You now know all the stuff that leads up to finally making magic happen. You can ground, center, and shield yourself. You can raise energy, and you’ve been practicing holding onto and then releasing energy. You can connect energetically with an energy source, pull energy from that source, and have started working towards imbuing an intention or purpose into that energy. Time to apply these skills! We’re gonna learn about putting energy into a thing, so that it does a specific job for you, from within the thing.

Moving energy requires that you be in a state of altered consciousness; whether you call this ‘flow’ or ‘in the zone’, you’ve been here before. While normal waking consciousness is a beta wave dominated state of being, for doing magical work, you want to be in a slightly slower, more focused state of mind. Alpha waves, a slower, longer brain wave, facilitate focus and concentration, and will help you manipulate energy and your own biochemistry, too. 

You will find that your magick is stronger when you are calm, focused, and stable. Attempting to do magick while upset, hungry, angry, anxious, in pain, panicked, or otherwise off-kilter will be rather like trying to roll a greased up pig up a muddy hill. If you simply must do energy work while under pressure, take the time to breathe and meditate first, to bring your energy state as close to an alpha state as possible. The calmer and more stable you are, the better your focus, and the better your ability to direct and manipulate energy will be. 

Consecration

Consecration means to make something/someone/someplace associated with the sacred. A Christian church is consecrated, making the church holy and sanctified within the religion. Wiccans can consecrate buildings as temples, or a grove of trees, a stone circle, or even as a temporary consecration. Consecration can be a complex set of rituals designed to cleanse and drive out impurity, and then link the space with a divine being. People, and objects, can be consecrated. A cup can be consecrated into a chalice or grail, a knife as an athame, a stick into a wand. Consecration is often used to create tools that are then used for larger workings. 

Blessing

A blessing is like a consecration, but where consecration creates a link to a sacred or divine energy/entity, a blessing creates a much lighter linkage, and invites the positive energies to watch over and protect that which was blessed. Buildings, people, and objects can be blessed. Usually those things are blessed in the name of a being or entity, invoking that being/entities protection and oversight. 

Empowering/Charging

To Empower or Charge something is to put energy into it. A crystal can be empowered to do all sorts of things. In empowering, you’re going to pull energy, imbue it with intent, and then put that energy into a thing. Where Consecration and Blessing both call upon outside beings for assistance (an example of using an ally in your work), empowering does not need or call for the attention or oversight of any entity. You do all the work, from raising energy, imbuing it with your intention, and then putting it into the item empowered. Usually, empowered things are given power to do a specific job, for a limited span of time.

Enchanting

To Enchant a thing is to empower it more fully, deeply, and on a fundamental level. The original purpose of the thing becomes subsumed into your purpose for it. A stone becomes a Talisman or Amulet, the cup is transformed forever into a Grail, and a blade becomes an Enchanted Sword capable of cutting through layers of reality. Enchanting is empowering taken to a whole new level. Where empowering tends to be shorter term, limited in scope and power, enchanting is permanent and lasting. 

Things Empowered

The form that things you’ve empowered can take are multitudinous and many. From Talismans and Amulets (usually carved or molded, small disks under 3 inches in diameter, with various seals and symbols on them), to sigils (drawn, painted, carved, molded, and so on, on a wide variety of substrates), and up to jars, poppets, boxes, bags, and other containers to hold both the energy of the spell as well as allies for the spellwork in the form of crystals, herbs, sticks, and more! You can Consecrate a tea pot and always have blessed tea. You could empower a stone to sit at your threshold to keep away traveling salesmen. Draw a complex set of sigils or bindrunes and enchant them to provide comfort and peace to your entire neighborhood. You can move energy into anything for any purpose. 

Moving Energy

After you have raised your energy, and have focused on your intent for the energy, it’s time to get it moving so it can do the work you need it to do. There are many methods for getting energy moving, ranging from a purely mental trance state manipulation to a haptic and movement based induction. 

Hold the item to be empowered, enchanted, or consecrated/blessed in your hands, and summon the energy you’ve raised and imbued with intent. Feel the item in your hands, the energy in your etheric hands, and mentally push the two together. You can use breath to blow energy into the item. You could visualize energy moving through your hands into the receptacle. You could see yourself as glowing, and slowly causing the item to glow, too. Remember to disconnect at the end of your work, and to ground, center, and re-shield yourself when you’re done. You raised all that energy so that you wouldn’t have to stay connected to the item, after all. 

For some of your work, you’ll want to build in stages. Empower a few crystals to act as power sources for a larger working, then create an energetic connection between those crystals and your working. This is an advanced technique, that I mention because it’s fairly obvious once you’ve been doing some energy work. As with all energy work, it takes practice to get good and fast.

Some works will require that you recharge them. Essentially, you do the spell again, using the same physical object. You may find that recharging a spell is easier than empowering it in the first place; this is because when you first empowered or enchanted the item, your energy and intent changed the energy of the item. Recharging it is just swapping out the batteries, not building the entire structure over again.

Remember to always disconnect from your work, and recenter and ground yourself after doing energy work. Do not turn yourself into the battery that powers the spell: when you sleep, the spell will break, and you can cause harm to yourself by not disconnecting. Ground yourself, energetically and physically, by eating some food, drinking water, and moving around a bit. A nice walk, some stretching, all are great ways to get out of that beta state and back into alpha state. 

Resources

Auryn, Mat Psychic Witch; a Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick, & Manifestation

Cabot, Laurie, and Cowan, Tom Power of the Witch

Grimassi, Raven Spirit of the Witch

McCoy, Edain Making Magick

Cunningham, Scott Earth Power