If someone cooks a meal in an oven, afterwards it will still retain the heat for a while, but the active heating element is not working, making what is being felt an after-image of the original cause, much as when we close our eyes after seeing a strong light we may see an after-image that is not the actual light itself.
If someone picks up a crystal that has been charged with healing energy, they will feel the healing energy, but not the active intent that put it there - a little like "seeing" the wind by it's effects.
As a variation on that, someone psychometrising an object will also feel the after-image of the vibrant principle, whether person or other, that actively created what is now being detected - but that is NOT the same as being or directly experiencing the actual active principle.
When we eat healthy vegetables, herbs, and other plants, we get the direct benefit of the nutrients in the plant, and, much as we can experience the healing energy put into the crystals I mentioned above, the - hopefully - beneficial energy of the environment that the plant grew in - but we are NOT mystically ingesting the spiritual essence of that plant type.
If we want to connect with the active, living, and intelligent essence of a plant species, we would need to connect to that through the astral or etheric - and do so by a respectful meeting as equals. We don't get that by eating the physical.
This is something where fuzzy attempts at "thinking" and poorly understood psychometrical impressions have been widely misunderstood through the psychic field, in my opinion.
To illustrate that with a few examples:
- there is a suggestion that some forms of cannibalism were an attempt to honour and partake in the essence of brave warriors or respected elders: they do neither - they consume a shadow of the vital principle (person) that was brave or respected, and are no more effective than lying in the shadow of an object enables one to get tanned by the sun which causes the shadow (mind you, given the risk of skin cancer, that particular folly would be better than actually getting a sun tan);
- one area of magickal practice I came across many years ago advocated consuming the entirety of an animal in order to take in its essence. What a load of twaddle.
Setting aside the ethical wrongs of that for a moment, again one is consuming the shadow, not the active vital principle - and much of what is being sought could be achieved by competent psychometry, rather than destroying what one is allegedly seeking to honour, and a FAR better way to access that power would be through connecting psychically, whether through meditation, a shamanic journey (that tradition described itself as "shamanic"), or similar.
On the other hand, that tradition also talked about walking the length and bounds of a water catchment, which IS beneficial, as it puts one in direct contact with the still present active vital principles (not all good, owing to pollution, etc) of part of this world; and - finally, and what triggered this little essay, I have started re-reading Katherine
Kurtz’s
“Lammas
Night”, which is an entertaining book, but gets caught up in the notion of having to make a physical sacrifice in order to access energy for a purpose.
Once again, this is not correct - when someone dies as a sacrifice, their vital essence is GONE, and all one is left with is the after-image of that vitality, just as, once the oven is turned off, all one is left with is the gradually cooling after-image of the formerly active heating element.
That doesn't add anything of significance energetically, although psychologically it may have impressed impressionable people.
Such an active is ILLEGAL, spiritually and morally wrong and indefensible, and indicative of a world (or group or person, depending on the scale) that is so barbarous and backward that it believes in physical violence, war, and conflict in general - the sort of backwardness that is behind extraterrestrials not making open contact with us, as many people and groups have attested to.
If you need energy for a working, you can build that energy by slowly, painstakingly, caringly creating BPM energy - just as, if you want to develop your psychic abilities, the best way to do so is through slow, careful, methodical, and persistent PRACTICE, not taking dangerous, ill-advised, undisciplined, uncontrollable and often ILLEGAL actions such as taking psychoactive substances (i.e., "drugs", whether legal or otherwise).
Take the time to do things in a way that is most constructive and of most long term benefit - BPM ways that do not harm sentient life, do not promote indiscipline or other immaturities (being contrary or rebellious is not standing up for oneself: it is reacting against something else, something outside and not of oneself), and help to build - NOT detract from by removing some of - all that is good in and of this world. The harm that can be done by deaths is shown by the harm done by the assassinations of Lincoln in the USA, Yitzhak Rabin in Israel (which destroyed the Oslo Accords - as intended), and John F and Robert F Kennedy in the USA - all cases where the harm is still continuing to this day. Even Christ's death was a problem, as it allowed the religion to be warped in ways that were not intended. Killing has a cost - to the mundane world, to the culture we all live in (one of the moral harms of capital punishment is that it demonstrates a limit to, and thus a diminishing of, the sanctity of life), and shows a deplorable spiritual immaturity on the part of all who advocate or demand it. Rather than that:
Be genuinely, spiritually, BPM better, and help to make the world so as well.
