First Taste of Energy

This is the first opportunity to feel energy. Now, it is not easy and most people do not get it on the first try. This is the solo exercise and there are some partnered exercises to come as well.

If you don’t know what energy is then you’re welcome to read this article. As far as articles go it’s the long way to say Energy is just what you move around when you move energy.

I am going to give a few different examples here from different sources, which are all used to get the practitioner to have their first experience of energy. They won’t all work for everyone. If you try one and you get absolutely nothing by all means give it a second pass, but feel free to move on. If you cannot get any of these to work at all then you should take a break and come back to these again, because most of the rest of the energy work, dreamwalking and astral projection part of this course is based on being able to do one of these.

Nearly all of these exercises work on what Robert Bruce calls Tactile Imaging. This means that they are based on relating that 6th sense to the sense of touch. Now we are so unused to having spiritual experiences that we are aware of that the impressions from them often get relayed to us through one or more of our other senses. This means when we sense a ghost or other kind of spirit, our brain might translate that into seeing the ghost, hearing the ghost, smelling the ghost or feeling the ghost if we just walked through it. While the sense is actually a 6th sense and it is not perceptible to the physical sense we can still pick up on it, but our brain has to understand it in the format to which it is accustomed. It is not uncommon for me to have a sense of where energy is acidic or alkaline, but it is rare for people to sense ghosts by taste. Tactile is the most easy one to develop for most people. It involves feeling energy on your skin. This is a great place to get started, but after a while using this skin is less useful than things like visualisation, which allows for 3D images of energy and perceiving energy across the room where we cannot touch it.

Each of these will have a reference to a book or source from which I appropriated that method. You are welcome to buy if you really want, but for things like energy work, the best learning is through doing rather than reading. Naturally, this is different from things like Hermetics and Qabalah where reading is more important. When you do energy working you end up building a language for having a dialogue between your own mind and your own soul and body so no amount of reading other people’s books can prepare you for that.

I think this is made very difficult by the fact we feel energy all the time. We have just spent our lives ignoring it. So unless we do something wholly unusual then we won’t easily notice it.

Common First Impressions of Energy

Everyone sees these things in their own way so do not be surprised if the way you feel energy is not listed below. But these are common things to look for and to know if you experience this then you’re definitely on the right track. If you experience it differently does not mean you’re not on track. Some people don’t feel the energy itself they feel a push, pull or pressure caused by the energy. Some people feel a certain floating fizziness in the air or a buzzing area of air. Some feel a heat that seems to be able to flow beyond the surface of the skin. Some people see sparks in their mind’s eye or picture a thick liquid, which emits light. Don’t be surprised if you see any of these.

Relaxation before doing energy exercises

It is much easier to do these exercises in a state slightly closer to that of meditation. Before beginning any of these exercises I recommend getting very comfortable in loose-fitting clothes. Closing your eyes and taking 10 deep breaths counting down very calmly. When other thoughts come and intrude as they will let them in, but don’t acknowledge them ignore them and let them flow back out of your head again just like they came in. Focus on relaxing, feeling calm and counting down the breaths. 10 should do it for now you don’t need a deep Buddhist trance for these exercises.

A Franz Bardon-Inspired Initial Energy Experience

Firstly, this exercise is taken from Franz Bardon’s Initiation Into Hermetics. He was a Czech writer who was imprisoned by Nazis during the Second World War. He wrote in German and was published soon after the Second World War. This method requires a lot of concentration and imagination. Initially, he recommends brushing the skin in the bath until the pores open up. Now this is not a physical substance that we are dealing with here, so you don’t actually need open pores for energy to come in. It can pass straight through physical matter if you will it. What helps however is imagining the pores of your skin opening up. Think about what your skin feels like in a hot shower when your pores start opening up. Visualise it completely. Imagine your skin breathing freely. In its own way, skin breathes you’re just not aware of it. Imagine right now you can feel it breathing as you breath in and out. Then as you breathe in, you imagine subtle energy or psy from the air around you being inhaled through all your pores. Just picture what it might feel like as it flows in through your pores. As deeply as you can imagine, feel it swirl into your solar plexus. Inhale 6 more times until you have inhaled energy 7 times in total.

Then when you have done that imagine that energy flowing from your solar plexus up your shoulder and down your arm and toward the palm of one of your hands. As it flows to your palm see what experiences you feel in your palm. Try holding it near your other hand about an inch away. Do you feel anything on your other hand? You might be able to feel heat, but energy is also there and the difference is energy passes through the skin. Energy is also often a bit fuzzy.

Not working yet? Try holding the palm where the energy should be collecting over your other side’s forearm still an inch away. Do you feel the heat of your palm on your forearm? Are there also strange sensations in the hand at the end of that forearm that might be influenced by energy going from your palm to your forearm and flowing along from your forearm to your hand?

This was inspired by Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics, which was an awesome book with a variety of different exercises that go right from novice to journeyman (or journeyperson) in magic without an excess of unnecessary theory. Some people find his works difficult to read through because they use terms like electric fluid to mean fire energy and magnetic fluid to mean water energy and fluid condenser. I think I found it easiest to read it with a dictionary of my meanings of his words after a while so I wouldn’t mix up electric fluid and electromagnetic fluid etc.

Xosh’s Japanese Shrine Method

Xosh who writes as M. Belanger, gives us another unique method. (I get the impression the full name under which their older books were published might now be a dead name so I use their Discord handle, Xosh. It’s the easiest way to not unnecessarily offend someone. By the way, if you’re sitting there getting offended that I respect a Non-binary person’s pronouns and name get the hell off my page and don’t write to me, I don’t have time or energy to deal with you.) Anyway, Xosh had a friend tell them about his visit to a Shinto Shrine in Japan. He explained to them that people would walk up to the shine, clap 3 times, rub their palms together, cup their hands as if they were holding something invisible and present this invisible thing as a gift to the shrine. Excitedly Xosh said, “They’re offering energy!”. The clapping immediately raised energy. As the palms are rubbed together it increases blood flow, which, by nature, also increases energy flow since the two are closely related.

Time to give it a go. First start with the relaxation exercise I suggested above. Then clap 3 times and immediately vigorously rub your palms together. Hold the palms about an inch apart facing each other. You might feel the tingle of the stimulated nerves, but as you put your hands closer and closer together you might notice a slight resistance. You’re pressing the energy together. Do you feel anything?

If you like this exercise? I really recommend Xosh’s books. They have written quite a few in the past. Weirdly this exercise is from the Psychic Energy Codex, but the book I have always found most useful is the Psychic Vampire Codex. It might seem like a weird corner of Tumblr and RPG that has spewed out people who identify with the vampire archtype however since Psychic Vampires, like Xosh, are under the impression that they need psychic energy to survive and therefore, they are naturally driven to work with it on a daily basis whereas other people might just use it once in a blue moon. Whether or not you believe they actually are Psychic Vampires or not and whether they need to feed or not, which I accept some people will find difficult to believe, they are easily the world’s experts on energy! Xosh has recently republished both books I mentioned above and I don’t know what’s new yet, but I imagine the refined books have some better info and possible contributions from their friend Catherine Rogers.

Robert Bruce’s Method New Energy Ways

Robert Bruce is perhaps my favourite and the easiest. If you try all the exercises and you get nothing. Don’t worry! It’s not going to be like a raging fire the first time you do it. It’s very subtle and most people do not get it the first time. Sometimes in our first attempts, it’s hard to be sure we actually felt something at all and even when we did we dismissed it. If this one doesn’t work take a break and come back to this later. Firstly, start with the relaxation exercise. It’s always easier when you relax.

This method is based on Robert Bruce’s “New Energy Ways”. Energy follows the focus of the mind. In old Chinese qi-gong manuscripts it often says, “Use the yi (mind) to lead the qi (energy)”. I think this is what Bruce got his method from whether or not he has read those old qi-gong manuscripts. Take the palm of your hand and turn it to face you. Take your finger and slowly trace a spiral in your palm paying attention to how it feels.

When you know how it feels take your finger away and just focus on the palm and think about how it would feel if something was still spiralling around your palm. What do you notice? Think about the surface of the skin as if you were trying to feel air currents with your skin and then spiral that focus around your palm very slowly. Keep going. Do you feel anything in your palm? Take the finger that you used to trace a spiral in the palm of your hand, this time do not touch your palm just point at it from an inch away and very slowly move the point of your finger in a spiral so it is tracing the spiral on your palm at a distance. As you do that try to feel for air currents where the finger is pointed at, on the palm. As you do this your concentration moves around your palm. This is the yi which leads the qi or energy. Energy should be collecting in your palm in a slightly greater concentration than normal. If you keep going for a while you might be able to start feeling it. It often feels like a subtle tingle, but we all have our own perceptions so I don’t want to colour yours too much.

Robert Bruce has some great books for learning how to do basic Energy Work, Psychic Self-Defence and Astral Projection. I really recommend their book Astral Dynamics which has some basic Energy Work and the steps leading to a first Out of Body Experience. I have not yet read his Mastering Astral Projection, but if it contains everything in Astral Dynamics and more it is bound to be worth a read. I hope to skim through it as I write more and more of this course.

The end … or is it?

If you felt something even if it was something small you’re ready to move on to another exercise. If you’re not sure then try again. You can come back here as often as you like. A practitioner of magic is not invalid when they are doing basic exercises, but instead, they are invalid if they neglect the basics, as sadly, so many do. I have lost count of how many do energy balls and then forget all about energy when they do pagan and occult dramatic rituals. In my opinion, it is only when the two are performed together that the magic becomes proficient. A ritual set up is essentially a huge energy ball that often gets whirled into a cone of power. If you think you have the feeling of energy then you’re ready to move on to the next article straight away which is making an energy ball. It’s a good idea to move onto the next exercise while you still have a feel for energy rather than leaving a big break in between.

This article was written as part of the beginning of a Magic 101 course. It is the first step in developing Magic Muscles or as some people called them in the 80s Psychic Calisthentics. You know it’s the 80s when they use a term like “Calisthentics”. The aim of this section is to get he feel for energy so you can practice leading energy around, shaping it and developing your conscious awareness of it. This will build your capability to manipulate the immediate psychic reality around you. Check out the rest of my course which is currently available for free.