Forget the Garlic: An Introduction to Psychic Vampirism
By Leni Austine
You're bopping through your day in a great mood and you run into someone you know. They launch into their daily tale of woe: their job sucks, they can't get a loan, their apartment has roaches, their car's broken down, their boyfriend left them. You make sympathetic clicks with your tongue, suggestions that you know they won't follow and end with a promise that you're there for them.

Your friend walks away smiling, but you feel like you've been hit by a truck. Your good mood has evaporated. What gives?

Forget the dark brooding tormentors with fabulous clothes and perfect hair. The modern psychic vampire does not consider him/herself powerful or invincible. Far from it. They are perpetual victims and gravitate to people that further this script, either by victimizing them or by playing the role of rescuer. The psychic vampire is a flaming narcissist. They only want to be near people who can affirm their self concept as poor, suffering souls. It's all about them. (Although, to be fair, unlike Dracula, virtually all psychic vampires are unconscious of how they affect those they prey upon.)

When we play the role of victim — and I'm not talking about people who have been genuinely traumatized — we give away our power. If we feel that everyone is out to get us, we can feel justified in doing what we have to get our needs met, regardless of ethics. Since every interaction is defined as win-lose, we can only win if we screw someone else over. This attitude keeps us from taking responsibility for our lives. Everything is always someone else's fault.

Think about the people you find powerful. Not the bullies or drama queens, but people who seem to have charmed lives. Things go right for them and when they don't, they pick themselves up and move on to brighter shores. They don't play the blame game and they surround themselves with other folks who enjoy their lives and their work and make good choices when things don't work out. These folks don't envy their friends' success and they aren't surrounded by hapless losers who make them look functional in comparison.

On the other hand, psychic vampires bank on the fact that our culture doesn't teach us the skills to be powerful in our own right. They count on other people being as powerless and luckless as themselves. When we feel powerless and weak, holes open in our psychic energy field: the invisible shield that we use to separate ourselves from emotional or psychic attack. The same way that stress can deplete our physical immunity and make us susceptible to colds, so a depleted psychic shield makes us vulnerable to psychic illness. Gaps in our shield give psychic vampires a nice place to sink their fangs into. And since (unlike the mythical kind of vampire) a psychic attact leaves no visible marks, there is no rational way to say, "Hey, stop drinking me!" Any complaint makes us look crazy. So we doubt ourselves, doubt our perceptions and our psychic shield is further weakened. The cycle continues.

One simple but quite effective piece of psychic self-defense is known as shielding, a much-neglected technique in modern Pagan teaching. But shielding is actually quite important: we don't go out in nasty weather without a coat; we don't leave our homes with the door wide open. If we did, we would expect to catch a chill or come home to find the TV set had gone missing. So why, with all the stress and anxiety and downright violence filling our psychic bandwidth, should we can go into the world unprotected?

Some folks advocate what they call a "positive attitude," by which they mean that the best defense is no defense. (This is usually prefaced with a phrase like "If you think you will be attacked, you will be.") While there is truth to the idea that a certain type of psychic attack (such as societally supported curses in traditiononal cultures) depend substantially on the fear of the victim for their effect, applied to the effects of non-announced psychic attacks, this stance makes as much sense as saying a locked vehicle is an invitation to grand theft auto. We do have a hand in creating our own luck, but there are people out there who don't have our best interests at heart. It's generally believed to be easier to prevent auto theft if you lock your car. Extending the analogy, shielding is the way we do this for our psychic selves.

What about hexing? A cautionary note.
In many cultures, so-called "negative" magics — like hexing — have been and continue to be used to address perceived psychic or physical attack. Often this was because there were no other options available. In some cases, there still might not be — injustice still exists and the system doesn't work equally well for everyone - but it is fair to say that today, for most people, most of the time, there are many non-magical roads to justice. Police, courts of law and self-defense classes are only a few, and we can use these resources as our first line of defense against being victimized. Before we attempt to use "negative" magic to solve our problems, we must ask ourselves: Have we done everything humanly possible to resolve the issue? If we don't ask those questions first, any aggressive spellcasting we undertake may be useless or may create an even bigger mess.

The other danger in focusing too much on psychic attack is that of projecting our fears and personal issues onto others. Many so-called "Witch Wars" have erupted because someone accused someone else of psychic vampirism. Since there is no objective evidence of a psychic crime there's also no way to defend oneself against such charges.

Very often the people who push our buttons are mirrors for the parts of ourselves we don't like. The old adage about pointing fingers still holds true: one finger points at the one we accuse - but the other three point back at us.

Benefits of a sturdy psychic shield
A good shield emanates from our positive attitude. When a psychic vampire wants to pass along their lousy mood, our positive attitude about ourselves makes it impossible to take this on. Showing our light when they want us to feel bad makes it impossible for them to get what they want. It's like psychic aikido - using the energy of the assailant's attack to throw them off balance.

A psychic shield can be "made" of whatever material you can visualize. Some folks see it as a wet blanket that gets thrown on whatever nasty thing comes at them, while others envision a Star Trek-style force field. Still others imagine a semi-permeable membrane, like that used in dialysis - blood flows through easily but all toxic materials get filtered out. This image allows us to set the level of protection to let good things (love, lottery numbers, positive energy) through but keep out the crap. My personal favorite is an image of garage doors, slamming down around me to block the stuff I don't want. Depending on how vulnerable I feel, the "doors" can be made of white light - or solid steel.

The best part of constructing shields against psychic attack is that by developing your defenses you are increasing your self-confidence and magical skills. Keeping the "vampires" at bay is just a really cool side effect. After all, garlic is much more fun to cook with than to hang around your neck.

Leni Austine is a freelance writer, ritualist and fulltime mom who practices Santeria and Wicca in Miami, Florida.