All right, so this is essentially the beginning of energy related witchcraft that I’ll be posting about as I try it and learn new things. Feel free to try out some of the stuff I talk about here but please remember that this is your journey and you can and should edit and tweak everything to best fit you.
Types of Energy
Reserved Energy
Reserved Energy floats either just above or below your skin. It should feel like it’s attached to you and resist most attempts to use it. It is minimally pliant, minimally workable, and mostly just exists as a backup or protection.
Latent Energy
Latent Energy is typically a ball of energy that is extremely malleable and easily visualized. This type of energy is more ‘for your use’. It can be visualized anywhere in the body; however, where ever it best seems to fit (i.e. a ball of energy in your stomach, chest, head, etc) is normally where it stays. Latent energy is great to work with to give yourself a better mastery over molding both Reserved and Latent energy.
Neighboring/Immediate Energy
Neighboring (or Immediate) Energy is an amalgamation of your energies and outside forces. It’s best visualized and felt by meditating. If you’ve meditated and felt like you were basically out of your own body and hazy, you’ve felt Neighboring Energy. It’s less you and, as a by product, significantly harder to work with. It’s not as difficult as Reserved Energy since that’s an active rejection to change, and this is simply difficult because you’re reaching beyond yourself.
Visualizing Your Energy
Visualizing energy can be a bit tricky, but seeing your energy, in my opinion, is equally important as feeling it. Being able to see and acknowledge your energy makes feeling and moving it so much simpler. There are a couple of ways to visualize your energy, so we’ll hop into those first:
First Plane Visualization (FPV)
If you close your eyes to visualize your energy and the first thing you see is your body, this is where you’re at. First Plane Visualization essentially means your energy best manifests itself to you as a physical part of you. Personally, I feel this makes it easier to work with Latent and Reserved Energy, but harder to work with Neighboring.
Second Plane Visualization (SPV)
If attempting to visualize your energy brings up empty space with your energy in some form or shape in it, congrats, this is you. This type of visualization makes it significantly easier to work with energy that isn’t yours but more difficult to work with your own as well. Your energy seems to best manifest itself as a construct in your mind, essentially on a different plane than your physical body. To use it, you have to get around your own barrier between it and physicality whereas outside energies that are already on your plane don’t need any extra work for you to work with them.
When you visualize your energy, you’re essentially introducing yourself and greeting it. In the same way you most likely wouldn’t hand a stranger a thousand dollars, your energy isn’t likely to do much for you if you don’t at least know it.
Moving Your Energy
Think of your energy as a muscle, if you never use it, it becomes that much more difficult to begin using and to strengthen it. Please don’t expect to hop in, visualize your energy once, and suddenly have it do everything you want it to.
First try visualizing your energy with your eyes closed. Spend some time with it, don’t demand anything of it. Is your energy naturally calm? Does it spin lazily as you sit with it? Is your energy a spitfire, constantly flinging out strands of itself and wrapping around everything it can without leaving it’s basic shape? Who is your energy? What kind of personality do you get from it?
Try to learn and love your energy every time you visualize it. When you’ve got the image of your energy firmly in your head, preferably to the point where you can almost feel it wherever it’s best visualized, try moving it. Try to get a strand of it to detach from the bulk of your energy and pull it towards you. If that’s difficult, simply work on moving the bulk of your energy towards and away from you (SPV) or around your body (FPV). This should honestly take awhile. Remember that you’re not simply trying to visualize it, but feel it. As it moves, you should feel it. Once you’ve got a mastery of that, try opening your eyes and doing it over again.
When you can move your energy in bulk or pieces with a bit more ease, I recommend pushing it to the surface. The easiest place to feel Latent Energy is between your palms. If trying to move your energy with in yourself simply won’t work for you, try this instead, then move back to that later. To push your energy to your hands for FPV, imagine it wherever it tends to manifest itself. Push it, either in whole or (preferably) in part, down or up your body and into your palms. If you need your eyes closed to direct it, by all means, close them; however, once you’ve got it comfortably in your palms, open your eyes and try to get used to keeping a hold on your energy with your eyes open. Allow it to do as it pleases within the space between your palms. Start out with maybe half a foot between your hands and slowly increase the distance as you grow more confident.
For SPV, visualize your energy and bring it towards you. Bring out either two bits of it, still connected to the whole, or the bulk of it towards yourself until it feels like you’ve stepped inside of it or as though it’s encompassed you. Carefully, without losing that feeling, visualize it (either with your eyes opened or closed depending on what works better for you) sparking its way down your arms and into your hands. If that’s too far to visualize, simply imagine it condensing between or in your palms for the get-go. Because your own image is less involved in your own energy, expect to have a harder time keeping it where you want it to be.
Energy, like most objects, rejects movement without force. When you move it at first, it may feel like it snaps back to where it started no matter what you do. Keep practicing and remember that it hasn’t really moved in years, so it’ll take some work to get it to move now.
Energy Exercises
We’re finally at the end of what I can share for the time being. I only have a couple of practices that I’ve been using lately, only one of which I’ll add here, specifically for Reserved Energy because that’s what I’m practicing working with currently. I will update this as time goes on but I do want to be sure before I give put any exercises. For example, one of them uses hunger as a basis and I don’t know how I feel about giving a purpose to staying hungry, so I’ll wait to add that if at all.
Exercise 1
Find a cold room or area, cold enough to give you goosebumps but not enough to shiver. Furthermore, if it’s outdoors, make sure there’s little to no wind. Wear short or no sleeves. Allow the cold to seep into your skin. Visualize your reserved energy; this may be a thin layer above or below your skin.
If it appears above your skin, give it intent, push it to separate you from the cold. In practice, this literally felt like a wash of lukewarm warmth sliding down from my head. The cold felt like someone holding an ice cube near my skin, but didn’t actually make me cold.
If it appears below your skin, incite it to heat itself. The cold should sink into your skin and meet that barrier of energy and fizzle out. I can’t tell you how it feels in practice because my Reserved Energy appears above the skin. If you try this out and are okay to share, I’d love to know how it differs.
Updates
I’ll either update or make new posts on this as I learn. I love energy based craft and I’ve got a lot more things I’m practicing that I’m not confident enough in quite yet to share…but soon. Here’s a mini-list of what you can expect in the future:
Moving Energy Into Objects
Visualizing Neighboring Energy
Using Neighboring Energy
Taking Energy from an Object
NOTE: All of the names I’ve given energy, energy types, etc were made by me simply to make it easier to refer to and talk about. If you call any of the feelings or activities something else, by all means, continue doing so. This is just what makes it easiest to understand for me.
Alright my friends. I have this problem: I am unmotivated and extremely barren energy-wise. Here are my fun ideas for gaining energy! This is kind of a Witchy self care day plan. You don’t have to do all of these btw. Do what you can. Anywho. Onto the things!
🔮 Go outside. Find a tree, preferably a strong mauve old one. Oaks are perfect. Place your hands on the bark, or by your sides. Align your feet with where the roots should be, and take a deep breath. As you exhale, visualize all the emptiness inside you draining with the air. Then inhale, and take in the trees strength from the roots. Do this as much as you need to.
🔮 make yourself a sachet full of your favourite flower petals. I would use carnation for strength, lavender for cleansing (I know its an herb pfft), and sunflower for energy and brightness. It can be a coffee filter full of your flower petals. Just tie off the end with a hair tie. Or you can be fancy. Idc. Whatever works, friendo.
🔮 Draw a sigil for energy. Good energy, mind you. Whatever that means for you, make it. Draw it on yourself or on the sachet, or somewhere on your clothes. Like a tag.
🔮 If you have spirit companions ask them for energy and help. Sometimes they are more than willing to offer you some help!
🔮 Grab yourself a water bottle. Put some quartz in it. Now shake that magical drink like there’s no tommorow for a full minute. Make sure the quartz is clean and put the cap on tight. Take out the quartz (put the water in a glass so its easier to do so) and drink the gem elixir! Woo hoo!!!
🔮 Draw yourself a bath. Add some bubbles. Fill that puppy. Now light a few yellow candles. Set quartz, carnelian, and turquoise somewhere they won’t get wet, but still close to the candles. The energy you will feel should be amazing, trust me. The quartz should amplify the energy of the other crystals and the candles. The carnelian is full of warmth and joy and vitality. The turquoise helps with creativity, and in my experience, motivation and inspiration.
🔮 Put a pillow on your bed or take one from it. Say this chant over it as you draw a circle on its surface with your finger:
“Pillow keep my energy tight
in your arms every night.”
That should keep your energy from draining whole you sleep. I found that when I dream a lot, I feel tired when I awaken. When I did this, it never happened again.
🔮 Take a nap. Or lay down and rest for an hour. Don’t make any posts or do things that could drain you. Just chill and try to recharge. Place crystals and herbs nearby if you want.
🔮 Make sure to put at least one of these types of days in your schedule every two weeks or so. Alternatively, do it when you need it. I need it Evert week. Some of you might need it more often. You do you.
🔮Eat lots of fruits and veggies. Their nutrients provides lots of good energy, physically and metaphysically (due to their properties). If you can’t afford these, try growing your own or adding herbs and spices to your food if you’ve got them.
Do you ever feel like you have to wait to be in just the right state to do magic?
Maybe you’ve been told you shouldn’t do magic when you’re sick.
Or maybe you’ve just found that spells tend to flop when you’re tired or sad.
THE PROBLEM IS, FOR MANY OF US THIS CAN MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF OUR LIVES!
From illnesses to working multiple jobs, raising kids or mental health struggles, life is messy and you just can’t maintain that optimal magic working state all the time.
This can be SO FRUSTRATING but today I’ve got a solution for you!
Now, sadly I can’t fix the parts of your life that drain you or wear you down. As much as I would love to have the ultimate answer to how to have that pinterest perfect life I am in the same boat as everyone else.
What I can do is show you how to work magic anyway.
You have to stop relying on your own energy. I know it sounds a little nuts, energy is literally what magic runs on and now I want you to just remove it from the equation?! What?
I promise I haven’t lost it and YES, that’s exactly what I want! Or at least I want you to make energy way less of a key player in your magic.
I want you to never have to worry about whether or not you have enough energy to work magic ever again.
This is all explained in detail, including energy work and getting past all of the things that are stopping your from practicing your craft, in my new program Old World Witchcraft.
You achieve this by using other sources of energy to fuel your work.
Pulling energy from other sources is a way to fuel spells when you’re low on energy yourself or you’re working on something very big that needs more than you can safely offer.
Basically what you’re doing is finding an alternative source of energy and channeling the energy you take from it into your work in much the same way you would channel your own energy into it. Instead of being the source of energy in this case you’re simply a conduit, connecting power source to magic and allowing the entire framework to run without needing your input, only your direction.
The first step in this process is finding a good source.
This source can be anything;
Plants
Animals
Crystals
People
The earth
The moon
etc.
It’s important to take into consideration that if you’re pulling from a living source you must ask permission first. It’s usually easiest to choose a source that you’re comfortable with, if you don’t work with plants much using plant energy in your magic is going to feel clunky and unwieldy, stick to what’s familiar.
Once you’ve found a source it’s time to connect your energy to it. If you’ve ever grounded and connected your energy to the earth it’s much the same. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and feel for the energy of your source. Visualize your energy and the sources energy connecting and mingling together.
Begin gently pulling the energy from your source into yourself, it might feel a little odd to do this so be careful during this process. Often pulling too much energy into yourself can cause some unpleasant symptoms such as lightheadedness, nausea, and giddiness. For this reason I suggest you have whatever you’re channeling the energy into at the ready so you can immediately pass the energy from the source, through yourself and into your spell.
You do NOT want to use yourself as a holding bay for that energy any more than you absolutely must.
It can take a bit of practice to get this technique down well enough to be used in spell work. I would suggest starting with training exercises to get comfortable before trying to use it for any big spell work.
As an example, you could try pulling energy from a plant or the earth and passing it into a stone or crystal and then back again. As you get more comfortable you can work up to transferring different energies and in greater quantities.
This technique can be used in a variety of ways, obviously, as I suggested, it’s good for adding a little extra power to your spells but it could also be used to store energy for later spells in crystals or tools. You could use it to heal yourself by channeling the energy into your own body where there are deficiencies causing pain or illness. You could even do this in reverse to deactivate a spell (it’s suggested that you not deactivate a spell by channeling into a living being, the earth is best in this case).
It’s always a good idea to thank whatever has leant its energy to you, fertilizing or watering a plant, cleansing a crystal, picking up litter for the earth, whatever you can manage to show your thanks and be respectful.
After using this technique it is always advised to finish by grounding yourself. Moving large amounts of energy can pull your own energy out of balance leaving you with too much or too little or even leaving residue of whatever you were moving stuck to your own energy. Plugging into the earth and allowing your energy to equalize and come back to a balanced state will prevent any negative side effects.
Do you have a better grasp on how to outsource your energy needs? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
And if you want to know more about how to become a witch and work magic the smart way, go check out my program Old World Witchcraft!
Perform this exercise with a plant with which you are familiar with, then try it with something you’ve never seen or handled before. Trust your observations
For this exercise, you’ll need the plant, plus your green witch journal & something to write with.
Take the plant in your hand. If it is dried or harvested herb, hold a pinch in your palm or hold your hand over it, palm down. It is a living plant that you correctly identified as safe to touch, gently touch it with your fingers. If you cannot identify it, hold your hand above or to the side of the plant with your palm towards it.
Close your eyes and imagine your palm glowing. Focus on the sensation of your palm.It may tingle or grow warm or cool. That means you’re focusing on the energy your palm is creating naturally.
Visualize the plant glowing
Visualize the glow of energy collected in your palm gently stretching out to touch glowing energy of the plant. As the two energies meet, ask yourself what you sense. Do you feel a specific emotion? Do ideas drift into your head? Thoughts or vague hunches? Pay attention. This is a method for collecting observations about the plant by sensing its energy with your own energy.
When you feel you have observed enough, send the plant a feeling of gratitude for its cooperation, then visualize your energy disengaging from that of that the plant and drawing back into your palm.
Open your eyes and shake your hands firmly, as if you’re shaking water off your hand. This will help you get rid of any excess energy hanging on.
Write down your observations in your green witch journal.
Everyone interact differently with the energy of a plant. If lavender energizes you, then that is one of lavender’s energy benefit in your practice, even though most books will tell you that lavender generally projects feelings of peace and tranquility. Acquiring first-hand knowledge is important for a green witch, as it shapes and refines your practice, personalizing it in a way that makes it truly unique.
Upon waking, it can be hard to let go of our troubling dreams. Reflecting on our dreams or keeping a dream journal can prove to be incredibly fruitful. If a dream bothers you beyond your average period of reflection, it could be time for a quick spell!
Sit or stand next to an open or closed window. Alternatively, go outside.
Recall images or scenes from the dream in as much detail as you can (journaling or even drawing upon waking may help this). Relive the dream, pick up on its energy and how it feels to you.
Pick a visual focal point. Look to the horizon, the sky, a mountaintop; somewhere far away from wherever you are.
Focus the dream’s energy towards this point. Visualize yourself pushing the dream- images, emotions, and all- away from wherever you feel its energy residing; your head, your heart, everywhere, etc.
Do this until you feel you have cast out enough of its energy.
To close, take some time to dwell on your own energy as it is now, without the overwhelming energy of the dream.
teakepp 