Psychic Protection

This is Britain's bestselling book on the subject, now in its 11th reprint. Practical and inspiring.

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Contents of the book
1 The background
2 Earth, body and breath
3 Protection
4 Cleansing
5 Blessing
6 Happiness, confidence and success
7 Evil, fear and advanced cleansing techniques
8 Spiritual rules: attitude, karma and grace
9 You can make a difference
Resources
Index

What now follows is the first chapter of the book.

Chapter One

What’s the issue?

‘I have this friend who just completely drains me. Every time I see her I come away feeling that I have no energy for anything.’
‘I’m about to move into a new home and I don’t like the house’s atmosphere.’
‘When I go into business meetings I feel intimidated by the atmosphere and I freeze.’
‘We had these people stay in the flat and we really did not like the atmosphere they left behind.’
‘I have this one client and after he has left I feel as if I have some of him stuck to me.’
‘There is this person who hates me and I keep feeling that their thoughts are inside my head.’
‘I live in the country and when I visit the city, I get overwhelmed by the vibrations.’
‘I’m completely drained by travelling in the rush-hour underground.’

These are common problems. They are caused by our natural sensitivity to energies and atmospheres. To one degree or another everyone is sensitive to the atmosphere of places, objects and people. Entering a church or library, we may feel its serenity. We like particular houses because they feel good and avoid others because they feel bad. Even the most cynical of people may enter a meeting or a bar and sense immediately whether the environment is hostile or friendly. People also feel the moods of different landscapes. Atmospheres can dramatically affect how you feel and behave, without your being conscious of them. This book is dedicated to liberating you from these unseen influences and giving you the opportunity to live more consciously and creatively.

For a fulfilled and healthy life it is crucial to be able to understand and work with the vibrations which affect you, both to protect yourself and to change them. It has long been accepted in psychology that a basic need of all people is to feel both physically and psychologically safe. If you do not feel safe, it is difficult to behave with dignity, joy and creativity and to fulfil your potential. Psychic protection, therefore, makes sense for all of us. It serves no one to feel vulnerable and unable to control their emotions in new, difficult or negative atmospheres. We all need to feel confident and empowered.

This book has been written for everyone who is sensitive to atmospheres and who would like to do something creative and helpful about them. You may be a full-time parent or business person, a teacher or a salesperson, a professional carer or a plumber, a computer operator or a gardener. Whatever you do, though, you have to work with people and in places – and sometimes you will want to know the practical strategies for creatively changing atmospheres. It is no help to you or anyone else if you are wobbled off centre by particular people, situations or places, and lose your ability to behave to your and other people’s best advantage. Equally, it will serve you, your family, your colleagues and your friends in general if you also know how to create an atmosphere that helps everyone deliver their best.

In the past many societies had specialists – shamans, medicine people, mystical priests and priestesses, exorcists and so on – who understood and practised the art of changing atmospheres and creating psychic protection. My experience is, however, that almost anyone can do this ‘energy work’. The techniques are very straightforward and there is no need for knowledge about them to be kept secret or shrouded in mystery. These techniques also require no special skills or gadgets, so it is possible to practice them without being embarrassingly visible.

In this book I share these basic strategies in a way that is easy to learn and to put into practice. They require no special background knowledge or attitude so if you are completely new to this kind of information do not worry. It is all very easily learned. These techniques also do not require a great deal of time or effort. Once you understand them you will see that they are very natural, like swimming or riding a bicycle or dancing or reading.

You will also find that you can use them in all kinds of ordinary and particularly challenging situations: meetings with new or important people, in irritated post office queues, traffic jams, bars, streets at night, with angry relatives – all kinds of situations that you meet in everyday life.

The main skills I have been teaching, and which you will find explained in this book, are listed below:

* how to maintain your own psychic space in uncomfortable or intimidating situations;
* how to protect yourself against powerful personalities and against people whose energy and attitude affect you;
* how to maintain your own energy field without external interference;
* how to cleanse your home or workplace;
* how to settle the atmosphere after a row or guests, or an unwelcome situation;
* how to create a benevolent and loving vibration which you can then place in an object or space;
* how to create a general attitude and lifestyle that is energetically beneficial.

My aim is that by the end of this book, whatever your background, you will feel confident that you understand and can put these techniques into effective practice.

Let me give right here a very simple example of this kind of work. You may, for instance, be given a jumper you like, but you are not happy with its atmosphere because of where it has been or from whom it comes. What can you do?

The answer is easy. Vibrate the jumper rigorously, shake it about, put it on the floor and jump on it, bash it around. This will shake out the old vibration and leave it neutral. A good wash or dry clean will also work.

Psychologically, of course, this helps you to perceive the object in a new way, free of past associations. Vibrationally, however, you have genuinely shaken up its actual atomic structure so as to release the atmosphere held in it.

Here is another very simple example. Vibration and shaking can also be used on yourself. For example, if you come out of a meeting and feel that you have absorbed and are holding on to other people’s ‘stuff’, all you need to do is just give your body and clothes a good long shake. This will usually be enough to remove it.

My personal background

I know how easy it is to do this kind of work because I have been doing it myself for 30 years and teaching it for 20.

The main reason I became involved in all of this is because since infancy, like many people, I have been very sensitive to atmospheres. I remember being taken to nursery school and noticing alleyways that felt frightening. Playing in the park there were certain areas and trees that I wanted to avoid. Most embarrassing, I remember being frightened of the long dark corridor of the flat in which we lived. I deliberately avoided walking down it to go to the lavatory and, instead, peed – at the age of two and three – behind the curtains in the sitting room. The strangest thing of all is that no one in the family ever mentioned it. Perhaps, if they noticed, they thought it was the cat.

You will be glad to know that I have overcome that particular fear (I can be safely invited into your home) and that I no longer take long distance jumps on to my bed in order to avoid the strange monster with groping hands. Nevertheless I have continued to be disturbed by atmosphere.

The whole lifestyle and way of thinking of my family led me to believe that my sensitivity was just the result of an overactive imagination. I therefore kept very quiet about most of my sensitivities and anxieties. If I did express my anxiety about a certain object or place I would either be laughed at because it was ‘unmanly’ or comforted with a genuinely caring cuddle and the statement, ‘There, there, don’t worry, there’s nothing there.’ But the irony is that, in fact, there was something there.

There was often an unpleasant atmosphere which I could distinctly feel, but my mother, who loved me and truly wanted to comfort me, was behaving like a million other parents. I was comforted and told there was nothing there. This is a strange situation, isn’t it? Genuine care joined with sincere ignorance. The result for me, and for many other people, is a certain confusion and even some shame about our sensitivity. It is still occasionally embarrassing for me, especially if confronted by authoritarian sceptics, to talk openly about these things.


I therefore always encourage parents to take the sensitivities of children more seriously. If a child is anxious, she of course still needs comfort, but instead of saying that there’s nothing there, parents might say something like, ‘OK, let’s have a look and feel of what is there. How does it really feel to you? Tell me about it. Maybe we can do something about it.’

As I grew older and went into my teens and then early twenties, my ability to feel vibrations never left me. I was also quite tough, smoking and drinking, and riding a large motorbike. I may have been sensitive to vibrations, but I was not generally sensitive or poetic. In fact, my personality was harsh. My impressions of people and places, however, were very clear and powerful. I could tell immediately what kind of a mood someone was in regardless of the front they were projecting, and I found new houses and landscapes fascinating precisely because of the changes in atmosphere.

When I was about 22, I began to meditate – as a survival mechanism in a stressful job – and I found my sensitivity increasing. It increased simply because I was sitting quietly. With my emotions and thoughts relaxed, there was less ‘interference’, less ‘noise’ and I became more open and aware of what I was actually experiencing in my body and energy field. Equally important, sitting quietly every day, I became acutely aware of the kind of atmosphere that I myself was creating. These atmospheres, I noticed, were entirely dependent upon my moods. I reached the startling personal conclusion that by deliberately changing my mood I could distinctly affect how a place or a person felt.

Having realised this, I must admit to having used it mischievously a few times. Late at night, telling spooky stories to friends, I would also put myself into a spooky mood, and watched with glee while my friends became temporarily frightened. I also began to experiment with creating a benevolent atmosphere and I became increasingly aware of what a powerful force for good – and bad – this natural human ability is. There are energy bullies, for instance, who push their weight around by intimidating people with their vibrations – I am sure that most people have encountered someone like this.

Around the same time I began reading all kinds of books on mysticism, spiritual psychology and the occult. Many of these books discussed how human beings can affect and manipulate energy and atmospheres. It did not take much thought to realise that it was important to make a clear moral decision about my attitude to this energy work and I did: I am only interested in energy work if it is of loving benefit. In fact, at 25, I took 2 years’ spiritual retreat in the mountains of Southern Morocco to commit myself more fully to this path and to learn more about the actual methods for moving and changing energy (see my book The Sacred Magician, Gothic Image Publishers).

Those two years of retreat were a time of intense learning for me and, when I returned to London, I began to use my new awareness and skills to help change atmospheres that were frightening and bothering. Most people I met were disturbed by energy problems which, if they only knew the basic skills, they could deal with themselves. (The most common two problems were living in a house with an uncomfortable atmosphere or feeling frightened and affected by someone else’s emotions and thoughts.) So what really began to interest me was helping people to learn these basic energy skills so that they could get on with their lives more confidently and creatively. The actual teaching began in a very casual way. I would, for instance, meet someone or a group of people who were being disturbed by an atmosphere in their house or workplace and I would get into conversation with them. During the conversation I would share my ideas on how they might deal with the situation and they were usually interested in my expertise and grateful. They then might send a friend with similar problems to see me. This happened to me many times.

Then visiting the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual community in Scotland, there were many people interested in my perspective and I was invited to teach classes on the subject. As a result of this I gained the reputation of being useful in this area and I had to begin teaching formal classes in order to avoid the growing requests for one-to-one tutorials. What was always interesting was that the people asking for help were very varied, from every conceivable social and work background: wealthy aristocrats to penniless hippies, medical doctors and nurses to engineers and architects, the occasional priest and nun, plumbers and secretaries and social workers, computer engineers, therapists, full-time parents and pensioners. Over 20 years I have taught these classes mainly at Findhorn and in London, but also internationally in the United States and Western and Eastern Europe.

I have also been particularly touched and encouraged by the feedback. Many people have told me how they at last now feel comfortable in their homes and offices, how they now have a new confidence to deal with previously worrying relationships and work situations. Personally what touches me the most is the feedback from people who have carried anxiety for most of their lives and now find that they are feeling generally more comfortable and generous. Having a doctorate in psychology and having worked with many psychotherapies, I am very aware of the psychological realities that underlie insecurity, fear and anxiety. As an energy worker, though, as someone who is sensitive to invisible atmospheres and vibrations, I also know that the problem is often not psychological but energetic. Techniques of psychic protection, therefore, and strategies for creating positive energies can substantially reassure and empower us without the need for deeper psychological work. This is good news for all of us.

The underlying dynamics

If we are dealing with atmospheres and vibrations, then we have to expand our usual way of understanding life.


Everything that exists in a material form which we can see and touch also has a more subtle energy body that we cannot see. This is clear enough in modern physics: every atom is made up of dancing energy. There are also photographic processes, such as Kirlian, which can actually photograph these energy fields.

These energy fields are capable of containing and radiating particular qualities of atmosphere. These atmospheres vary enormously, from peace to anger, from joy to sadness, from anxiety to confidence, and so on. These different atmospheres not only sit in solid forms – for instance, the brickwork of a house – but they also float in the air. They float in the air and they move around to different places and to different people. When someone has a tantrum, the energy and atmosphere of the tantrum may float way beyond the person actually having it and be felt by someone else a great distance away. Many people have experiences of suddenly knowing that a close friend or relative is in a certain mood. Equally, many people often have a sense that someone is thinking about them. One of the features of being in love is the feeling of being connected by emotions even when the lovers are separated. You may also sense the raging thoughts of an enemy.


In a very real sense, all of this follows a basic law of the physical world which is that energy never disappears. When people, for instance, feel anger or joy they put energy into this feeling and this energy continues. It may sit quietly in their body, perhaps causing ongoing tension in the stomach, or it may be released beyond the body into the air (see illustration). Whatever happens to it, it continues to exist in some form or another. It may float around in the larger energy field of the person who first felt it; it may become absorbed by that person’s house or workplace; it may land on someone else who might then hold on to it or release it with more feeling. We will be returning to this subject later in the book.

Perception and discrimination

As you become involved in this work you will find that there is the huge problem of whether you are accurately sensing and perceiving these realities, or whether you are just imagining them. This goes hand in hand with confusion about how you actually do the perceiving. There are some people who see pictures and get images, others who hear sounds or smell scents; while others talk about intuition and direct knowing.

In actual fact, the way that most of us perceive atmospheres and vibrations is through feeling and sensing them. I am not talking about an emotional feeling, but about something that is more of a physical sensation. You can sense and feel atmospheres and vibrations in the same way that you feel changes in the temperature, or dampness, or a breeze.

The main experience of atmospheres does not take place inside the brain and imagination. It actually happens across the whole body. Sometimes the feelings are very obvious, even overwhelming, and sometimes they are very subtle.

Every human being has an energy field which is not only interwoven with their material physical body but which also extends beyond it. Every one of us has an electromagnetic energy field extending several feet, sometimes much more, beyond us. This energy field is made up of our physical radiance and vitality, and is also made up of the radiance of our emotions and thoughts. This energy field, sometimes called the aura, is also created by the radiance of our general consciousness.

Some readers may not be familiar with the idea of the aura because it is not taught in western biology or medicine. It is however a basic concept in oriental and Ayurvedic medicine, and is certainly not a strange idea in the light of modern science which understands that everything is made up of energy. It is an important part of everybody’s bio-energetic make-up and it is important that we know about it if we are to understand how psychic protection and creating positive energies actually work.

The aura is an electromagnetic energy field which passes all the way through the human body and radiates beyond it. Although we cannot see it, we can experience what it is feeling. It is precisely the sensitivity of the aura and how it merges with our nervous system which allows us to feel atmospheres and vibrations. When something vibrates in the aura, we sense it.

Our aura is continually meeting other energy fields and when it meets another field, a wobble or wave is sent through it, like when a pebble falls into water. This vibration then anchors down through the skin into the physical nervous system. The brain notices the sensation in the nervous system and then interprets the experience. This is incredibly obvious when, for example, you meet something like an angry dog which frightens you. Your energy field meets the energy of the angry dog and there is that wobble or friction where they meet. This wobble travels through your energy field and lands in the nervous system down the spine and your spinal hair literally stands on end. Your brain then interprets this experience: fear.

The same thing happens when we meet a benevolent person or place. Our energy field encounters their benevolent energy field. The harmonic where they meet is communicated down into the physical nervous system and it feels good.

This is also exactly what happens when we go into the countryside or a building. Harmonious landscape, for example near moving water or underground springs, is felt by our energy body. Beautiful landscape is not just perceived by our eyes but is felt by the whole body. This is why so many people from cities want to spend time in the country, feeling and absorbing the nurturing atmosphere of landscape.

As we enter new buildings, we also often immediately feel the quality of the place. Our aura meets the general vibration of the building. Anyone looking around for a new home knows the experience of a place simply feeling bad even if it looks great. And sometimes we find houses and apartments which look terrible but have a great atmosphere. The house in which I am writing this book looked terrible when we moved in, but it had a wonderful warm family atmosphere.

There are nevertheless genuine difficulties in being accurate about what we are sensing. We carry our own vibrations around with us and there may be many situations in which we feel something and think it is external, coming from, say, a building, when in fact the vibrations are coming from within us. We may also, for various reasons to do with history and temperament, react to something intensely and think that it is negative, when in fact it is harmless. A frequent example is if you meet someone who has a threatening image, like a sullen male teenager. He may, in fact, be the sweetest kid just dressing like his peers, but his image is enough to trigger your own fear. You feel ‘hostile vibrations’ but they are in fact all yours.

All through this book, therefore, I shall be cautioning you to be aware of projections and stuff that belong to your own psyche and I will explain the psychological dynamics that can interfere with accurate perception.

You can never guarantee that your inner impressions are accurate. You, therefore, need to be open and receptive to impressions, without your concrete mind blocking the process, but at the same time you need to maintain a healthy scepticism. This requires an attitude of inner amusement, not taking it all too seriously, an openness to being wrong – and at the same time a reborn childishness that is open and receptive to new sensations and images.

Generally speaking, if an inner impression is accurate, then it will sit comfortably and wisely in you. If the inner impression causes you some excitement, then you will have to wait until you have calmed down to feel whether or not it still rings true. You will find more on this in different parts of this book.

Becoming an active player

Taking atmospheres seriously and knowing the basic techniques for working with them is empowering and confidence-building. Instead of being a passive unconscious player in this world of energies and vibrations, you can become an active player directly influencing and controlling your environment.

This is why I have such enthusiasm for energy work. I believe that the whole purpose of human life is for our true essence – unique to each of us – to shine through, for each of us to become who we truly are and genuinely fulfil ourselves.

But to fulfil ourselves we need certain basic conditions. We obviously need food and shelter and physical safety. But as mentioned earlier, and worth stressing again, we also need psychological safety. And we need to feel that we have self-control. We cannot fulfil ourselves if we have no influence over the energies and atmospheres which may continually influence us where we live and work and play.

This energy work of protection, cleansing and blessing helps us feel less afraid and more confident. People who begin to experiment with energy work are often astonished by the psychological benefits that it brings them. There can be huge relief as they lose their sense of vulnerability and lack of control.

I also believe that our sensitivity and our ability to work with atmospheres is completely natural. Cynics, sceptics and religious fundamentalists may attack energy work as superstitious, unintelligent or even the work of the devil. For me these people are like the flat-earthers of several centuries ago. They are out of date. They are missing reality.

As well as being for your own personal benefit, this inner work can be very beneficial for your family, friends, workplaces and colleagues, in fact for all the different communities in which you live and participate. To clean up and nurture the atmosphere in your homes and workplaces is a real service. Working in a more disciplined and sustained way, it is also possible to clear up the atmosphere in your neighbourhoods. This may sound extravagant, but I have experienced this in reality over and over again.

Later in the book I will describe exactly how you can work in this way. You will see that it is genuinely possible and already practised by many people who enjoy this aspect of the work because it gives them a real sense of doing something useful for the world. Alongside the physical pollution which is challenging the ecology of our planet, there is also a great deal of vibrational pollution made up of negative attitudes, feelings and thoughts. It is possible to work helpfully to clean up this inner environment so as to benefit what we might call the ‘psychic ecology’ or 'inner ecology’, the ecology of vibrations and atmospheres in our planet.

It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to realise the huge amount of invisible psychic pollution that is floating around the whole planet. You can work actively to transform and heal this pollution. At the very least you can take care not to create more. Some people believe indeed that it is this attitudinal and energy pollution which is the root cause of the actual environmental pollution and toxins. Any work that helps to relieve this situation is obviously useful.

The simplest help is just to be a calm oasis of goodwill in the midst of modern craziness. Everyone knows people who radiate a friendly and peaceful presence. I remember an extraordinary tea lady in one place where I worked. Always working against deadlines, there was frequently an atmosphere of stress and people suffering strokes and heart attacks, but at 11 o’clock along would come this benevolent creature dispensing a friendly smile, a cup of tea or coffee and good vibrations.

Inside modern hospitals I often wonder how much of the healing achieved is actually due to the support staff and cleaners who wander around, doing their work with a calm and beneficent attitude.

Good vibrations can actually be measured with scientific instruments. Our brains emit different frequency transmissions – alpha waves, beta waves and so on – according to the level of our relaxation and well-being, which can be scientifically monitored. This technology has been successfully used for stress control and also in the relief of epilepsy. When I was working with special needs students, I met an American tutor who had spent some time researching teaching literacy to adults. The greatest successes came with tutors who radiated a very calm atmosphere, which provided a safe space in which the student could relax, ‘unfreeze’ the brain and learn. This was actually measured. The tutors with the best vibrations achieved the greatest successes with anxious underachieving students.

The benefits, personal and collective, of this energy work are clear. Far from being a superstitious diversion for cranks, it is a very sensible approach to life which can provide a confident isle of sanity in an increasingly complex world.

Sympathy for the criticisms

There are many sceptics and critics of this work. ‘This is actually all a load of superstitious rubbish. The only reason you believe in it is because you can’t face the idea of a world that is beyond your control. So you pretend you can control it.'

In one form or another I have heard these criticisms many times and in a way I am sympathetic to them. The world is full of psychic charlatans and tricksters who will do anything to make money or manipulate people for some kind of personal power trip. Every few months there is a story in our newspapers about some tragedy created by a self-inflated and dangerous guru or psychic master.

Historically it was even worse. In the Middle Ages in Europe, superstitious trickery was part and parcel of Christian culture, especially in the Church itself. Superstition and spooks reigned supreme. Chicken bones were sold as saints’ relics (their fingers) for protection. In fact, almost anything was sold to protect people from the devil and save their souls. Around every corner you could find someone prepared to cast a spell that would in some way or another affect the atmosphere or energies – for success, for victory, for love, for money, for good looks. In many ways organised religion was a part of this racket.

In the 1600s and 1700s, European culture began finally to ditch these absurd and unpleasant beliefs. Quite rightly there are many people today who are frightened of returning to those dark ages and every time they hear about something that resembles medieval superstition, they have a knee-jerk reaction of distrust. I am happy that these people exist for it would be a dangerous world without healthy sceptics.

Academic anthropologists in particular claim that we — like the tribal ‘primitive’ peoples – make up this inner world of energy so that we can pretend to control that which is uncontrollable. This attitude to the natural wisdom of tribal peoples and to our own general sensitivity is intellectual snobbery at its most narrow-minded. If something does not fit into the contemporary scientific understanding of the universe, then it is deemed childish imagination. But science itself is moving forward now and coming to a more fluid understanding of nature and the cosmos, in which there is a continuum between consciousness and matter, and an understanding that everything is made up of energy in different forms.

There is, however, a more practical difficulty when it comes to believing in energy work. It really is a matter of experience. If you have not experienced it, why should you believe it? We have five obvious senses – touch, taste, scent, sound and sight – which deal with a solid physical world. We cannot miss the information that they feed through to us. The sixth sense is more subtle, less obvious, but it also is always at work.

Perhaps we tend to ignore this sixth sense simply because we are never taught about it or encouraged to take it seriously. It was not on my school curriculum and my parents never introduced me to it. I wish, in fact, that as a boy I had been taught that sensitivity to vibrations and energy work is normal. It is a completely natural part of life. Awareness of it can bring you nothing but benefits.

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