This is the spirit realm. Right here, right now. That is the great secret of the lower kabbalistic triad. The point of surviving on this plane is imbuing matter with your spirit by participating with life. How you do so makes all the difference. (1)
Dion Fortune writes, in her novel Psychic Self Defence, in 1930, “Times, points of view, and fashions change, but never principles. Those who have formed the impression they are suffering from some form of psychic attack should take note of this. In the end, isn’t your own projection simply exaggerated into a dramatic scenario? For the ultimate answer to most of life’s problems almost inevitably lies with oneself.” (2)
How do we know we are in control of our own spirit? How do we know we are acting for our own best interest? And when we feel that we are fully our empowered selves, what does it feel like? Many New Agers believe that they can use their intuition to find truth. But how do they know they are not being co-opted into believeing things that are incorrect? And if we are the subject of psychic attack or subliminal control, what does that look like?
Fortune describes many signs and symptoms of psychic attack. The summary of symptoms is lethargy, sudden exhaustion, disinterest in previous activities, nightmares, irrational fear, fear of ridicule, seclusion, vertigo, shock leading to memory loss, forgetfulness, sudden personality change, mental breakdown, physical illness. There can also be odd smells around the victim such as sulphur or burning. (2)
Basically, Fortune suggests that psychic attack can appear as mental breakdown, depression, and even physical illness. Also, those with previous imprints of PTSD are more easily influenced by attack because they have previous energetic holes in their fields, or access points in their personalities. In other words, in humans, psychological patterns are often easy to reprogram as behavioural psychologist Skinner ascertained with his theories of positive reinforcement and radical behaviourism in relation to physical elements. Humanistic psychology concomitantly reinforced this through the mental and unconscious realms. Tools exist for psychological reprogramming in both the physical level of positive reinforcement and the non physical plane of intention and concentration.
I have participated in ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru with people who believed they were being psychically attacked, and others who believed they were formerly or currently possessed. Psychic attack is a sort of blindsided attack on the Free Will of the individual through subliminal or magical means. Usually, it happens to a person within a closed social circle, with a sense of tension and confinement. The isolation or seeming psychological isolation serves to create additional stress which leads to further weakness within the mind. The attacker may also be a percieved authority figure, as in the everpresent case of dueling brujo shamans in the jungle of Peru.
I have known a few people who described themselves as sociopaths. What I witnessed was that they observed many of the subtle energetics and psychological patterns that I notice as an intuitive reader, but instead of working in the field of healing, they worked strategically to manipulate people through playing off of their psychological wounds. They operated under a sort of constant state of subtle psychic attack by doing so. In effect, they skillfully manipulated an individual’s weakness and turned it against him. Sociopaths have no empathy, so this sort of psychological strategy is second nature to them. One could argue that in our modern society of advertising and global corporate capitalism, psychic attack is more common than ever, on a subtle persistent level. It is certainly true that mental illness and chronic fatigue are more common than at any other time in known history.
Fortune uses the examples of victims of psychic attack being duped through fixed gazes, repeated demeaning phrases, and social isolation. The psychic weight begins to wear them down over time. Imagine a woman in an abusive relationship with a charismatic man. She starts out beautiful and radiant, but a year later, is clearly exhausted and tormented. This is a form of psychic attack. However, a more serious psychic attack takes the form of intentional magical attack. Fortune refers to the comparison of prayer and sorcery. While prayer is considered mainstream and acceptable, the existence of sorcery still gets called into question. She writes, “There is no essential difference between sticking pins in a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny the reality and potency of the other.”(2)
She says that psychic attack works through the attack of the etheric double of the victim. This entity is common in certain animistic practices around the world. For instance, some tribes in Papau New Guinea used to make small figurines of themselves to represent themselves in the dream world, or the other world where the energy body traveled. In Taoist medicine, they refer the etheric soul of the liver as the Hun, and speak of it traveling outside of the body during dreams. Attacking this energetc version of the person is thought to affect them on a soul level.
In Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism, there is an idea of the Qliphoth, the disembodied energies of the anti-tree of life. Qliphoth means shell or husk. These energies seek to inhabit people by manipulating their egoic desires. The qliphoth feed the viral meme of the overactive ego and the void of its hungry ghost can never be filled. (3) The qliphothic energies are the sort that encourage vampiric psychic attack through persuading the ego into battle.
Eduardo Duran writes of ancient Native American theory in Buddha in Redface, “That’s how it happened. We forgot that we are a part of the dreamtime. Many of the dream healers began to think that the dream was a part of them and not the other way around. At this point, they began to be hurtful in the dream. They started using power in an egocentric manner in order to gain material wealth and favors. They started using the wrong type of concentration; they started to rely on their sense of self, which doesn’t exist anyway.” (4)
Psychic attack works by manipulating the psychological wounds and egoic desires of the victim in such a way as to leave them parasitically sucked dry. However, this psychic vampirism is only possible because the victim has an energy leak in the etheric double which allows it. Fortune argues that the gateway to manipulation or healing of such issues always lies in two realms – survival and the sex drive. Usually, the victim of psychic attack is either trapped in an isolating scenario afraid that they may not physically or financially survive, or they are in some sort of sexual bind with the attacker, or both. These two gateways to the psyche are extremely powerful and can have a hypnotizing affect on an individual, especially if they have previous psychological issues which are directly related to the scenario.
This ties into the two transcendental paths – that of healing, initiation, and knowledge, and that of strategic sorcery and egoic deception. Again, these are evident on personal levels as well as societal levels. It is hard to imagine how an entire society could be duped into paying taxes which largely feed the war machine in distant countries, and leave their own children uneducated and without health care. This is also a form of psychological manipulation on a massive scale. It operates by hypnotizing and intentionally entraining people into believing in consumer culture and expansion despite the obvious failings.
The results of psychological manipulation are hysteria, lethargy, insanity. It is difficult to tell the difference between psychic attack and individual breakdown. One man I met claimed that a shaman had psychically attacked him for leaving his tutelage for another. Shortly thereafter, he developed a severe case of malaria which nearly killed him, and recurred for a year, as well as an inability to enjoy or tolerate ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru for a year long period, until another shaman was able to successfully remove the black magic.
I also experienced psychic attack. I began having repeating disturbing nightmares of the attacker who was a skilled ceremonial magician. I could not focus, was depressed and frazzled. I visited two different intuitives, both of whom immediately, with no information, told me that I was being psychically attacked and accurately described the attacker. I went to extreme ends to remove the cords to the attacker, which of course, were my own egoic flaws, admittedly related to my concepts of desire and attachments to certain styles of survival.
If you have valid reason to believe you may be psychically afflicted by a skilled attacker, there are certain things you can do. First, sever your connection with this person. This may seem obvious, but in many cases, there is a very heightened and magnetic energy between the victim and attacker which is difficult to disengage. Because there is also often a shared secret or exclusive quality to the personal connection between the two, it is difficult to walk away from the bind. Second, develop a routine of eating healthy food, getting exercise, and good sleep. This builds the energetic field of the victim so that it is harder to access them in other realms. Try to avoid dissassociative states of alcohol and other drugs which leave the energy field blasted open in an unguarded state. These states also open up the victim’s latent unresolved emotions concerning the attack and can easily create imbalance. If counseling helps, do it. Surround yourself with positive influences and uplifting friends – it wears off.
The concept of spiritual contracts also applies. Sometimes it feels nearly impossible to disengage from clearly toxic or charismatic people. In those cases, there is always an energy that binds the personalities to one another in a vampiric way. Intuitives call that energetic cord a spiritual contract. When viewed in the light of spiritual healing, this contract karmicly exists so that you fully learn the lesson of a psychological pattern. We all know people with strange patterns in their lives. I once had a girlfriend who got arrested and beaten by police repeatedly for strange unassuming reasons. It would happen even when she seemed to do little to provoke it. In that case, she had a longstanding issue with authority that was easily triggered, provoked, and attracted by subtle cues. In the case of psychic attack, there is always a spiritual contract or negative belief system in place that perpetuates the sort of hypnotizing dissonance of the relationship. Unraveling this prolonged entrapment is karmic and can heal the ego-dominated schism that may repeat endlessly until you do so.
Spiritual practice such as meditation and yoga help defend against psychic attack because they unravel psychological issues as well as help the practitioner develop an impenetrable neutral aura in the face of suffering, desire, and survival. “There is nothing in this world or the next that a hypnotist can do to a person who keeps his nerve and won’t pay attention.” (2)
Protection against psychic attack is merely any exercise that strengthens your energetic boundaries, sense of self, and individual spiritual connection. For instance, any form of practiced concentration, such as meditation, strengthens the individual psyche. Prayer, ritualistic banishing or creating a helpful bond with any variety of “unseen forces,” such as angels or guides, helps because it builds energetic immunity. Creating a large and varied social network prevents the isolation and confinement common in successful psychic attack. Being cautious with altered states in private and in public and keeping your body in good physical shape both create a stronger energetic field which is harder to penetrate.
There are also techniques which can be used, of course, for both healing or sorcery, that you can utilize to ward off attack and strengthen your field. Simple exercises of prayer or “relating to unseen forces,” trance states, energized suggestion through incantation or hypnotism, distance healing visualization optionally with reiki symbols (both personal and interpersonal), invocation of universal healing currents such as the Green Tara or Buddha or Jesus, calling on teachers within a spiritual lineage both vocally and in prayer, going to power places on earth such as Machu Pichu or other sacred sites, and using all five senses to focus your intention at once through energized subliminal association are all effective methods.
Having energetic holes which attract certain psychological and physical patterns in life is common in people who are psychically attacked. They can remove the attack and regain better psychological balance than before by recalibrating their energetic fields. This is similar to an imbalance in gut bacteria. When certain parasites in our guts overgrow, we become ill and need to rebalance our intestinal flora. The same can be true of our energetic fields and psychological imprints. Evil forces do not exist on their own accord, only evil intentions – evil is relative to the human condition and interpretation. Although a tornado kills people, it is not inherently evil. Evil is a matter of perspective, balance, and intention.
A shaman friend of mine once told me that there are three types of demons: 1.) The kind we laugh off because they are irrelevant and cannot hurt us. 2. ) The kind we overwhelm with unconditional love. 3.) The kind we must charge and fight. The results are always the same when we succeed in these demonic battles – all becomes one! We succeed by overcoming demons and either identifying with them and healing them, or else transmuting them. This is because the demons that most relate to the wounds in us are directly connected to our own egos. Therefore, ironically, protection against psychic attack can also take the form of ego dissolution or ego transcendence.
In Dispelling Wetiko, Paul Levy writes of a nonlocal collective psychosis that is overcoming mankind. The term “wetiko” is a Cree Native American word for the diabolical egoic spirit that has been terrorizing mankind for some 2000 years. The Cree believe that this evil egoic spirit stems from another dimension and controls people through evil acts and intentions. (5)
Likewise, psychic attack is based on the egoic needs of the attacker taking root in a victim’s psychological weak spot. It operates by feeding off the fear of the victim and keeping them caught in a cage which stems from their own blindspots. It is a sort of invisible bind that causes the afflicted to disempower themselves in the long run, through the weakening of their self-confidence and faith.
This is where Timothy Leary’s Game Theory comes in handy. In psychological and paranormal concerns, it matters where we put our belief. It often takes time for those dabbling in intuition and the paranormal to fully understand the balance of good and evil and the reciprocity of their actions in the equilibrium of the homeostatic universe. This is why mystery schools with levels of initiation exist. There are very good reasons for the shamanic concept of purity of intention. “In a world of matter and energy, intention is everything.”
Through the use of LSD, Leary developed a theory of behavioural psychology that he called “Game Theory.” It has to do with creating a distance from our intimacy with our own egos by moving into the space of Sacred Witness. Shamans worldwide have been doing this for eons in their healing circles. For instance, in Tibet, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is traditionally read to the dead for many days after they pass, in order to remind the dying spirit of the teachings so that they may pass through the demonic Bardo state and be liberated from attachment to the ego, post-mortem. This is a perfect example of Leary’s Game Theory in ancient indigenous terms.
By removing attachment to the personal ego drives (mainly of sex and survival), and creating distance from the idea of the Self, one can transcend the energetic body and move closer to the field of unity consciousness while living. This is the goal of many schools of Tibetan Buddhism – to have a constant awareness of the uncertainty of the hour of death and to develop a keen sense of ego dissolution and connection with Source energy beyond the Self.
In relation to psychic attack, Fortune writes of the importance of the etheric double because, “the aura is always pierced from within.” (2) In other words, there is always a corresponding belief that allows the psychic attack to be effective. This is why treatment of psychic attack must be specifically tailored to the psyche of the individual. Although there are certain helpful guidelines, the details of the egoic storyline can be important for unwinding of the negative imprint and forming an embodied awareness of the lesson in the wound. When this cycle is complete, the psychic hooks detaches and the particular Bardo demon can no longer phase the self- actualized ego.
Again, it matters where you put your belief. Recently I read an article on a man’s ayahuasca experiences. At one point, he decides that the ritual of the ceremony is a meaningless structure, realizing, “There is no tradition/ritual/ceremony/belief system that is imperically valuable, necessary, or valid outside of the psychosocial context in which it is supported.” Instead of illuminating the essence of the ceremony, he revealed an element of himself – an unwillingness to meaningfully participate and imbue his life with intention. (6) He then continues to do ceremony in an effort to learn about this “naked” awarness, stripped of unquestioning belief. Leary also implies the importance of this suspended belief and playfulness with reality in explaining his Game Theory.
“When we move from behaviour-science to behaviour-change, we see that baseball experts have devised another remarkable set of techniques for bringing about the results which they and their subjects look for: coaching. Baseball men understand the necessity for sharing time and space with their learners, for setting up role models, for feedback of relevant information to the learner, for endless practice of the desired behaviour… Baseball is a clean and successful game because it is seen as a game. The nationality game is treason not to play (and treason to play), the racial game, the religious game, and the most treacherous and tragic game of all, the game of individuality, the ego game.” (7)
Leary formed a psychedelically influenced theory of psychology with Game Theory which centers around integrating psychedelic states of ego dissolution and unity consciousness and longterm behavioural change. Transcending and refiguring the ego attachments to our two fundamental drives of sex and survival, in combination with spiritual experience in a safe space with Sacred Witness, inevitably results in the removal of psychic attack and hooks because it creates both empathic understanding and a sense of cellular spiritual transcendence beyond the faculty of the imagination.
This is why when Leary gave Ginsberg LSD, he tried to call President Kennedy to persuade him and Krushchev to try it. He was convinced that it could save the world through ego dissolution.
Leary suggests there are cultural myths in place that imprint the collective with limiting beliefs about themselves. He implies that cultural creatives access visionary states and are able to transcend limiting myths, by becoming more psychologically free and breaking cultural and personal imprints which held them back from their full potential. Perhaps the idea of psychic attack feeds off these culturally placed limiting myths as well as personal ego traps. It may be that the keys to transcending psychic attack are physiological brain changes led by such visionary creative deviance.
“If you are in an ethnocentric stage of development and you have a unity state experience of being one with everything, you might interpret that as an experience of oneness with Jesus and conclude that nobody can be saved unless they accept Jesus as their personal savior. If you are at an egocentric stage and have the same experience, you might believe that you yourself are Jesus. If you are at an… integral stage… you are likely to conclude that you and all sentient beings without exception are one in the spirit.” – Ken Wilbur (8)
These developmental psychological stages could explain why one person is susceptible to psychic attack while another is not. Again, it matters where you put your belief and how you feel you are related to the universe as a whole.
Leary writes, “Hatred of the creative is a phobic taboo against change originating in the Prometheus Myth.” He calls it “cultural distrust of the innovator” as neccessitated by a society made strong by hierarchical authority. Prometheus brings fire to the people yet ends up being tortured for eons in return. It may be that the ability to reweave physiological cellular and psychological imprints is the key to avoiding psychic attack and promoting self actualization. (7)
Psychic attack is the individual reflection of the ongoing astral battle in the form of the struggles in our collective unconscious for balance, and the struggles in our political, economic, environmental, and sexual ideas for balance and awakening on global level. It is as if sacrificing a piece of the Self for the whole is valuable suffering when knowledge is gained. These lessons are applied to the collective through the awakened individual ego.
Psychic attack is a real as any other invisible illness. Chronic fatigue syndrome, paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder are all diseases of vague origin. What matters is your ability to change the game with enthusiastic conviction and redefine yourself in relation to the universe.
Works Cited
(1) Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabbalah. Aziloth Books, 2012.
(2) Fortune Dion. Psychic Self Defense. Weiser Books, revised edition, 2011. Original, 1930.
(3)http://www.myoccultcircle.com/on-the-nature-of-the-qlippoth/ Qliphoth.
(4) Duran, Eduardo. Buddha in Redface. Universe Publishers, 2003.
(5) Levy, Paul. Dispelling Wetiko. North Atlantic Books, 2013.
(6) Jesso, James. “Ayahuasca: Not your Typical Trip Report.”
http://psypressuk.com/2014/02/03/ayahuasca-and-i-not-your-typical-trip-report-part-1-by-james-w-jesso/
(7) Leary, Timothy & Potter, Beverly.Change Your Brain. Ronin Publishers, 2000.
(8) Fadiman, James. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide. Park street Press, 2011.
Additional Resources
~Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Image by Eric Scroggs, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
