I don’t think I’m alone in saying the being sick isn’t exactly a goal or anything resembling a good time, but invariably there will be someone that wants to know whether they should perform magic while sick or not. There are some benefits, but also some drawbacks. We’ll get to that in a bit.
In short, sometimes I do but it really depends on how sick I am and how much focus I need to be able to pull off that spell. Petitions are always a safe(r) bet when sick. When you’re really sick you may find that you may not have the focus to do some of you more demanding work or you’ll run out of steam halfway through a ritual. You may even find that you stay sick longer if you do even medium rituals requiring normal focus but with a fair amount of energy work it depends partially in your efficiency with that particular ritual and energy.
I have a tendency to just do petitions and hybrid rituals because I can move the energy quickly and fairly efficiently especially with the help of the entity that I’m calling upon. Depending on the entity, I may throw in some extra energy and blood for them to help me get over this quicker. And this could be Leviathan, Marbas, Raphael, Hi’iaka, Abaddon, Beelzebub, etc… Pele can burn things out (careful here). You get the idea.
I have figured out that I have to do those medium rituals and hybrid rituals for my “normal” work load when in the deepest parts of the illness. I will wind down based on my energy levels until there is a peak of the illness that usually lasts a day or two, where I do almost nothing. Sometimes, literally nothing. I also have to ramp back up slowly as I feel better since I have a tendency to jump right back in at the same level before I got sick. If I don’t, I have a regression with it and it wastes even more of my time when I fight it again.
I don’t think it’s dangerous for most people to do magic while they’re sick. Some of this may depend upon the entities you’re calling upon and how well you know them. Some energies could make you feel even more ill. I certainly wouldn’t run myself to exhaustion from Magic as this will cause the illness to last longer and potentially get more severe requiring even more time away from full ritual.
Yesterday I was still mostly feeling normal, so I did my normal routine daily work and some decaying candles for the target of a friend. Today I would not be doing those decaying candles since they take more time and concentration than I would care to expend. At some point I’ll go out and do my ritual offerings, but I don’t know that I’m doing any of my cultivation exercises today. Instead I’ll be cycling Nature and Solar energies through me and dumping the negative energies from the illness into the ground. This doesn’t take a lot of concentration or energy work and I think it shortens my duration of the illness. Part of the reason this doesn’t take as much concentration is because I “practice” this technique a lot. Used to be daily for…years?
Whether or not you should do go into ritual when sick isn’t something that I can really answer. You’ll have to figure it out by finding those boundaries, limitations, and consequences for yourself. If you stick to simpler workings then you should figure out or recognize where that line is for your current welfare. You can charge a candle a little at a time to rest between charges and still have a charged candle at the end of the day for whatever purpose you’re looking for. Technically, you could do that with a ritual, too, but you’ll have to put in more energy to overcome what’s lost between sessions. If you do decide to do that I would attach that working to an object in between rest cycles or ask an entity to do it for you. But if you rely on emotion as fuel, you should probably hold off until you feel better so you can get enough energy into the working for to manifest properly.
Just like with exercise only you were going to be able to know whether you should or shouldn’t. You may even consider sending specific types of energy into specific crystals or objects for rituals that you do frequently to access for times like these. This would be similar to sending unwanted or excessive energy into the ground or a crystal and if you do it for specific ritual types by keeping it in your in your space to be charged when you do those rituals it won’t require as much from you when you decide to use that energy to supplement when sick.
The only real benefit to being sick is that you can send this illness and symptoms into a crystal or stone or anything else that can hold a charge a while and use that for some of your baneful work or as an offering to entities that appreciate those types of energy.
I hope this little brain dump has given you some ideas for how to overcome being ill while still needing to do magic. Sometimes, it just can’t be helped. Take it easy. Take it slow. And spend a few minutes planning how you will overcome that before you’re sick, need something quickly, and all your friends are away from their devices.
