When beginning magickal training, the first thing that most people learn to focus on is their hands. Once you are capable of consciously directing energy to the hands, it’s only a short step to direct it through the hands and use it for all sorts of other purposes, such as charging items, healing, creating shields to protect and defend your aura, and countless other uses.

• Begin by rubbing the palms together briskly for thirty seconds, or until you feel them beginning to grow warm. When you do this, you’re waking up and stimulating major energy centers in the hands.
• Next, close your eyes and focus on the golden sphere-shaped energy center in the middle of your chest. Take several deep, even breaths while visualizing that you are pulling chi or energy from the world around you with every inhalation. With every breath, the golden sphere in your chest grows brighter and brighter as it is filled with this life-giving energy.
• After several breaths—at least three, but I often do it for as many as ten—you want to begin sending energy down your arms and to your hands with every exhalation.
• When you inhale, see the sphere in your chest glow brighter.
• When you exhale, see gold light spill out of the energy center, down your arms, and into your hands. See it begin filling your hands with gold light, saturating them so that it appears in your mind’s eye as if your hands are so filled with gold light that they’re surrounded by it.
• Every time you inhale you pull in more light, and every time you exhale it travels down to fill your hands so that they glow even more brightly.

You should practice this several times a day, until you can see it clearly in your mind. You should also do it a few times when you’re preparing to either send or receive energy with your hands. You can add tactile sensations to help with the visualization. For example, as you see the gold light move down your arms and into your hands, imagine that it feels like warm water or lava as it moves. Adding other senses to the visualization will strengthen its effects.