Most of the books on the market dealing with sex magic concentrate on the sex aspect, and they usually ignore the magic aspect. Some of these books are nothing more than compilations of dirty pictures, and almost all of them seem focused on increasing sexual performance and enjoyment. I’m all for increased sexual performance and enjoyment, but if that’s all you want, you might as well just buy an issue of Cosmo.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Ms Alexander’s book isn’t about how to have great sex, but how to use sex inside of a magical operation. Some of what’s in the book doesn’t even directly deal with sex, but instead focuses on theories and techniques centered around energy manipulation and magic. That isn’t to say that the book doesn’t ever talk about increasing sexual pleasure, it does, but that isn’t the real focus of the book.

The book’s cover says that it’s the ‘Easy & Fun Way to Tap Into the Law of Attraction’, and that’s really the sort of magic this book tries to teach. This is a book about manifestation magic, or how to bring things into your life, whether that be material objects like money, or people like romantic partners, or even events, like winning a court case; and as the title suggests, the book’s method of producing this manifestation is through sex.

Ms Alexander has written several dozen books on a wide variety of topics, including Wicca, spellcraft, tarot, reflexology, and erotic fiction. This has made her somewhat of an expert on a lot of different spiritual subjects, and one of the cool things about the book is that she’s able to incorporate techniques pertaining to all of these other subjects into the realm of sex magic. Often times there’ll be a few paragraphs dealing with utilizing something like the tarot, or the I Ching, or reflexology.

She’s also managed to bring together techniques and ideas from a lot of different systems, including Western systems like Ceremonial Magic, Paganism, and Chaos Magic; and Eastern Systems like Buddhism and Taoism. She’s also included a lot from the New Thought movement. The New Thought Movement is a system that even many of the most open minded Ceremonialists and Pagans want nothing to do with, but it’s also one of the best systems to incorporate into this sort of magic. Manifestation magic is the thing that New Thought is centered around, and its the one kind of magic that it’s really good at.

Being an eclectic magician, I really love books like this that don’t solely concentrate on one system, but instead take the best parts from a lot of different systems and put them together into a workable, and more efficient, model.

This review’s probably too long already, but there’s one last thing I want to bring up. A good portion of the book is dedicated to different magical acts that you can try and different exercises to improve your magical abilities. A lot of books on the market are filled with theory, morals, spiritual speculation, personal accounts, and if you’re lucky some associations. The books I like, the books I find useful, and the books I think new magicians will get the most out of are books like this, which don’t just talk about magic, but give people instructions for real things they can go out and do after they’ve read it.

I don’t agree with everything in the book, but I agree with most of it, and the theory that the magic is based on is solid. It’s a great book for anyone interested in incorporating sexual acts into operations centered around manifestation magic. The book targets beginning magicians, but it’s also a useful book for more experienced magicians that are looking for some new ideas (I found a few things in the book I really want to try). My only real complaint about the book, and it’s the book’s biggest flaw, is that like sex, although there are some things that you can do by yourself, for the really cool stuff you need a partner.

“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today, look at me, I could be, centerfield.”

So you want to be a magician. If you’re not a magician, I assume that’s why you’re reading my blog. Maybe you haven’t found the right group, or the right teacher. Maybe you can’t afford one of those other correspondence courses. Maybe you’ve tried other systems, but it’s too difficult to invest six months or a year or three years to a system before you see results. You’re in luck because I’ve come up with a 1 lesson correspondence course that will make you a magician. I’m giving it away free, so all it’ll cost you between a quarter and two dollars in supplies. You don’t have to study. You don’t have to learn protection techniques or magical theory. You don’t need a teacher and you don’t need a group. All you have to do is read this one post, follow these instructions, and tomorrow morning you will be a magician.

If you haven’t yet done a spell, if you’ve never performed a magical operation, even if you’ve never seen a ghost or had a psychic premonition, what I’m offering right now is the key to your spiritual attainment. Whatever you want to do or become spiritually, it all starts right here, right now, and all you have to do is want it.

Right now you’re being given a choice. You can choose to become a magician today. If you chose that, then today you’ll start on your spiritual path, whatever that may be. Whatever it is you want spiritually, you’ll find it on that path. Whether that’s doing magic, seeing ghosts, finding your higher self, gaining enlightenment, flying on a broom stick, or whatever else you want spirituality to be.

If you choose not to become a magician today, I don’t know why you’re reading my blog, or any magical blogs or books. You should give up, save yourself some time and money, and not waste the time of legitimate teachers and group members. If you aren’t yet a magician and you don’t become one today, I have very little faith that you will ever become a magician.

Magicians are defined by their actions. They do things. They also tend to jump right in and do things. They don’t wait until they’ve studied enough, until they’ve learned the right techniques, until their success or safety is assured, or put things off until tomorrow. Magicians get an idea for some magic in their head, and then they go out and do it.

If you put off doing this today, you will probably never do it. If you want to wait until you’re ready, you will never be ready. If you want to be a magician, if you want to be a spiritual person, just take this first step, and everything else will come to you.

I implore anyone reading this who has never cast a spell, or who hasn’t cast a spell in a long time, to change that and become a magician today. I want people to be magicians. I want other people to find their spiritual attainment. So please, do this for yourself, and make yourself, spiritually, into what you want to be.
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So you’re still reading, so I assume you’re at least thinking about seeing this through. You might be wondering how you can be a magician. It’s easy. A magician is someone who does magic. If you do magic, you’re a magician. The wonderful thing about magic though is that once you start doing it, everything else will start to fall into place. You’ll be having spiritual experiences, which will teach you about the metaphysical universe, and then you’ll have practical knowledge to apply to theory. This will make you a stronger magician who can do more, which means you’ll have even more spiritual experiences, and those will teach you even more about the metaphysical universe, giving you even more practical knowledge to apply to theory.

You’ll begin a cycle that will make you more and more powerful through out your entire life, and even into your afterlife.

All you have to do to put everything in motion is do one spell tonight. That will start the chain. I suggest trying to do magic as often as you can. You can easily do one of the spells you’re going to do tonight every night if you want to. Or you can experiment with other spells, maybe even your own. You don’t have to commit to all this right now though. Right now all you have to commit to is doing one spell.

I figure some of things people want are sex, money, and power. I think most people want at least one of these things. So I’ve devises four simple spells to help you attain sex, money, and/or power.

Will these spells work? That depends on you. The magical theory is solid. If you do them well enough, the spells will work. They might not though. Don’t get discouraged if they don’t work on the first try, or if they never work for you. It might take a few tries, or it might take a different kind of spell to see results. Just keep on trying until something finally does work, and always perform these spells with a positive attitude, never giving up faith that this time it will work.

Right now the important thing isn’t results. Right now the important thing is to be doing magic. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s still a first step on the journey to becoming an adept, and even a horribly bad novice magician is still a magician, which makes them much more spiritual than someone who isn’t a magician.

So, four spells, pick the one you like. All of these spells require a candle. I suggest a new white pillar candle that will burn for a few hours. That’s just a suggestion though. Feel free to use any kind of candle you want, can afford, or happen to have on hand. If it burns too long, you can always just put it out. You’ll also need a lighter, and something to put the candle on, preferably a candle holder. The prosperity spell also requires some pocket change, and the glamour spell works best with a mirror.

I also suggest taking a nice relaxing shower prior to doing any of these spells. If that isn’t possible, that’s okay, it’s just a suggestion. A quiet, dark place where you won’t be disturbed is also ideal, but not necessary.

Once you’re ready pick your spell and get to work. You may want to copy your spell into a text editor and print it out in case you need a reference during the spell.

Spell 1: Making Yourself Pretty

This spell is a basic glamour + projection. The idea is to make yourself more attractive, so more people will be interested in you.

This spell works best if you haven’t pleasured yourself lately. If you have, don’t worry, you can still do the spell.

First things first, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. Don’t worry, it’s a solitary ritual, so no one will see you. Except your gods. And any spirits that happen to be around. And any one who may astrally project or remote view you. Actually, unless you’re a never-nude, not being seen naked isn’t really an achievable goal anyways.

Hold the candle in your hand and look into the mirror, and focus on your better physical qualities. Figure out the things that make you attractive. Spend a few minutes (like five or ten) looking into the mirror, and thinking of yourself as an attractive person. Be attracted to yourself. Ignore your flaws, or any parts of yourself that make you unattractive.

The goal of a glamour shouldn’t be to give yourself specific attributes, like six pack abs or larger breasts. That doesn’t really work, and there’s no telling if a potential mate will even want that anyways. The goal is to put an aura of attractiveness around yourself, and then the person looking at you will fill in the blanks to make you attractive.

After you finished that, sit down with your candle. Put your hands on either side of the candle, bow your head down, and close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let what I think and what I feel leave me and enter into this candle.”

Now start thinking about either love or sex. Remember what it feels like to be in love, or even to like someone and have a crush on them. Think about how wonderful it is to think about them and spend time with them. Think about some sexual fantasies and things that turn you on. All the while hold the candle in your hands, and try your best to think about the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts going into the candle.

I suggest spending five to ten minutes on this.

Place the candle on its candle holder.

Say out loud, “As it burns, let all that is within this candle come to be with me. Once all that is within this candle has come to be in me, let it come off of me as the heat comes off the flame.”

Light the candle. Spend about five minutes staring at the candle and feeling whatever it might be giving you. After that, go about doing whatever you want to do that night while the candle burns.

The next morning you may want to repeat the mirror ritual without the candle, but you don’t have to. For the first half of your day, maybe the entire day, you may notice people looking at you a little more lustfully.

Spell 2: Bringing Yourself a Lover

Chance encounters with people you find attractive are great, but they’re so chancey. There’s no guarantee that you’ll meet someone when you go out tomorrow, and very few ways to increase your odds. Maybe you would have more luck at a singles bar, but the love of your life might just be doing their grocery shopping tomorrow. This spell is designed to bring about a chance encounter with a potentially special someone. After that it’s up to you, since the spell doesn’t offer any help beyond that.

To start, take off all your clothes, including your socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Once you’re naked, stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.” Repeat this for a total of five times. Louder is better, but don’t yell or scream. If you think you might be overheard, you don’t have to say it loud enough to be heard.

Next sit down with your candle. Place each of your hands on either side of the candle. Bow your head down and close your eyes. Think of all the traits you want your boyfriend or girlfriend to have. Think of the different physical attributes you would find attractive. Imagine all these things combined together into a dream person who would be your new boyfriend or girlfriend. While doing this try to think of the candle. Imagine all of these thoughts entering into the candle. If you can, visualize these thoughts, and your dream lover, leaving you and entering the candle. Do this for five to ten minutes.

Place the candle on to the candle holder. Say out loud, “Let another lonely heart, like the one described within my mind, be drawn to me. Let this candle burn, and in doing so bring us together.”

Light the candle.

Stand up straight, close your eyes, and say out loud five more times, “I am a magnet, the person I want will be drawn towards me.”

Spend a few minutes staring at the candle while it burns. See if you can feel anything, like the universe twisting around and coming together around you to offer you an opportunity.

Now go about your business for the rest of the evening and let the candle burn. You may wish to repeat that last part of the ritual about being the magnet again in the morning. If all went right with the spell, you may find yourself having a chance encounter with someone special.

Spell 3: A Simple Prosperity Spell

Maybe you’ve already found the love of your life, so those other spells aren’t going to be all that useful to you. But all of us could use a little extra spending cash, so here’s a spell to help make you part of the 1%.

In addition to your candle, you’re going to need some pocket change for this spell. Try to get between five and ten coins, and ideally have at least one of each.

Now that you got your pocket change, you aren’t going to need your pockets anymore, so take off all your clothes, including socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. This will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions.

Sit down. Put your money in your left hand and make a fist. Hold the candle with your right hand. Put your arms at your side, and raise your hands so they’re level with your head. Close your eyes. Say out loud, “Let these two things be as one. Let this candle be as money, and make me richer and bring prosperity. Let this money be as the candle, released into the universe.”

With your hands still raised, and your eyes still closed, imagine the money coming out of your hand and entering the candle. If you can, imagine it entering your hand, traveling through your arm and across your chest, and exiting out your other hand into the candle. Then imagine the candle burning, and showering coins into the universe around you. Finally imagine the candle burning, and coins showering out, and being drawn to and entering your body.

Continue these visualization for five to ten minutes. When you’re about to finish, bring your hands together, putting your left fist, holding the money, against the left side of the candle. If you can, take a minute or two to imagine all of your thoughts and imaginings from the last five to ten minutes leaving your mind and entering the candle.

Place the candle on the candle holder. Say out loud, “Burn and bring me prosperity, and riches for a day.” Light the candle.

Spend five to ten minutes staring at the candle. See if you can feel the candle doing anything to you, specifically enchanting you with a prosperity spell. If you can’t that’s okay.

The next day you’ll hopefully either find or come into some extra money. It’ll probably just be spare change, but it’s still money, and if you want to develop your own prosperity spell, the basic concept is the same, you just have to think bigger.

Spell 4: Feel the Magic

Maybe you’re content with the material aspects of your life. Maybe you’ve done the first three rituals already, so you have the love of your life and you’re piggy bank is all filled up with pocket change. All you want now is to feel something magical. Let’s do a little empowering magic.

WITH THIS SPELL YOU NEED A LIGHTER – NEVER USE MATCHES!!!

First things first, strip completely naked, and that includes socks and underwear. I didn’t include clothes in my $2.00 of required tools, and clothes can be expensive. Being naked will also get you into a magical mindset, and it may even help you get used to experiencing new things and being able to still work magic under those conditions. With this spell in particular, being naked is going to make it that much easier to experience something.

Sit down with the candle, and put your hands on either side of it. Bow your head and close your eyes. Think about the candle for a bit. Think about its shape, how it feels, what it is, and how its about to be used magically, and what it might symbolize ritually. Imagine the thoughts and images in your head flowing out of you and entering into the candle. If you can, specifically imagine the route they take from your head, through your chest, through your arms and hands, and finally into the candle. Continue these visualizations for five to ten minutes.

Once you finish, place the candle on the candle holder. Take the lighter in your hand and say, “I am of the magi, and I call forth fire elemental to sit upon this flame.” As soon as you finish, flick the lighter, and use the flame to light the candle. If you screw up lighting the candle, start again with, “I am of the magi…”. As you light the candle, imagine a fire elemental (whatever you think that would look like) being pulled up from underground and into the flame.

Once the candle is lit, sit down. Watch the flame for a minute. If a fire elemental is inside, it may be moving erratically. The flame may be much bigger than it should be, or the flame may rapidly change from being small to large and back.

Sit down facing the candle. Spread your legs a bit, but not so much that you’re uncomfortable. Hold your hands up to your head with your palms facing the ceiling.

Look at the candle. Look at the flame on the candle. Think of the energy coming off the candle as it burns. Think about the heat coming off that flame. Imagine that the energy is like the heat, an invisible aura that emanates from the flame. Look at the flame, and visualize that energy coming off the flame. Imagine pulling that energy and that heat off, towards you. Imagine pulling that energy off the flame and into you.

Continue sitting there, legs still spread, hands still up, imagining the energy coming into from the flame like a steady stream. Imagine the fire elemental being pulled off the flame and into your body. Imagine it coming to rest inside of you.

If you managed to successfully evoke and take in the fire elemental, you’ll probably begin to feel a bit hotter underneath your skin, and a lot more powerful. Taking in a fire elemental is like getting a quick boost of power. If you don’t manage to get a fire elemental, you may still end up drawing some of the energy from the candle into yourself. If you’re not used to taking in energy, it may seem like an awful lot.

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“Got a beatup glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes, you know I think it’s time to give this game a ride.“

So there’s four spells. All you have to do is follow the instructions and do  one tonight and tomorrow you’ll be a magician, and you’ll be on your way to spiritual attainment.

If you have any issues or questions with the different spells, or have trouble getting them to work, I’m more than happy to help. The only thing is, I’m not going to help anyone who hasn’t attempted one of the spells. The whole point is to do something tonight, not put off doing it until I can get around to answering your questions.

Even if you’re having problems, try doing the spell. If you don’t understand why you’re doing something, that’s okay. If you’re not sure about something, guess. If there’s a part of the spell where you don’t know what to do, make something up. If you can’t do a spell exactly as its written for some reason, then make some sort of modification to it so that you can do it. It doesn’t need to be exact. It doesn’t even need to work the first time you try it. What does need to happen is you need to be doing magic today, even if you completely fail at it.

Likewise if you want to tell me that this is crap, it’s dangerous, tell me why it won’t work, tell me how they can be improved, or otherwise complain or point out flaws in these spells, go ahead. But if you’re going to do any of that, do one of the spells first. If you’re not a magician, I don’t care about you’re opinion on magic. It’s uninformed, and I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

If you want to compliment me on this post or tell me how great it is, I always like to hear nice things, but wait until after you’ve done one of the spells. Then you can talk about what you did and experienced if you want. And, until you’ve done one of these spells, doing one of these spells is going to help you a lot more than commenting on Internet blogs.

If you want to talk about your experiences with these spells, or how well they worked for you, feel free. I always like hearing about how this sort of stuff works or doesn’t work for other people.

Of course the gun wasn’t loaded, so the initiate would survive the ordeal. If the initiate knows the gun isn’t loaded, it seems like a stupid little game, and that’s all it really is. If the initiate thinks the gun is loaded though, then it starts to seem more like a cruel hazing ritual, but it’s actually a true initiation ritual, and an example of the sorts of trials a magus must go through.

Usually early in our careers as magicians we are all given these trials to overcome. Either, as with the Freemasons, they are done by senior group members or teachers in order to prepare us for what lies ahead, or we receive them in a more spiritual way. These trials are important, and hopefully all magicians receive them. These trials remove our fears, so we can operate magically, and make us strong enough so that the spiritual world doesn’t break us.

With the Freemason ritual, in particular, the point is to desensitize someone and remove their fear of death. Magical workings can become very scary things. There’s a lot out there that can kill you. Many magicians deal with these scary things by becoming so afraid they use numerous unnecessary protections in their operations and never really push themselves in their magical practice. These magicians never seem to get anywhere with their practice, and miss out on a good deal of what magick has to offer.

Once a person learns about the spiritual world, that fear can make this world a very frightening one to live in. They now know that there are powerful and horrible spirits out there that can at any time enter their home and kill them without repercussions, and there’s not much out there to defend them from this. They then spend their lives in anxiety and fear trying to protect themselves, or they become born again Christians.

The metaphysical universe, as practicing magicians see it, is not a very comforting and protective place. It’s a place where different spirits are attacking each other, and different magicians are attacking each other, and good or evil doesn’t determine the victory, but rather whoever’s strongest. The universe is not weighted towards good. There is no all mighty God looking out for his children, and saying a name, such as Jesus Christ, holds no special power over the spirits. The metaphysical universe is a mortally dangerous place, and we’re cast out there, pretty much alone, to survive on whatever inner-strength and wits we might possess.

Christianity meanwhile offers a safe-haven from all of this. There is an all mighty god, who is good and righteous, and he loves you and wants to protect you. Whenever things get to the point that a person can’t handle them, they can always turn to God for protection and aid. That’s why so many magicians turn to Christianity after their first bad experience. The church offers them safety.

The Freemason ritual is meant to force the initiate to face death, to overcome their fear of it, and show them that even all alone they can survive it. The next time the initiate is put into mortal danger, it’s not going to be as bad. All of that fear and anxiety is going to be washed away, and they’ll be able to practice their magic without worrying about what might happen to them.

That’s great if you have a fear of death, but not all of us fear death. For some of us, there are things far worse than death, and so our individual trials need to deal with those issues too.

When I was first starting out, I underwent a spiritual trial I can still remember because it was so emotionally scarring. I was playing around with some new found power, putting certain energies out and astrally projecting and seeing what I could find. That night I think I was seeing if I could attract a potential date to me and meet them on the astral. What I got instead was horrific.

Eventually I gave up with what I was trying to do and just fell asleep, and I ended up in a super-vivid dream. Those aren’t too uncommon for me. Those are the dreams where I can accurately smell, and taste, and feel every small thing around me. This one though felt even more real than my normal super-vivid dreams.

In my dream I was me, but I had a compulsion I couldn’t quite control, and I was forced to act upon it. The compulsion was a kind of necrophilia. I had two dead bodies hidden away in two different buildings, and I couldn’t help but move back and forth from one to the other and then having sex with them.

Some of you might be thinking of pale white recently dead bodies, and that probably doesn’t seem so bad, but that’s not what I’m talking about. These bodies were completely unpreserved, and probably months or more old. They were decaying, they smelled and tasted putrid, and insects were running through them.

Through out the dream I was terrified that I would get caught doing what I was doing, and I was really ashamed of it, but still I had to do it. The actual sexual experience was beyond horrific. It’s still the most disgusting thing I could possibly imagine, and before this dream I couldn’t even imagine something like this. Worse for me was that through out the dream I wanted to be having this sort of sex. I can’t remember how many times I had sex during that dream, but it was a lot.

I woke up from that dream a complete mess. I felt so sick right afterwards. Luckily I was still with my teacher then, so I at least had some help in recovering from what happened. A lot of people told me to write this off as just being a dream. I knew back then that it wasn’t just a dream, but I was already telling myself it was. That thought in my head that maybe it was just a dream was the only thing that stopped me from curling up in a fetal position and mumbling insanely for the rest of my life.

I was emotionally scarred by the whole experience. To be honest, it very nearly broke me. But I recovered from it, and now I’m stronger for it. In fact I was so scarred from that experience that I’m desensitized to anything else the universe might throw at me.

Some gross and yucky spirit wants to rape me? It’s not going to be that bad, sex with dead bodies was worse. I’m not afraid of going to prison and being gang raped there either, as many men are, because that’s still not as bad as sex with dead bodies (or even yucky spirits). It’s not just sex things though, it’s any kind of gross, disgusting thing. I’m more than happy to walk through raw sewage or an adult theater filled with human secretions, and the spiritual world equivalents of these places, because it’s still not as bad as sex with dead bodies.

There is nothing that can be done to me or shown to me that can ever scar me or break me, because it will never be as bad as that dream was. Even that dream has lost a lot of its edge, because I survived it, and I know I can survive it.

That was one of my trials. It was a very horrible one, but I’m glad it happened. I’ve become extraordinarily resilient because of it. The horrible things out there don’t scare me, and I can go right on with my life even after having a horrible or gross experience.

I’m relating my personal experience, and the Freemason ritual, to give some examples of what these trials look like, so they can be properly identified. They are usually very horrible and scarring things, and one of the not so fun parts of magic. They’re a necessity though, and ultimately a good thing, and something we, as magicians, should embrace. It’s a thing that makes us stronger, and makes us strong enough to reach our full potential in performing magical operations.

As an aside, the next time you’re in Walt Disney Land, take a ride on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride, and all the while think about the Freemason ritual (Disney himself was a Mason, and there’s a theory that the original park rides were meant to introduce children to Masonic ideas).

I had a really bad year once. I don’t mean bad like I went goth or started listening to nothing but Supertramp, but I had about a year where I wasn’t feeling very happy. It was just a jumble of events that kept occurring which were sad, or depressing, or stressful. It was a lot of things, and its not like I just broke down and had a nervous breakdown one day. But slowly, and very gradually, my mood shifted to being not so pleasant.

During this time my spirituality started to change. I started seeing spirits less and less, and eventually not at all. I stopped hearing them when they talked too. My ability to sense energy started to diminish. I could still notice the energy movements directly around me, but it took effort, and I couldn’t feel all that much.

I could still gather up information, but I had to forcibly channel, and meditate, and concentrate. I could still speak with specific spirits, but I had to try really hard, and what I heard came in really weak.

Magically, I could still do magic, I could still fall back on my favorite rituals, but it was much more difficult, and I was succeeding less and less. Psionic magic started to become very difficult. I used to sometimes accidently make things happen by just wanting them, and that spontaneous ability seemed to leave me.

Everything seemed to be effected, including things like divination, astral projection, and glamours.

I wasn’t completely defenseless, and I wasn’t completely stripped of my magical ability. I could still cast a spell or jump into a witch war if I had to, but that sort of stuff took a lot of effort, and I was far weaker than I remembered being.

It happened so gradually, I didn’t even notice it happening at first, and by the time I did start to notice, I had started to forget the way I used to be.

And when that happened, it sparked some doubt in me. Maybe my spiritual beliefs were all fantasies or delusions. Maybe I am, or was, a seriously disturbed individual. All of these things I had memories of seeing and feeling, I wasn’t feeling anymore, and I was starting to wonder if I ever really did.

Then I had a really good day. It was actually a good week that culminated into a really good day. I remember visiting the park that night, and I felt everything. It was a large park, and I could feel every blade of grass and animal and insect in the place. And every person, including the girl I went with. And I knew everything each of them was feeling, and what they all felt like on the inside, spiritually speaking. In the same way, I could feel of the spirits there too. I could see them walking around, and I could talk to them if I wanted too. The entire park was a sensual overload.

And my mind, my mind just opened up all of a sudden. I still knew things, but I didn’t know how. There was a fogginess in my head, and stuff would just sort of come out of that. But now that fog was lifted, and it was like I suddenly had multiple minds that were hidden behind that fog, and now I could see how they were working and how everything was figured out logically. I felt like I had become some sort of genius.

And that’s when I remembered that this is what it should feel like to be me. I should be living in that sensory overload, able to feel the entire universe around me. And my mind should be working at that higher level. I shouldn’t just know things, but I should be able to see how I’m figuring them out. I should feel my higher connections. Energy should be pouring out of me. I should be seeing, and interacting, with dozens of spirits every day. And my life should be so spiritual that it seems normal to me, and I never have any reason to doubt its reality.

I realized that something had been seriously wrong with me, and at the same time any spiritual doubt I may have had was wiped away.

I’m not telling this story to brag, or to try to gain sympathy for my plight, but to share the lesson of it all:

The better your mood, the more spiritually adept you are.

We have higher bodies. After our physical and astral bodies, both of which we’re already very connected to, we have our mental body, or Holy Guardian Angel. Our connection to this body still exists at birth, but it’s somewhat severed. We can rejoin with this body, as I have, but even if we don’t our mood will still effect our magic. Our mental body is powerful. It’s full of knowledge and ability. Magically and spiritually speaking, it’s the greatest source of power we have available to us. It’s also a piece of who we are, and without it we’re all incomplete.

Our mental body exists in a place called the heavenly planes, called that because it’s a seriously happy place. There are of course lots of different places in there, but all of them represent various versions of what some would term heaven. The lowest area of the mental planes is probably close to the theological Christian interpretation of heaven, being a place of perfect love and contentment.

Like attracts like, and we’re drawn towards what is like us, and away from what is unlike us. When my mood started to diminish, I became unlike the heavenly planes, and unlike my mental body. Even though I fully reconnected myself to my mental body, once my mood shifted that connection became strained, and as my mood got worse so too did that connection. As things got worse, it was getting more and more difficult for me to connect to this part of myself.

Even if I hadn’t merged with my mental body and reconnected with it, my mood still would’ve had a negative affect on my magical ability. Just because someone hasn’t yet gone through that process of reconnection doesn’t mean that they don’t have some sort of connection to their higher self and that they aren’t gaining something from it.

When I had my good day, I became more aligned with the mental planes, and I became more aligned with my mental body, and almost instantly my connection came back. I became whole again.

When our mood is positive, we have a stronger connection to the higher planes, and to our higher bodies, and our spirituality and magical abilities are all strengthened. When our mood is negative, our connections to these higher bodies fade, and we become spiritually weaker.

Of course it isn’t realistic to always be happy or always be in a good mood. However if one wishes to be spiritual, and to be as strong as they can spiritually, then they need to stay away from long periods of negativity.

We also need to adjust our mood for magical practice. Magic isn’t something that is best practiced in a serious or somber mood, and its definitely not something that should be practiced while enraged, upset, or depressed. Moods such as happiness, joy, and love produce much better results.

When we aren’t in a positive mood, and we need to perform a magical operation, we need to get into one of those moods. Each of us has our own different happy thoughts, and we need to use those to empower ourselves.

I listen to punk music, and surround myself with toys and old video games, and think about tv shows and movies and comic books. These are some of my happy things. All the little pictures I put on the posts that are meant to be humorous, or reference some part of my childhood, all the little jokes I make, and all of the references I make to pop-culture aren’t just part of my personality, and they definitely aren’t a sign of immaturity. These are all a crucial part of my spiritual practice. I need these things. They make me stronger.

I’ve said before that I’ve never met a magician that could actually do real magic, to any degree, who didn’t also have a good sense of humor. I’ve also never been in a successful group ritual that was entirely serious and where there was never a point where people broke out laughing.

There’s a reason for that. These things aren’t distractions. They aren’t profane. They’re empowerment. At the same time rage and depression make horrible fuels for a magical operation. Nothing ever seems to work when a magician tries to harness the power of those emotions (yes there are darker magics that can use these things, but I’m not talking about those just now, and if you’re trying to harness the power of your rage and depression but still doing magic like you normally would, you’re not doing it right).

Somber rituals meanwhile, where everyone goes through the motions and where everyone is afraid they’ll ruin everything by adding some levity to the operation, are even worse. There’s no way to even harness that crap.

By the way, if you’re wondering why I put Batman at the top of this post, it’s because I talk about my Dark Knight of the soul.

Personally I prefer skyclad practice to clothed practice. Although I do believe there are certain benefits to skyclad practice, it’s far from necessary, and as a magician I’m just as effective with my clothes on. The real reason I prefer skyclad practice is because that’s the way I was trained. My first teacher was a strong proponent of skyclad practice. My initial training focused on skyclad work, and it lies at the foundation of my spiritual practice. It’s to the point now where, although I don’t need it, I’m far more comfortable doing magic naked than with clothes on, and any anxiety or embarrassment I may have had over being undressed in front of others went away a long time ago.

I’ve seen articles that have weighed the pros and cons of skyclad practice, but it was never really something I ever did. I never really had a choice in the matter. My teacher knew spirituality through skyclad practice, and that’s the only way she knew how to train me. My choice wasn’t whether I wanted to practice skyclad or not, but whether I wanted to advance spiritually with the teacher that was offered to me, or not.

That wasn’t much of a choice either, because everything inside of me was telling me that I needed to be with my teacher. I could’ve said no, but that would’ve run counter to every instinct I had, and ultimately I would’ve done almost anything that she told me was in my best interest. Luckily my trust wasn’t misplaced, and she was a very good and responsible teacher, but she was definitely in a position where she could’ve taken advantage of me in a lot of different ways.

I’m guessing for most people skyclad practice isn’t much of a choice either. It all depends on what groups you’re interested in and who you want for a teacher. Out here I don’t think there is a public group that practices skyclad, so unless you know someone who’s into skyclad practice, your only choice is to practice skyclad in solitary. Some people may have the exact opposite issue, where there’s a really good group they want to join, but they require skyclad practice. The only people who need to decide whether or not to practice skyclad, really, are group founders and leaders.

If you’re considering attending a skyclad ritual or group, there are definitely some things you need to think about, but what’s probably your biggest issue, being naked in front of other people, isn’t really something that needs all that much of your time. It’s the sort of thing a person can spend weeks, even months, thinking about and going over in there head, but all of those issues will fade away within the first five minutes.

If you’re thinking about skyclad practice, but you’re nervous about being naked, the best thing you can do is just jump right in and try it out. After five minutes you won’t be nervous anymore. Also remember that this isn’t forever. Just because you undressed in front of other people doesn’t mean that you always have to be naked. If it turns out you don’t like being skyclad, you can always put your clothes back on and never take them off again.

It’s like trying a new meal. You wouldn’t spend a long time trying to figure out if you might like it or not. You’d taste it, and if you didn’t like it you just wouldn’t eat it again.

In a responsibly run setting though there’s a few reasons why you’re fears will quickly fade away:

1. Everyone else is naked too - When you’re considering taking off your clothes for the first time this never really enters your mind, and if it does you probably don’t think that it makes a difference. You’re not at all concerned about seeing someone else naked, what bothers you is them seeing you naked.

However once you’re all there and undressed, it’s like being in the changing room at the pool or taking a shower at the gym, except that it might be unisex. It’s not that bad because everyone else is naked too. You’re not being paraded around in front of leering eyes. People aren’t sizing you up. They’re just as naked, and exposed, as you are.

2. No one cares that you’re naked - In a responsibly run group, no one is going to care that you’re naked. If anything, the other participants are more concerned about being seen naked than seeing someone else naked. The more experienced members though are probably going to be comfortable in their skin, and treat you exactly the same as if you were fully clothed.

This also means that no ones going to be looking at you lustfully, and there’s not going to be anything to be ashamed about. Which leads right into number 3-

3. Everyone’s body has issues - Because we usually only ever see ourselves naked, and maybe a significant other, we get this idea in our head that our physical imperfections are rare, and so we want to cover them with clothes. We don’t want other people to know exactly how ugly we really are.

Once everybody is naked though, you start to see that very few people are perfect. Some people are a little overweight. Some are a lot. People have cellulite. Breasts are sometimes uneven. Or small. Penises are small. People have back zits. Some women have large feet. Some men have very small womanly feet. With most people things tend to be more saggy than firm. Even a lot of the very few people who look absolutely fantastic naked have managed to find miniscule flaws that nobody else will ever notice to be ashamed about.

Once you notice that everybody else has issues, it makes it a lot easier to accept your own. You also start to notice that nobody even cares, and probably even notices, whatever is wrong with your body. They’re too busy worrying about their own.

This is actually one of the benefits of skyclad practice. It promotes a more positive body image.

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The biggest issue with practicing skyclad is finding a good group of people to do that with. You don’t want to have a bad first experience, where a bunch of folks are eyeing you over and trying to get into your pants, or rather that patch of sky which covers your genitals. Even worse you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you’ll be pressured into sexual acts, or worse yet possibly raped.

Before you practice skyclad, you should find a person or group that you feel comfortable with. You should be able to get to know the group socially, figure out what they’re about spiritually, and spend enough time with them to have some level of comfort. As a general rule, if you were alone at a party with just these people, and you wouldn’t feel comfortable getting completely trashed with them, you probably shouldn’t be doing any skyclad work with them either.

Outside of the odd ritual or event that draws people from all over, any skyclad group should offer prospective attendees a chance to meet with everyone, clothed, before they attend a skyclad function. This not only allows potential members an opportunity to get comfortable enough with the group to take their clothes off, but it also allows the group to screen potential members before they’re put into a sensitive situation. After all, even if you were comfortable with the group, you probably aren’t going to be comfortable if the group leader lets just anyone who answers their craigslist ad attend the skyclad ritual.

I’d be very wary of any group where you aren’t at least allowed to meet the leadership first while everyone is wearing clothes. Even if you are allowed to keep your clothes on, it’s usually a bad sign when the group leader wants to be naked when you first meet.

It’s also a good idea to ask about the degree of sexuality inherent in their rituals. Just because a ritual contains some sexual aspects it’s not necessarily a bad sign. Many rituals utilize various degrees of symbolic sex. However you want to make sure you aren’t walking into an orgy, since that will probably be a bad experience for you. You also want to make sure the group isn’t doing anything that would make you feel uncomfortable.

In this regard everyone is going to have different limits. Some may be okay with light touching, others may not. Some may be okay with the ritual leaders performing more sexualized acts than what is expected of typical attendees, others may not.

You should also get a straight answer from the group leader if you’re going to be expected to touch anyone’s genitals with any part of your body or have anyone else touch your genitals during the ritual. If they say yes, it’s a really bad sign. There’s a time and a place for rituals like that, but it’s usually going to be between two romantically entangled partners, or with a small tightly knit group that has no romantic entanglements. It’s not the sort of thing that should be happening during larger, general rituals.

Also try to (subtly) question members of the group about the sexual practices of its members. Things you want to look out for are groups where all of the members seem to be pushing for polyamory, and groups where it seems like people are constantly swapping partners. Also look out for groups where members are a little too open with strangers about fringe sexual practices, like BDSM or furry costumes, especially when almost all of the members of the group practice the same fringe sexual practices.

These are usually signs that although the group rituals may not be overly sexualized, the group itself does have an undercurrent of sexual recruitment, and the skyclad practice may just be a way to ease you into that.

The best way to join such a group though is to make friends in the group before you join up. Try to talk to some of the people already attending the group you might get along with. Go out to dinner with them a few times, or invite them over for a little while. You can even try doing some spiritual work with them. This way you can build up a relationship with someone already in the group and come to trust them. Then when it comes time to take your clothes off, you won’t be all alone in a large group of naked strangers.

The vast majority of everything that is termed magic is tied into energy work. A basic understanding of energy is necessary to do any significant amount magic, especially in regards to developing magical techniques. Energy is also an essential component to logically explaining how and why magic works. To dismiss energy as a fiction is to admit to having no understanding of magic.

It also needs to be pointed out that energy isn’t a new concept. It’s been called different things through out history, but the idea of energy has existed in various spiritual systems going almost as far back as recorded history. Energy is not an invention of New Agers or the New Thought camp or any other group that Pagans and Ceremonialists sometimes like to mock. It also isn’t limited to just the older Eastern religions. The idea appears in the West too.

Another thing to keep in mind, just because a particular magician didn’t mention something in their written works doesn’t mean they weren’t aware of its existence. This is especially true of metaphysical truths that should be obvious to actual practitioners. Energy definitely falls into this category, as does other things like the metaphysical qualities of stones.

Ceremonial magic has produced a lot of literal magicians. These are the types who think that a magician’s written works compromise the totality of his or her knowledge, and consider anything not discussed in the work to be at the very least beyond the scope of that magician’s work, and in many cases believe it to be nothing more than New Age hokum. Many Ceremonialists, Pagans, and other Western magicians dismiss anything not discussed by major predecessors as unfounded and untrue, even when it is something so basic and simple it should be obvious to any practitioner.

The second thing that needs to be discussed is why we call it energy, and most specifically if it should be called something else. It’s been called other things in the past, such as aether, void, and spirit. Energy, when used metaphysically, also doesn’t mean the same thing that it means when used scientifically. Some have said that we should really call it something else, since it isn’t really energy.

The problem is, language really isn’t made to communicate metaphysical experiences. Many of these experiences, like most things in life, can only be understood through comparison of our own life experiences. At this point in time, only a small percentage of the world’s population has experienced a true metaphysical event, and an even smaller percentage have sought to study and analyze these experiences. There are simply not enough adepts in the world to warrant new words being added into the languages of the world to describe these experiences.

One option is that we make up completely new words. The problem with doing this is, unless someone has a code book, they won’t know which words are meant to be applied to which metaphysical experiences. If I say ‘bonta’, for instance, do I mean energy, or shielding, or grounding, or something else entirely? Unless you’re familiar with the term, you won’t know.

What we do in magic, what we’ve always done (and what I’ve noticed the gods also do sometimes when they need to communicate foreign ideas), is we steal similar words. We find something that’s kind of like the metaphysical experience or magical operation we’re trying to describe, and then we call it that. This isn’t a perfect system, but in this instance, at least, if we find another magician who has experienced the same thing, they can usually infer what we’re talking about by looking at the original definition of the word.

For instance, the word shield is a piece of armor, usually carried in ones hand, and used to protect oneself. It is a universal symbol of protection. In magical terms, a shield is a barrier of energy used to protect oneself from unwanted magical attacks, among other things. In scientific terms, grounding refers to how electricity moves on a path towards the ground whenever possible. In magical terms it refers to pushing energy out of oneself and into the ground.

Energy is another one of these words. Energy is an invisible force which does things, and on the physical level is usually the force that empowers the magical operation. It does other things too, like giving us the ability to continue living and sustain our physical bodies. For the most part, energy is a fairly obvious term to describe this force. It does other things too, which maybe aren’t so obvious with the term energy, like constructing the universe in a way that empathy is possible, but no term is going to be perfect.

Of course we could call it something else, like communication as one person suggested. Except there really isn’t a point to changing the name. Yes, communication would better describe its functions within empathy and telepathy, but it doesn’t really describe how it empowers a spell. And just like energy, the term communication already describes something completely different.

As of right now, everyone is used to using the term energy and understands what it means. Any other term is going to be just as flawed, so there’s really no point to changing the name now.

Before we can begin to understand something, we need to define it, so what is the definition of energy? The best definition I can come up with is that it is an invisible, yet sensible and relatively quantifiable, force which can cause change and which can be manipulated and directed.

So let’s start by describing what a force is. A force is something that can cause some sort of change in the universe at some level. Heat is a force. When created, it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area. You can feel that temperature change. Electricity is a force. Electricity can do everything from turning on your TV to killing you. Even though you can hit me with it, your fist isn’t a force. But the momentum of the punch and the calories your body expends to move your fist, those are forces.

Metaphysical energy is also a force. On a very basic level it can be felt, and it can change your emotional state. Manipulated at a more finer level it can do everything from making you rich to killing your enemies to empowering your sperm, and at some levels it can even create life from nothingness (imaginary/artificial elementals). Energy is a force.

Energy, like many things in the universe, is invisible. We normally can’t see it with our eyes, although there are ways to train our mind into creating visual representations of energy. However energy doesn’t reflect light, so these visions of energy are not being seen by our eyes, and can not be objectively viewed by just anyone.

Energy is, however, sensible. We can feel energy around us. How much energy we need in order to feel it, and how accurately we interpret those feelings, is entirely dependent on how well we’ve trained our bodies.

Energy is also relatively quantifiable. As long as I’m adept enough at sensing energy, I can look at the energy is column A and the energy in column B and determine which column contains more energy. I can determine that one room contains a lot of energy, and that another room contains a little bit of energy.

However I can not objectively measure the energy in an area. My measurements of energy are based on the reactions of my physical and spiritual bodies, neither of which are completely accurate tools for measurement. There are a large number of internal variables which can make me incapable of accurately measuring energy in the same way that a fever can render me incapable of accurately measuring the temperature in the room with just my body.

These measurements are all relative too. I can say that column A has a lot of energy, or that it has more energy than column B. However I can’t give you a number, like 95 degrees, so that you could understand how much energy is in column A. What I might consider to be a lot of energy, you might not consider to be much energy at all. Meanwhile without personal knowledge of column B, you have no idea what more energy than column B means.

How I sense energy is also relative to where I am in my own spiritual path. What I thought was a lot of energy ten years ago doesn’t seem like much energy at all to me now. What’s more, if I cannot recheck something now, I have no idea what my past measurement means, since my concept of energy quantities has changed so dramatically. For instance my first teacher seemed to be extraordinarily powerful. More energy fell off her than I ever saw anywhere else. However its been many years since we’ve had any kind of contact. If we were to meet up today, it’s completely plausible that I may have surpassed her many times over, and now view her as having very little power. It’s also completely plausible that she’ll seem just as powerful to me and beyond my capabilities today as she did then.

Energy can also cause change, which, as we discussed earlier, is necessary for any force. Energy is typically the empowering force in a magical operation. It’s what makes things happen and causes the desired change. It’s also what connects things together.

Lastly energy can be manipulated and directed. We can move energy. We can take energy from point A and bring it to point B. We can also change that energy. We can change it to another type of energy, or mold it into something else completely. We can make that energy do what we want it to do.

These are all important things. Energy isn’t some natural primal force, like a hurricane, which we can neither stop or control. Energy is something we have control over. We can move it, we can create it, and we can work with it. This is essential for magic to, well, work.

That being said, energy is a physical thing. Energy is deeply tied to matter, and it seems to bare some relationship to it. Matter only exists within the physical realms, and the same is true of energy.

We live in the physical planes. Earth is part of the physical realms. The physical realms have physical stuff. Earth isn’t the entirety of the physical realms though. There are other worlds. There are also completely spiritual places within the physical realms which contain little or no matter. Where ghosts and spirits exist, the ones you see in this world anyways, is part of the physical realm. When you astrally project, where you go is almost always part of the physical realms.

Beyond the physical realms we have the mental realms. There everything is based in thoughts and ideas and knowledge. There is no matter there, and there is no energy. Beyond that are the emotional realms, which lie on the other side of the abyss, and once again contain no energy.

So magical operations done in the mental realms, so long as they are not intended to affect or utilize the physical realms, do not use energy. However magic done in a physical realm with the intention of affecting the mental or emotional realms will almost always use energy, since it is usually a necessary conduit (among other things).

There are also different types of energy. There’s happy energy, and sad energy, and playful energy, and angry energy. For every kind of emotion that exists, there is a kind of energy.

Note that I said every emotion. There are many more emotions than exist in the normal human spectrum. In fact there are more emotions than exist in any human’s spectrum. There are just too many emotions for anyone to be able to naturally feel all of them.

Some more common emotions that fall outside the normal emotional spectrum are death, life, and violence (not to be confused with anger or rage). All of these things have specific energies that can be felt, and in turn can give you a concept of what the emotion feels like, but which are not naturally felt by most humans.

So the question arises, where does energy come from? Within the physical realms, energy is a byproduct of emotion. Whenever an emotion occurs, energy is created as a result.

So now we must define emotion as it’s meant in a metaphysical sense. An emotion is not the same thing as a feeling. A feeling is a kind of emotion, but there are also emotions which aren’t feelings. Feelings are also things that are created within us at some level. Either our bodies’ physiologies create them, or they’re created on some spiritual level, depending on what you want to believe, and they can be easily manipulated through the use of certain drugs.

Emotions, however, don’t begin with us. Emotions existed before there were people, before there were spirits, and they actually appear pretty close to the beginning of the universe.

An emotion is a primal force created as a byproduct of an act. An act meanwhile is something that happened.

The very first thing in the universe, at least as far back as we’re able to see, are acts. The first act occurred when the first part of the universe created itself. This in turn creates the very first emotion, creation, or creativity. As it turns out, the earlier an emotion appears in the creation of the universe, the more powerful it tends to be, and the more energy it tends to create on the physical realm. This is why sex magic can be so powerful.

So an action occurs. That action causes a change. This action-change in turn creates an emotion specifically tied to it, and that emotion ripples across the universe in a wave. In the physical realm, this wave takes the form of energy.

Going back though, these actions, which start the universe, create emotions, which form the emotional realm. You get a few of these emotions together and eventually they realize they exist. This is the first idea, and from this idea other thoughts and ideas start to spring forth, which in turn is knowledge, and all of this creates the mental planes. That initial creative emotion drops down and enters the mental planes, and you start having creativity and art and culture and invention and all sorts of other things. Eventually these things start to take form. Now they’re not just thoughts and ideas, but they start to gain substance. Enter the physical realms.

The physical realms started as nothing. Just this idea of a physical place where things could have substance, and this was caused by creation. Then emotion comes into the mix, and when it enters the physical realm, it creates energy. Energy will be the form that emotion takes when it enters the physical realm, because everything in the physical realm must have a form. Thoughts are now brainwaves, creation is now cells, and emotion is energy. This gooey energy starts to fill up the physical realm, and then Thought enters the mix. Empowered by Creation, Thought starts to come up with ideas which in turn molds this energy into different things. First completely spiritual realms are created. And then spirits are created which inhabit these realms. These spirits, in turn, are connected to higher entities made up entirely of thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. More emotions come in, the energy gets more diverse, more and more things are molded, and eventually from all of this matter is formed. Then we have physical worlds and later they’re inhabited by entirely physical beings. These beings in turn have a connection to a spiritual self, and to a mental self which is entirely thoughts and ideas. This is the creation of the universe, and how energy came into existence.

NOTE: I understand this idea leaves a lot to be desired. The creation of the physical realms from the mental realms leaves a lot to be desired in this explanation, especially considering how smooth, and even inevitable, the creation of the mental realms from the emotional realms are. It was really a question of whether I wanted to spend weeks, maybe months, trying to sort out all of the small details, or whether I wanted to get an article posted right now. Hopefully I’ll be able to clarify this process further in a future article or a future revision of this article. If not, feel free to do the work yourself.

Last week A while back Albiana reposted an article she wrote about a teen witch she happened upon. If you’re not familiar with her blog, Albiana is a long time Pagan who has more recently joined up with a Garderian BTW sect. Her online persona is that of a wise and experienced, yet sassy, Wiccan. In her blog posts she often times uses this persona to poke fun at the stupidity, ignorance, or absurdity she finds within the Pagan community. It’s a fun blog to read, mainly due to her bitching.

It’s difficult to take issue with Albiana’s post. Her online persona is critical of every minor infraction against intelligence and common sense, and that’s why she’s fun. It’s only supposed to be taken seriously to a point, and beyond that it’s just entertainment. But this post in particular resonated with me, because we adults in the community do treat teens pretty shitty, and we often times don’t give them the proper respect they deserve. These teens then grow up without guidance, and being resentful towards us, and they’ll become the immature and stupid middle-aged people we all complain about having to deal with.

The phrase that Albiana overheard, which set-off the post was this:

“Yeah, so I’ve decided to be vegan now. Oh, and I finally told my parents I was bi, which made them completely freak, but then what can they do, right? I’m almost 16 and in a few years when I’m 18 they won’t have a say at all anyway. Besides, they got more pissed off when I told them I wanted to practice vampire wicca, but its my life not theirs so they can just deal.”

My first impression is complete awe. This teen has such a strong command of the English language that she’s able to express herself in a grammatically correct way, and she can do it without using profanity. However I’m assuming Albiana was paraphrasing from memory, and so this wasn’t the teen vampire-Wiccan talking, but Albiana herself. In that case I have to point out that I’m pretty sure ‘vampire wicca’ is hyphenated, but I’m not positive on that point.

My second impression is that this is a typical teenage girl. I really don’t expect much from them. Even the most intelligent teenager is still going to be largely immature, because maturity is derived from life experience, which teenagers lack. Their spiritual experiences are, at best, still minimal and their spiritual understanding is almost entirely speculation, and they typically have accumulated very little theoretical information, and next to no practical information, to develop that speculation. It’s largely a matter of time. I’ve lived twice as long as a teenager, and the older I’ve gotten the better I’ve gotten at reading. As far as life experiences go, as far as accumulated information goes, age is a huge advantage.

Teenagers are also rebellious and experimental. They do things just to piss their parents off. They also try out new things, sexually, spiritually, and dietary.

Albiana also talks about how these teens never do any real magic because they’re scared of what might happen. It’s probably true, but it’s also normal. They’re still children, and children are scared of things. I don’t mock a three year old for being scared of the dark, and I’m not about to mock a teen for being scared of a demon, or even a simple ghostie.

I’m not scared of these things, but I can easily deal with a ghostie and I can hold my own against a Goetic spirit. But I can see why someone would be afraid of a ghost or a demon. I know how to hurt a spirit, and I know how to kill one, and I’ve tested myself against some pretty nasty things and survived. There’s empowerment in all of that, and that empowerment helps with not being afraid. If I had never fought a spirit, if I didn’t know what I know, a simple ghostie would seem invulnerable. I would see myself as powerless against it. That can be a very scary place to be.

When people get so bent out of shape over something stupid a teenager did or said, I immediately assume one of two things about them. Either they live their lives terrified that someone who knew them back in high school will one day expose them for what they were as a teenager, or they’ve managed to romanticize their teenage years. Sure they may have done kid stuff, but they were intelligent and mature, and even cool about it, and nothing like these kids today.

Fortunately I didn’t really find my spiritual path until after my teen years. It wasn’t something that seemed all that important to me. So there is no goth-vampire-Wicca phase in my past. Still I’ll admit I was just as much of an embarrassment as a teenager, I just found things other than spirituality to focus myself on. Remembering the way I was, it’s hard for me to be critical of the teens I meet today.

There are adults that act like this. When a thirty, or forty, or fifty year old, or an even older person acts like this, they’re a lost cause. There’s nothing that can be done to help them if they’re that spiritually inept and generally immature at such an old age. They’re also going to be looking for things like power, control, and respect, all meaningless things that will prevent them from ever finding spiritual truth.

Teenagers though are awesome. Teenagers are just being teens when they do these things, and they all still have potential to grow up into really powerful magicians. Teenagers have an excuse for being ignorant, immature, and spiritually inept. Sometimes they come into the community to be rebellious and piss off their parents, but even when they do they’re drawn into rebelling in this direction because they have an interest in spirituality. It’s very rare to see one who wants a place of power and respect in the community or control over other people. Usually their motives are more or less pure, and they’re genuinely seeking spiritual truth.

For a lot of them, it’s going to be a phase. Right now I’d say only one and ten will still be involved with some sort of minority faith at thirty years old. But can you blame them? They’re mocked by the more respectable adult members of the community, they’re offered little in terms of guidance, and the only people willing to teach them are usually emotionally unbalanced adults that want to have power over them and possibly take advantage of them. Sadly, the most intelligent among them will see the community for exactly what it is and run away from it. The ten percent that stay are going to be so spiritually adept they don’t really need the community, or so stupid and easily manipulated that they’ll never amount to anything.

It’s the way we approach teenagers. Most teenagers need spiritual guidance when they’re first starting out. Just like most adults need spiritual guidance when they’re first starting out. Responsible adults also need to guard them within the community. There’s a lot of people who would take advantage of them, and there are quite a few more that set a bad example. Teenagers can be taken advantage of more easily. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid or gullible, and it isn’t their fault. They lack the life-experience to see things from the perspective of the adult that is victimizing them, and they often don’t understand why what’s being done to them is wrong.

They also don’t have much experience dealing with spiritual issues. They may be afraid of a lot of things. That’s normal, and a psychologically healthy response. They don’t have the spiritual tools to defend themselves, and they don’t yet have confidence in their magical abilities. That can make them feel very powerless, and make spiritual threats seem invulnerable and unstoppable. What they need is an experienced magician or magicians to take them by the hand and back them up. It’s a safety net for them, so they know that if they get in over their heads there’s someone powerful there who can fix it.

At the same time they need to be regarded as people. They deserve to be treated with the same respect as everyone else. They should be listened to, and they shouldn’t be mocked for having an opinion, being wrong about something, or exploring things. We should also keep in mind that we aren’t their parents. It isn’t our place to tell them what they should or shouldn’t do, or what they should or shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t hold it against them because they disagree with us, or because they make a life choice that seems silly to us.

We have to allow them to explore things, to do things, to make mistakes, and discover knowledge for themselves, even if they’re going to get hurt in the process. None of us were content to listen to the advice of our elders, and the same is true of the teenagers of today and tomorrow. We’ve all chosen a spiritual path that is dependent on personal growth and evolution through spiritual experiences. Children need to have those same spiritual experiences in order to evolve and grow. It’s not a type of knowledge that can be imparted to them.

GO TO PART 1

I’ve been giving a bit more thought to how I want to present these exercises. Part one dealt mainly with energy awareness, although there was some manipulation involved. Part two is mostly going to deal with internal manipulation, moving the energy around within yourself, and part three, when I get around to it, is going to deal more with moving energy around externally. I’m only promising a part three right now, but I’m thinking I might have to add a part four in order to explain energy balancing, and possibly even a part five or six to cover advanced techniques.

First off, if you haven’t read part one yet, start there. Those exercises should keep you busy for a few weeks at least, but more likely a couple months. These exercises are designed to build on each other, so until you’ve started to see some success with those exercises, these will probably be too difficult to master.

The first exercise should have been included as #5 in part one, but was omitted. In fact, I’m adding this as #5 of part one right now, and pushing all of the other exercises up a number. If you’re already familiar with part one though, you may miss this one, so I’m reposting it here.

#5 ** Walking Barefoot **

This is actually a super simple exercise. All you have to do is take off your shoes and socks and start walking barefoot. When your feet hit the ground, try to pay attention to how it feels. Notice that different areas feel different. Grass is soft and cool. Cement is hot and hard. Carpets are smooshy, wood floors are flat, and tile is hard and cold. When you walk, pay attention to the feeling in your feet. With each step, try to notice your foot hitting the ground and how that feels.

You should do this exercise as much as possible. It’s an easy exercise because it doesn’t require you to actually do anything. It requires you to not do something. Anytime you don’t need to wear shoes or socks, don’t. Work and public showers are the only times most people need to be wearing shoes. If you’re like me, you may feel more comfortable driving in shoes, although it is perfectly legal to drive barefoot. Nowadays most companies don’t have a “no shoes, no service” policy, although a few hold-outs still do require shoes.

#12. Finding Your Chakras, pt 1

Let’s talk about Chakras for a moment. This is a practical article, not an article on theory, so I’m going to keep this as short as possible. Chakras are the parts of your body that allow for energy manipulation. They let you create energy, they let you take energy into your body, they let you push energy out of your body, they let you convert energy to a different type of energy, and they let you move energy around, both inside your body and out, in other words everything that energy manipulation entails. As you can guess, understanding your chakras is very important to energy manipulation.

The number of Chakras varies between different belief systems. Most systems work with seven major chakras, although Tibetan Buddhism uses ten. Those are just major chakras though. There are also minor chakras. Some systems list dozens of minor chakras. Even these though are just the largest and most important minor chakras in your body. There are actually tens of thousands of chakras that can be found through out your body. In fact, depending on how meticulously you want to count, there are actually millions, even billions, of chakras, but it’s sort of pointless to go looking for each and every one of those. The amount of chakras you’re going to be able to find in your body is going to be limited by how small of a chakra you’re willing to look for.

Different chakras within your body do not have different duties, although some may be better at certain jobs. Any chakra in your body can perform any of the jobs that a chakra can perform. If you read up on chakras you’ll notice the seven major chakras are each given different duties and properties. For our purposes, the main difference that we’ll acknowledge between the chakras is that some are far better at energy manipulation, and do it with much larger quantities of energy, than others. Some also naturally seem to work with certain types of energy, although any chakra can be made to work with any kind of energy. Now let’s go find us some chakras.

We’ve already talked about an area in your chest where emotion and energy seems to come from. That’s one of the major chakra. If you’ve been doing the exercises from the first part, then you might have already noticed a couple others too. You might have noticed that there’s a calmer type of energy coming from your head near your eyes, and you may have noticed other types of energy, mostly sexual or lustful energy, coming from around your genitals. These are also chakras. You might have also noticed that chakras don’t exist on the front or back of your body, they go all the way through it. So a chakra position on the front of your body also corresponds to a chakra position on the back of your body. If you haven’t discovered any of this yet, don’t worry, we’re going to find all the chakras right now.

This exercise is going to be easiest to do on a bed, but you’re going to need a little bit of room to spread out. Most people will probably need at least a full sized bed, although smaller people can get away with less. If you have a small bed, it might be easier to do this on the floor, but you have to be able to make yourself comfortable lying on the floor.

To start, you’re going to want to clear everything off your bed, like blankets, comforters, and extra pillows, so you have room to lay unhindered. If you need a pillow to be comfortable, you may keep one on the bed. We’re going to use as much sensory deprivation as we can in this ritual, so don’t burn incense or light candles. Try to make the room as dark and quiet as possible, and completely undress.

Next lie down on the bed on your back. Put your arms down at your side so they aren’t touching your torso, and spread your legs a bit so they aren’t touching each other. Spend a few minutes relaxing yourself and, if you know how, you might want to try meditating a bit too.

A. THE HEART CHAKRA

First we’re going to look for the easiest chakra, the Heart Chakra. The Heart Chakra is located in the center of your chest slightly above your heart. When you feel most emotions, such as anger or joy, you’ll feel them strongest inside of your chest. That feeling is caused by your Heart chakra activating. If necessary, work yourself into an emotional state. Think of something that will make you happy or angry or make you cry or something, whatever it takes to get you feeling an emotion. Think about exactly where you’re physically feeling that emotion in your body. Now pinpoint the center of that physical feeling, and that is your heart chakra. Now relax yourself, let the emotions start to fade away, but keep your eyes closed and think about that centerpoint in your chest and focus on it for a while. Get an idea of how it feels there, and how you interpret what’s going on there. Also try to remember where this point is so that the next time you look for it you don’t need to use emotion.

B. THE BROW CHAKRA

Now let’s think about something. Math or literature, pick your position. If you prefer math, you need to do math which will be slightly difficult to do in your head. It has to take some effort on your part, but at the same time you don’t want to mentally strain yourself. It could be multiplication, or division, or adding fractions, or multiplying them, or whatever. It really depends on how good you are at math. If you prefer literature, think of a story you’re familiar with, either from a book or movie, and start dissecting the plot and symbolism as best you can.

Spend a while, at least fifteen minutes, doing this, so that you get lost in your thinking. Then ask yourself, “Where in my body am I?” You should be feeling yourself strongest slightly above your eyes and directly in between them. This is your Brow chakra. You might also notice energy coming out of there. It’s not as intense as the energy that came from your Heart Chakra. This is energy is energy that is associated with thought and other mental tasks. Stop thinking and take a moment to feel out this chakra and become familiar with it. Also, once again, try to remember where this one is so you don’t have to go through this process again.

C. THE THROAT CHAKRA

If you’re reading this article as you’re doing the exercise, start reading out loud. Otherwise just start talking. You can do this whispering, and you can do this screaming, but doing so will make this exercise more difficult. You’re best off talking in a moderately loud voice, like if you were talking on the phone to someone who was using a cell phone outside. That’s a good volume level.

If you pay really close attention, you’ll notice there’s a very slight vibration in your throat. This vibration is what makes your voice work. It’s also where your Throat Chakra is located. When you speak, a small amount of energy comes out of that chakra inside your throat and you may be able to notice it. Most of that energy will leave through  your mouth though. The energy, like your voice, originates at your throat chakra, but you’re pulling it up through your throat and spitting it out your mouth. It’s important not to get confused and think you have a big chakra in your mouth. It’s in your throat. Once again take a moment to feel the chakra out and get familiar with where it’s located.

D. THE NAVEL CHAKRA [OR SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA]

This ones normally a bit difficult to find. There’s only one easy way I know of to activate this thing if you don’t already know how to activate your chakras. It’s very stupid and cheesy, and you’re probably going to feel stupid and cheesy for having done it, and before you do it you need to pray to whatever gods you worship that no one will catch you doing this. It’s that bad.

Okay. Get out of bed and stay naked, it’ll help. If there’s a mirror you can see yourself in, that’s a good thing. Spend some time admiring your awesome biceps and pectoral muscles. If you don’t have awesome biceps and pectoral muscles, imagine you do and admire them. If you don’t have a mirror, imagine you have one of those too. Look at yourself like your frickin’ Adonis, or Atalanta if you’re a woman, or prefer to imagine yourself as one.

Now stand up straight, legs slightly apart, arms at yours side, and fists clenched. You might want to even take a moment to bring your mighty fists up and shake them. Say “RRRRGH” as you do.

Now as your doing this exercise, you have to mean everything you say. You have to believe it and feel it inside of yourself. And if, at any time, you break out laughing during this exercise, you have to start over from the very beginning. Also keep in mind the chakra we’re looking for is located between your rib cage and your bellybutton, so that’s the area you want to pay the most attention to.

Take a moment to relax and clear your mind. Meditate for a few minutes if you know how. Then take a deep breath in, and then a deep breath out. Let the air come in through your mouth, and your stomach expand, and then push it out and your stomach constricts. Continue to take a few more deep breaths.

Say, “I am a powerful warrior.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths.

Say, “I am strong. Strength and power flow through my body.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths.

Say, “Let the energy that envelops me come through me and empower my body.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths, but as you do so envision waves of energy coming into you as you breath in, vibrating through your entire body on the way down your esophagus, and coming to rest in your upper stomach.

You might start to feel some energy in your chest around your heart chakra. If you do, you need to push that energy down your stomach as best you can and then ignore it. We’re not looking for the heart chakra, and we don’t want to get stuck focusing on that.

Say, “Let the power of my ancestors flow through my body.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths. Again let the waves of energy flow into you.

Say, “I am power and I am strength.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths. Again let the waves of energy flow into you.

Say, “I will crush my enemies on the battlefield. I will leave them broken and bloodied and their blood will quench my thirst.”

Take 3-5 deep breaths. Again let the waves of energy flow into you.

Say, “I am power. I am strength. I am a warrior.”

Now if you did it right, and you really got into it and believed all of these things you were saying, you should be feeling really pumped up right now. You should be feeling near invincible and ready to beat the crap out of someone or something. You should be punching yourself in the chest and stomach and making unintelligible grunting noises. You should be sort of wired with this empowering energy. Where is that empowering energy coming from?  You might feel it all over your body, and you might feel it coming out of different chakras, but it’s flowing into your body from a single source which can be found between your belly button and ribs. Just go to the very center of where that energy is emanating from, where it’s the strongest, and that is your navel chakra.

Relax a bit, explore your navel chakra, and try really hard to remember where it is. You don’t want to have to do this again.

E. THE SEX CHAKRA

This chakra is a tough one. It’s located between your belly button and your genitals. The chakra is associated with instincts and sometimes the subconscious, so it’s very hard to activate. Generally this would be where you feel fear from, and by fear I mean pure gut wrenching terror, not just nervousness or anxiety. It’s also where you get your intuition (gut feeling), and it’s connected to precognition. It’s also connected to sexual desire, actually horniness, but so is the next chakra.

The least time consuming way to find this chakra is to go look at some porn (but don’t masturbate, you’ll see why soon). It doesn’t have to be porn, but you have to find something that will turn you on. This can be movies, pictures, fantasies, or romance novels. It really doesn’t matter. If you feel anything in your genitals, ignore it, that’s not what we’re looking for. Before you feel something in your genitals, you should hopefully feel something a bit above your genitals. That’s your sex chakra activating.

If that method doesn’t work, then you can try refraining from having sex or pleasuring yourself for a while. After a little while, anytime you start to see someone attractive or maybe see a little bit of skin, you’ll start to feel an urge in you. That would be your sex chakra activating.

Once again, take a moment to explore this chakra and try to remember where it is.

F. THE ROOT CHAKRA

Remember how you weren’t supposed to masturbate before? This is why. Masturbate now. You don’t have to really get into it, and it doesn’t have to be really good, in fact it’s better if it’s not so good, but pay attention to the orgasm. Where do you feel it the most. Where is the pleasure sourced from. You might feel it in your stomach, and you might feel waves of pleasure across your body, and that’s great, but it should be sourced from an area on your genitals. If you can’t differentiate that, you need to masturbate in a less pleasurable and sensual way, so that you just feel it at your genitals.

That point is your root chakra. When you have sex, and when you pleasure yourself, energy moves in and out of there. Take a moment to explore it (not making a sex joke here is killing me) and try to remember where it is.

G. THE CROWN CHAKRA

This is the last chakra we’re looking for because it’s the hardest to find. It’s difficult to activate. Meditation sometimes works, but it’s still hard to find. To start this chakra isn’t even located on your body. It’s located just above your head. It could sort of be the top of a crown if your were wearing one, but I like to think of it as being kind of like a halo.

Hopefully, after finding the previous six chakras, you’ve got an idea of what a chakra feels like and that should make finding this chakra easier.

Sit cross legged on your bed (or in a lotus position if you can do so comfortably). Take a few moments to clear your mind and let it go blank. If you know how to meditate, start meditating, but meditate with the goal of clearing your mind completely.

After a few minutes, start looking for your crown chakra. The meditation should have made the thing activate, and if you’re lucky it’s pouring out enough energy to make it noticeable. It might not be noticeable though. If it isn’t, that’s okay, you just have to find it yourself.

With your mind still blank and in a state of meditation, concentrate on various points in the area right above your head. Remember how the other six chakras felt when you explored them. If you need to, now that you know where they are, meditate on each of them and feel them out. Figure out the things that each of them have in common. You’re looking for something else that’s similar to those chakras..

What you’re going to be doing is mentally poking around right above your head and seeing if a certain area feels like one of your seven chakras. If it doesn’t, move on to another area. Keep doing that and eventually you’ll hit your crown chakra. Once you do, spend some time exploring it and try to remember where it is.

Congrats, you’ve found all seven chakras! This exercise will probably take a couple hours to do, so you’re going to have to set some time aside for it. The good thing about this exercise is that you only ever need to do it once. So long as you remember where your chakras are, you’ll never need to use this exercise again. But if you do ever forget where they are, you can always repeat the exercise.

#13. Finding the Chakras, pt 2

Right after you finish exercise #12, you should probably do this exercise at least once. This is a much quicker exercise. The first few times you do it, it may take a few minutes to do. Eventually you should be able to do it in seconds. To start, a quick review, our seven major chakras in top to bottom order-

Crown Chakra – Right above the head
Brow Chakra – Slightly above and between the eyes
Throat Chakra – Center of the throat where we speak from
Heart Chakra – Slightly above the heart, center of the chest
Naval Chakra – Between the rib cage and the belly button, center chest
Sex Chakra – Between the belly button and the naughty bits, center stomach
Base Chakra – Naughty bits!!! Or, you know, the base of the spine.

Now lay in bed naked and spread out a bit. Close your eyes. Take a moment to clear your mind and relax. Now feel each of your chakras from top to bottom. Feel your crown chakra first, then your brow chakra, and so on and so forth until you reach your base chakra.

If you want, you can also activate each of the chakras when you feel them. If you don’t know how to do that yet, that’s okay. Just be aware of where the chakras are and how they feel.

Once you finish the exercise, you can do it again if you wish.

If you aren’t very comfortable with your chakras yet, or you just want some more experience feeling them out, you should spend a little bit more time doing this exercise than normal. Spend a few minutes, at least, concentrating on each chakra after you find it. Pay attention to how it feels and what it feels like. Ask you feel each chakra, ask yourself, how is this unique when compared to the other six chakras? When you finish, ask yourself, in what ways are all seven chakras alike?

Once you feel comfortable with your chakras, you can also do this exercise for speed. See how fast you can find all seven chakras. It’s important that you actually feel all seven though, and not just name them. It’s even better if you activate each one as you go. You should be able to eventually feel and activate all seven, in order, in a few second or less. Once you start to get good at this exercise, you’ll be able to do it several times in just a few minutes.

This is a really good exercise to do every night before bed. You’re already laying in bed, you’re already relaxed, and you only need to set aside a few extra minutes before going to sleep to do it.

#14 Activating Chakras

Once you’re familiar with your chakras and where they are, it’s time to move on to activating them. All that’s meant by activating a chakra is that it’s being used. You’re pulling energy into it, pushing energy out of it, or producing energy with it. Additionally you may be using it to convert energy or move it around. We actually activated each of the chakras in exercise #12, since we found a way to make them produce energy in order to find them. So if you’ve done #12, you’ve already completed this exercise. Congratulations!

Just kidding. The activation in exercise #12 was largely uncontrolled. The point of this exercise is to learn how to activate the chakras in a much more controlled way. We’re also going to do it in a way which is less time consuming and more universal.

You can start this exercise with whatever chakra you feel the most comfortable using, however I recommend starting with the Brow Chakra. The Brow Chakra creates a calmer energy that feels less intense than certain other chakras, and it’s far easier to control when you’re first starting out.

If you’re using the Brow Chakra, I suggest sitting up in your bed when you do this exercise. If you’re using a different chakra though, you may get better results in a different position. Once you start to learn the exercise though, you should be able to do it with any chakra in any position. I also suggest doing this exercise skyclad the first few times because it does make it easier, however it isn’t mandatory. The exercise will also be easiest in a quiet and dark room.

To begin with, just find the chakra like you did in exercise #13. Doing this activates the chakra. Once you’re aware of where the chakra is and you start thinking about it and concentrating on it, it will naturally produce a small amount of energy.

To start, let’s take energy into the chakra. If you remember the incense trick, we’re just going to do a variation on that. Like before, inhale, and visualize the energy coming into you as you inhale like it’s the thick smoke from the incense. Now inhale a second time, but instead of visualizing the energy coming in through your mouth, visualize it coming in through your Brow Chakra. Repeat this two or three more times.

You should start to feel a rush of energy in your body around your head. This may just be a slight rush of energy, or it may be very intense experience. You might even get a bit of a buzz off of taking in the energy. You might also start to notice some of the spiritual things around you. These are side-effects of taking in more energy than what you’re used too. If you don’t feel these things though, don’t worry about it. Most likely your chakra just isn’t taking in enough energy to have an effect on you yet. It’s like a muscle, and you’ll just have to practice more in order to build it up.

Now that we have an energy high, let’s try to push some of that energy out. As you breath, when you exhale, imagine the energy inside of you coming out of your mouth. Unless you’re very good at maneuvering energy around your body, exhaling probably didn’t have that much of an effect. Now activate your chakra and exhale again, but this time visualize the energy coming out of your chakra as you exhale. It should have a much more pronounced effect. Repeat two or three more times.

If you’re using your brow chakra, you probably noticed that you took in a bit more energy with every breath than you let out. This is because it is a lot easier to take in energy with the Brow Chakra than it is to push it out. You can of course equalize these abilities by training the chakra, but naturally, with the Brow Chakra, pulling in is a lot easier than pushing out.

Finally we need to make the chakra produce energy. This isn’t that hard. In fact we’ve already done this several times in this exercise. Concentrate on the chakra, and it’ll start creating energy. The stronger your concentration, the larger the amount of energy you’ll create.

You can also try visualizing the chakra as a wheel. As the wheel spins, visualize energy building up around it. As it spins faster, it makes more energy. This visualization will do three things. First it will get you thinking about the chakra, which will make it produce energy. Secondly it will give you a visual aid to connect to chakra energy production, and you can imagine that visual aid at any time to make a chakra produce energy. Lastly, by controlling the speed of the imaginary wheel, it will give you a method to control how much energy is being produced by a chakra.

Once you’ve succeeded in doing the exercise with the Brow Chakra, repeat the exercise with each of the six other chakras. Once you get used to this exercise, you can combine it with #13. As you go through each of the seven chakras, make them pull in energy, push out energy, or create energy.

#15 Finding the Smaller Chakras pt 1

Next we’re going to find a few of the smaller chakras so we know where they are for future exercises. There are billions of chakras through out your body, but we don’t need to find all of them. We’re going to concentrate on the most important chakras besides the seven main chakras, and those would be the strongest chakras in your hands and your feet.

Unfortunately, unlike the major chakras, there aren’t any methods to activate these chakras that work most of the time. In order to find these chakras, you’re going to have to look for them. Hopefully, from working with the major chakras in the previous exercises, you’ve become familiar with what a chakra feels like and how it works. That’s going to help you find these chakras, because the best I can do is tell you where they are and have you look for them. If you’re having trouble finding them, go back to the earlier exercises and continue to work with the major chakras until you have a better handle on what a chakra feels like.

A.HAND CHAKRAS

There are three, arguably four, important sets of chakras in your hand. Most magicians tend to favor one of these three or four sets, and they’ll usually use that particular set to do most of the energy work done with their hands. However there are advantages to using each of the different sets of chakras, and it’s a good idea to train all of them, even if you favor one, so that you can use any of them as needed.

A1. WRIST CHAKRA

The wrist chakra is technically located on the arm just below the wrist. Like all chakras it goes through the body, so you’ll also find it on the opposite side of your hand. Magicians who favor this chakra often do a Spider-Man pose when trying to manipulate energy or work magic. They turn their arm over and move their hand down, kind of like what Spider-Man does when he shoots a web.

The main advantage of using this chakra is that it’s good for close-quarter spiritual, or spiritually-enhanced, combat. Magicians who favor this chakra are typically the ones who are more comfortable in a spiritual fight. The reason for this is, whether the palm is held flat or in a fist, it’s very easy to shoot energy from over or under the hand through this chakra. It’s also useful to make a consistent blade of energy that comes out and extends over or under the hand. You can hit someone, or some spirit, with your fist or hand, and also hit them with energy at the same time.

One other advantage to using this chakra is, by going through the backside, it can be done very inconspicuously. place your arm across your stomach, and you’ll notice the chakra can easily be pointed wherever you need to point it without it looking like you’re pointing at something.

A2. PALM CHAKRA

Just below your fingers you’ll notice some mounds of bone (these are called carpals). There’s a small chakra on each mound. Directly below them there are several larger chakras. These chakras are almost always working together, and unless you try to really feel them out and separate them into individual chakras, they even feel like they’re one big chakra. After that there are again smaller chakras that exist through out the palm of the hand. All of these different chakras are usually used in unison, and most people regard them as a single chakra. As far as your hand chakras go, this one is the most powerful.

As you can guess, if you want to move or manipulate energy with your hand, this is the best chakra to use. It’s capable of doing more work than the other chakras in your hand. In combat, it’s often used by magicians who like to blast energy at a safe distance. It’s also favored by magicians who like to cast curses and enchantments without getting too close to their victims.

Even magicians who don’t favor this chakra tend to use it a lot, because it has some other unique uses too. It’s a chakra located in the palm of your hand, so if you’re holding something in the palm of your hand, it’s really easy to put energy into that object or take energy from it. It’s also the chakra that is usually used to enchant items. Going back to magical combat, it can be used to energize or otherwise enchant a weapon your holding.

A3. FINGERTIP CHAKRA

Just below the tip of each of your eight fingers there is a chakra. There’s also similar chakras on your thumbs, but these are weaker and thumbs are rather unwieldy, so these ones don’t get used too often. Compared to other chakras in your hand, your fingertip chakras are fairly strong, but they’re usually used individually and not in unison with each other or any other chakras, so they end up being much weaker than the collective of chakras found in your palm. Most magicians tend to use the chakras in their index and middle fingers, because most people have difficulty moving their ring and pinky fingers individually, and the pinky chakra is a bit weaker than the others.

Magicians who favor this chakra are usually like to point their fingers at things to manipulate energy or cast spells. They’re also the types who like to tap or lay their hand on someone’s shoulder in order to curse or enchant them.

The main advantage of this chakra is it allows you to easily draw energy from, or put energy into or otherwise enchant anything, or anyone, you touch with the tips of your fingers. Plus, for some magicians, the act of pointing is a strong ritual aid.

A4. KNUCKLE CHAKRA

Some magicians, especially those into martial arts, have favored the Knuckle Chakras. Some think that this is the best route to master shadow boxing. Unfortunately, when compared to other hand chakras, the Knuckle Chakras are very weak, and they also get used individually like the Fingertip Chakras instead of collectively. It’s possible to train them to move substantial amounts of energy, but very difficult. The Wrist Chakras actually work much better as far as shadow boxing and martial arts combat goes. The Knuckle Chakras end up being weak and redundant, and there’s no real advantage to using them over other chakras (and so I don’t suggest spending much time working them). Most of the magicians who do try to train their Knuckle Chakras just haven’t realized that there are ways to move energy from their wrist chakras that would produce better results.

B. FEET CHAKRAS

We have four important chakras in our feet. Most people are going to favor one or two of these chakras, and just use those two. Usually the center chakras are favored, because they’re the strongest. Unlike your hand chakras, there isn’t much point in training each and every one of your feet chakra. There just isn’t that much of a difference between them, or any real advantage of using one over the other. The only exception would be if you were a martial artist who was really into kicking and wanted to incorporate energy work into your martial arts.

B1. TOETIP CHAKRA

These are really the equivalent of your fingertip chakras on your toes. They’re a little bit further down the toe than the fingertip chakras are, and the strongest chakra is actually on the big toe. Individually these are going to be your weakest chakras. They’re not really close enough to be used as a collective, like your Palm Chakra, but they can still be used in unison, in which case they do become stronger than your Heel Chakra.

B2. UPPER-FOOT CHAKRA

There is a chakra, sometimes regarded as a collective and sometimes regarded as a single chakra, on the bottom of the mounds of your foot just above where the arc starts. This is actually the strongest chakra on your foot.

B3. ARC CHAKRA

Starting at the Upper-Foot Chakra, about three quarters of the way down the arc of your foot is your Arc Chakra. If they’re equally trained, this Chakra can become almost as strong as the Upper-Foot Chakra.

B4. HEEL CHAKRA

Finally, a little ways from the center of your heel, going towards the back of your foot, is the Heel Chakra. This tends to be the weakest chakra in your foot, although it is more powerful than a single toetip chakra. However if you were the martial artist I described above, this would be a very useful chakra to train.

#16. Finding the Smaller Chakras, Pt 2

Once you’ve found all of the chakras on your hands and feet, they can be trained in the same way as the major chakras. You can perform exercises #13 & #14 substituting the minor chakras for the major chakra.

#17. Moving Energy Around

Just like with the earlier exercises, this one requires laying in bed with as much sensory deprivation as possible, and before starting you should take a few moments to relax.

The goal of this exercise is to move energy around your body. Energy kind of works like a muscle. It moves around and changes according to what your brain wants it to do in the same way that your legs move for you when you want to walk. Energy will even move, as per your thoughts, when you don’t want it to. For instance, your legs aren’t going to start moving you somewhere because you think about walking there. But if you think about moving your energy across the room, it will start to move in that direction.

Your energy also moves and changes as per your emotions. Whatever you feel, your energy will try to do it. If you’ve ever gotten so angry you wanted to kill someone, your energy actually became aggressive and it literally attempted to kill the person. Luckily, unless you spent a lot of time training yourself in energy manipulation, you’re not going to be able to kill someone just by wanting to. This is one of the reasons why emotional control is so important for very experienced magicians who routinely work with large amounts of energy and can easily mold it into an attack.

The point is, you’re energy is always moving and working as per your intent, your will, your thoughts, and your emotions. If we can manipulate these things, we can manipulate how our energy moves and behaves. For this exercise, all we want to do is move energy around a bit.

Once you’re in a calm and relaxed state, concentrate on your Heart Chakra and the energy you have there right now. This is the energy we want to move around. Unfortunately we won’t be able to move all of it. Most likely, you aren’t yet skilled enough to move all of that energy at once without losing any. Even if can though, once you move the energy out your Heart Chakra is going to create some more. So if you notice that you just moved some of the energy and not all of it, don’t be discouraged, that’s supposed to happen.

Visualize all of that energy in your chest rolled up into a ball. Now visualize that ball slowly moving to the right side of your chest and then towards your shoulder. Visualize that ball slowly moving all the way down your arm, through your upper arm, through your forearm, through your wrist, and finally into the palm of your hand. When you do this, your chest should feel emptier, as if a lot of energy and emotion has been removed from it (although as we discussed, it won’t feel completely empty). Meanwhile you should now feel a lot more energy and emotion in the palm of your hand.

If you can, slowly visualize that ball of energy moving from your right hand back up your arm, through your shoulder and into your chest, across your chest, into your left shoulder and down your left arm and into your left palm. Then move the ball back into your chest. If you’re strong enough, see if you can get the ball of energy into each of your feet.

When you first start doing this, this can be a very difficult exercise. Make sure you visualize the ball slowly moving and going at a snail’s pace. The easiest way to fail at this exercise is to become impatient and move the ball more quickly than what you’re capable of handling. If this happens you’ll lose your focus on it altogether, and it will break apart and dissipate into your body. The exercise can also be very tiring when you first start doing it, meaning you may only be able to get the energy into your right hand before you’re completely exhausted by it.

As you do this exercise more and more though, you should be able to get better and better at it. Moving energy around will take less and less out of you, and you’ll be able to do it faster and faster. Once you’re able to successfully move the energy into all of your hands and feet, start working on moving it faster and faster. Eventually you should be able to easily and effortlessly push almost all the energy in your body to one area in a split second just by thinking that you want it to go there.

#18 Lifting and Dropping

This exercise is meant to help you get used to moving large amounts of energy quickly. It also teaches some techniques that can be used later on to raise and ground energy. Unlike the previous exercise, the entire point here is speed, not accuracy. If you find that you’re losing lots of energy, or that you’re only moving a fraction of the energy in your body, that’s okay for now. You’ll get better at doing this exercise more accurately and efficiently by continuing to work on #17 and #19. The point of this exercise though is to increase your speed.

To begin, stand up in a comfortable position and take a few seconds, or minutes if needed, to relax yourself and clear your mind. You may find it easier to perform this ritual skyclad, especially the first time, but the exercise can easily be performed clothed.

Using the techniques you learned in the previous exercise, move as much energy as you can into your upper chest, and hold it there for a few moments. Do not roll this energy into a ball. We want to move it as a large unwieldy mass of energy.

Now visualize that energy moving down your body and into your calves and/or feet, and hold it there for a few moments.

Then visualize the energy moving back up your body and back into your upper chest, and hold it there for a few moments.

Now move the energy into your feet or calves as quickly as you can. In order to do this, you’re going to have to visualize all of the energy in your chest dropping down your body really fast.

Now move the energy into your upper chest as quickly as you can. This time you’re going to have to visualize the energy moving up your body really fast.

Repeat these two steps, moving the energy up and down, several times or until you start to get exhausted.

#19. Stoning

This is a simple exercise I’ve discussed before which involves moving energy in and out of stones. It’s a great exercise that really helps a person learn how to manipulate energy, and it actually teaches a lot of different skills which are useful with energy work.

To start you’re going to need at least a few gemstones. You can buy gemstones for one or two dollars a piece at almost any occult store. I’d suggest getting five to ten, all different kinds, to start with. You can also try asking more experienced magicians if they have any extra stones. Many will have stones they used when they were first learning energy manipulation which they no longer have any real use for.

Pick any one of the stones and hold it in the palm of your hand. Make a loosely held fist around the stone. Now activate the Palm Chakra and pull energy in from it. If you’ve been practicing the earlier exercises, you may have already figured out a technique to do this. If not you can use the inhaling trick. Inhale and take energy into you. Now concentrate on the Palm Chakra, and move where you’re taking energy in from as you inhale to that chakra specifically.

Once you’re comfortable taking energy in through the Palm Chakra, you should start to learn how to take in energy without inhaling. After you activate the Palm Chakra, visualize the Palm Chakra as active and pulling energy into it. At the same time start pulling energy out of your hand and forearm and into your chest area. This should start taking in energy from the Palm Chakra, and it will do it consistently as opposed to only while you’re inhaling.

Once you start pulling in energy through your Palm Chakra, start taking in energy specifically from the stone. To do this, as you’re taking energy in from your Palm Chakra, change your intentions so that you only want energy from the stone, and not energy from the general area (often times when working with energy changing your intent is enough). At the same time  visualize the energy being pulled in from your Palm Chakra as being pulled directly out of the stone.

You should start to feel some energy from the stone coming into your body. This energy should have a unique feel to it, which would be the energy taint from the stone. This should give you an idea of what the stone feels like.

Now that we’ve gotten energy out of the stone, the next step is to reverse the process. Again hold the stone in your fist. Now start moving the energy in your body up into your forearm and then into your hand. Activate your Palm Chakra (by identifying it and thinking about it), and keep pushing the energy forward so that it comes out through your Palm Chakra. Once you’ve done this, intend to push the energy into the stone, and visualize the energy coming out of your Palm Chakra and being forcefully pushed into the stone.

Not all of the energy is going to end up in the stone. Some of it’s going to fall out into the general area around you. In fact, when you first start doing this exercise, a lot of the energy is going to fall out into the area around you. That’s perfectly normal. As you get better at it, less and less energy will be lost to the surrounding area, but you’re still going to lose some.

Once you have this down, you can repeat the exercise several times. Pull energy out of the stone, and then push energy back into the stone. You can also try the exercise with different stones. Different stones will have different taints, and the energy is going to feel different.

Another variation you can try, once you’ve mastered energy conversion, is pushing a specific energy into the stone that is different than the energy you took out. In fact if you repeatedly alternate between doing this and pulling energy out of the stone, what you’re doing is cleansing the stone.

By keeping a couple of small gemstones in your pocket, you can easily practice this exercise any time you have a few moments of free times. Just put your hand in your pocket, make a fist around one of the stones, and start pushing and pulling energy out of it. It can also be done at the same time that you’re doing a lot of other activities (like say having a conversation with someone or watching TV or reading my blog). In fact it’s good to practice exercises like this while doing other things, because it gives you practice in manipulating energy while your mind needs to be focused somewhere else.

#20 Raising Energy pt 1

When we raise energy, it means that we bring energy into the area that wasn’t already there. There are four ways we can raise energy. We can draw it from the earth, we can draw it from a divine source, we can draw it from a distant source, or we can create it ourselves. For this exercise, we’re going to work on drawing it from the earth.

To begin stand up. Being barefoot or skyclad will both help, but it isn’t necessary. What you want to do is activate some of your feet chakras and activate your base chakra (your base chakra is actually the most important one to activate, so if nothing else make sure you get that chakra). Then start pulling energy upward through these chakras and into yourself. Pull in as much as you possibly can. Make sure you intend to pull this energy directly from the Earth. Standing on dirt may help, but so long as you have an indirect connection to the Earth, the exercise should still work.

Keep pulling as much as you can and drawing the energy into you, and if you need to release the energy through your upper chakras. You should feel a lot of energy coming into you. Some of that energy may be from the area surrounding your legs, but when you’re taking in that much energy, you should deplete the energy around you fairly quickly and then start drawing from the Earth.

Be careful doing this though in volatile areas. If the energy in the area feels bad to you, then raising energy like this will most likely draw a lot of that energy into you, which could be a bad thing.

Since your chakras don’t really need to be touching the ground, you might be wondering why you can’t raise energy from the earth through your upper chakras, like the Heart or Brow chakra. You can. If you can figure out how to do it, you can try it. I’d suggest trying it with your Crown chakra since that’s the highest and will produce the strongest effect. If you succeed, you’ll probably notice that it feels very uncomfortable, and you’ll probably become a bit nauseous. That’s why most magicians will usually use their lower chakras to raise energy like this.

#21. Raising Energy, pt 2

Now we’re going to raise energy from ourselves. Start by laying in bed naked. Spend a few seconds relaxing and clearing your mind. Now do exercise #13 and find all seven of your chakras. Then continue and find all of the chakras in your hands and feet, and any other smaller chakras you may be familiar with.

After that, do exercise #14, and activate all of these chakras that you just found. Just do your best to produce energy from each one, and don’t worry about drawing in or pushing out energy.

Now try to think about and activate all of those chakras at once so they all produce energy. If it’s too much for you to focus on all of those chakras right now, then just focus on as many as you can (but in the future try to keep adding more chakras to that number). The most important chakras to activate are the seven major chakras, so eliminate those chakras last.

Once you’ve activated these chakras, try to produce as much energy as you can from each.

You’re now raising energy into the room, as much as you possibly can. Maybe you don’t want this energy in the room though. Maybe you want this energy for yourself. Your chakras naturally push most of the energy they produce outward (this way your body doesn’t hold excess energy, which for most people usually isn’t a good thing, but it’s often necessary for magicians to do this). What you need to do is turn your chakras inward so the energy goes into your body instead of into the general area.

To do this, as you’re creating energy with a chakra, also pull energy through that chakra into yourself. Now the energy will go into you instead, and you should fill up with energy fairly quickly.

You might not be able to both create energy and pull energy in with all of your chakras at once. You may have to limit yourself to even less chakras to do both acts at the same time. If you’re having a lot of trouble, you can start by doing it with just one chakra at a time, and keep practicing it until you can do it with multiple chakras at once.

Once you get a certain amount of energy into you, your body will naturally start pushing large amounts of energy out, because it’s not going to be able to hold that much energy. The more you do these exercises though, the more energy you’ll be able to do.

A word of caution, carrying around large amounts of energy can cause problems. Once you feel like your body’s starting to push out large amounts of the energy that you’re taking in, you should stop the exercise. You don’t want to take too much energy in. At the same time it’s a good idea to ground out after doing this exercise. That technique is explained in the next exercise.

#22. Grounding Out

Grounding is the act of pushing energy out of your body and into the ground. Excess energy can be harmful and difficult to control, and grounding is a way to get rid of that energy. Grounding is also a way to get rid of energy that may be harmful to us or disruptive to whatever we’re currently trying to do, or energy that just isn’t compatible with us.

When we ground there is usually a backwash effect. Some energy from the Earth will come into us. Typically when a person grounds it’s because the energy in them is causing a problem, and so there is usually an energy imbalance. Getting rid of the offending energy helps to correct this imbalance, and the backwash of Earth energy helps balance them further.

You do need to be careful though when the energy of an area feels off or yucky. When you ground in an area like that, there’s a good chance some of that energy will flow through you from the backwash.

Like raising energy, all you need is an indirect connection to the ground. You can even do this from the top of a skyscraper, because you’re still touching something that ultimately connects back to the ground. You could theoretically even ground while flying in a plane or jumping through the air, but it’s much more difficult.

When many magician’s ground they touch the floor with their hand. This is unnecessary though. You can easily ground out through your feet, and I suggest learning how to do this. Standing still for a moment while you ground is a lot less conspicuous than bending down to touch the ground. Grounding may also be seen as a sign of weakness in some situations, and you may not always want to show that weakness.

The reason why some magicians touch the ground is twofold. First off, many magicians find it easier to work with the chakras on their hands than the ones on their feet, mainly because they use the ones on their hands more often and haven’t taken the time to train their feet chakras. Secondly the ritual aspect of touching the ground helps them ground.

It may be easier to learn how to ground by using your hands, but after some practice you should be able to easily move on to doing it with your feet.

To begin, you need to fill your body with enough energy so you’ll have something to ground. The easiest way to get this energy is by performing exercise #21. If you haven’t perfected exercise #21 yet, then you can charge a stone for a few days for the same effect.

To charge a stone you should push energy into the stone several times a day without ever taking energy out. Keep doing this for three or four days, and you should hopefully have accumulated a sizable amount of energy by then. Alternatively you can place the stone on an altar to a deity for a day or two and ask that deity to charge the stone for you. This method may not work though. Once you have the stone charged, pull the energy out and let it fill your body.

To ground, place your hand on the floor. Next move as much of the energy in your body as you can into your forearm. Continue to push the energy into your hand. Activate one of the chakras on your hand. Your Palm Chakra is probably going to be the best one to use, but you can use whichever one you feel most comfortable with. Push the energy through your hand, through the chakra, and into the floor. When you push out the energy, make sure you do so with the intent that it’s going into the Earth and not just the floor. There will probably be some sort of backwash effect which will occur naturally. If you wish to increase this effect, after you finish grounding pull energy up from floor through your hand, with the intent that the energy is coming from the Earth.

The ritual is done with your feet in almost the exact same way. The only difference is that the energy has to be moved down your body and into your legs, and you have to use your feet chakras to push the energy out. You don’t have to be barefoot to ground out through your feet either. It may help, but your feet are touching your socks, which touch your shoes, which touch the floor.

#23 Touch and Draw

Remember the chakras that exist on your fingertips? Where going to start using those, and we’re pretty much going to do the exact same thing we did with the Palm Chakra when we drew energy out of the stone.

Your fingertips contain little chakras, and those chakras can be used to draw energy out of things. Last time we used gemstones, which hold a fairly large amount of energy, and which have fairly strong and unique taints on their energy. Now we’re going to start doing this to other objects to see how they feel.

Right now, place your fingertips on the wall next to you. Activate the chakras and draw energy through them, the same way you drew energy out the stone through your Palm Chakra. Don’t just draw from the surrounding area, but intend to draw specifically from the wall. Use visualizations if you need to.

The energy of a particular wall is going to vary due to a wide variety of factors. But your wall probably didn’t have as much energy in it as a gemstone, and the energy was probably a bit harder to distinguish. As you get better at energy manipulation you’ll become more sensitive, and you’ll be able to better work with smaller amounts of energy, and better able to distinguish the more subtle differences of an energy.

Now start walking around and touching things, and pulling energy out of them. What does your computer desk feel like? Your computer monitor? The door to your room? A piece of glass? A piece of plastic? The pavement outside?

Get in the habit of touching things, and get in the habit of drawing energy out of everything you touch. This is an exercise you can always be doing as you go about your day, especially once you become proficient enough to quickly draw out energy and identify it.

This method is fine on inanimate objects, but never use this method on living things like people, animals, or even house plants, and never use this method on spirits. Doing so is a kind of vampirism, and there’s a lot of other crap that goes along with that. Plus it can be harmful to draw energy out of a living thing that way. There is a non-vampiric method to feel out the energy of something living or a spirit, and I’m going to explain that in a future exercise.

This exercise is going to do three things. First its going to get you used to drawing energy into your body through a chakra, and your going to become more and more proficient at doing that, especially when you’re drawing in energy all day long. Secondly it’s going to train you how to identify different energies, and you’re going to become more and more proficient at noticing those subtle differences. Lastly it’s going to expose you to a lot of different energies and you’re going to start to get an idea of what a lot of different things feel like. Later on, when you feel an energy that is the same as or similar to an energy you’ve already felt, you’ll have a better idea of what that means.

#24 Barefoot, Again

This is a variation on #23, and its going to make use of the barefootedness we’ve had to endure because of exercise #5.

What we’re going to do is start using the chakras in our feet to draw energy out of the ground as we walk. We’re not going to draw energy out of the Earth, like we did when we were raising energy, but instead we’re going to start drawing energy out of whatever we’re walking on. Things like wood floors, carpet, cement, dirt, whatever.

Start by standing up right now, and drawing in energy from the floor beneath you. This is done exactly like exercise #23, except you’re using your feet chakras instead of your hand chakras. Activate the chakras, then pull in the energy directly beneath you. If you need to, visualize your feet chakras sucking in energy from the floor, kind of like a vacuum cleaner.

Unlike the previous exercise, it really isn’t that important to use a specific chakra. As was explained earlier, most people will be okay if they only ever train one or two chakras on their feet. The middle chakras are the strongest though, and will probably be the easiest ones for most people to use.

Now walk into another room and repeat the exercise, and then into another room, and then outside. You should start by doing this exercise whenever possible when you walk into a new room. Once you get a little bit better, you can start doing it whenever you walk onto a different type of ground. Once you become really fast at it, you can start doing it with every step you take. You can even perform this exercise when you need to wear shoes, although it will be more difficult.

This exercise will help teach you a few different things. First it will give you an idea of what all the things you’re walking on feel like, energy wise. Secondly it’s going to specifically train the chakras in your feet, and get you used to using them and make them stronger. Lastly it’s going to give you even more experience working with energy in general.

You may notice that your feet chakras seem weaker than your hand chakras. Actually these chakras are naturally more powerful, it’s just that most of us are used to using our hand chakras more often. It also doesn’t help that most people will wrap their feet up in layers of socks and shoes the majority of the time. Comparatively, outside of a few special occasions like playing in the snow or performing a prostate exam, our hands are usually left naked and we’re able to touch things with our skin.

#25. Converting Energy pt 1

The goal of this exercise is to start learning how to convert energy. In order to begin this exercise, you need to be in an emotional state. You can either work yourself into an emotional state, or wait for one to occur naturally. It really doesn’t matter what kind of emotional state you’re in, but I do suggest a positive emotional state, if for no other reason then it will be more pleasant for you. The stronger the emotional state, the easier this exercise will be, so if you’re having trouble with it try working yourself up more. Having a weaker emotional state will better work your abilities though.

Okay, you’re having an emotional state. I’m assuming it’s one of those states associated with your Heart Chakra, so I’m going to talk about putting energy into your chest. If it’s something associated with a different chakra, like say fear, you’re going to have to move the energy to that chakra instead.

Now go grab one of your stones. It doesn’t matter which. The more energy that’s in the stone the better, so a charged stone would be best. If you don’t have a charged stone handy, you can still do the exercise. It just won’t work your abilities as well.

You’re going to have to do these next parts quickly, because you’re only going to have a limited amount of time to do this.

Hold the stone in the palm of your hand and start drawing energy out of it. Take this energy and start moving it into your chest where your emotional energy is. Now push the emotional energy inside of you into this new energy. Have the emotional energy envelope and surround it. It should now start changing it, and the new energy should start becoming like the emotional energy.

With this exercise, at least at first, you’re probably going to have a lot more emotional energy than what you take in from the stone. You don’t need that much energy to convert though. Once you get the process down, you should be able to convert very large amounts of energy using only small amounts of energy.

#26 Energy Conversion Pt 2

This time we’re going to do the same thing as exercise #25, except we’re going to reverse the process.

First get a lot of energy inside yourself. You can either raise the energy and place the majority of it in your chest, or wait until you’re in an emotional state. Now pick up a stone, and start pulling the stone’s energy into you and towards the other energy in your body.

This time we’re going to have the stone’s energy envelope the energy already inside of us. Unless the stone’s particularly powerful, or you’re producing relatively small amounts of energy (in which case you need to keep working on the earlier exercises), you should have a lot more energy inside of you than in the stone. So this exercise will be a bit more difficult, but it’s essentially the exact same process as the previous exercise.

Bonus Exercise #1: Couplet

I’m listing this as a bonus exercise because not everyone’s going to be able to do it. If you can’t it’s no big deal. You can continue on with the other exercises and still learn how to manipulate energy. There are no essential skills that you’ll learn from this exercise that I’ll be incorporating into future exercises. If you are able to do this though, this is a very cool and sweet exercise you can perform with someone special.

To begin you need a partner, and both of you should either be adept at energy manipulation, or learning it. Anyone whose made it through part 2 of this guide should be fine. I really suggest doing this with someone you’re in a romantic relationship with. So long as both people are comfortable with the exercise, you can do it with a close friend or even an acquaintance. However the exercise is so personal that most people aren’t going to feel comfortable doing it with someone they’re not in a romantic relationship with. It also requires some degree of trust.

To begin, both partners should undress and sit cross-legged on the floor across from each other, looking each other in the eyes. Both should extend their left hands out with their palms facing upwards. Now each should take their right hand and place it over their partner’s left forearm.

Both should now start moving their energy into their right hand and then pushing it into their partner’s body.

More experienced magicians may wish to pull energy into themselves from their partner with their left hand at the same time at the same time that they’re pushing energy out with the right. This will make the process easier. You need to be very careful if you do this though. If one person is stronger than the other, they can end up pulling in significantly more energy than they’re giving away and drain their partner. This can make their partner sick, and in extreme cases it can be fatal. However a magician who lacks so much control over energy that they might kill someone by draining them almost certainly wouldn’t be strong enough to kill someone in this way.

When you just push in, you have control over how much you give away, and you probably won’t lose so much more than you’re going to make yourself sick. When someone is pulling, they need to have enough awareness and control to make sure they aren’t taking more than they’re giving away, or their partner needs to be adept enough to control how much they can take.

If you’re doing this in order to build up your energy manipulation skills, it’s best to switch hands halfway through the exercise so that you’re pushing with the left and receiving with the right. If you’re just doing this to enjoy the other person though, there’s no reason to switch hands.

With this exercise, both participants are going to be giving their energy, and in a sense their essence, to the other person to feel them out, and at the same time they’re going to be feeling out their partner. For some the nudity will add an additional element of intimacy to the exercise. Even putting that aside though, the exercise is still very emotionally intimate. Each participant is allowing the other to feel them at a very deep emotional and spiritual level, and the energy of both participants is intermixing and running through both bodies. In a certain limited spiritual sense, the two are becoming as one, and there’s no clear line between where one ends and the other begins.

CONCLUSIONS

I wanted to do a lot more with this section. I wanted to add more exercises dealing with energy conversion. I also wanted to add an exercise that dealt with how to feel out the energy of living things. To do that one though, I’m first going to have to first add at least two more exercises, maybe more, to teach some techniques I haven’t gone through yet. This article has already gotten very long, and several of exercises I covered ended up being split into two exercises instead of one. So these things are going to have to wait until part 3, and there will be a part 3 for sure. Eventually anyways.

The exercises in part 1 were fairly simple, and dealt a lot with energy sensing. Part two has dealt almost exclusively with internal energy manipulation. The exercises have become a lot more complex, but they’ve been worked up to by building on what came before them. Exercise #24 or #26 shouldn’t be any more complicated than exercise #1 if you’ve mastered everything that came before it. It’s also gotten to the point where I don’t have to explain every little thing. To someone who has gone through all 26 exercises, I can simply tell them to move energy to a particular part of their body, or put it into a stone, or draw it out of an item and into their hand. I no longer have to explain the techniques to do these things. Not only that, but people who’ve gotten to this point should be starting to figure out a lot of things about energy manipulation for themselves.

Still I’ll continue to give more exercises in part 3. That part will deal mostly with external energy manipulation. Now that you can move energy around inside your body, you’ll start to learn how to move it around outside your body. I’m also going to have some more exercises on energy conversion, mainly because this article just didn’t have room for them.

These things take a lot of time and work to put up. Exercises are really hard to figure out and write up. The only thing worse are rituals. It took me almost a year to do part 2. I don’t expect to wait as long before I finish part 3, but it might take me a while.

I’m not making any promises for future instalments past part three, mainly because I don’t know how I’ll feel about doing that much work. Right now I want to do five or six parts. Part four will deal with internal energy balancing, and part five will cover advanced techniques. Part six, if I even decide to do it, will have even more advanced techniques. Whether or not there’s a part six will really depend on how many things I want to cover.

As before, if you’re doing these exercises feel free to let me know how it’s coming along. If something isn’t easy to understand, or you’re having trouble with one of them, let me know. It may just be a simple clarification. Or I may need to add a new exercise to work some ability I hadn’t thought about. If you let me know about the issue I can not only fix the exercises for you, but I can fix it for everyone else as well.

PART 3 COMING SOON

Background

This regression is from my most recent past life. I’ve practiced magic in several of my past lives, including this one, and those past lives usually tend to have a stronger influence on me.

In this particular past life I was a woman, and judging by fashions and interior design I’d say I was a teenager sometime in the fifties, and that I lived in what was probably an English speaking country, most likely the United States or Canada. I died sometime in the seventies, probably closer to the end than the beginning. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Beyond that I had quite a bit of family money and was rather opinionated. I never married and never had children. I lived in a very large home as a child, moved out into my own home, a much smaller one, for a while, and eventually moved back into the family home (I’m assuming this followed the death of my parents). I don’t believe I ever worked a real job or ever actually earned money.

I remembered hiding spiritual books in my bedroom as a teenager, and through hypnosis I was able to discover where I was exposed to magic. A neighbor was a sickly old woman, and she taught me some things at a very young age. Around the time I was twelve she died, and I stole some of her books from her house following her death. Those were the books I was hiding in my house.

Death

My first ever past life regression was of a death, and whenever I find a new past life, the first thing I try to discover is how I died. I usually die young, and quite a few of those deaths are violent, with the remaining ones being accidents. There’s probably a lesson I’m refusing to learn hidden in there somewhere.

Anyways the first time I regressed this past life’s death, it was strange but I was satisfied. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that I was missing big holes.

In the regression I was a bit older, and as I said it seemed to take place in the seventies, which would put this death shortly before my birth. I was in a home, and I can’t say for certain what country it was in, but judging by the place I’d say it was a western nation. The place was a two story, and I was upstairs, and the whole place looked cheap. The walls were painted a light blue, and it looked like it was lit by track lighting, or maybe an uncovered lamp. I was in one of those upstairs areas that isn’t really a room, but just an open area upstairs. I’m not sure what they’re called.

The house looked cheap, so it definitely wasn’t mine. It also wasn’t very well furnished. There wasn’t much furniture, and there wasn’t much on the walls. It looked like the sort of place a bunch of guys in their early twenties might own if they were really clean.

Anyways there was some blood on the wall. I was speaking to a spirit. I remember saying, “Do you know what I am,” while all poised for attack, and then something slashed me across the chest. In one swipe three cuts tore up my shirt and cut deeply into my breast. And that was how I died.

I assumed a few things from this. I knew the house wasn’t mine, so I assumed I was there to clean it and get rid of some hostile spirit. Much like I do in this lifetime, I just assumed I’d be able to handle this spirit. Unfortunately this spirit turned out to be a lot more powerful than I thought it would be, I got in over my head, and those slashes across my chest were enough to kill me.

I was happy with that explanation, but I was wrong about everything, and I figured that out when I regressed the missing pieces.

What Really Happened

As I said I had a second regression, and I remembered all the missing pieces, and now what happened makes much more sense. The most important part of the regression though is what I learned about the pandora boxes.

A pandora box was why I was at the house. I had no intention of cleaning the place, and I wasn’t even invited in. When I arrived the front door was unlocked. What I wanted was inside, and so I went in.

If you’re not aware of how regressions work, at its most intense you have access to the thoughts that were swimming in your head during the regression. It’s like you’re rethinking them. That’s why remembering something like you’re name can be so difficult, because we usually don’t think of our names. I’m sure there’s a lot of other information I knew then that I can’t remember now, because I wasn’t thinking of the back story shortly before I died.

I’m not sure where the name pandora box comes from. I don’t know if it was a name I gave the thing, or if it was a name I learned from someone else. I also have no clue where I learned about these things or how I even knew they existed. I don’t know why I was looking for one either, but if I knew where one was today, I’d probably go looking for it now just because. I do know that the idea of pandora boxes was in my head, in the sense that what I was looking for was one of several such things. Which means there should still be others like it which are still intact.

To describe this thing, it was a wooden box which was probably about a foot and a half to three feet long. The base had a rectangular shape, but the top was more slanted downward, like the roof of a house, and the ends actually came out further than the base. There were a set of circular indentations across the tops of the long sides. These pushed into the base, and the top was curved around them. It would provide a way for it to be set upon rods or carried with them, although I have no idea if this is their purpose.

The box itself was beautiful. Everything about it was a masterful work of art. You’d have to see this thing to appreciate it, but it’s one of the most beautiful creations I’d ever seen, and made entirely out of wood and paint. There were several different colors, including quite a bit of light blue and several shades of white. However most of the box was painted a color that I can clearly see in my head when I think about it, but which I can’t identify. I’m colorblind though, so it’s very possible this is one of the colors I can’t see, like green or purple.

I know in my head that these boxes are very, very old. They are thousands and thousands of years old. I don’t know the exact age. I’d say anywhere between four thousand and fifteen thousand years old. Looking at it though, it was in pristine condition. There was not a dent or a chip on it, not even a loose splinter. The paint wasn’t even faded. The paint literally looked like it had just finished drying. The thing didn’t even collect dust. It’s either craftsmanship far beyond any techniques known today, or very powerful magic.

The other thing about these boxes, they also have a very strong invisibility spell on them. One of these things could be sitting in front of your computer monitor right now, and you’d never know it. You can’t see it with your eyes, and you can’t remote view it with your astral body. It contains a tremendous amount of energy, but you’d never be able to feel it. You wouldn’t feel it if you touched it, and you moved towards it, you would walk around it without even noticing. You wouldn’t even notice the absence of something there. It would seem just like an empty space in the room. I’m pretty certain that photographs and video tapes wouldn’t work either. There is no way you could locate or sense the thing, physically or metaphysically.

You’re probably wondering how I found the thing then. I’m not sure how I located it, but I know how I finally got to see it. No spell is foolproof, there’s always a work around if you’re smart enough to figure it out. But let me get back to the regression.

So I let myself in to the house, entering through the front door. I already knew where I was going in the house too, because I made a beeline right for the room I needed to be in. Right away I went up the stairs, entering that open area I talked about earlier. The place seemed deserted, and there was some blood on the walls. I should’ve guessed something was wrong. I think I was just too obsessed and excited to see the warning signs.

Anyways I went into the hallway and entered a room which was sort of like a den. There was a lot of different things piled up on the shelves and on the desk that was in the room. Anyways I  was in this room with a spirit friend of mine, and this is how I saw the box. I’m not sure exactly what kind of spirit this was, but for whatever reason the invisibility spell didn’t work on him. I had him come with me because I knew it wouldn’t work on him, and he was my way to get the box. How I knew this, I don’t know.

Anyways I stepped out of myself a bit, and I let myself see through the eyes of this spirit. I was in front of the doorway still, and the spirit was across the room on the other side. When I saw through his eyes, I saw myself standing on the other side. Quickly I scanned the room, and there was the box I was searching for laying on the desk. And it was open. And I was overcome with terror.

I popped into my own eyes, turned around, and tried to leave that house as quickly as I could, not even bothering with the box. When I got into the open room, I saw it in the hall, the thing that used to be in the box. Judging by my reaction earlier, I’d say that I knew that something really bad was in that box, but I’m not sure if I knew it was this.

This thing was like a tall anamorphic feline almost, and it had breasts so I’m thinking it was female. It had bright white fur. Maybe there was a darker color in the back, but the front of her was definitely bright white. And she had spots, but weird spots. They were black, and they were square, not round. And they were white in the middle. They were like square donuts.

And the power. The energy I felt pouring off that thing was immense. In this lifetime, I’ve never seen a spirit that powerful in this world. I’ve never seen one that was even close to that powerful in this world. It wasn’t stronger than a god, but I can’t think of anything else that comes close to it. And this is just based on the energy pouring off the thing that was so strong I couldn’t help but feel it. There’s no telling how much power was inside of that thing.

The energy was very animalistic, very violent, and very twisted and evil. The thing was intelligent though. I can’t imagine anything being that powerful and not being very intelligent.

The energy was so strong, I can almost feel what it was right now. It was so strong that when I think about the thing or talk about it, a bit of its energy taints me, and its enough to be noticeable. I’ve also noticed that certain primals tend to be drawn towards that energy, and I’ve been approached by them because I carried it. The primals are surprisingly civil, and even a bit obedient, when they sense that energy. What that means, I don’t know. It doesn’t last very long now, years after the regression. After I experienced the full force of the regression though I carried that energy with me for almost a month before it fully dissipated. Nothing I tried did much to get rid of it, and in the end I had to wait for it to dissipate on its own.

I just want to give some sense of how strong this thing was, but it’s hard to do, because I can’t find anything approximate to relate it to. But I’ve fought a lot of spirits, including a lot of very powerful ones, and I’ve met quite a few more than I’ve fought. I’m not exaggerating because I’m inexperienced with spirits. Things as strong as this are pretty much unheard of in this world.

The thing was definitely far stronger and far faster than me. It didn’t seem to like me, and it was getting ready to attack. I figured I was screwed, so I tried bluffing. I didn’t really have any other options, and it wasn’t like I was going to make my situation any worse than it already was.

So that’s where you get the ‘Do you know what I am… blah blah blah… power power power… I could crush you with a thought, ect. It came at me, swiped once with its claw, ripped up my shirt, and put three gapping slash marks across my breast. Deep wounds like that into a woman’s breast hurt a lot, but they’re not usually fatal, at least not right away. I was still alive, and still managing to stand, and what I did next was truly impressive. I picked up the spirit and through it down the hall, through a doorway, and into a bedroom at the end of the hall.

Picking up a spirit and throwing it across a room is a fairly simple psionic attack. It usually doesn’t do much either, besides maybe roughing the spirit up a little and possibly opening up some room between you. What’s impressive is that I was able to do it to something that powerful. I couldn’t do that today. Even well rested and my energy peaked, tapping into all my reserves, even if I used enough energy to kill myself, I couldn’t manage to throw something that powerful. I’m not as powerful now as I was then.

The throw cost me just about every ounce of energy I had left. I had nothing left to defend myself with, and I could barely move. It didn’t even buy me a second. The spirit got right back on its feet, and rushed towards me, and at that point I met my end in a bloody mess. I don’t remember much of it. I suppose I either lost consciousness, or my soul was pulled out before I finished dying. That is how I came to my end.

Theories on the aftermath

I’ve been trying to find this scene for quite sometime. It was a gruesome murder, and I was a rich socialite in a place I wasn’t supposed to be in. If I could find an account of the crime, I could probably find out what my name was and find out more about that pastlife.

But it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. I’m looking for a single murder that happened in the 1970s. There were over fifteen thousand murders every year during that period for just the United States. Which, another issue, I’m not sure what country this happened in. And this is in the pre-internet, pre-electronic archive, pre-search engine days.

That also assumes a body turned up. What if that thing ate the body or otherwise disposed of it. Then I’d just be a missing person. I had money, so I’m assuming at some point someone had me declared dead, but I’m wondering if anyone really cared that I was missing. I had no husband, or children, and my parents were dead. I don’t think I had any siblings or other close relations, and I don’t many of the people I knew cared all that much for me. I was probably just some eccentric old maid that took off one day, and when I didn’t come back I doubt anyone really went looking for me.

I’ve also thought that maybe the whole house is still hidden. When I got into the house, that spirit was still in it. Maybe the box had a failsafe. When it was opened, it just made a bigger box around the house. The spirit got trapped inside and can never leave, and the lot just disappeared from existence. No one notices that it isn’t there, and no one seems to see it when they pass by it. It’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t explain how I found the house, or why I didn’t notice the huge invisibility spell around the house, which would have been a sign that something had gone horribly wrong. The only way this works is if the box was opened after I had already gotten onto the property.

Other Theories

Someone pointed out to me that what I described was similar to some descriptions they had heard of the ark of the covenant, except smaller. I don’t know what descriptions they were talking about.

Someone also told me that they heard of similar boxes being made in an ancient civilization, they thought maybe Babylon. They were very old and powerful and evil spirits that couldn’t be allowed to walk the earth. Instead of destroying them, powerful magicians trapped them in these boxes. That way their power could be sucked out of the boxes and utilized. However failsafes were put into the boxes to try to prevent them from ever being opened so that these things would never walk the earth again. Over time the boxes were lost and scattered.

Someone also told me heard of spirits like this in an unpublished French grimoire, and while trying to translate the grimoire his pet was brutally torn to pieces, after which he stopped working with it and destroyed his copy of the manuscript.

I’ve also seen some theorize that these things were worshipped, like gods, by the primals. It’s also thought that these things are what most people are looking for when they go after the primals, and somehow the two have gotten mixed up. Primals are strong relative to your average spirits, but they aren’t that strong, and they aren’t usually that bright either. It’s not the sort of stuff most people would equate with the Lovecraftian mythos.

Sex magic is a fairly broad term that covers a lot of different practices. It includes everything from symbolically sexual rituals and intimate non-sexual rituals to actual sex and masturbation during a ritual. For the purposes of this article though, I’m only concerned with sex magic as defined as having actual ritual sex.

Sex magic is a valid and potentially powerful form of ritual magic. It can be used to reach higher states of ecstasy, to reach higher spiritual states of being, and to form stronger spiritual connections with your partner. It can also be used for more tangible gains, such as prosperity magic or love spells.

I’ve always been a strong proponent that sex magic works best within a monogamous relationship. This isn’t magic that is done by yourself, this is magic that is done in a partnership, and the strength and experience of that partnership is a lot more important than the strength and experience of the individual practitioners. To reach the higher levels of what is attainable through sex magic, it isn’t enough just to develop oneself. The practitioner needs to develop themselves inside of the confines of a partnership and in specific regards to that relationship.

Sex magic works best within a monogamous relationship, but there’s still a lot, magically, that can be gained from casual sex. Not everyone is going to be fortunate enough to be in a long term relationship with a fellow practitioner, and there’s still a lot that can be done and experimented with if you’re able to find another partner or two that’s willing to work with you.

However there’s an ideology that is counter-productive to sex magic that has entered the magical community by way of the swinger community. As far as I can tell, there are two types of swingers. There are a very few swingers who are fairly young and attractive. These people keep to their own kind, don’t associate with the other swingers, and, in the rare instance they enter the magical community, generally don’t get involved with sex magic. These folks are desirable, and there are always people willing to sleep with them.

The second type are unattractive. Many are older and even elderly, a large percentage are overweight, some of the men are underweight, most are out of shape, and some are just plain ugly. There usually isn’t anyone in this group that very many people would fantasize about sleeping with, and most people aren’t interested in seeing any of them naked. The problem the people in this group have is that the only people who will sleep with them are the other swingers like themselves. That might be fun for a while, but eventually some of these folks want to start sleeping with more attractive people. A big lure of swinging is getting to sleep with all sorts of attractive people, but that only really works if you happen to be an attractive person. This group also tends to have a high man to woman ratio, so there’s an incentive to get more willing women into the group.

One avenue some of these folks turn to is sex magic. It’s a way for these people to swing, and to hopefully bring in some younger and more attractive people with the lure of spirituality. No one is going to be enticed by the bodies these swingers have, so spirituality becomes an additional tool they can use to attract new partners.

Of course I take issue with the clear exploitation of someone else’s spirituality for sexual gain, but that isn’t the problem I want to talk right now. There’s a much bigger issue in that these swingers are damaging the effectiveness of sex magic by pushing an ideology which runs counter to it.

There’s an idea within the swinger culture that sex is not really connected to different emotions. Swingers are especially referring to love, but they also mean other emotions too. After all we’re not always in love with the people we have sex with, but that doesn’t mean that sex isn’t emotional for us. Most swingers believe that these emotional responses to sex are conditioned, as are certain other things connected to sex like intimacy and emotional closeness. They also believe that the best way to be is to recondition oneself so that all of these things are no longer connected to sex. Sex should just be a pleasurable physical act and nothing more.

This is a great ideology for a swinger. In fact I’d say it’s a necessary ideology if you want to be a swinger. How else can someone juggle an open marriage or deal with the emotional weight of having all of these various sexual partners?

When swingers move into the realm of sex magic, they bring this ideology with them. It’s a good ideology to bring with them, because it makes it easier for them to convince these young attractive people to have sex with them. Sex is promoted as a meaningless physical act, just like it is in the swinger community. The only difference is that in the swinger community the goal is physical pleasure, but here the goal is spiritual and obtained through ritual. In the magical setting sex becomes no different from drawing a circle on the ground or swinging a sword through the air. These are things most magicians wouldn’t think twice about doing if they believed it served some spiritual purpose, and these swingers would prefer it if we all thought the exact same way about having sex with them.

This is a great ideology for swingers, but a very poor ideology for magicians to have. The problem is having ritual sex is just like drawing a circle on the ground or swinging a sword through the air. If you do either of those things as a purely physical and mechanical act, it isn’t going to do shit. Your just drawing lines in the dirt and pushing aside air molecules. It’s the intent, the energy, and the emotion that goes into these acts that empower them during the ritual.

Sex works the exact same way. In fact sex is such a great ritual tool because, even with casual sex, it’s usually wrapped up in emotions and intimacy and creates such strong bonds between the practitioners. The feelings of love and friendship and acceptance, the intimacy and closeness you feel when you give yourself to someone, feeling wanted and being touched by someone else, and even the lust of being with someone you’re genuinely attracted to are the sorts of things that empower sex in ritual.

These aren’t the sort of things we, as magicians, should be trying to remove from sex. These are the sorts of things we should be embracing, and the parts of sex we should be trying to further exploit in our own spells and rituals. Sex should be about feelings, that’s where its power lies.

Of course I doubt the swinger element will care much. I’ve talked to many of them, and I honestly believe they’re exploiting spirituality to get people to have sex with them. Even the ones who do have a genuine interest in magic usually don’t understand how to properly use sex within ritual. They also tend to be the sorts that believe that the only good spiritualities are the ones that either endorse their sexual habits or have no opinion about them. They’re often very offended by people who disagree with them about sex, or think that what they’re doing might be wrong or immoral.