One of the most practical and exciting forms of energy work is projecting and directing. I’ve always favored energy-directing rituals and techniques over passive kinds of meditation such as zazen or mindfulness. Part of the reason was that I saw such powerful results from working with energy—and in a drastically shorter period of time than anything I experienced from meditation.

The more thought, preparation, concentration, and effort that you put into a ritual, the more energy you are generating. That energy can then be directed toward different purposes. When doing this work, you are acting on the etheric or astral level of reality—this creates a blueprint from which the physical world is shaped and created.

There are two ways to project and direct energy: Pull energy into yourself and project it outwards, or pull energy down onto objects, places, or people outside of yourself. It bears repeating that in magick, we never use our own energy. To do so would deplete us. Drawing energy from outside sources and then directing it outwards to accomplish something is what enables us to create our own worlds.

This section also includes rituals to charge substances and objects for use in magick. I haven’t always been a big fan of using material “props” like wands in my rituals. This is because in prison I had to learn what one of my teachers, a woman named Dorothy Morrison, called the “empty hand technique.” She called it this because I had absolutely nothing material to use—no candles, no incense, no tools. Just myself. It made me realize that all of those things are essentially just training wheels. They are props that help us eventually learn to do magick anytime and anywhere, with no sort of external dependency. Using tools in magick can therefore be a liability if you feel you can ONLY do magick when you have them, but it also does something else. It allows you to create a powerful artifact that adds its ever-increasing strength to whatever intention you’re trying to realize.