What is Energy?

Energy is the substance that you move around when you do Energy work. Well then, what is energy work? Well, it’s moving around energy. Okay… that’s not the most helpful definition, but it is probably the most honest one.

Energy is a spiritual substance that can be moved around, moulded and used for a number of purposes. It is rarely visible to the natural eye. It is used in many spiritual practices for the manipulation of spirits, the spiritual evolution of the practitioner and for physical healing. Some types of energy can make a person feel like they have more energy or vitality. Some can make a person feel like their limbs are full of lead. I have read people define it as giving a person vitality when you pour energy into their body, but frankly, that’s not always the case hence the lead example. Working with Energy is a key process to working magic in the modernly accepted paradigm of magic. There are some people who practice magic without using energy and it does not feature in their understanding of how magic works, but most practitioners use it.

The Subtle Body or Energy Body

It is often believed that as well as having a physical body we have a body made of energy as well. It is frequently suggested that although we are not aware of it, our physical body automatically uses energy to maintain itself by tapping into the movement of energy in the energy body. Also, we often exchange energy with other human beings in nearly every interaction. Also, as we breathe in and out, our spiritual body also breathes in and out energy.

Some authors such as Robert Bruce refer to the energy body as the etheric body.

What other people call Energy

When a person meditates sometimes they see light moving around the body and that is what we mean when we say “energy”. In Chinese medicine, health is often modelled as qi flowing around the body. This qi is also energy. In Reiki, healing is performed by channelling a universal energy they call “ki” which is written with the same Chinese character as qi. In the practice of yoga, udana, prana and apana are all forms of energy in different places of the body that ideally are united to achieve a certain stage in yoga’s evolution of the practitioner.

In Alchemy energy is often equated to the subtle matter because energies are thinner and less viscous than physical stuff, which Alchemy dubs gross matter. So you might see references to Subtle energy and the Subtle body which is the energy body. M. Belanger notes in her work that Energy is like Subtle Mercury and it acts a bit like mercury sometimes too.

In the writing of Eliphas Levi, he often refers to a substance called the Astral Light which is likely to be this energy as well. The main difference for him is that this substance seems to have a connotation of truth with it as well. It would seem that for Eliphas Levi perceiving this energy or astral light signifies seeing spiritual truth. However, he warns that like light it can be refracted or reflected so a person seeing this spiritual light could be led astray by a reflection or refraction of spiritual light.

In the writing of Franz Bardon, there are references to electric fluid and magnetic fluid. It would seem that he meant “energy” as well, but due to the time in which the book was written such terms were not in common usage. Other than an obscure 70s movie called Simon King of Witches which is somewhat of a classic for Hermeticists, these terms do not appear to be used elsewhere in magic. It is possible they originate in Mesmerism or Animal Magnetism.

In the writing of Yang Jwing Ming, who wrote a few books on qi-gong, the Chinese practice of Energy Work, he notes a connection between parts of the body which transfer energy and the conductivity of bio-electricity in the tissue. He also notes that areas which are commonly used for storage of qi seem to be structured as if they are for storing bio-electricity. He concludes therefore that Energy (or qi as he calls it) is bio-electricity. While there is probably a relationship between the two, it is my experience that energy can exist outside of the human body for a time and be transferred from person to person, but bio-electricity cannot so I think this is an example of oversimplification. Please note that in the writing of Chinese “qi” is pronounced like “tchee” and it is sometimes spelled “ch’i” in an older system for phonetically writing Chinese for Westerners to read. It is common for Westerners to drop the apostrophe and render it as “chi”.

Often psychic research referred to energy as psi or psy. This was popular with loads of websites which taught you to make psiballs, a very fun exercise that you will hopefully practice very soon. My original experiences of energy were through these psy websites. Although most of them don’t exist any more in an early journal, I recorded many of the articles and my results from practising them and I am doing my best to write up paraphrased versions on this website. I cannot render them as is because sadly I don’t have the copyright.

Names for Energy from various practices:

• Psi or Psy
• Energy
• Vital Energy
• Subtle Energy
• Subtle Mercury
• Astral Light
• Ki (as in Reiki)
• Qi (as in Qigong. This is sometimes written as Ch’i or chi.)
• Prana (which also means breath in Yoga)
• Udana and Apana (also mean energy and in some chakra tantras they are united with the prana in the process leading to the spiritual evolution of the individual).
• Electric fluid, Magnetic fluid and Electromagnetic fluid (in Franz Bardon possibly from Mesmerism)
• Orgone

People who use energy work can often manipulate the blood flow in their extremities. They can frequently heat up parts of their bodies at will by changing the blood flow in that part of their body. This means it can frequently be used to speed up healing, eliminating headaches and probably more. In my early practice, I learned to use it for auto-suggestion. This helped me read many books despite having dyslexia, push myself further in sports than my chubby body would normally allow and cure a number of headaches. I also have quite a few people who felt that I healed them in some way with it, though I ask people to go to the doctor if they have had unchecked pains, particularly repeated ones.

My own experience of energy allows me to perceive spirits and spiritual activity. It also allows me to work powerful rituals and protect myself from all sorts. Energy work is an important springboard into the first steps of magical practice.

Conclusion

Energy is what you move when you do energy work and energy work is the willful movement of that undefined stuff called “energy”. There are lots of words for what it is, but whenever people try to nail it down to something, often they nail it down to something physical and it then falls short of that. In truth, that does not matter really. What matters is it is useful. It’s like having an imaginary friend who can do complicated mental maths. He might not be real as a person, but by using him you can get complicated maths done, even if it is really you who does it somewhere in the back of your mind. Debates, about whether energy exists outside of the mind of the perceiver, rage, but the important part is that you can sense energy and manipulate that undefined stuff called energy and through that ability, you have a springboard to launch yourself into sensing and manipulating spiritual reality. Once you begin to have a subtle effect on the physical using your sense of energy, you might still question whether energy exists, but you will not question that it is extremely useful. So for now suspend your disbelief while you learn, but get ready to question it when you have used it for a while.

This article has been part of an attempt to create the Magic Muscles part of a Magic 101 course. Click below to return to Magic Muscles.

I mostly recommend working through my magic muscles course that I will outline here as I develop it, but that might take years to write up. In the meantime, working through books like Robert Bruce’s Energy Work, M. Belanger’s Psychic Vampire Codex and Franz Bardon’s Initiation Into Hermetics as key books to start your spiritual journey. Robert Bruce’s Energy Work spends a lot of time focused on the body and rarely has you send energy out of the body so you need to make sure you do that as well. The Psychic Vampire Codex is written for people who have a deficiency in energy and need to take it (hopefully with consent) in order to survive. Not only does it have a lot of practical exercises it also has a lot of theory from people who have been doing energy work their whole lives. Who better to tell you about energy than someone who is forced to work with it regularly in order to survive? Franz Bardon’s books are probably the best books for a complete magical system from basics to advanced that I have ever come across however, the vocabulary he uses makes them a difficult read even after being translated from the German.