What is a shield?

 A psychic shield is a non material substance/force/power with which you surround yourself for protection. Many types of force can be called into play in its construction, and many forms can be used, all at your discretion. It's important that a friend, instructor or adept NOT do this work for you; your shield will be with you permanently, and you need to have the intimate connection that creating your own provides.

Why make a shield?

The best reason is for protection against psychic flak of all kinds, especially important when you are first starting down the Path, and aren't yet well-versed in defensive measures. It's protection from mind-games and psychic vampires (yes, they do exist), and a good shield helps you to separate mundane flak from psychic flak. It exercises the faculties of self-reliance and visualization. All told, it's one of the most essential tools of the working occultist.

What do I need to know about shields?

Your shield is your BASIC piece of protection/comfort/defense. It is a permanent part of you, and something like wearing a Circle like a second skin. It should be flexible and semipermeable, moving and growing with you, and "breathing" with your energy usage. Be aware that what you visualize when you start out is what will be there, but that the shield will probably change of its own accord to keep up with your changing capabilities and needs.

Building the Shield

Preliminary Cleansing

When building your first shield, it seems rather ridiculous to lock in any negative energies you may be carrying with you currently. Therefore, a preliminary cleansing, as follows:

Stand in a quiet place and center your energies. Visualize a gleaming sharp sword in your hand. Use it joyously, vigorously slicing through the air close to your body on all sides, over your head and under your feet. As you slash, visualize all unfriendly or negative ties being severed and the ends shriveling away to nothing. Do not be specific -- "this tie, that tie" -- ALL unfriendly ties are being cut!! Note that friendly and unfriendly ties exist on different planes, so you can't damage the friendly ties -- although you may be surprised that ties you thought were friendly, aren't -- and vice versa. It isn't necessary to do this every time you work on your shields, although a once-a-year cleansing and general housecleaning couldn't hurt.

Other helpful rituals include:

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram; the Middle Pillar; the Kabalistic Cross; any other cleansing/grounding rituals you may be aware of.

Visualizations

You have to decide every detail of the visualization of your shields. What shape will it take? What color (if any)? What materials? What appearance? These are the basics; we'll touch on the embellishments later.

Shapes

Round, spherical, cylindrical, square, cube, pentagon, pentagram, ovoid, and any other shape you like. If you can form and hold a dodecahedron in your mind's eye, go to it!!

Colors

Any color of the rainbow, and a few never seen on this plane are all acceptable. White is one commonly used color, but if you want chartreuse, by all means go ahead! Try to avoid black; not for its effect on you, necessarily, but for not giving the wrong signals to the folks you might want to be working with.

Textures

Vary widely; from brick walls to energy cocoons, to steel spheres and laser force fields. Whatever your mind conceives of as protecting is what you use.

Warning

Leaving this construct semipermeable is strongly advised. This leaves you open to receiving positive energies while still giving you protection, and allows the important vibrational interactions that lead to growth.

The Process

Once you've decided what you shield will be, sit quietly and begin to visualize it around you in the form you've chose. Take 10 or 15 minutes to get it solid and clear to your inner eyes, then quit for the day. Once a day for a week, re-visualize your shield and strengthen it. Then check your shield once a week for the next month, re-visualizing and strengthening as needed. After that, check on your shield as you feel it's needed, but at least once a year. Keep in mind that once your shield is well-established, it's basically self-sustaining and maintaining. Eventually, the only times you'll need to be aware of your shield is at its yearly housecleaning, when you think of an improvement, or when it's reacting to a threat.

Embellishment And Nifty Extra's

- Attach a vial of Essence of Poison Ivy, to react upon attack.

- Silver-mirror the outer covering.

- Add glue or rubber bands to the outside of your shield. Don't forget to clean more often if you use glue.

- An automatic maintenance system.

- A sorter. Friendly energy breezes in, unfriendly energy is repelled.

- A detection device. Allows a thinner shield, which sounds an alarm when confronted with negativity.

- A grounding device. This simply grounds negative energy it encounters.

- A slingshot, to return negative energy to its source. Can be amplified to use the law of threefold return.

- Any other embellishments you can justify in the name of defense.