Psychic Self Defense

Well meaning idiot on an ego trip.

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

Perhaps it might be useful to absolute beginners with energetic/healing/cleansing work, but even then there's a lot of misleading and ridiculous content. Would be much better to start with reputable books about energy centres, space clearing, personal vibration and altered states of consciousness and work up to topics like exorcism and healing blockages in others once personal energetic responsibility is understood.

Would you ever listen to anything by Embrosewyn Tazkuvel again?

No, his understanding of very real and powerful forces was simplistic enough that it seemed to come from a combination of watching a couple of horror films, combined with many years hanging around with the Diana Coopery lilac brigade who seem to make 'ancient lore' up as they go along rather than respecting existing sciences and histories of the occult, expanded through direct experimentation and interaction.

Morality is more complex than two polarities, as is energetic activity. To misunderstand this is to put yourself in serious danger, and Tazkuvel thus encourages people to do that through his limited perspective, whether or not he means to help them (and undoubtedly has helped many) by doing so. Just as a person is full of complexity and diversity of motivation, so is any given entity or energy. Banishing darkness with light may work in many cases, but it should not be the core understanding of those entities because when you polarise you naturally make yourself vulnerable with fear and lay yourself open to ego by being 'the hero' rather than seeking a deep understanding of what you're dealing with and what both of you want in order to heal.

There were also some aspects to the content that made me laugh out loud. Yes, horrendously violent images do affect your energy and it's worth being aware of that, in the same way that you'd be aware of how drinking 6 coffees affects your body as opposed to distilled water. That doesn't, however, mean that your energy body was not built to cope with it, or that you're somehow going to boost resilience by avoiding horror films, rock music, or anything even remotely frightening to current new age fashion (which has many merits yet boosts trends of music and culture that reinforce spiritual materialism and are never remotely anti-establishment. Coincidence? We might do well to think/read beyond what the Oprah network is feeding us.)
Quite the opposite, letting the body deal with small amounts of stress in order to actually open up to a wealth of ideas, metaphors, and understandings of human experience is surely beneficial for any aspiring occultist or healer- we cannot heal ourselves or others by whitewashing our lives, as true cleansing involves the acknowledgement of dirt and unseemly things in order to choose what we want and what we don't!
It's true that altering your point of attraction by surrounding yourself with strengthening elements is beneficial, but in a situation where you've already drawn in negativity (or even demonic activity) to your experience, the only way to heal or get rid of it is to take personal responsibility for why it's there, understand what it's teaching you (even if that's just what you don't want), and then take appropriate and respectful action. That some (rare) entities are predatory does not absolve us from responsibility or involvement in their turning up. ESPECIALLY if we're already on a spiritual path.

Cherry on the cake- The section about saving his friend's life after he was 'contaminated' by watching The Exorcist was laughable, and came from pure ego on the author's part, representing a symptom of an unfortunately insular and fearful cultural understanding on the part of his friend. Everything I just touched on is encapsulated right there in that ridiculousness. To paraphrase Caroline Myss, if your 'spiritual immunity' is that low, the first thing you need to do in order to deal with the challenges of our age is to grow up!

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Some of the information on smudging, salt cleansing, demonic exorcism and mineral properties was accurate, and the section on ASPs and info about psychic vampirism would be very useful for a total beginner. Overall though, this guy uses simplistic techniques and has a very mediocre understanding of what constitutes, appropriates and reinforces 'negative energy'.

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