three facets: strength/power (being able to handle larger and larger amounts
of energy in any given moment), endurance (being able to handle energy flow for longer and
longer periods of time before mental fatigue sets in) and precision (developing an ever-
increasing degree of precise control with the energy).

Increase your strength/power by practicing moving an increased volume of energy. Attune it to

Increase your endurance by practicing moving an easily managed amount of energy as long as
you can. You'll obviously want to draw energy into you while you push energy out. Again, attune
it so something that would do the world some good but not something you specifically need in
your life, because you should be focused less on the attunement and more on holding the
energy flow steady. Go longer and longer.

Increase precision by doing the 3-D Geometry exercise with more challenging objects, for
example a star or cross or (later) snowflake. Also practice precision by using highly detailed
imprinting on the energy you create. The difference in happiness between the little girl and the
father with the pony from the earlier exercise is an example, but make the changes more subtle
- an 8 year old's reaction versus a 13 year olds, or an 8 year old boy's versus an 8 year old girl's,
things like that.

Also, start doing ritual magick without the ritual. Start out with more simple and straight-
forward rituals, for example instead of doing a ritual with candles and oil or whatever to make
your boss like you, just create a large pool of "like me, boss" energy sitting over your boss' head
that will flow down into him/her whenever they think about you. Reserve ritual for times when
you're doing more complex workings or just want to enjoy the occulty nature of ritual, but at
least occasionally, do real magick that you care about simply by sending out a bunch of energy
that you've attuned to your purpose.

501: Post-Graduate

This is for people who want to be able to tell what others' energy is supposed to accomplish.

I can't think of a way to pursue this level of energy mastery without a partner, so get a partner.

Create a pool of energy to go do something important to you, but instead of just sending it out
into the world, place it in a temporary holding field in the air above you. Then have the other
person sense the energy and try to identify, with increasing precision, exactly what the energy is
supposed to do. Once they're done, release the energy to go do what it's supposed to do. If you
don't have things important to you, do "make the world a better place" spells or silly things like,
"make my wife snort the next time she laughs". But whatever it is, make it as real of a spell as
though you were doing really important magick. The point is to make it a serious spell with
serious and clear energy imprinting so that the other person can learn on real spells how to tell
what energy has been programmed to do.

With this level of mastery, for example, if a witch gives you a pendant as a gift, you can tell if the
stone in the pendant has been enchanted and if so, what the purpose is.

I hope these exercises strengthen your magick.