Anchored Shields

Shielding is one of the first techniques new practitioners learn when they study defensive magick.  The basic shield that almost every “magick 101” book teaches is the standard bubble shield (the white glowing egg that blocks negative energy).  It’s a great beginner shield because it’s easy to visualize and doesn’t take a lot of energy to maintain.  Unfortunately, it also has a lot of draw backs.  If done correctly, the basic bubble shield will really dampen your magickal senses – to the point where you might be under psychic attack and you wouldn’t even notice it.  And no, that isn’t a good thing.  If you don’t know you’re under attack you never do anything to stop the attack and as soon as your shield goes down you get hit.  Eventually, all bubble shields have to come down.  Although they don’t take much energy to maintain, they do take some and you will eventually get tired.

I deal with this by using a series special purpose of filters rather than a single large shield for my daily defense.  Now, the more complicated your shields the more energy they take to maintain.  If I had to run all my protections of my own energy I’d be comatose by 9am, so I don’t.  Instead, I anchor my shields.  An anchored shield is centered in an object (crystals, semi-precious stones, jewellery, tattoos, etc.) that you carry on your person and runs of the energy you’ve put into that object.  This allows you to run massive shields without draining yourself dry.  Of course, those anchors need to be recharged regularly (usually 1-2x a month) to maintain potency.

To create an anchored shield I just hold the anchor in my hands and describe the shields I want it to put up.  Now, you have to be very, very specific in your description.  You need to say exactly what you want each part of the shield to do, what you want it to do with the energy it lets pass, the energy it doesn’t let pass, whether it lets you feel what it’s doing, what it does when it runs out of power, etc.  You also need to describe exactly how you want the shields to activate and deactivate - are they automatic whenever you carry the anchor, do you have to will them up or down, do they go up automatically when you run out of energy, etc.  It’s like creating a computer program – it will do exactly what you tell it to and not one iota more or less.  If you want your shields to think then you need an egregore (and that’s a whole different thing). 

Once you’ve created your anchor you need to charge it.  I like to charge my anchors by singing, dancing, or meditating – usually singing.  How you charge your anchor will affect the character of your shields.  If you charge it by burning a candle then you’ll have very firey shields, if you charge it with intense visualization and a drop of your own blood you will get very intense shields that will probably make other people uncomfortable, if you charge it by going dancing you’ll get shields with playful energy.  Be mindful of what kind of energy you use and what its effects might be.

Then all you have to do is carry your anchor and let it work.