Raising and Directing Energy (The Part Everyone Skips)
You've gathered your ingredients. You've timed your spell perfectly to the full moon. You've written beautiful incantations. You've arranged everything on your altar just so. You light the candle, you say the words, you... sit there awkwardly wondering if anything actually happened.
Here's the thing nobody tells beginners: all those correspondences, all those herbs and crystals and perfectly chosen candle colors—they're just props. They help focus your intention, sure. But they are not the actual magic.
The actual magic is energy—your energy, specifically—and if you don't know how to raise it, move it, and direct it toward your goal, you're basically just playing with fancy candles.
And yet, somehow, this is the part that gets glossed over in most spell instructions. You get long lists of ingredients, detailed ritual structures, poetic incantations—and then right in the middle, almost as an afterthought: "raise energy and release it toward your goal."
What Energy Actually Feels Like
Before you can raise and direct energy, you need to know what it feels like in your body. This is experiential knowledge—you can't learn it from reading, only from doing.
Right now, rub your palms together vigorously for about 30 seconds. Fast, creating friction and heat. Now slowly pull them apart, about 6 inches. Hold them there. Do you feel that? That buzzing, magnetic, slightly tingly sensation between your palms? That subtle pressure, like you're holding an invisible ball?
That's energy. You just raised it through physical action (friction) and now you're feeling it.
Try pushing your palms slowly together and pulling them apart. The sensation gets stronger and weaker. You're manipulating energy right now, with no ritual, no tools, no magic words. Just your awareness and intention.
This is the foundation of all energy work. If you can feel this, you can do magic.
Why Most People Skip This Part
Learning to sense and move energy requires practice, patience, and a willingness to feel kind of foolish while you're learning. It's not instantly Instagram-worthy. You can't screenshot the feeling of energy moving through your body.
It's also deeply personal—what energy feels like to you might be different from how it feels to someone else. Some people feel heat. Others feel tingling, or pressure, or coolness, or a sense of movement. Some people barely feel physical sensations at all but experience it as emotion or color or sound.
You have to figure out your own energetic language, and that takes time.
So instead, a lot of witchcraft content focuses on the easy-to-teach stuff: buy this crystal, use this herb, say these words. You can copy that. You can't copy someone else's energetic experience.
But here's the truth: a spell without energy behind it is just theater. Pretty, perhaps meaningful on a psychological level, but not actually moving energy toward a goal.
How to Actually Raise Energy
Energy raising is about building up a charge—creating more energy than your baseline resting state—so you have something to direct. There are dozens of ways to do this:
Physical movement: This is the most accessible method. Dancing, spinning, swaying, drumming, clapping, jumping, running in place, even vigorous cleaning. Your body generates energy through movement. Ever notice how you feel buzzy and alive after dancing? That's raised energy.
In spell work: Put on music that matches your intention. Move your body. Don't worry about looking graceful—this isn't performance, it's energy generation. Dance until you feel that aliveness, that buzz, that sense of power building.
Breath work: Breath is life force, and controlling your breath controls your energy. Fast breathing raises energy (think how you feel after running). Slow deep breathing grounds and centers energy.
In spell work: Try rapid breathing—inhale sharply through your nose, exhale sharply through your mouth, fast and rhythmic. Feel your body wake up, your heart rate increase, that buzzing sensation building. Do this for 1-3 minutes. You'll feel unmistakably charged.
Sound: Chanting, singing, humming, toning—sustained sound vibrates through your body and raises energy. There's a reason every religious tradition uses repetitive sound.
In spell work: Chant your intention over and over, or just chant a single sound—"Om," "Aum," a vowel sound, whatever resonates. Feel the vibration in your chest, your throat, your skull. Let it build. Volume helps—don't whisper this, really make sound. (If you need to be quiet, you can hum or do it in your head, but it's less powerful.)
Emotional intensity: Strong emotion IS energy. Rage, joy, grief, desire, fear—these are all powerful energetic states.
In spell work: Connect with the emotion behind your intention. If you're doing a confidence spell, feel into what confidence would feel like—fake it until you feel it building. If you're doing protection magic, connect with righteous anger about what you're protecting against. Let the emotion build and intensify.
Visualization with sensation: Imagine energy building in your body—as light, as heat, as electricity, as water filling you up—and feel it as real. Your body doesn't know the difference between imagined and real sensation if you commit to it.
In spell work: Visualize energy (in whatever form makes sense to you) gathering in your core, your belly, your chest. See it getting brighter, stronger, more intense. Feel it as sensation—heat, tingling, pressure. Build it until it feels like you're going to burst.
Sexual energy: Yes, we're going there. Arousal is one of the most powerful energy states accessible to humans. Sex magic is real and it works because orgasm is an enormous energy spike.
In spell work: You can incorporate arousal and/orgasm into spell work (solo or partnered). Build arousal while holding your intention. At the moment of climax, direct all that energy toward your goal. This is advanced and requires good energetic control, but it's incredibly effective.
Combining methods: The most powerful energy raising combines multiple techniques. Dancing while chanting while visualizing while feeling the emotion of your intention—that's a massive amount of energy.
The Peak: Knowing When You're Ready
You'll know you've raised enough energy when:
Your body feels buzzy, tingly, alive
Your heart rate is elevated
You might feel heat or cold flashes
There's a sense of pressure or fullness
You feel almost manic, hyper-focused, powerful
There's an urgency, a feeling of "I have to do something with this NOW"
It feels like being on the edge of something—a sneeze about to happen, laughter about to burst out, tears about to spill. You're at maximum charge.
This is the moment. Don't let it dissipate. This is when you direct it.
Directing Energy: The Part That Actually Makes It Magic
You've built up all this power. Now you have to AIM it.
Visualization: See the energy leaving your body and traveling toward your goal. If you're charging an object, see the energy pouring into it. If you're sending healing, see it flowing to the person. If you're manifesting something, see the energy moving out into the universe to make it happen.
Physical gesture: Push your hands forward, releasing the energy. Point at your target. Throw your arms up. Stomp your foot. The physical action helps your mind release the energy outward instead of letting it just dissipate.
Breath: Blow the energy out. One sharp exhale, pushing all that built-up power out of your body and toward your intention.
Words: Speak your intention clearly as you release: "This money comes to me now." "Sarah is healed." "I am protected." The words give the energy specific instructions.
Emotion: Feel the success of your spell as already real. The gratitude, the relief, the joy—feel it now, and pour that feeling into the energy as you release it.
The key is that the release needs to be definitive. Not tentative, not uncertain—a clear, forceful "GO" command to the energy.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Let's walk through a simple spell with actual energy work:
Goal: Confidence for a presentation
Setup: Light a yellow candle, hold a citrine in your hand
Put on upbeat, powerful music
Start moving—dance, bounce, sway
As you move, start chanting: "I am confident, I am clear, I am powerful"
Chant faster, move more vigorously
Visualize golden light building in your solar plexus (your core, below your ribs)
Feel it getting brighter, hotter, stronger with every chant and every movement
Let the emotion build—feel yourself becoming more confident with every repetition
Keep going until you're buzzing, until you feel like you might burst, until the energy is almost uncomfortable
Hold the citrine in both hands at your chest
As you exhale forcefully, see all that golden light pour from your body into the stone
Say clearly: "This confidence is mine. I carry it with me. It is done."
Feel the energy rush out of you into the stone
Put your palms flat on the floor or hold the earth
Let any excess energy drain into the ground
See the difference? That's not just lighting a candle and hoping. That's actual energy work.
Skipping the buildup: You can't just decide "okay, now I'll direct energy" if you haven't actually raised any. That's like trying to pour from an empty cup.
Not going far enough: A lot of beginners raise a little bit of energy and think "this is probably enough." It's not. Push further. Get uncomfortable. The edge of too much is where the power is.
Letting it fizzle: You raise energy but then you don't direct it decisively, so it just... dissipates. You feel tired afterward but nothing happened. You have to PUSH it out toward your goal, not just let it evaporate.
Overthinking the release: The moment of directing energy needs to be instinctive, not intellectual. If you're in your head analyzing whether you're doing it right, you've already lost the energy. Feel, don't think.
Not grounding after: Ungrounded excess energy leaves you jittery, anxious, unable to sleep. Always ground after energy work.
Practice Outside of Spell Work
You don't have to wait until you're casting a spell to practice energy work. In fact, you'll be much better at it during spells if you practice regularly:
Do the hand-rubbing exercise daily until you can feel energy easily
Practice moving energy around your body—visualize it flowing from your head to your toes, pooling in your belly, radiating from your heart
Ground regularly—sit outside, palms on earth, and deliberately release energy into the ground
Shield building is energy practice—creating an energetic boundary around yourself
Try to sense other people's energy—not to be invasive, but to develop sensitivity
Good energy work often looks and feels ridiculous. You might be dancing wildly in your bedroom, chanting at the top of your lungs, crying, laughing, shaking, making weird noises, moving in ways that would look absurd if anyone saw you.
This is why people skip it. It's vulnerable. It's weird. It requires you to be unselfconscious and fully committed.
But this is where the power is.
All the aesthetic altar photos in the world won't make your spells work if you can't do this part. And once you can do this part, you barely need the aesthetic stuff at all.
Start Simple If this all feels overwhelming, start here: Tonight, light a candle for something simple you want. Stand up. Put your hands over your heart. Take ten deep breaths, imagining golden light building in your chest with each inhale. When you feel full, push your hands toward the candle and blow out the breath sharply, seeing the light pour from your chest into the flame. That's it. That's energy raising and directing in its simplest form. Do that a few times and pay attention to how it feels. Build from there.
The Real Secret Here's what experienced witches know but rarely say outright: the props are training wheels.
The herbs, the crystals, the candle colors, the lunar timing—these all help you get into the right headspace, help you believe, help you focus. They're valuable.
But a witch who can raise and direct energy can cast effective magic with literally nothing but their body and their will. No tools needed. That's the level you're aiming for.
Not to abandon the tools—use them if they help—but to know that the real power was inside you the whole time. It always was. You just have to learn how to access it, raise it, and throw it at your goals.
So stop skipping this part. Stop collecting ingredients and copying spells and wondering why nothing works.
Learn to feel your energy.
Learn to direct it with intention.
Everything else is just set dressing.
