Pre-Requisites

Pre-Requisite: Visualization

 

What is Visualization to you?  The concept starts with the root word visual.  Think of the visual, in the being, in the mind or a mental image.  Visualization is a key tool to use with this book.  Visualization is a mental and physical method of understanding the use of energy. It takes the intention of the innate will to create and manifest. Before it can be seen physically it must first be seen within visually.  The door to understanding how to begin to visualize opens by awakening the five senses.  As a refresher, these are the sense of taste, touch, smell, sight and auditory sense.  As this is a beginner discussion on how to use visualization as a tool, there are books available on the topic of the six-sense that will elaborate more on psychic abilities.

Senses:

The sense taste is in use every day when we eat and drink.  If someone were to say, “the honey covered biscuits were so yummy”; if you visualize hard enough you can almost taste the honey on your lips.  Alternatively, if asked how an apple might taste; if you visualize hard enough you might taste the tart sweetness of a red apple.  The main element is to take a moment and try to remember what it tastes like.  Focus on the flavor.  Was the item spicy, thick, sweet, or bitter?  Was the apple crunchy or chewy?  By this remembrance with intent and focus on this sense, you are activating the sense and thus visualizing. 

The sense touch can be one of the most helpful tools of visualization.  When we hold an object, we sense its depth, weight, and texture.  Is the object round or is the object hard or soft?  Is the object hot or cold?  When we run our hands in a bowl of water, is the water hot or cold?  Is there a thickness like syrup or is the substance light and flowing.  When you have a good image in your mind on how the object feels you have activated the sense of touch and thus visualizing.

The sense of smell has the power to activate memories and set certain moods.  This is why incense has been a popular mood enhancer for centuries. Now days we would call it aromatherapy.  When we think of trash, what type of smell, do you sense?  Does it reek of spoiled vegetables or residues?  When we bake bread or pie in the oven, when do we know that the food is cooking?  When we smell the warm and yummy smells of pumpkin pie or banana bread, right?  Try to remember smelling a pie cooking in a cool spring eve or the smell of a recently mowed yard.  Smell the strong pine in a dense forest or your favorite incense burning on a cold winter night.  This activation of the sense smell in tune activates a scene in your mind that is a form of visualization. 

When we walk outside in the day what do you see?  Can you picture clear blue skies with a few white puffy clouds?  Do you see a sunset with purple and pink shades across the sky?  When you look across a mountain or fields, do you see the shades of green flowing grass or trees with snow across the mountaintops?  If you can, you are already visualizing.  This is one of the easiest senses to master as we use this sense consciously at almost every given moment. 

The last of the five senses is the sense of hearing.  Do you ever sit and start humming a song to yourself?  Do you ever hear or think about old songs?  I can still hear the loud sounds of horns from taxicabs and cars when I last visited New York City.  If you dig deep, enough you can almost hear and replay memories of songs at different times in your life.  Attending a few shamanic fire circles, I can internally recall the songs that we sung and thus raise some of the energy I felt at that time and bring it to the present.  Thus, auditory visualization is a powerful tool using vibration as an activator.  If you hear old songs and can remember times do to it, you are thus visualizing. 

These keys or doors to visualizing are in many ways used to activate, ground, center our energy, and can be used for great works.  In the magical scene, this is useful to create sacred space, cleanse and purify the mind and body and set in motion great alchemical works within the body.  Though they seem simple, some of the most important things in life are over-looked for being so.  For these five senses are keys in visualizing and through visualizing, we can seek to bring light to the darkness of our unconscious being. 

 

Visualization Key Exercises:

 

Grounding and Centering: Before starting the visualization techniques, it is good to practice an exercise called grounding and centering.  Grounding means to establish an energy connection between the physical body and the earth.  By doing so, the individual has an energetic posture and focus.  Centering is aligning your body so that all energies are flowing from your toes to your head and vice versa.  Thus, grounding and centering means to create a firm but fluid state of the mind and body.  The tree of life exercise is a common means of achieving grounding and centering.

 

Tree of life exercise:  

Stand up straight making sure your back is straight.  Relax and bend your knees to where you feel planted into the earth, almost like a sumo wrestler stance with a space between your feet.  Keep your back straight and lift your arms up and out from your sides to resemble your arms like branches of a tree.  Now inhale deep from your abdomen and diaphragm.  Feel energy flow up from the earth up and into your feet.  Like your feet is a sponge soaking it up.  Notice the energy flow up your legs, up your stomach and out your arms and up through your head and outward.  This exercise pushes all excess negative energies out of the body to the earth and takes in healthy vitality to revitalize the energetic body and ground and center you.  Think of the energy you give back to the earth (the negative waste) as fertilizer thus the cycle of life continues.  Grounding and centering is important in magical or energy work as the individual draws upon the earth’s vitality, rather than depleting his or her own. 

 

The Apple

Exercise:  Visualize the apple.  Hold it in your hands; turn it around, feel the shape, size, and weight of the apple.  Notice the color, the reflection of light on its skin.  Bring it up to your nose and smell it.  Bite into it, taste it; hear the crunch as your teeth sink into it.  Eat the apple; feel it slide down your throat.  See it grow smaller in your hand as you eat it.  When you have eaten it down to the core, let it disappear.  (Try with other foods)

 

The Silver Chord     

This exercise is of most importance when doing any shamanic journeying or interacting with entities on the astral that are not so nice.  Everyone has a silvery/golden chord that ties the energetic body to the physical body.  Visualizing is vital for this as the chord is attached to the back of the neck.  When one leaves his body to explore through a meditation; to get back quickly all that is required is pull on his or her individual chord. Once pulled he/she is whisked back into his or her body.  Think of the silver chord as the rope used to traverse the maze (astral/unknown) and defeat the Minotaur (the unconscious) as well as help lead the way back to the physical world (the conscious).  Even entities on the other planes have chords, not necessarily silver but black, red, green.  Within the minds sight, you will be able to see and activate them using visualization and intention.  As a defense, pulling on the chords of others will cast them out quickly or safely bring them home. 

 

Creating a Sacred Space

In many traditions of magic as well as science, there is an importance of creating a sacred container or sacred space.  By doing so, the individual will only allow certain energies within the space and keep out unwanted variables that could affect the intent of the work.  In addition, some believe it creates a protective barrier from negative energies that again might affect the outcome of the individual’s intent. 

 

Casting the circle exercise: With the hand you write with, point outward.  With your index finger/fire finger visualize a glowing fire shooting out of your finger and point towards the floor.  Now slowly turn and see it glow as you cast it along the outside of the planned space to make a complete circle.  As you do this, say these words: I cast this circle to be a place that is not a place, a time that is not a time, a land between here and the land of the mighty ones, to be a sacred space.  The words “a place that is not a place” means it is a created container not from this world. The words “a time that is not a time” means the space is outside of time. The words a “land between here and the land of the mighty ones” means, the space is a bridge between our world and the spirit world as well as the divine consciousness. The words “to be a sacred space” means just that, it is a sacred space.

By doing so, you are creating a sacred container that is outside of time and space.  The space has no variables accept what you bring to it.  This is a starting point for any work/meditation.  As you get use to the exercise, you can always visualize a different color then golden fire.  In some traditions of work, individuals will use wands/branches from a tree instead of their finger to create the space.  The main point is that by visualizing, the individual is internally manipulating and transforming energy for a purpose, which in turn changes his or her external environment.   

 

Closing the circle exercise:

Take your hand you write with and hold out your arm with the hand pointed outward.  Visualize light coming out of your hand like a sword.  Cut downward fashion and say the following words: May this circle be open but unbroken, marry meet marry part, merry meet again, so shall it be.  The circle is now closed. By saying the words “open but unbroken” means that though it is now closed it can be quickly brought back again for future purpose. The words “merry meet, merry part, merry meet again” is giving respects to all those who were in the sacred space/container. The words “so shall it be” is similar to the pagan “so mote it be” in that you are setting the intention that the words just said were heard and meant.

 

 

Pre-Requisite: Wellness Training

Part of the emphasis of this program is actual practice using energy as a means of transformation.  To maintain an energetic balance on the physical level, the individual doing this work will need to maintain his or her health.  The minimum amount of time required is 30 min., four days a week.  I recommend that the individual reading this do 30 min., seven days a week but four days is acceptable.  The reasoning is often at the beginning of learning about energy work the individual will use personal energy or vitality rather than external energies such as elemental or environmental.  Later in this workbook is a chapter on the types of energy but for the present exercise is important. 

 

Examples: The fitness can be of the individuals own choosing; walking, hiking, walking up and down steps, running, biking, swimming, dancing, etc.  

Additionally, the recommended amount of sleep a night is 7-8 hours.  As each individual progress’s through this workbook, the individual will start to feel the energy changes within.  The foods eaten and liquids drank will affect the body once the individual is energetically awake.  The individual might start to feel sick if he or she eats fast food everyday as well as taking in toxic levels of sugar.  A good quote on this is, “You are what you eat”.  While working through each lesson, one of the key root skills you will obtain is awareness of your surroundings and your own body.