It may have been a ouija board, or a Pagan healing ritual, or a book you picked up, but you've realized that there really is magic in the world. Who would have thought such a thing to be possible, that spells are flying about the ether and real people are transforming their lives and environments by manipulating unseen forces? It's usually very exciting at first, and fast becomes terrifying. There are people and things out there, ready to do you harm! You don't have years of training, so how can you protect yourself? Not to worry . . . you were probably safe against psychic assaults for quite some time before you knew they existed, so you know what you're doing. You just have to remember what you've known all along.
Spirits Don't Notice You Until You Notice Them
In the United States, it's very common for people to become interested in psychic phenomena while attending college, or at least at about that age. Not so old that we ignore imagination, and surrounded by friends of like mind, it's easy to discard skepticism and discover the unseen world. This opens the gate to the stage of the Psychic Warrior, which Inana Seastar refers to as spirit obsession. The grammar of that page leaves much to be desired, but her point is clear: awareness of the unseen is a two-way street. The more you think about those forces, they more they care about you.
Psychic Attacks
In his article on Psychic Self Defence, Jordsvin lays out a number of helpful spells for protecting oneself against these types of assaults. Most telling, however, is his observation that, "psychic attacks are among the hardest sort of magick to do, and the easiest to deflect. This should come as no surprise. If psychic attacks were easy, we'd probably not be here - all our ancestors would have all been hexed to death centuries ago!"
Don't Grant Permission to a Magical Attack
The Psychic Warrior that has just discovered the supernatural world and feels embattled on every front is creating that danger himself. A key principle of magic is that it cannot affect you without your permission. However, this permission is more easily granted than you might think, which brings us back to how you maintained your spiritual safety for all those years before you ever knew about the terrible dangers you were in: you couldn't give permission, because you didn't believe in magic in the first place!
Until one believes in a magical system, it cannot have power over you. Complete belief is necessary to use the energies, but also gives vulnerability to them; an excellent example is that of Haitian zombification and other Voodoo practices. Those spells have a very real effect, because the victims and willing recipients believe in them wholeheartedly; this is the essence of magic. Without permission, nothing can happen. This principle is the same one that makes Ouija boards effective . . . they work because users have, by default, given them permission to do so.
What happens when you start to believe in magic is that you must give it permission to work on you. Then use Jordvin's spells or Dion Fortune's techniques to defend yourself and, if you're sufficiently well-trained, you will repel attacks. However, those shields and wards are a form of permission - permission to test your strength. It takes a long time to become strong enough to defend yourself.
Magical Defense Starts with Avoiding Magical Offense
The best defense at any point in your development is not to look for a fight. Creating impressive shields and carefully warding one's home serves only as invitation to the aggressive. Be the stone in the river, allow magic to flow around but not through you. Leave no trace, and no one will track you down to challenge you. Don't desire conflict, and conflict will not manifest in your life. In other words: if you don't go looking for trouble you seldom find it.
Magic is real, as real as you want it to be. Authors from Aleister Crowley to Silver RavenWolf can give you instruction on how to use it in your life, but proceed carefully until you can balance your belief and your protection.
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