Here’s the way magick works: even though infinite consciousness manifests itself in time and space, there is still an endless amount of it that lies outside the material plane. It’s all around us and within us, and we are within it, much like fish in the ocean. It has a kind of intelligence embedded within it and behaves as we program it to behave. It shapes itself to conform to our expectations. We can draw upon this infinite energy source that saturates the universe by using our breathing and visualization. In this first section all of the rituals are about developing these basic skills of energy work.

When we’re working with subtle energy, we’re working with a substance that exists on the etheric, or astral, level of reality. This level of reality overlaps and interpenetrates the physical but is more ephemeral. It’s said in magick that anything and everything that exists on the material plane began as energy on the astral plane and eventually became dense enough to gradually come into being in the physical. This is why shaping energy is such a vital aspect of magick to master—because you can use this energy to shape the world around you. This may sound too good to be true, but we’re not here to convince you of it or convert you to a way of believing. Instead, Lorri and I will just give you the methods to try it for yourself. 

What exactly is this energy we’re working with and shaping? Its name has varied from culture to culture throughout time, but it has always been known—as well as the techniques to accumulate it and cultivate it. In fact, it was at the very heart of the ancient Sumerian culture and religion. They called it “melam” or “melammu” and said it made those who practiced accumulating it glow like a star on the astral plane. It was often said this melam was like a “garment” made of light. This garment was also at the heart of Christianity. When Christ revealed this garment (called the “solar body” in magick) to his disciples on the mountaintop during the episode known as the transfiguration, they fell on the ground in terror. 

This is why the Sumerians translated the word melam to mean “fearsome radiance” as well as “aura.” In cuneiform, melammu was written with the ideogram for “fire,” which ties into the Sumerian metaphors about the gods being clothed in fire and light. To this day, thousands of years later, modern magicians still sometimes refer to this energy as “astral light.” The ancient priest-kings of Sumeria practiced rituals to gather as much of this energy around themselves as possible, so that they could disperse it out to the masses. They credit it with all sorts of amazing qualities that we receive when we accumulate large quantities of it, including physical vitality and longevity, charisma, beauty, pleasure, sex appeal, willpower, and independence. Melammu also translates into “divine radiance.” Those who are perceptive to this astral light, as mages in the 1800s called it, see it as a psychic light shining from the person.

This divine light is what artists of old were attempting to illustrate when painting halos around figures like saints and archangels. Everyone actually has this “light” shining from within them, which we usually call an aura in the West. The difference in those who are in closer contact with divinity is that their aura begins to shine with a much more brilliant intensity. This happens due to ingesting energy on the astral level of reality for spiritual sustenance. When we begin using parts of ourselves that extend beyond the material plane of reality, those parts grow stronger and more a part of our experience of the world as a result.

Working with the internal energy system to induce higher states of consciousness has been known in every age of mankind and is still practiced in some cultures through tai chi, chi gung, and yoga. In the western tradition it’s done through magick. Author and teacher Dion Fortune defined magick as “the Yoga of the West.”

Dion Fortune was the equivalent of a tai chi master within the magickal tradition. She described a whole and healed aura “as sure a defense against psychic invasion as the healthy and unbroken skin is a defense against bacterial infection.” One of the benefits of doing energy work is that it can repair the aura, healing it of rips and wounds. It was this kind of energetic repair that kept me alive during some of my hardest times on death row. In my early days of learning magick, I found that what I loved most was working with energy using visualization and breathwork. I experienced amazing results, which is what made me love it so much. This work is incredibly effective and can be done in ways that are far less static than sitting meditation.

In ancient Chinese Taoist teachings, it was said, “All that is necessary is to circulate the light.” The sages of that tradition have said that if you just focus on mastering how to take in and work with the light, then everything else will take care of itself. Let’s get to it.