Sometimes all a book needs to do to provide value is to cause you to cock your head at a 90-degree angle and look at your life from a different angle. A sufficiently heavy book can do this without even being opened, but the preferred method is to approach a topic that you felt you had figured out in a way you just never had considered before, and looking from that direction makes all the difference. Mark NeCamp's 2024 book Energy Magick: A Basic & Advanced Guide for Witches & Pagans did this for me by stating its premise in a way that surprised me: "what if you could do magick "without physical tools, by directly manipulating the energy that connects all things...?" Simple words, but I didn't even know it was a question until I read it.
So, "never" isn't true, but "not since I first learned about the craft" isn't. I thought it was the common point of view that of course we can work with energy unaided, but why do it when the purpose of tools is to assist in the doing of a thing? That said, NeCamp's ingenuity is to peel the outer layer of this subject with the simple question "what if you could?" and then keep peeling, methodically getting the reader into a headspace where tools don't enter into the relationship that a practitioner has with the energies of the universe. The reader's head now cocked at an appropriate angle (to stretch my metaphor), the author can now proceed in what would otherwise be a fairly standard guide to energy work with everything considered through this "tool-less" lens. Early chapters are on grounding, meditation, creating sacred space and so on. Throughout, NeCamp writes in what he accurately describes as a "conversational" style, quite informal, and unlikely to put off a reader with any air of imperiousness or sense of a guru imparting The Great Mysteries(tm). No, this is your buddy Mark, hanging out over a pot of tea and telling you stories. The later portions of the book move on to healing, trance work, protective magick, and ritual in a very methodical and sensible way. In the third part he gets into what I always think of as the "recipe book" portion of this kind of book, with a dozen or more purpose-written applications of energy such as prosperity work, elemental protection, and self-empowerment. Those practical recipes are on top of the more than 70 exercises that leavened the earlier chapters to assist the reader in developing their facility with energy as described throughout the text.
Energy Magick is an easy book to recommend, well-written in a tone that goes down easy while imparting a fairly typical 101-102 approach to magick. I've only a couple of quibbles. The smallest one is the use of "basic" and "advanced" as ways of dividing practices within the book. I get why people do it and it's certainly not a high crime, but setting information in a heirarchical structure like this can't help but set a reader into a dangling-carrot way of wanting to move through the book and get to the good stuff. The "Fundamentals of Energy Work" in Chapter 3 are worthy topics for any practitioner, no matter their initiatory degrees or years of practice. Likewise, one may never perform "Cord Cutting" as laid out in Chapter 8 and this in way impugns their level of knowledge or dedication. Like I said, it's a small quibble and I'm probably tilting at windmills, but we can talk about how you should know about "A" before proceeding to "B" without characterizing either skillset. My other hesitation is whenever I see a focus on love spells, money magick and so on. It's not highlighted on the cover so it's not so glaring as other books, but whenever I see these sorts of things I can't help thinking that I haven't noticed the population of neopagans being particularly more wealthy than the general population, nor do I see an absence of romantic tribulations. Probably a cynical worldview but there you have it. In general I think this is a worthy addition to the canon of introductory magickal literature because of Mark NeCamp's prose style and off-the-beaten-path way of approaching the subjects.
~ review by Wanderer
Author: Mark NeCamp, Jr.
Moon Books, 2024
264 pg. Paperback £14.99 UK / $16.95 US
