In a small online energy-work group, this is a ritual we are going to be working with for a couple of weeks. If you like it you can see more in the following book from which it is mostly taken. As someone who hasn’t read the book, however I cannot promise that it will be an accurate reproduction of the exercise. Either way, it might be something worth trying. I will include my results below.
This ritual comes from a modern faery tradition where blue fire is synonymous with the energy of the divine.
We begin with Breathing to a count of 4:
- Breathe in during a slow mental count of 1 to 4,
- hold your breath for a 4-count,
- breathe out for a 4-count, and
- hold your lungs empty for a 4-count.
After 60 seconds of breathing this way, imagine that you can perceive the energetic blueprint that forms the foundation of the matter around you. The forms that give life and solidity to everything. Peer deeper, let yourself imagine you can see between the molecules, between the atoms. See the void permeates most of reality. Then begin to tune into a blue light. After each breath let yourself see the light more and more. Perceive it as the blue colour of a gas flame or something similar. Imagine it’s like a blue electricity full of life. Let it flicker like a flame, dance and pulse. See it as an active force filling the void. Permeating all matter, so that everything around you moves and shines with blue fire. While doing this exercise we assume a paradigm that this blue fire is an occult force that gives all things life and existence.
Breath this blue energy inward for at least 6 breaths, from the space around you. Let it enter your lungs, pass into the blood and circulate around the rest of the body. Fill yourself with it. If you can take in more than 6 breaths continue until you are full and then push yourself to take in one more. Stand or put your feet flat on the ground, let your energy circulate and as you breathe. As you breathe in, let the energy pack tightly into your bones. the blue fire draws tighter into the body. Over several breaths the blue fire draws closer in, drawing it inward toward your skeleton. Be aware of the minerals particularly iron in your bones. Imagine that these minerals “ground” the energy (make it more stable, it doesn’t get sent out like some grounding techniques). Continue breathing, letting the energy pack more densely into the skeleton. Spread it out evenly throughout the skeleton.
Allow the energy to be totally absorbed into the skeleton and make soft fists in front of you. Turn your wrists as if you’re about to beat your chest. Inhale and pull your fists to your chest, stamping with one foot, imagining the energy in your skeleton locking into place. Repeat stamping the other foot. Repeat jumping and stamping both feet at once. Repeat this until all the excess energy is used up ensuring to always finish on both feet. Imagine the energy you were just working with is now stored in your bones like an intricate crystal, holding hidden power and knowledge.
Take three more breaths and allow any excess energy to disperse or ground out normally.
Review
Preconceptions
As I worked through this exercise, I was really reminded of a number of different spiritual exercises. I am made more confident that these techniques don’t appear in isolation, but are perhaps a modern refined version of something that has stood the test of time. I need to however be aware of the potential for preconceptions of these techniques to get in the way of what they are actually trying to achieve. For example, I can’t assume I know what each one is for until I have experience of it and I need to be careful of misreading the instructions because I am thinking of the exercise which is similar. I think I first came across the 4-count breathing in a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn exercise book from the Ciceros. It might be for getting into an inhibitory trance state or altered state of mind, it could be for blurring the lines between inner energy and outer energy. It might be to increase the oxygen in the blood to give a sense of euphoria. I will attempt to ignore these interpretations and just do the exercise as best as possible with no anticipation to see what result naturally occurs. Franz Bardon had a number of exercises in Initiation into Hermetics, where you inhale the elements, but this is done by opening the pores of the skin and inhaling through the skin rather than the lungs. After the elements, Franz Bardon moves onto a slightly more ethereal element, possibly an arche (my memory is failing me) which could be considered similar in definition to the blue flame. The point of this exercise is to build the soul’s control over the elements and the powers which manifest reality. Again I will try not to assume. Finally, pulling the energy in and out of the bones seems similar to the bone marrow washing technique, or at least the interpretation thereof, taught by Yang Jwing-Ming in his Qi-gong series. In this case, however, the energy gets tighter and tighter into the bones rather than being made to go in and out of the bones cleaning them. The exercise is different enough the point of the exercise could be totally different. It is best I allow myself to be convinced of this difference to prevent my preconceptions from getting in the way. The insistence on finishing with landing on both feet is probably to ensure balance in the body. Best to just do not think.
Initial Perceptions
Okay as with nearly all meditations everything goes wrong in the beginning. As I began I was aware of the ground and thought that this would annoy housemates if I stamped so I moved to the kitchen where the tiled floor would be less noisy. I was reminded we have mice and I had just put this out of my mind, when my dog noticed I was standing up. She thought this must mean it was time for walkies and got up to remind me to take her, which made me jump because I thought it was mice.
Then as I began naturally everything came flooding into my head. Oh, what is my housemate watching in the next room? Are those snacks? They should be in Tupperware to not attract the mice. What’s that noise? Is it pipes? I blanked my mind and its clearness was almost a visual white warmness in my brain. I continued the breathing exercise. I continued the exercise and began to perceive every little sound around me. The fridge’s coolant pump, the slight ticking of the boiler, every creek of the house, an insect in a light fixture and once again silenced my mind. It worked.
As I began the breathing exercise, I began to feel my arm prickle with a slight fizziness. Then as I began to see the blue flame it was hard to see it as a single flame because it would be spread out uniformly across the world. So I began to see it like how a flame looks in zero gravity, but then mentally I considered this would encompass the entire of reality so I saw it as infinitely large.
As I inhaled it I began to feel some pressure building up around the laogong gate on both hands (an energy gate for allowing energy in and out of the body at the palm of the hand located in the centre of the palm 2 thirds of the way to the wrist). The was a sharp spark in one of the fingers of my left hand. I think I wasn’t focusing on the lungs so much the first time. Unfortunately, my previous experience with a similar exercise took over and I went on autopilot. Since I was trying to keep my mind blank, I did not correct it.
As I let it go into my bones they felt fizzes at different points.
Overall Experience and Results
There was a tendency for these actions to result in heightened emotional states. This is possibly related to the grounding technique. For me the lifting the feet and stamp did not aid the grounding process. By lifting the feet the energy system was less connected to the earth. This broke what was symbolic of how the system grounds itself, connection to the ground itself. Then slamming my feet on the ground made me more aware of the physical so I was less aware of and less able to partake in energy action, so I couldn’t make it ground while taking the more physical action. Finally the jump with both feet reminded me of how much less stable I am since I haven’t been able to attend White Crane Kung Fu which is not a thought for encouraging grounding.
Finally the overall exercise seemed to increase the capacity of the energy body to store energy. Some of the later versions of the exercise I lost count of how many times I drew energy in and just seemed to pack more and more in the body.
For me the energy I was drawing in is less manifest and potentially infinite in nature, therefore should not be restricted in quantity by the storage capacity of the system of a manifest being. It would be like trying to store honour in a box. One does not have size the other does… but it was simply a thought that occurred to me as I noticed the connection between the colour of the blue flame compared to the skin of Nuit in Thelemic cosmology.
Anyway a good exercise to experiment with and I am definitely adding the book to my wishlist.