High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row - Damien Echols 2018

Raising and Directing Energy
Preliminaries

Iwant to offer one more preliminary exercise to prepare you for the fundamental practices you’ll be doing in part III. This is a version of one of the most widely taught exercises in magickal traditions, because it allows beginning students to experience subtle energy for the first time, and it’s even common for new practitioners to detect energetic sensations on their first attempt. This initial hit is important. The more you’re aware of what energy feels like, the easier you’ll find it to work with.

Additionally, for people who are a little skeptical or think of energy work as something strange, or even for those of you who might be operating on mere hope that magick is possible, this exercise will provide an experience that will show you that working with energy is actually straightforward and tangible. It’s really no more unusual than most of the things you do over the course of the day — especially when you remember that you’re already doing magick all the time. Once you experience this firsthand (if you haven’t already), something crucial happens in the psyche and you’re no longer as hindered by disbelief. As your confidence in energy work grows, so too does its effectiveness, which makes whatever magick you choose to perform that much more powerful.

The following exercise for raising energy has two phases. Do Phase 1 for a week or so before moving on to Phase 2.

PRACTICE ” RAISING ENERGY: PHASE 1

1.Rub the palms of your hands together. Do this vigorously — the way people rub their hands together when it’s cold outside.

2.Fairly soon (twenty seconds or so), you’ll feel your hands growing warm. That heat comes from the friction you’ve created, of course. As anyone who’s had to sit through elementary school science knows: heat is energy. In fact, everything on the material plane contains heat energy.

3.Separate your hands about six inches apart, palms facing each other. Close your eyes and feel the heat contained in that space. Note any fluctuations in temperature or movement.

4.If at any time during this practice you need to generate more heat with your hands, return to step 1 and pick up where you left off.

5.Experiment with the sensation. Move your hands a little farther apart and a little closer together. What’s that like? Try to mold the energy into different shapes. Hold it in your hands as if you were gently squeezing a water balloon that you’re trying very hard not to burst. What happens when you add that visualization to the exercise?

Try Raising Energy: Phase 1 several times a day for up to five minutes or so each time. Just find little spaces in your day to stop and feel this form of preliminary energy work. You can do this for longer than a week before moving on to Phase 2 if you’d like, but I highly recommend giving yourself at least seven or eight days of this practice. It’s a way to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of energy flow.

PRACTICE ” RAISING ENERGY: PHASE 2

If you’ve spent adequate time on Phase 1, by now you’re more proficient at raising energy and shaping it between your palms. Now you’re going to learn the basics of directing energy and utilizing it for all sorts of magickal purposes — from charging objects to passing healing energy to other people. For our purposes here, you’re going to place energy into a given item with a particular intention in mind. I talk a lot about talismans (objects charged with magickal energy) later on in part IV of the book, so feel free to skip ahead and read more about them there if you’d like. You don’t need to do so for the purposes of this exercise, though. Right now you’re just trying your hand at practicing the basics of charging.

1.Pick an object to use as an amulet or talisman. It doesn’t have to be overly special, and it doesn’t have to be anything particularly magickal looking. It could be as simple as a pen, a photograph, or your car keys. You’re going to charge this object with protective energy, so pick something that’s easy to carry with you as you go about your daily activities.

2.Place the object on a table or other surface in front of you. Begin rubbing your hands together.

3.Cup your hands around the object and focus on the sensation of the energy generated by your palms.

4.Now you’re going to charge the object with a word, phrase, or image. At this point, just choose whatever comes most naturally to you. For example, the charging word could be “protection,” or your chosen phrase could be something like “protect me.” Let’s say you chose your car keys for this exercise. You could simply see yourself driving safely and happily in your car. All of these methods are equally effective; it just comes down to personal preference.

5.Verbalize or visualize accordingly while you feel the heat pass into and through the object. Do this until it feels “done.” I can’t really tell you what that feels like — just trust your intuition and stop whenever it feels right.

6.Put the object away (in your pocket, purse, glove box, or wherever) and forget about it. You don’t need to keep thinking about it; in fact, it’s counterproductive to do so (more about this later in the book). Just know that the object is working according to your intention, and go about your day.

Of course, your charge doesn’t have to have anything to do with protection. It could be anything, really — healing, luck, compassion, you name it.

I’ve used this practice for small acts of magick numerous times. I once took a trip to Las Vegas and used this technique to charge a ring of mine. I sat in my hotel room and charged it with the thought, “I am lucky at gambling.” I put the ring on and forgot about it; I just went into the casino with my friends, enjoyed myself, and gambled a little bit. I didn’t always win that weekend — a particular Hobbit-themed slot machine gobbled up $80 like it was nothing — but I came out on top a lot more than you’d think. I love roulette, and I’d play every morning I was in Vegas, winning just enough to pay for a luxurious breakfast. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t thinking about roulette as a form of gambling. When I walked up to the table, I knew I was going to win, so it was almost like stopping at the ATM on my way to the diner.

When we perform magick to change things on the material plane, the first aspects of reality that are altered are those that are most malleable. Oftentimes, this means our own psyche. Consciousness is pure energy, so we can readily shape it in a way that results in changes in the physical world. My success at roulette has nothing to do with the much-talked-about “gambler’s high” — when people fall prey to that rush and don’t know when to stop. With magick, I’ve learned to think of activities like playing roulette as simple, routine, somewhat interesting tasks that don’t generate bursts of excitement or waves of fear. They’re simply a way of being in the world, only with a little more success than what’s considered normal.