This blog post was originally written by Rhi for The Witch Apprentice.
In the spiritual community, we speak a lot abut psychic protection. This is for good reason! Psychic protection shields the thoughts, feelings and projections that invade your space.
It helps neutralise any energetic debris and imprints that have been picked up or accumulated from your daily interactions with life. It can also help draw a line between one’s own thoughts and feelings, and those of others.
The human body is made up of layers often referred to as our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies, sometimes called physical, etheric and astral bodies. Both systems essentially mean the same thing - the subtle unseen energetic field that interacts with everyone and everything we come into contact with, in person, in our thought forms and online.
Our physical bodies go though an array of health and hygiene practices every day. We wash our hands before eating and after using the bathroom, we shower, take vitamins, eat healthy etc. We can employ this same methodology to ourselves on an energetic level as a way to boost our own psychic immune systems and clear any discordant energy.
Everything is energy - so we need to consider the energy that is impacting us, the people we interact with, the land and potential geopathic stress, our own internal emotions and thought forms, and the overall integrity of our auric field (which I like to call our spiritual skin).
Protection should be part of regular spiritual hygiene maintenance (prevention is better than a cure) but here are some situations where we should definitely use protective techniques:
- After having a negative interaction with someone
- After having a bad dream or nightmare
- If you’re having unexplained insomnia
- If you feel depleted or ungrounded
- If you’re an empath or highly intuitive
- Before magickal practice and ritual
- After drinking or consuming recreational drugs
- If you’re feeling like you’re being watched or not alone
- If you’ve had a bad day
- If you’ve been sick or feeling under the weather
- When travelling or moving house
- Before and after going into crowded places like shopping centres or stadiums.
Intention alone should be enough to combat negative psychic imprints, but I’ve found it to be very effective to anchor my intent with a physical tool or practice to amplify my defence systems.
We can use our mind’s eye to surround our bodies or space with white light or bubble of protection around us, use focussed visualisation, ritual crafted oils and sprays, flower essences, essential oils, plant allies and botanicals, spell work, crystals, incense, smoke cleansing, candles, sound and frequencies, breath work, guided meditations, ritual baths and sigils.
Sometimes protection methods come in the form of having a long, hot shower and envisioning washing away the weight of the day down the drain, or having a conscious cup of tea, grounding your energy in the present moment.
Maybe you anoint a black candle with a banishing oil and as the candle burns down, so does any discordant energy, or maybe you’ve had a hard day and the best you can do is put a guided protection meditation on YouTube and go to sleep early listening to the video.
Further reading
-The Psychic Vampire Codex: A Manual of Magick and Energy Work - Michelle Belanger
-Psychic Self-Defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack - Dion Fortune
-Psychic Protection (Thorsons Way of) - Judy Hall
-How To Create Positive Energy in Your Space - Kasi Kaye Iliopoulos
-Subtle Energy - Keith Miller