This article was written with the intent of teaching about harmful magick like unethical vampirism and other forms of harm. I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular or identifying any particular group as a source of problems; however, people new to the spiritual path have the right to know what dangers may exist when they turn to spirituality.

I hope that anyone reading this page understands that there are good people and there are bad people in everything around us, and that my thoughts and opinions cannot be agreeable to everyonor apply to everyone. We are all entitled to our own opinions, and readers should draw their own conclusions.

What is a Psychic Vampire?

What the heck is it? It is not what you think. It has nothing to do with biting a human or animal. In fact, it is not physical at all. It can be a form of mind control or feeding of another person’s mind, grounding a group's excess energy and or sending energies with harmful intentions. It can be a form of mentally abuse if used unethically.

I must add here that NOT all psychic vamps are harmful. In fact there can be a "code of ethics" involving this subject. One thing I have recently learned about psychic vampires is that most of them have no intention of harming anyone. There are good and bad within ALL belief systems. It depends upon the intentions of the magician, the individual or psychic person.

There can be useful aspects to the psychic vamping. Suppose a group of people in a club are dancing a lot. Can you imagine how much energy each person can generate? Now think of how much thirty people are going to create. Dancing, frolicking and raising energies can cause a lot of chaos to people who are unaware of this great energy that they created. They have no idea about grounding and centering or releasing that energy that was generated. Too much energy in one spot or one person can be very harmful to one's health. All people need to learn to ground themselves.

But a psychic vampire can take that energy that has been created and "drink" or absorb this energy to protect the unaware from the excess energies. They can then use this energy in more of a positive way; for instance, they can use it to replenish their own energy, or disperse some of the energy to sickly or elderly people who need it. The energy can then also be grounded or sent back through the ethereal realms for proper recycling.

Three Main Forms of Psychic Vampirism:

One is the ethical vampire. Two is the unethical vampire. Three is the unaware vampire. The person who is down on themselves and tends to bring everyone else down with them could be an unaware and unintentional psychic vampire. Then there may be an unethical vampire who does this with deliberately harmful intentions. You may not be able to spot unethical vampires right away, but you might be able to feel their energies across a room. These types of people may appear uncouth; they may also talk a lot of nonsense about what they can do.

The ethical vampire, like the one I described above, can recycle and transfer this raw energy for the greater good. I would venture to say that most vampires who are not out to cause trouble or chaos probably do not kiss and tell about what they can do. They probably do not disclose their talents to mundane people, and rightly so.

How Do They Do It Unethically?

Have you ever felt badly drained after being around a new person? Have you ever noticed that one negative person can bring down everyone present? This could be a form of unintentional psychic vampirism. Psychic vampires may not know they are even doing it to others, but then again, some do. They can look like everyday, casually dressed people; sometimes they may be dressed in the cliché "Gothic" attire, although you cannot judge based on clothes. Someone unethical might think it is some sort of a game or like to harm other people for fun. But this can hurt another human being physically and or psychically.

Another way an unethical vamp might do this is to pretend to do other things within a group or social setting while actually pulling energy out. For instance, my friend and I were recently at a local park meeting with a prospective member of our community. While we were interviewing the prospective member, the person’s friend was pretending to be meditating off to the side of our group meeting. No one suspected anything awry. But after a few minutes had passed while my friend was asking questions, I starting feeling someone’s energy trying to tap my and my friend’s mental barrier; I immediately suspected that the outsider was the culprit. I started blocking and shielding against him. However, later this person admitted to me that he was a chaos magician of five years of study.  He was obviously pulling too much energy from my friend. And we did not need anyone else to remove any excess energy from us, as a group dancing might; we are well aware of proper grounding and centering techniques.

Some unethical ones may know there is a way to "steal" or grab thoughts from others, or to pull energy from them. This is more along the lines of mind reading, though; it isn’t that hard to do, with proper training and practice. Either way, it is unethical to tap into someone’s mind without their knowledge or permission. So beware of an unfriendly or harmful person, especially if your instinct tells you something is wrong with such a person or with his or her aura. You may want to practice working with reading auras to help determine if someone is unethical.

Psychic vampirism is very real. They are all around us at all times: some with good intentions, some with not-so-good intentions. So we need to be aware of the signs of an unethical vampire. If you feel "bad vibes", suddenly feel ill or drained of energy, and are completely healthy and not exhausted from work at the time, you might suspect psychic vampirism. But you should always review all other options mundanely, before suspecting or accusing someone of purposely draining you.

What Do the Unethical Ones Want, Anyway?

If it is done intentionally and unethically, unethical vampires may want more knowledge, they want more energy, and they may intend to harm others. It’s really hard to say exactly what they do want, since I do not practice it. But I believe that they might attack the more learned ones in a group because they may feel that they have more knowledge than the others. They also may attack the less learned people because they are easy targets. They may know they can get away with feeding from them and have the victim blame it on a mundane thing such as "I didn’t get enough sleep" or "I did too much housework today." But the truth may be that someone has psychically attacked them with harmful intentions.

Section 2

How Do I Protect Myself?


You can protect yourself against a psychic or magick attack. One way is to ground and center and block. Learn to do a LBR (lesser banishing ritual) or how to visualize a sphere of protection magick around you or a loved one. Learn to put your shields up around unknown people in unknown places. Do not suspect everyone is out to get you or cause harm or that everyone is a psychic vampire. But be aware that there are people who can do this for harm.

If you go to a meetings and gatherings of spiritual minded people, or a meet-and-greet, just keep a keen eye out for someone trying to pluck your brain! Immediately put your shields up if you feel threatened. Don’t give out your craft name or real name to anyone you do not trust or know very well. I always have a public craft name but also have a craft name only known to me and the Gods/ spirit guides.

Some people say you can cross your arms across your chest to help block an attack. I don’t know if this truly helps or not. Some other things you can do are: creating a Witches' bottle, setting up a mirror spell around your home to reflect the harmful magick., or doing a protective shielding spell. Other ways might include setting wards around your home or property. Carrying amulets or talismans is another great way too. A simple candle magick spell can be as effective in protections as well.

Last but not least, if you really believe someone is harming you or your family and you know who this person or entity is for sure, then do a full banishing against it or them. There are many ways to protect you; it only requires study, action, and will.

The best way is to study up on the subject of protection magick and to practice shielding a lot. One book on the market right now is The Witches Shield from Christopher Penczak (Llewellyn Publishing), which I highly recommend, along with its companion CD. I have also recently bought Silver's Spells for Protection for my wife. You may also want to buy or borrow books that deal with psychic vampirism and read them yourself to better understand the techniques and theories of this subject. The best way of defense is learning the offensive aspect of protective magic. However, you can also runInternet searches for protective magick and shielding. If you follow the Wiccan Rede and or Karmic balance you will not harm the other person, but rather send them loving energy back instead so they may see their errors.

What Are the Other Harmful Things to Watch For?

Astral beings can attack you as well through psychic means. Using a divination board or oracle to communicate with the spirits can be dangerous if you do not know how to correctly use them and understand working with entities. During astral traveling or in dream states you could have an astral nasty trying to tag along with you in hopes of coming back to our mundane middle world. This is why you would want to cleanse yourself and ground and center the energy that accumulates during ritual, astral work or soul journeying. Keep in mind that like attracts like in the magickal (spirit) world, as it does with magnets. You do not want harmful astral baggage lingering around your home or yourself.

Harmful spirits and shadow spirits most likely develop from within your own household. Fighting, arguments and feelings of stress can create an energy ball of harmful magick or power beyond your wildest dreams. Remember the like-attracts-like axiom? If you and a spouse or partner have regular fights or live too-stressful lives, you probably have already started making this harmful spirit grow. It can feed off negativity that you create. So be sure to banish inappropriate energy and cleanse your house quite often if there are problems in your household.

At some point in your life you may also end up angering another Witch, pagan, group or person for some reason. This person or persons may have a tie with you that needs to be severed--that is, the astral cords that tie you together should be cut. If you find yourself in this sort of situation, then you should cut this tie magickally through spell/ritual as well as mundanely removing this person from your life. If you feel this person is sending you grief, negativity or harm, then it may be necessary to go one step further and make a Witches' bottle or other magickal warding against this Witch or person or influence.

Curses and the Evil Eye

Be also careful not to let any magickal person get a tag, lock or something similar from you if you feel they might use it against you . . . which brings me to briefly mention the evil eye and curses. Many people of old believed that curses or hexes were placed upon them by Witches or warlocks for some reason. Most of the time they were not victims of a curse at all; it could be a cold, or just a bad time in their lives. The evil eye was believed mainly in Italian folklore, which, like some other traditions, taught that if an evil Witch gave you the "evil eye," you could become very ill or even die. So many people wore a sprig of bay leaf around their necks to prevent this from happening or hung garlic to ward against vampires. Many people often believed these superstitions to be true.

The Shadow Self


You may also meet your shadow self at some point in your studies and otherworld travels. This other self may be the negative/harmful and unhappy feelings of your other self. All your negativity, anger, frustrations, jealousy and self-doubt are food for this shadow self. It has been developing for a long time and may have become very powerful. Don’t let it rule or control your life. You can’t banish it totally and you shouldn’t anyway because it is a darker part of you.

You would be better off partnering up, or coming to terms, with your shadow self. Make friends with it and try to work along with it. This should be done for other obvious reasons, for instance, to fix mundane problems you harbor in your mind or body. You want to have the upper hand of your shadow self; if it controls you, then you will be overcome with your little problems more often. Conversely, the stronger your will becomes toward the shadow self, the healthier you will become mundanely. You may need to shield yourself from this part of you if it becomes too aggressive during your meetings with it.

Polarity

There will always be eyebrows raised when we speak of negativity or harmful magickal intentions. Many people in the magickal world do not use the word negative to reflect a harmful situation. There are differences in each use of these terms. "Negative" should not always be used to describe a harmful situation. It takes both positive and negative aspects to create a union or whole, cosmologically speaking. It is best described like the yen and yang train of thought.

Many things in our world deal with equal and opposite forms of themselves, as with white and black colors, day and night, dry and wet. We would not know the difference of being wet if we did not know of being dry. So negative should be thought of in the terms of opposite of positive, as it is in electrical circuits. Whether or not we are talking about energies or mundane everyday life habits, we should try to refrain from using the word "negative" in this aspect. It is best to use the word "harmful" instead. This will save an argument in the long run too.