Yes it most certainly is! Next question please.
So many students of magic think it is not a necessary component to magic and they are happy to go through their entire magical careers without even trying to use Energy Work. Energy Work gives you a direct experience of magic. You notice connections that you hadn’t seen before. As you are experiencing Energy you experience the medium through which the Astral Plane (or the reality in which spirits live) communicates with us.
If you can see Energy you will soon be able to see spirits. It’s like the canvas, on which they draw themselves so they can speak with us. In truth, I really do not know what substance it is made from, or whether it actually exists outside of human perception, but it is a crucial part of magic, spirituality and psychic phenomena.
Energy also makes you aware of your own spirit in your body. It’s like you have another body which is made out of this Energy substance often called the Energy Body or the Subtle Body. This is often rendered as 6 chakras (sometimes more; sometimes less) lined up along the spine connected to thousands of energy veins called nadis, which spread energy throughout the body. (I should note here that Chakras were never intended to be part of the subtle body. The ancient texts which say “see the Muladhara at the base of the spine” were actually trying to tell you what to visualise in order to make a Muladhara at the base of the spine similar to the way a reiki practitioner would put a chokurei in someone. You’re trying to introduce an catalyst of spiritual change which isn’t already there, but the mistake of believing when it says “see” that it is something which is already there has so heavily affected the western world that it is now pretty much accepted that they already exist in the system and if you can’t see them, then your subtle eyes need work! See my page on chakras.)
The Chinese render this system a little bit differently using a major channel which runs through the spine and then down the front of the body and a few of energy veins called Meridians and thousands of tiny energy veins called luo which allow energy to reach the skin. Although they render it differently there are distinct similarities and I believe the difference is reflective of the purpose for which they intend to use their Subtle Body: Health, Enlightenment, Supernatural power, etc.
So if that is energy why is it so important in ceremonial magic? Ceremonial magic is the art of evoking and controlling spirits. It has a broader definition these days, but this was its primary definition in the late 19th century. The awareness of Energy / Astral Reality is extremely important in this process.
I meet so many wannabe magicians, who want to summon up demons to help them win the lottery, get better jobs and pull hot girls. The truth is they might be able to summon up these demons, but without learning Energy Work they cannot communicate with them, they cannot see them and they certainly cannot tell if they have successfully banished them afterwards. Because they are ignorant of the main medium between the spirit and the mind of man. This is why so many practitioners in the early stages of magic can lead themselves and their friends, into heaps of trouble, especially the ones with selfish motivations.
One day, in a discussion between me and some members of a group based on Aleister Crowley’s teachings the question came up, “is Energy Work important in ceremonial magic?” and someone said to me, “Crowley did not do it, so it was probably new age stuff, which is all made up”. I did not know where to begin, when I heard this sentence.
Firstly, just because Crowley did something does not stop it being “New Age,” just because something is “New Age” does not mean it is made up and just because something is made up does not mean it is any less likely to work (we will look at this another time). Finally, Aleister Crowley did actually do Energy Work and required that his magical students learn it straight away!
In the reading list for Crowley’s magical order, called “the A.:. A.:.”, you have to read Swami Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga. One of the first chapters on this subject is Pranayama. This is well-known as a yoga breathing exercise. In this chapter the author chooses to describe how a person is not actually working with the breath, but a much more subtle substance called Prana. You have to read about this Prana before you even allowed to be a probationer in his group.
Prana is believed to be energy. A thorough look at yogic practices and you will find that yoga practitioners believed that the body contained multiple types of energy and prana is just one of them, but it is the more manipulable energy in the body and the most important for spiritual development. It is said to flow from chakra to chakra, through the channels called Ida and Pingala.
Also an initiate of the A.:. A.:. is expected to learn Energy Work and Astral Projection after their initiation as well. In their first initiated grade (Neophyte), they are expected to practice an astral projection technique called “rising upon the planes” and the famous invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel is done through a text called Liber Samekh which involves visualization of columns of light shooting out of the initiator (founds like Energy Work to me).
“But I don’t like Crowley,” I hear you say. There are many practitioners who do not respect Crowley for what he contributed to magic. “Do you not respect Dion Fortune as well?” I ask.
In Psychic Self Defense, Dion Fortune describes an Etheric body. Because of the languages of the time she chooses to describe it as a field of magnetic stresses which runs through out the body. She also brings up chakras throughout the entire of her Mystical Qabalah. It is clear from many of her writings that Dion Fortune used Energy Work throughout her magical practice.
If you are still not convinced, after all they were both members of the same club (the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) then let’s go back even further. The Astral Light is described by Eliphas Levi around 1850 as something which is governed by human will. You could also perceive it’s direction of flow. He suggests it is easy to get confused and sometimes people see genuine light and sometimes they see refractions and reflections, but it is clear that he is referring to that same energy perceptions that most mediators perceive. Astral Light is Energy.
We soon find Madam Blavatsky who wrote her first magnus opus, Isis Unveiled in 1877. In Isis Unveiled, there is an entire chapter devoted to the Astral Light where Blavatsky refers to a bible verse. In this Bible verse, the character Jesus is being pushed around in a crowd, when she stops and says, “who touched me?” His friends tell him, “the whole crowd is touching you”. But Jesus is insistent at this point and says, “Who touched me? I felt the power go out of me.” Jesus has been touched by a sick woman took power from Jesus’ body to heal herself. So this idea of Energy in the body is biblical and is at least as old as the Book of Luke. The oldest manuscript which is likely the book of Luke is dated to 300CE.
“But I’m a Kabbalah practitioner, I don’t follow this Christianized version of Kabbalah,” someone else once said to me. If is this your view, I suggest you turn to the Bahir. In the Bahir it reads, “this tree [the tree of life] is the heart of Israel. It runs parallel to the spine, the main part of the body… Hidden in this heart are the 32 paths of wisdom and in each of their paths there is also a form guarding it. I do not know about your view but this suggest to me that the tree of life runs parallel to the spine has multiple paths and it begins to sound like the chakra system.
In the same text, we read light flows from the top three sephiroth like the life of water and God blew in to [man’s] nostrils a soul of life. It seems like the idea of breath, light and life are being considered as a substance which can flow and can flow in to a human body giving it life.
Ok so this one is a bit of a stretch but at no point did a Kabbalistic philosopher say that Energy Work stuff is a load of bogus.
So I conclude that no matter what kind of ceremonial magician you are, Energy Work is very important in the practice of magic!
If you are interested in learning Energy Work and you are a complete beginner or not confident at all. I suggest Energy Work by Robert Bruce followed immediately by Astral Dynamics from the same author. We have actually done a review of Energy Work recently which you can find here.
If you are quite confident with Energy Work already but want to expand your understanding. A book we are reading at the moment might suit you. This is The Psychic Energy Codex by Michelle Belanger.
Books referenced in this article are:
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