Throughout my life I've heard the word "energy" used, viewed and treated in the spiritual sphere as some ethereal, supernatural force. I even saw a TikTok the other day claiming that secular and atheist witches do not believe in energy work. I'm not sure where this treatment of the term "energy" started, but it likely has a lot to do with some more "woo" practices like Reiki and crystal healing.
I think we need to remove this stigma from the term "energy" in the Craft because 1) energy is an objectively real, observable material and 2) the benefits of working with and understanding energy shouldn't be packaged and branded as a medium for the "mystics only" club. This was something really meaningful that I took from Psychic Witch, where Mat Auryn explains energy in more scientifically observable terms.
Rather than defining energy as a mystical force, he explains that reality is, in fact, entirely composed of energy. The majority of us don't really think about reality this way, but anyone who has taken a physics class can tell you that this is a fact. Reality is energy--this is not a mystical perspective; it is a fact of the laws of physics. The scientific method has shown us that even things that appear solid, (diamonds, skeletons, my coffee mug, for example) are merely energies vibrating at a slower rate. Everything is made of particles perpetually in motion.
Still with me? Okay, so--Auryn breaks this down further by stating that the five senses are just various ways that we perceive energy. So in a sense, we are achieving a rudimentary form of energy work just by perceiving the world around us. Put in this context, many other animals are superior to humans with certain types of energy work (I wonder if this is part of why animals are so sacred to us witches). Dolphins and bats can legitimately use echolocation to experience sound waves as a form of sight. Indeed, we humans are far from the top of the totem pole when it comes to energy perception--it's almost as if humans were not created to rule over the rest of the earth (such a crazy concept).
Some examples of energy that our bodies cannot perceive include magnetic fields, radiation, wireless signals, and ultraviolet light.
What I'm trying to say is that Auryn's book really helped me to think of energy in terms of empirical reality, and reinforced my (somewhat) recent realization that magick is a valid, observably effective tool that can be used to achieve the changes we want.
Anyone else find that they can have been out of touch with their craft for MONTHS, and then you get sick and all of a sudden you've pulled out your green & house witch reference books, the oil diffuser is out, Blackthorn's Botanical Magic is by your side, and you've prepared more herbal teas than any one person can realistically be expected to drink in less time than it takes to say "so mote it be"... or are you normal?
This is a gift for my lovely friend @sumi-sprite of her ROTG OC Halistair! Absolutely LOVE him, and his design! His eyes were really hard for me to do for some reason but I think I did pretty okay!
Hal is the "Spirit of Halloween" and the ruler of the realm of "Sleepy Hollow"; a place where any dark spirit or being can call home!
My favorite part about this piece was his hair and the Wil-o-whisps, they both came out so good!!
This was partly inspire by me wanting to get back into the ROTG fandom and restart an old fic of mine before Steven Universe got its claws into me!
We were talking about tsa today and I mentioned how once my tarot cards got caught by the machine and my bag had to be searched and forgot I was with my boyfriends very Christian family and someone goes “tarot cards, what’s that about?” And the daughter goes “:o maybe she’s a witch!” And I’m just like *nervously* “haha I use them for introspection and a reflection of my mind definitely not uh telling the future…”