by LordArt » Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:15 pm
It sounds like an astral journey kind of thing. Usually such a thing happens when someone is sleeping rather than awake, and it just seems like a strange dream. That's the usual MO. It probably hurt because you WERE awake and resisting (ie. you wanted to feel your body versus wanting to pay attention to what was going on with your astral self. When you are sleeping, you aren't paying attention to your physical body really). As far as what you saw, astral forms take the forms they like, complicated by the fact of your own symbolism trying to understand what is going on, so grabbing the best symbolism for what is happening, and the best source is mythology that you've already know. My experience is that if something decides to break through your natural defenses, it usually leaves the person more "open" to what is going on out there.
A good example of that is someone I knew who got possessed (purposely in this case, long story) and couldn't get rid of the entity, which then had to be forcibly removed. The problem was she was so damaged by the situation, that almost anything that came along would hop in after the original entity was removed. She had to be "shielded" to prevent things from getting in so she could heal normally, which she eventually did. The point is, it is unlikely the experience left you unchanged (as you admit).
The being able to use, as you call it, elemental energy, is something you likely already had the ability to do, and just as a self-defense kind of thing "remembered" how to use it. It is also possible that the entities granted you the knowledge. Depends on your background, the entities, and what actually was going on, etc. The experience itself could have been anything from a bunch of entities having a joy ride to something deciding it was time for you and your friends to learn something "officially" or anything in between. Until you either have someone look into it directly or learn astral projection to go ask, you won't know (unless they show up again to be asked).
As far as magical energy being manipulated into 15 elements, it's more complicated than that. It's a full spectrum like light, but many try to limit the categories because it's useful to do so. Just like in light we use RGB (Red Green Blue) as primary colors to combine to make other colors, historically, magic has been turned into earth, air, fire, water (and sometimes spirit). "Magical Energy" is simply so much more complicated than that in actuality, however, manipulating energy just by perceived elemental delineations is quite useful to get things accomplished. As a good example, to me, density matters. Let alone weaving the energy together to make magical "materials" which in and of themselves would look like elemental energy to the untrained.
I'm not sure if any of that helped, but there it is.