Negative Energy

I have a problem with the way the term negative energy is used in general, but I find it particularly irritating when I see/hear it in the Witchcraft community. Actually it’s not merely irritating, I find it down right depressing! It is definitely my biggest pet peeve in Witchcraft.

To me using the term negative interchangeably with bad or uncomfortable when discussing energy is somewhat New Age-esk. That attitude does negative energy a huge disservice, it’s dismissive of just how beautiful and important negative energy is. I don’t actually have a problem with any individual who uses these terms interchangeably as I feel it is typically done out of habit and without much thought, but I really wish it wasn’t the collective habit especially in Witchcraft where it is absolutely established that negative and positive energy are specific things that are neither inherently good or bad.

Of course we can have negative experiences or thoughts that are “bad”, but this is not the case with energy. The example I like to use is crystal energy. I could pick a crystal and feel that it has an “uplifting, exciting” energy while the person beside me could pick up the same crystal and feel an “anxious, nervous or stressful” energy. The crystal and it’s energy are neither good nor bad, we are merely having a individual experience of and reaction to it’s energy. The same can be said of negative and positive energy.

Positive energy is solar, masculine, active energy while negative energy is lunar, feminine, receptive energy. I may experience either of these energies as feeling good or bad to me at any given time, in any given circumstance, but the energies themselves are neither good nor bad.

When we label energy that feels bad as negative we are insulting Goddess in my mind. It really made/makes me sad as I myself had done this for many years. So the problem became how do I label energy that doesn’t feel good if not as negative? It took me a while to figure this out, but for several years now I have been calling it disharmonious. If an energy feels good I call it harmonious rather than positive and if it feels bad I call it disharmonious rather than negative. This way I don’t have any weird, unnecessary associations with positive or negative energy.

I genuinely hope that one day we as a community can stop using terms that seem to have their origins in other spiritual communities in ways that don’t serve our own.