Introduction
Here is how to build a multi-step energy shield. This is my basic shield, and it is nearly impregnable. It is based on rings. Each ring powers an orb-like shell that goes around you and shields you.
Fire
First, you start with fire. Make the energy like an aggressive ball full of red, hate, and fury—the sort of emotions you would get if somebody had pissed you off massively.
Water
Once that is in place, you make the rest of the elements. Water takes, erodes, and sends back waves around you. Your water shield is designed to take attacks, spin them around, and send them back at the person who sent them, like a gravitational slingshot. It can also dissolve and erode things that are within its power.
Earth
Next is earth. Earth is a simple stone or metal shield around you. Its strength is in its weight. If somebody tried to attack you with a sledgehammer, it might pass through the other shields, but it would break apart upon the earth or stone shield.
Air
Then you have the air shield, which does something similar to the water shield. It spins attacks around and throws them off at such high velocity that they fly away in a crazy direction. It can acquire much more reflex than the water shield and turn attacks away from you.
Creating the Fifth Shield
At this point you have four shields. So how do you make the fifth shield and bring them all together? This is where it gets difficult. You start merging them, pausing the energies with your will if you can.
You keep merging until you can mix these shields into one shield—one that does all of these things. Then you recreate the first four, link them together, and you have the pentagram shield: all five elements.
There is an initial ignition that sets the layer's signature, and then it runs on its own. The shield layers are a preset behavior you program beforehand, and then they automatically trigger.
The Black Ring and Self-Maintaining Shield
You will get the sense that it is done almost as if seeing it with your physical eyes. The energy stops being turbulent and exploding out of itself and settles into what, for me, tends to become a black ring. It might be another color for someone else, but I see a black core and a ring around me when I am done.
It is like a sentry gun in a video game. It is set, and it does its thing. But if it runs out of juice, you have to run back up and power it again.
The goal is that it becomes self-maintaining once properly established. If it is tied into your subconscious, your subconscious will keep it up so you do not have to consciously maintain it all the time. The subconscious maintains the shields and links them to an energy source.
The Spirit Layer
The spirit layer gets to choose and act. Once fire, water, earth, and air stabilize, it helps form the black ring. It can simultaneously burn, redirect or erode, resist, and deflect, intelligently responding to intent spikes.
It should be subconsciously programmed to respond only to things that carry hostile intent toward you. Negative energy sent your way would trigger it.
It intelligently selects what to respond to. Because it is your energy, some of your own understanding goes into it. It can misfire, but it usually does not.
Linking the Elements to Larger Sources
You want to link the elemental layers to the planets or larger elemental correspondences if you can: ocean to water, atmosphere to air, Sun to fire, and Earth to earth.
The four elemental layers are not just closed batteries, although you can add batteries. In this system they are anchored to large external correspondences: fire to the Sun, water to the oceans, air to the atmosphere, and earth to the Earth itself.
When I connect fire to the Sun, I visualize a conduit between them, declare the correspondence with intent, and draw energy through it with my will. Anything that establishes the connection clearly can work.
Aether: The Fifth Element
Aether itself is the fifth element. The four links provide enormous, conceptually simple reservoirs, while intent is enough to establish the connection.
The four are then merged into Aether. After that, the elemental layers are recreated and linked into the complete pentagram shield.
The fifth shield is somewhat intelligent and guides and controls the other four once you make them. In total, the process creates nine rings.
When the turbulent mixture finally settles into a black ring, that transformation itself is the sign that Aether has formed. It is the visual representation of successful fusion.
An Advanced Question
Someone once asked me: “If I became proficient enough, could I theoretically begin directly with Aether, or is going through fire, water, earth, and air necessary because those four are what teach or construct the Aether layer?”
I had to stop and try that. The answer, at least from that attempt, is that it makes a different shape and then splits into a set of multiple revolving rings.
Further research is needed, I think.
Conclusion
And that is how to make my pentagram shield.