wilhelm reich

Examining Orgonite


Recently I was gifted with several pieces of orgonite from a friend of mine. I’ve been curious about orgonite and the assorted orgone tech for a while, but my experiences have been very slim with them.
To back track, if you’re wondering what orgone is, it is a term coined by Wilhelm Reich to more or less refer to a universal form of life energy. Reich was an early psychologist and student of Freud’s and he worked various ideas about energy and energy bodies into his models of psychology. His take on this universal life energy was more mechanistic than what most sorcererous folks are used to, it isn’t about will and belief, but a natural interplay of form and matter. He viewed it more in lines with electricity (in terms of how it operates) than some subtle energy controlled by people.
This led him and those following his ideas to theorize and create mechanical devices meant to manipulate orgone. He felt that organic material attracted orgone, while inorganic material repelled it, and by combining these materials in certain ways you could alter the flow of orgone. There are devices to shoot beams of focused orgone, or to reprogram it, and a variety of things. The simplest is a shooter, which is a hollow tube surrounded by alternating layers of organic and inorganic materials. Polyphanes has done some work with that side of the tech, which you can see here. He theorized that the attraction/repulsion worked somewhat like a maglev or rail gun, drawing in, repelling, attracting, repelling down the line.
Orgonite is one of the later pieces of orgone tech to enter the stage being invented by a couple in 2000. Their idea is that you don’t need the strict layers of organic/inorganic materials, but more a roughly 50/50 balance. Orgonite, rather than being ordered layers is a collection of mostly inorganic material suspended in an organic resin. Orgone is believed to have two main types, positive orgone (usually just called orgone) and dead/ly orgone. From an energy model you could see it as clear energy, and polluted energy. Deadly orgone is supposedly created by lots of things, but most commonly cited are things that disrupt orgone/energy as they understand it, so powerlines, power plants, radio towers, and the like.
Anyways orgonite supposedly gathers in the deadly orgone and transforms it back into positive orgone and releases it. Now since the 2000 creation of orgonite some people have expanded this idea. So rather than just making generic positive orgone, they would make specific frequencies of positive orgone, based upon what went into the orgonite. This is where it sounds like it crosses a bit back into the magickal realm. By using different metals and crystals as the inorganic compound in orgonite the energy released would be tuned to certain things. It might be more of a healing energy, a faster clearing energy, more resonant with the throat chakra, whatever.
So now I have three pieces of orgonite from my friend. Sadly this is a small sample size, but I’ll talk about what I noticed. First off I’ll admit outside of Reich’s armor theories, I don’t give him much credence, yeah, I believe in invisible life energies whirling around us, but his model of such doesn’t totally work for me. Then even looking into the orgon-tech the orgonite doesn’t seem to fit that theory. Reich’s orgone accumulating box was layers of material, shooters are layers of material, everything was about the alternating flow of organic/inorganic. Orgonite has both materials, but they are more haphazardly aligned, there isn’t layers, you have inorganic stuff floating loose in organic medium. It’s seems like mixing all the dough and filling ingredients for a pie in a bowl, rather than making dough, filling, and constructing a pie.
None the less, not buying his theories, and feeling orgonite doesn’t even match those, there is definitely something to the orgonite. I pick it up, and I can feel a buzzing coming from it. Even one of my woogity-accepting but not really perceptive friend was surprised at what he could feel from them.
IMG_20150804_204348The Dragon one has a sense of elevation, to use a standard model, it’s almost as if it is releasing energy that is more attuned to an astral level than a physical one. In fact while holding it it becomes easier to shift my awareness up out of the physical. When it’s “resting” is has a similar sense, but undirected. We all know places where the boundaries might be a touch thin, it feels like that, not majorly, but enough that if you knew what you were looking for, and how to use it, you’d see it.
IMG_20150804_204320The Triskelion feels the most like I’d expect orgonite to feel like. I can’t get a clear bead on if it is programmed a certain way, but what does come out of it seems like it’s been cleaned and stripped down, and is ready to go. I get the sense that it would be good to work with sensitive energy blockages. Sometimes you can tell a blockage is holding the channel open, and if you remove it it would collapse, or it’s holding back too much energy to safely release at once. I could see using this on the person to slowly over an hour or so breakdown and hopefully purify some of the blockage, but it would do it in a way a lot slower and gentler than a person could. Or more accurately, would. I would not want to spend hours slowly removing a blockage from someone, but having them hold/tie the orgonite to the area for that time, that’s not an issue.
IMG_20150804_204402Lastly is the Heart piece. This is my least favourite, and it’s not cause it’s a heart. There is something to this that by body disagrees with, everytime I keep it with me, I feel sick after a while, and I don’t mean a little off, I mean verging on violently ill. I get the sense it’s trying to cleanse me, but the trouble is I’m not the model it’s appropriate for. It’s a cleaner designed for PVC pipes, and I’m lead. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just my body and energy don’t work in a way that is compatible with it. That’s not uncommon for me, there are several energy systems that my body does not like, even after working with Reiki for a decade, when I get Reiki offered to me it bothers my system. Despite not working well for me, I’m really glad I was sent this piece, because it was the first one to give me a clear reaction, it really makes me realize something is going on.
Something very odd I noticed about all of them though, is that I can’t meditate when in contact with them. I’ve taken each of them to temple with me, a few times, and decided as a way of passively exploring what they do, I’d meditate with them, and see what happens. Every time I’m meditating with them touching me, I can’t meditate for the life of me, it is as if my monkey mind was given a PCP-laced banana. I was almost completely unable to bring my attention where it should, and it would run off faster, more violently, and farther than it does under any other circumstance. I have no idea and no good theories on why, it is just an observation.
My last observation, is that I suspect orgonite doesn’t work, at least not as the theory posits it. I’ve tried following the way the energy moves in them, what happens, I’ve tried looking at the whole, and at parts, and from a mechanical perspective I can’t see how or why it works. If I step out of the orgone model though, it seems rather simple: orgonite is a talisman. I know a lot of orgone-followers prefer to look at their stuff as more scientific/mechanical than magick, but it’s a blurry line at times. Here is the thing though, orgonite contains a quartz crystal to direct the energy, then is surrounded by other stones and metals which change the energy “frequency.” This is not dissimilar from any for more crystal/metal magick, save the suspension in organic resin. Most of our traditions have us use this metal because it does this, this crystal cause it connects to that, and I think the orgonite is doing the same. When the orgonite is completed, it’s charged, in this case my friend’s husband gives it some reiki to get it going. Also when my friend makes them she is guided by her intuition on what metals and stones to use, and my cursory reading on the subject shows that’s fairly common. Also this sounds like it is more or less making a basic talisman.
So as much as I respect my friend, I feel I have to disagree with her premise in believing in orgonite. I feel she’s actually making a magickal talisman. It’s not so much about the ratios of the materials and the way they interact, but more about their sympathies, and how she connects them, and gets them going. I suspect that orgonite would function just as well if it used an inorganic medium instead of organic, but that’s just a practical ingredient, the nuts and bolts are the metals, gems, and energy involved in their creation.
Now, again I’ll say, there is definitely something too the pieces. They work, they have a noticeable charge, they’re doing things. I just disagree on the mechanics on /how/ they work. That being said I think the idea of using the orgonite method would be fascinating to tap in terms of talisman creation. I could suspend crystals, metals, and herbs in specific simple patterns and seal them in resin to later consecrate. It’s definitely something I’ll be thinking more about.
I can’t say for sure, and will experiment more, but that’s my current standing on orgonite.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick