Updated June 16, 2004
This essay has somewhat of a split personality. The diagnostic signs are more aimed at a practitioner who is trying to figure out what is going on for someone else. The defensive methods are written so that they can be given to the victim of a psychic attack as is, for immediate use. As such, the voice used in each section is a little different, so I hope the reader will bear with me as they go through each section.
From time to time people discover that they must resort to some method or other of mental or emotional protection for themselves. Sometimes they are affected by a bad atmosphere which after a time is starting to get to them. Sometimes they are associated with a person who appears to be stealing energy from them in some way, or to be acting in a fashion that may be described as psychic vampirism. More rarely, they may be the victim of a curse or spell, which, whether believed in or not by the victim, appears to be wreaking havoc in their life. In extremely rare cases, someone's life is more or less completely upended by some sort of haunting or other poltergeist type manifestation.
Fortunately, there is help. There are a number of methods available that can be used to stop the ability of negative energy to affect you. They range from simple and mild to moderately complex and very effective. Any of these can be used by anyone with sufficient motivation.
This subject has been written about before, notably by Dion Fortune in her book Psychic Self Defence. This book is wonderful. It treats this topic in great depth, and gives a good deal of background and definitions. If you need serious information about this topic, you should go buy this book.
Although some of the methods presented here are also presented by Dion Fortune, in thirty years of practical work I can also personally vouch for the fact that they do work. Our version of the Pentagram Ritual differs significantly from that given by DF, and provides a more complete symbology, as well as an invocation phase.
People come with a sort of natural immunity to psychic attack. We are living all the time on the mental and emotional planes, whether we realize it or not. We have evolved sophisticated mental and emotional mechanisms that most of the time work pretty well, and allow us to function as social and individual beings. Unfortunately, most of us are woefully uninformed about the nature of our own emotions and minds, a fact that is exploited when someone deliberately mounts a psychic attack on someone else.
This natural immunity means that the normal random mental and emotional atmosphere that everyone encounters in their daily lives usually doesn't affect them too severly. Some people are of course more sensitive than others. This is individual variance, just as people vary in their susceptibility to catching colds from each other. If you encounter someone who is very angry or agitated in your daily life, you may not be made upset yourself. On the other hand, if your own mental defenses are at a low ebb, some of the other person's mental and emotional upset may penetrate into you, and can very definitely affect you. The strength of this effect is greatly enhanced if they have a close relation to you, or if you are compelled to deal with them for very long.
Everyone has experienced this at one time or another. Exploiting this phenonomon consciously is one mode of psychic attack. Some of these methods in another context are what is known popularly as "brainwashing." Most occultists would also call it Black Magic.
We are entering an era when many people are gaining an understanding of magical and ritual methods through the growing popularity of religions such as Santeria and Wicca. By far most practictioners of either of these religions would say that the power of the Gods should not be used to harm others-- and the Wiccian Rede tells us An It Harm None Do What Ye Will-- yet, as more and more people are drawn to what is generally a good thing, there are bound to be some small number who will take good knowledge and use it for bad ends. So, the number of people who have the understanding of how to consciously mount a psychic attack is going up, as well as the will to do so.
Occult attack often produces a constellation of peculiar symptoms: extraordinarily vivid dreams, especially ones in which one is confronted by some person or agency which feels somehow external to you, and in which doom is forcast for you, and which are filled with a sense of foreboding. It is a particular feature of these dreams that they tend to repeat again and again with the same, or nearly the same features, in marked contrast to the ususal dream life of the victim. Sometimes maniacal laughter is heard, sometimes vivid colors are seen, sometimes it is a certain scene filled with dread.
Sometimes there will be a general sense of foreboding which accumulates with no clear cause-- this can occur if the barrier between the unconscious and the conscious in the victim is dense, and the signals coming through are therefore heavily filtered. The unconscious picks up the negative vibration readily, but has difficulty passing it onto the consciousness clearly. This is why the dreams are often the place of first disturbance, as during dreaming is when the barriers between conscious and unconscious are thinest. As the situation advances, sleep becomes disturbed, and the waking life suffers the consequences. There can be signs of nervous exhaustion, such as jumpiness, irritability, muscle spasms and twitches. As things progress, the dream contents can intrude into the waking life, with audible and sometimes visable hallucinations. At this point, fear and paranoia are a real concern, and need to be managed.
Sometimes the victim of an occult attack has been told that one is being carried out. This is part of the strategy of certain kinds of psychic attack; although it does make determining if an attack is in progress simpler. The victim's own state of mind can be turned against them if fear can be generated, which will give the attack more power over them. If this is the case, then it is very important to give the subject the idea that they can in fact defend themselves against the attack, for belief in this matter grants genuine power. On the Inner Planes, it is force of will that is paramount, and here belief seals will.
One of the difficulties confronting any worker in this field is how to tell the difference between a genuine psychic attack and an ordinary neurosis or even psychosis, since they can display similar features. Usually the difference can be teased out in the story told by the subject. A genuine psychic attack will not have the usual neurotic projections or distortions, the "emotional plague" that so often colors and weighs down the daily life of the normal person.
A real psychic attack will be associated with a certain person or relationship, or occasionally a place or a thing, in the subject's life. If the association is with a person or thing, there will be some sort of history that makes sense connected with the relationship or object.
There will be some sort of motivation that can be discerned in the details-- psychic attacks are hard work (conscious ones, at any rate.) No one will undertake one for what they consider to be trivial reasons. The various facts of the case will fit together in some way to explain why the attack is taking place.
There may well be a sensible 'aura' about an object or place. If you have the ability and the access, it is a good idea to try and psychometrize the object or place, to literally try and feel it out and see what impressions you get. Of course, you need to be careful of your own defenses in that case!
One such object in my own experience, a Tarot deck being used as the locus of a rather nasty case of psychic vamperism, had the most remarkable ability to cast a cold draft of air down from it at all times. Normally this is a sign of an Etheric energy drain, which was consistent with the story that came with the deck. During the course of destroying the deck, I drew banishing pentragrams on each card with salt water that had been charged. This of course, made the deck somewhat wet. We decided to burn the deck in a magic circle, which necessitated drying it out. It took a kilowatt of power for over an hour in a microwave oven (which astounded the owner of the oven-- the deck just was not that big or that wet) to dry it out. I'll bet the owner of the other linked deck got really warm that day!
If psychometry is not available, or is uncertain, then Divination by the method of your choice is a good fallback. A solid Tarot or I Ching reading can be invaluable in determining whether an attack is occuring, and if so, what its nature might be. A simple five or seven card yes / no - up / down spread can be very insightful on the question of whether an attack is taking place.
Of course anyone who tries to diagnose a psychic attack must themselves be reasonably familiar with the workings of "emotional plague," and be relatively free of it themselves. Practically, this means that they have themselves undergone an extensive process of "magical annealing" probably over many years, and also most likely including some good old fashioned psychotherapy, in order to arrive at a reasonably healthy place, psychologically speaking, before they are able to undertake this kind of work.
There are many paths that allow this sort of attainment, including A Course In Miracles, A Treatise On White Magic, Wicca, Yoga, Qigong, Reiki, Taoism, Ritual Magic, and psychotherapy, pursued deeply enough, and many other paths.
And, of course, the clearest sign that an occult attack has taken place is that the occult remedies undertaken to cure it will be effective. No one's schizophrenic psychosis will be cured by cutting up onions and leaving them in a dish while they sleep! Or by casting a magic circle, for that matter, although certain forms of grounding meditation could be very helpful...
This is a very simple method which can be employed any time.
Obtain some onions or garlic (big yellow onions are good, or healthy heads of garlic.) Before you go to bed, cut them into quarters, put them on plates, and set them around your sleeping area, or wherever you are experiencing trouble. They tend to absorb negative influences. Gather them up in the morning, or twelve hours later, and take them out of the house or apartment, and throw them away. Never eat them afterwards! Always use fresh ones every night.
You can do the same with dishes of vinegar. It is even better if you can get some camphor and dissolve it in the vinegar.
If the onions or garlic turn black overnight, this shows that negative influences were absorbed.
Dion Fortune tells us that dilute solutions of nitric acid may also be used. That seems to be running more of a risk for no good reason, since much safer materials are available (vinegar, onions,) even though a dilute solution is to be used, although the efficacy of the nitric acid is reputed to be stronger than onions, garlic, or vinegar.
One of the points of this method is to prevent materialization by absorbing etheric force.
Begin with the affirmation / formula:
"Out of the Darkness, Let the Light Arise!
Let the White Brilliance of the Divine Spirit Descend!"
You should then say or think forcefully the sacred word "OM" as you visualize white light descending and illuminating you and the space around you. Feel, as best as you can (and it gets better with practice,) the word VIBRATE throughout your chest and body. Imagine that this VIBRATION extends throughout the space you are protecting, causing the light you have drawn down to pulsate in dazzling fashion. This is the Light of the Gods, pure and protective.
If you have studied any Buddest or Hindu philosophy, you know that the Holy word OM is considered the Sound that creates the Universe. There is more to this than a mere myth. Even were it to have started out that way, the fact that millions of people over thousands of years have used OM literally billions and billions of times in meditation have given it real power. In esoteric terms, we say that the thought form behind the word has been given gigantic potency by all of this effort and attention.
By your use of the word in this way, you tap into this energy and potential. would add that you also contact genuine spiritual powers who seek to help humankind. Their energy raises your vibration above that of the lower astral, where the people who are attacking you must operate. In time, you will be able to protect yourself by the use of the Light and the OM alone.
Then do a meditation where you visualize that you build, brick by brick, a protective wall all around your bed (or wherever you are.) As you do this, make each brick glow in your mind's eye with bright blue light, and KNOW that you are safe inside the protective wall. KNOW that no negative influence will reach you; KNOW that any negative influence that attempts to disturb you WILL BE REFLECTED BACK TO ITS SOURCE. Make the wall seal under you and above you. KNOW that the bright blue light is the protective light of the Great Gods, who are ON YOUR SIDE.
You can repeat this meditation when you wake up, so that you carry the protective wall with you all day.
There is a downside to this meditation: it tends to seal you off from outside influences so effectively that it can ultimately be isolating.
A variation of this method is to imagine yourself protected by plate glass, which insulates your personal aura against any intrusion by outside forces. This can be done if you are confronted by someone in person who is trying to dominate or intimidate you. As you imagine yourself surrounded by the thick plate glass, say to yourself that your antagonist cannot hurt you; that you cannot hear them; that all of their efforts to affect you bounce off of the plate glass wall harmlessly.
This method can be made more effective by using the above affirmation and invocation of the White Light, and the use of the OMs. If necessary, they can be done in silence mentally. With practice, this can be done almost instantaneously.
Another method that can be used to resist the influence of someone trying to dominate or intimidate is simply to avoid eye contact. Much magnetism is emanated by the eyes, a fact well known to both the Qigong therapist and those attempting to dominate another by force of will. Refusing to make contact with the eyes can effectively derail one of the main routes into the subtle body.
A second method to resist domination is to close the auric circuit of the body. Fold the hands together over the solar plexis. Hold the elbows in a relaxed position close to the body. Place the legs and feet together also in a relaxed posture. If you know Qigong mudras, "Holding the bone in a quiet room," is an effective hand position.
Holding a posture like this closes several of the main etheric circuits in the body, preventing entrance of external forces. The chakras in the hands are connected together with the solar plexis / middle burner, protecting them. Similarly, the chakras in the feet connect together, sealing off the lower part of the body aura. This combined with the intention of protection make entry into the aura quite difficult.
The Greater Ritual of the Pentagram is the foundation ritual of Western magic. It is one of the fundamental ways to form Sacred Space in Western Esotericism. Properly done, it is virtually impregnable.
The Greater Pentagram of course, did not originate with our group. Many other people have given versions of it in their published works over the years, including Israel Regardie and Dion Fortune. Our version is based on the Greek Pantheon, and was written by our Order's founder, Lucifer. If you're curious about the real history of the name Lucifer, check out this reference.
Lucifer gives a very complete explanation of the Pentagram rite. Our version gives both a Banishing phase, and an Invocation phase.
Just the Banishing phase can be used to create a safe place to weather a psychic attack. Use of the Invocation phase strengthens the magic circle, and heightens the vibration, which can be used as a restorative to strenghten one's own health and peace of mind.
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