An essay on why we all get so fatigued trying to do witchcraft, and some ideas on what to do about it.
I've mentioned a few (several?) times that I'm trying to rework my practice to be so much lower energy.
I want to practice a lot. My path has responsibilities and demands. I want to be engaged in witchcraft daily and often.
As a part of this I have had to really sit down and untangle the question of chronic magical fatigue, which then turns in to chronic regular fatigue.
I've come to some personal realizations during this quest. Here is one of them, which I would like to suggest as a concept or hypothesis but not a literal truism:
One of the most vital and basic energy working techniques you can learn is feeling how full your "mana tanks" are.
Magical battery, odic fluid, witch-power, whatever you want to call it. It's finite for all of us (even if for some it can recharge faster than they can use it).
I have yet to see a "daily practice" or "101 energy work guide" provide a resource on how to feel how much magical energy you have, and explain how to avoid over-spending it.
I have also never seen a 101 guide ever really explain that "energy-gathering" techniques which are meant to recharge you are in and of themselves draining.
Techniques which refill your mana tanks are often the same techniques as energy raising and energy programming.
E.g.: "Pull energy up from the earth" (energy raising) "and guide it to your spine, imagining that it refills and recharges your whole body" (energy programming).
This is an actively draining technique.
The only passive energy-gathering technique I'm familiar with is just resting.
As humans, this should be common sense! Eating food requires energy (to find food, to prepare it, to consume it) and then can further tire us as our body redirects resources to digestion.
As humans, when many of us get older, we start to realize our physical limits. You know how far you can get in the day on a single bagel. And for many of us, if you've pushed past your limits, your whole day is thrown off. Refueling might make you crash and nap, not suddenly fill you up with a huge burst of energy!
Yet somehow it's pervaded the 101 energy working sphere that a certain energy-gathering exercise - which drains your magical power - will just fill you up and you can do as much magic as you want again. Warnings about not over-exerting are usually like, "take it easy! Only do 1 or 2 minutes if you can't do all 15, or even take the day off ;)" but no actual instructions about how to feel out your limits and know how to reliably stop before you over-exert.
I think that for a lot of people it would be helpful to divide their energy-working abilities into two categories: Muscle and Fuel.
Your energy working Muscle becomes stronger over time. It has its own muscle-memory, and repetition of techniques can allow you to do them faster and better over time. This Muscle behaves very much like your earthly muscles: it burns fuel to work, but it also becomes fatigued and even damaged with over-exertion. It requires regular periods of rest. Once pushed to the point of fatigue, the necessary period of rest becomes a lot longer.
Your energy working Fuel can be thought of as the little magical calories floating around your energy body system. These units of energy are refilled and recharged as we do normal things like eating, sleeping, and engaging in restorative mundane activities. This Fuel doesn't do anything on its own*. In order to utilize it, you have to engage your Muscle. The more that you work with Fuel-collecting and Muscle-using, the more efficient your energy body system becomes at accepting, processing, storing, and expelling Fuel. You can use your Muscle to collect Fuel and store it inside your energy body.
No matter how much Fuel you have, once your Muscle is fatigued, you have to rest.
I can run a marathon (no I can't, but imagine with me) and be totally exhausted. If I eat an entire pizza, will this allow me to suddenly run another marathon? No, of course not!
Now, let's imagine that nobody brought a pizza to me, but I had to walk down to the corner shops to buy one - now, my poor muscles can barely hold me up. Energy-raising exercises still require you to flex your Muscle, and if it's already fatigued, you are probably just shooting yourself in the foot.
Your Fuel and Muscle are not automatically synchronised. And I think a lot of us out here are abusing our poor Muscles, demanding they work again and again and again, not understanding that they need literal periods of rest - hours and days to be allowed to relax, heal, and regrow to a stronger state. And I think a lot of people do believe that just by Refueling, their Muscles are supposed to "magically" work as if they just came of a week of rest.
In my beliefs, this Fuel and Muscle are the same ones we use for divination, spellwork, and spirit contact :) So if you're trying to do tons of these things all the time and thinking that a grounding exercise can replace rest, you're probably literally just… running yourself into the ground.
I would like to propose that if you are having a really hard time dealing with fatigue and energy levels when trying to engage with your practice**, you should learn two techniques: A way to judge the fatigue of your Muscle, and a way to judge the fullness of your Fuel.
Either of these things can be accomplished with a pendulum on a number line (using a pendulum requires usage of your Muscle, by the by!). Bodily sensations may tip you off - I get a strained feeling in my forehead when I'm close to over-exertion. You can also induce a psychic technique, such as asking yourself where you're at and waiting to hear, see, know, feel, or understand where your Muscles and Fuel are at.
I would also like to propose that metaphysical energy gathering can actually be so tiring that it might be inappropriate for everyday use. Raising a ton of energy and infusing it into yourself or objects for later use is a full day's activity, not a quick act you can shove into a morning routine. I'd like to clarify that here I differentiate between energy-raising, and meditative techniques which provide a "grounded," present-moment focused state of mind.
If you're taking suggestions, I would recommend figuring out how much magic you can do before you achieve a state of 50% Muscular fatigue/Fuel exertion, 75%, and 90%. I believe you shouldn't push past your limits. It just hurts. It feels bad, it's exhausting, and it takes exponentially longer to rest and heal. And I think many of us will be surprised at how little magic we can accomplish when we respect our limits.
*Some people who experience a great over-abundance of personal energy do have weird stuff happening around them all the time; it's the metaphysical equivalent of a cat rubbed with a balloon and set loose in a Styrofoam factory.
**Here, I mean people who notice marked upticks in exhaustion and fatigue when working magic, not people with baseline fatigue which just carries forward.
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