Energy work Let's begin by defining energy, and understanding exactly what we're working with when we do energy work. When talking magic and metaphysics, there are two main common ways to understand the term energy. Let's call them type P energy and type M energy. Type P energy is physical energy. It is quite literally the electrochemical energy of your body. P energy is a resource that can be acquired and spent. It moves your muscles, and maintains your health. Type M energy is metaphysical, and perhaps calling it energy is misleading. This resource is never consumed, but rather allocated and deallocated. This allocation, in general terms, is maintained by your attention. Mostly your subconscious attention. This means that as long as you can locate and repurpose the thread of subconscious attention that is attached to a certain allocation, you can recover that energy. It never stops belonging to you, and leads back to you, which is one of the underlying principles that makes karma possible. M energy can be conceptualized as a ray of light that originates in a source, which you may call God, and passes through many polarizing lenses, which modify its nature and effects, and reduces its potency (just like a lens would). A lens cannot lose or gain any amount of photons passing through it as long as its being shone on. But it can focus or scatter that energy in various ways. Magic, and indeed energy work deals entirely with type M energy; in the use of lenses to work with it, be it external or our own. The misleading use of the term energy to refer to it, as well as the fact that type M can indirectly produce an expenditure of type P, has resulted in the mistaken assumption that it is the latter which rules these practices, and it has made things much more difficult to understand. Let's look at a practical example. There is a curse spell that consists in taping the target's picture to a pig's face (looking towards the pig), then killing the pig (violently), dragging it through a forest, and burying it in a shallow grave, for wild animals to desecrate it later. It is often assumed that this type of sacrifice feeds on the pig's life force, and by some mysterious mechanism mediated by the magician's willpower, it's put to use in tormenting the target. However, a more accurate modelling can be done if we understand how M energy works. The pig, like any other living being, is a lens through which the light of God shines. Likewise, the tormented, angry, fearful psyche of a being acts as a polarizing medium that can potentially turn that light harmful to the next lens down the line (if it is directed properly, and does not scatter, or does not end up hitting the magician, or being affected by the magician's own undisciplined attention polluting the ritual). It is important to realize that the energy of the sacrifice is never spent. It is allocated. And by appeasing the pig, one can undo the curse. That is, one can help the sacrificed being to deallocate its traumatized attention. If you think about this, and apply this reasoning to many magical applications of sacrifices, trauma, lust, and other attachments, you will find you now understand them more deeply.