Magick is always all around us.
Natural energies course through us and around us all day every day.
If we could see this energy, we’d see an infinitely busy environment full of swirling, whizzing, colour and shapes.
We would see and hear visions and sounds that would make us burst with frenzied excitement.
The trouble is, it never switches off!
All that energy is constantly whizzing about at all hours at all times.
Often all that frenetic energy can cause us to feel drained, overwhelmed and exhausted. It gets too much for us at times because even though we can’t see or hear most of it, our bodies are still feeling it, exposed to the elements of the universal forces, and this can translate into fatigue and illness if we don’t learn to channel it.
Channelling is a way of transferring the energies within us into something else, in order to release all that energy and emotion outwards.
When we do that, we feel lighter, refreshed and less anxious or stressed.
There are lots of ways to channel energy, most of which involve some form of creativity, for example:
We can use rituals or spells, and other magickal ceremonies.
We can use music as a method of channelling through dance and singing, or playing an instrument.
We can also use other art forms too such as painting and drawing, sculpture, or printing.
The act of creating something new from this channelled energy is an exhilarating experience.
The reason lots of art is sought after and commands millions at auction isn’t because it looks nice necessarily; it’s because of the energy it contains and the emotion it conveys to the viewer.
Art can move us in a way that very little else does. It stirs primal emotions within us that have an effect on our psyche.
That’s not by accident.
It's not just because it’s nice to look at, but because of the pain, anguish, fears, doubts, traumas, emotional state and state of consciousness of the artist when they created it.
All of that energy they felt has been transferred into that canvas or sculpture, dance or piece of music, and you as the viewer are witnessing it at its rawest.
The buyer of an art piece isn’t buying a painting - they’re buying the channelled energy and part of the life force of the artist, in paint form!
The artists psyche manifested into matter.
When you feel as though you have energy you need to channel, pick up a pen and paper, or a paintbrush, close your eyes and just scribble or paint.
Look at the paint strokes or pen strokes, look at the lines in front of you - are they heavy, jagged, smooth, soft, faint, flowing or scattered? Are they deep and cutting or smooth and well formed?
All of these little details will tell you something about what you are feeling.
When you learn to read the lines and marks in front of you, you start to see the emotion and the energy felt during their making.
This can really help us to get a grasp on our emotions and feelings, and help us to understand the energies that flow through us.
When we allow ourselves to channel and create, we relieve ourselves of energy that may not serve us.
We convert that energy into a magickal physicality, into something beautiful, raw and ancient.
When we create, we channel a part of our soul out into physical existence and stamp our mark on the world.
We are all born as creative beings. So go forth and create!
PS:- The image above is a piece I did using a technique that’s known as bulletism. It’s essentially splats of paint or ink that creates fairly random shapes, and then these are drawn into to create interesting, and fantastical worlds within the splats themselves and the negative space around them.
This method is a very good form of channelling as it can maintain your focus for hours, which means your mind is fully focused on the act of creating in the here and now, instead of catastrophising over what was and what might be. It’s really easy to do and very soothing.
For more musings, why not join the Facebook group Beneath The Canopy?