Wilhelm Reich was a German psychoanalyst, rising to prominence in the 1920s, whose writings within that field on the formation of character are still influential. But it's for the innovations that led to his departure from psychoanalysis that he's most well-known. The Freudian concept of repression, as far as Reich was concerned, wasn't psychological; it was bodily. Reich discovered his patients' mental state improved when he used physical massage to relax areas of tension in the body. He also noticed how the ability to enjoy full and satisfying orgasms had a direct bearing on mental health.

These discoveries, combined with Reich's sincere commitment to socialist ideals (he was a pioneer in offering free psychoanalytic treatment to working-class patients), resulted in a unique therapeutic approach that treats mind and body as a single entity. For Reich, the healthy orgasmic functioning of the individual has a direct bearing not only upon physical and mental health, but upon moral and political health as well. His criticisms of Nazism as a contemptible symptom of sexual repression and orgasmic frustration might be read as a hilarious satire – if they weren't so serious, that is, and on the whole true.

Reich has the unfortunate distinction of having been persecuted by both fascists and communists during his lifetime. Fleeing the Nazis, he relocated to the USA, but even here there was no escape from persecution. During the 1950s he was literally hounded to death by the McCarthyist regime.

Towards the end of his career, Reich's ideas took on a cosmic twist, as if – not content with linking mind to body to society – he wanted to include the universe as well. Reich advanced the idea that health at all levels was the expression of two types of universal energy: one positive, which promoted life and big orgasms; and one negative, which led to death and horrible diseases, such as cancer.

These views led to Reich's invention of some intriguing contraptions: the Orgone Accumulator, a sort of cupboard with a seat that supposedly bathed the person inside with positive energy; and the Cloudbuster, a large thing with a pointy tube that could be aimed at the sky to make rain.

Unfortunately for those people who would like to write off Reich as insane, the Orgone Accumulator seemed to cure the occasional person of cancer; and the Cloudbuster, in one famous incident with multiple witnesses, seemed to produce rain in the middle of a desert.

Reich's ideas had a major influence on the hippies during the 60s, and have left a subtle but discernible mark on certain strands of contemporary occultism, through the work of writers who were part of that generation, such as Christopher S. Hyatt and Robert Anton Wilson.

But my reason for this preamble is that at the weekend I got my hands on some orgonite and have begun an experiment.

Pucks of orgonite. Designed to be buried in soil.

Orgonite is the stuff from which the walls of an Orgone Accumulator is made. It absorbs negative energy and pumps out positive energy in its place. Mark Bennett, the person who produced the sample that I was given, has been encouraging people to bury samples in allotments and gardens to observe its effects on plant-growth. The effects of orgonite on Bennett's plants have typically seen a threefold increase in size.

Searching the web revealed to me a whole subculture of orgonite usage. Neo-Reichian warriors across the western world are engaging in what they call 'gifting'. This involves placing orgonite, or other kinds of Reichian devices, in locations designed to counteract the negative energy of mobile-phone masts, toxic industrial plants, or military research sites.

So what exactly is this orgonite stuff? Well, don't get too excited: it's a mixture of resin and metal shavings, sometimes with a crystal embedded inside. The fundamental principle is the mixture of organic (resin) and inorganic (metal) materials: this is what pulls the negative energy in and pumps the positive out. Oh – and it never runs down, by the way. Orgonite just keeps giving and giving, presumably until it falls apart.

This is all fine by me – as are the writings of Reich – apart from one thing: the subtle yet inescapable materialism of this view. Are we really to suppose it is the physical presence of a lump of aluminium and resin that exerts a causal influence upon the growth of plants?

Maybe. But this is what my present experiment hopes to establish, because although Mark Bennett suggests we should compare the growth of our orgonite-assisted plants against a non-orgonite control, I think we have to be on the lookout for a third factor: magic.

How can we be sure that the Neo-Reichian warriors aren't simply engaged in sorcery, rather than the deployment of a specific technology? How can we be sure that the increase in plant-growth isn't due to acausal (i.e. magical) rather than causal factors? Given that no one is putting forward a theory to explain precisely how orgonite creates its supposed effect, I don't think this is too insane a question.

The magical pot, with bind-rune for prodigious growth.

I don't have a garden, but I do have a tiny balcony where I grow a few pots of salad leafs and root vegetables. So I've taken three roughly same-sized pots, sowed them with rocket seeds. In the base of one is the organite. The second pot, my control, contains nothing special. The third pot, however, contains a sigil (a bind-rune), which was the outcome of a magical ritual to make the seeds in the pot manifest prodigious growth.

Apparently, the orgonite casts its influence over a radius of approximately ten feet. That would embrace the whole of my little balcony. However, the effect supposedly tails off across distance, so by placing the orgonite sample at one end, and the control and magical samples at the opposite end, it should still be possible to observe any differences in yield.

So which one is going to win? Will it be the orgonite / subtle materialist / causal pot? Or the magical / acausal pot? Or maybe rocket seeds just want to be left in peace, and it'll be the control that wins. Stand by for the results in a few weeks!