There are locations where you can find condensed pockets of energy that can be absorbed, used, or just appreciated. One of those places in NYC is known as the Cloisters. It’s a series of medieval monasteries that were brought over from Europe by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and reassembled near the northern end of Manhattan into one large sacred artifact. Housed within it you can find reliquary busts that house the skulls of female saints, the stone sarcophagus of a knight from the crusades, and a courtyard that was designed to be so beautiful that it reminds pilgrims of the Garden of Eden. Visitor’s thoughts are turned to angels from the moment they enter, and their eyes meet the painting of an androgynous Archangel Michael driving a spear through the face of a demon. People have looked upon this piece for over five hundred years and mulled over the existence of these celestial intelligences. That kind of faith carries an incredibly strong energetic charge. Millions of eyes, minds, and hearts have put so much energy into this piece that it has become one of the most powerful archangel talismans on earth. Being in proximity to artifacts like that can have incredibly beneficial results to our consciousness.

I began regularly visiting the Cloisters after someone once said to me—“If you want to have fine, beautiful, meaningful things in your life, then you have to surround yourself with things and places that have that energy.” So I’d go there regularly to just linger and allow myself to be bathed and saturated by the energy of the place. The centuries of energy that built up there can be absorbed to strengthen the aura. You can do it actively, by using breathwork and visualization, or you can do it passively just by spending time there—because we are constantly, automatically absorbing the energy of the places and people we are near. I think places or things that have accumulated a lot of energy around them (of either the good or bad sort) tend to psychically draw people to them. This is why over seven million people a year are drawn to visit the Met. It’s basically a storage facility for a big chunk of the world’s most powerfully charged talismans and magickal artifacts. When you walk those halls, you are literally walking among gods. Deities of every nation, people, and period of time are now all coexisting under one roof.

Here is a simple practice for drawing in the energy of a room or a place:

• Get still and concentrate on your breathing.
• As you take in breath, “see” it form a sphere of white light in the center of your chest, or your heart center.
• Now, take in another deep breath and take the energy of the room into your heart center. Let it take on the color you imagine the place feels like; for example, a church may “feel” purple, and a classroom may “feel” yellow.
• As with other rituals, imagine that this energy flows through you and into the center of the earth, where it will remain for you to draw on as needed.