Psychic Self-Defence (Dion Fortune)

The text opens with a statement of the seriousness of writing on psychic attack and defence, noting the difficulty of giving practical information on defence without also revealing methods of attack, and observing that initiates have guarded their secret science. The writer states the task was not sought but will be discharged honourably, drawing on years of experience shared by mystic and lunatic. First-hand rather than second-hand material is preferred; attention to psychology and occultism began with a personal psychic attack that shattered the writer's health. Psychic attacks are called commoner than realised, connected to the witch-cult. Mrs. Eddy, founder of Christian Science, is said to have stumbled on such methods and feared "Malicious Animal Magnetism"; the New Thought Movement exploited them. Sixty-three mind-power course advertisements are counted in one magazine; several, including telepathy, healing, and hypnotism advertisements, are quoted. The writer recounts entering, at twenty, the employment of a woman with occult knowledge from India, called the Warden. She used mind-power to extract false testimony via a fixed gaze; a diary once saved the writer, but later baseless charges were agreed to. The Warden dominated an orphan girl (rescued by trustees) and "Auntie," whom the writer helped escape. Warned by the secretary and by a silent automaton-like staff girl, the writer confronted the Warden anyway. A four-hour litany of "You are incompetent... you have no self-confidence" left the writer a wreck, ill three years; an inner voice advised feigning defeat. A thirty-hour stupor, fear, and depletion followed. A doctor diagnosed hypnotism. Recovery came through recovering memories and initiation into an occult order. The writer connects the case to witchcraft, Black Magic, and hypnotic suggestion, and describes later occult work under the Masters of the Great White Lodge.

The text notes a literature on psychic attack in folk-lore, ethnology, witch-trial records, and fiction, whose independent accounts confirm reports of occult attacks. It stresses distinguishing psychic experience from subjective hallucination and undertaking differential diagnosis between hysteria, insanity, and psychic attack. The annotator cites a recent tragedy in Iona and refers to the novel The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, presenting cases under the guise of fiction. It argues the sum-total of cases cannot be explained away, citing the historical dread of magicians and witches, and that fear drove the witch-burnings by whole countrysides. It distinguishes the Left-hand Path from the Right-hand Path, and cites Three Men in a Boat regarding a man convinced he had every disease. The stated aim is to give protective knowledge. The second section describes an overruling plan and invisible forces sustaining the universe. Four conditions may rend the veil. It names adepts of the Left-hand Path. Diagnosis must precede treatment. Attacks may be ignorant or malignant; one should not respond to attack by attack. It discusses influence of places, characteristic dreams, weight on the chest, etheric substance, and references Crawford's experiments with the Goligher Circle and Eva C., noting Crawford's suicide. It describes nervous exhaustion, wasting, and cites Kipling's The End of the Passage. It describes repercussion bruises (goat's hoof, ace of clubs), evil odours, slime precipitation, footprints in snow, Commander Gould's Oddities, the Devon prints, the astral bell (Conan Doyle), fires, and poltergeists. It warns of fraud and the hysterical maidservant. The third section explains telepathic suggestion: auto-, conscious, and hypnotic suggestion, addressing the subconscious via mental pictures, and spiritual healing through rapport, citing Coué and Christian Science.

The text states that mental power can be used for evil as well as good, noting that the Founder of Christian Science concealed the second edge of the sword. It explains that messages to the subconscious must be simple, and that suggestion creates a mental atmosphere about the soul (defined to include mental and emotional, not spiritual, processes) until a response is elicited. Up to that point the defender holds the advantage. Two gates admit an attacker: the Self-preservation Instinct and the Sex Instinct. The attacker fills his own soul with rage or lust, sounding a keynote in the Abyss answered by beings like "Dark Uriel and Azrael and Ammon," who work through the operator; the note cites the game of Nuts and May and the story of Faust, where the Devil aids Dr. Faustus to win Margarita but claims his soul. The aura, pierced from within by fear or desire, is likened to unbroken skin. The text then recounts a case: in 1926 a Mr. and Mrs. C. died within hours of each other. Two years earlier a friend consulted the annotator about Mrs. C.'s nightmares and Mr. C.'s epileptiform, non-epileptic fits, occurring monthly with the moon's phases. Psychic investigation traced Mr. C. to a past life with two women, mother and daughter, who practised witchcraft. Mrs. C. identified the old lady as her mother-in-law and Miss X. as the younger witch. Miss X.'s successive fiancés and aunt died of hemorrhage or wasting, suggesting vampirism. Mrs. C. developed cancer of the womb; both wives died of it. Miss X. broke down after her household's deaths. The final section describes Miss L., an ultra-sensitive vegetarian at a Hampshire occult college, who terrified a horse, caused community nightmares, and after a quarrel appeared as a snapping orange-sized head. She warned the narrator to lock her door, then chased her with a carving-knife.

The narrator, holding a saucepan of boiled greens, fends off Miss L., who slashes with a carving-knife, until the head of the community intervenes and scolds both for the noise. After lunch Miss L. collapses exhausted. The head fills a soap-dish, makes passes over the water, and draws a five-pointed star on Miss L.'s threshold; she stays in her room forty-eight hours. Through talks he restores her toward normalcy. Two incidents follow: the heavy front door repeatedly opens at night until he re-seals Miss L.'s room; and he seals his own room point-outward against Miss D. Miss L. cannot enter his room because of a psychic barrier, and asks the narrator to hide a silver cross, which had been blessed and magnetised. Miss L. recounts memories of black magic in past lives, childhood witch day-dreams, projecting malignant force at her mother and sister, and feeling like two persons; she has a horror of sacred symbols. The text turns to etheric projection and ectoplasm. The adept, called Z., goes into trance and loses two-thirds of his weight; the narrator lifts him single-handed. During his illness, the narrator wakes to see Z. lying grey and colourless across her bed; he vanishes when she moves and later recalls nothing. The narrator describes artificial elementals, then recounts accidentally formulating a were-wolf while brooding on revenge, thinking of Fenris. A grey wolf materialises beside her; she pushes it off and it leaves. Advised by her teacher to reabsorb it and forgo revenge, she summons the creature and draws its life back along a silver cord. On vampirism, the narrator describes psycho-analytic patients who drained energy and machines, and morbid rapports where a dominant partner draws vitality from a negative one.

The text distinguishes parasitism—unconscious and involuntary devitalisation, common and outside the enquiry's scope—from vampirism, reserved for deliberate attacks. True vampirism, the annotator states, requires power to project the etheric double, and is rare in Western Europe but common elsewhere. Commander Gould's book Oddities gives an account of vampirism among the Berberlangs of the Philippines, drawn from Mr. Skertchley's paper; the Berberlangs liberate their astral bodies to feed on victims' entrails, making moaning noises. Skertchley claims he saw a flight of them and found a dead occupant. The text compares this with Mr. Muldoon's account of astral projection. The annotator recounts one case of genuine vampirism, handled by the teacher Z. and used as a basis for a story in The Secrets of Dr. Taverner. A youth, D., boards with a student; phenomena include dogs barking and a French window opening nightly. Z. detects an invisible entity, which is cornered and dispatched in the bathroom by absorption. D.'s cousin, returned from France with necrophilia, had bitten D.'s neck, transferring the vampiric entity of a Magyar magician. Z. absorbed the earth-bound soul. During Miss L.'s time at the occult college, the annotator and others suffered bleeding "mosquito bites." Z. describes bloodless African victims and where to find vampire punctures; the annotator once saw elongated canine teeth. The text then treats hauntings: interference by discarnate souls versus place-conditions. Cases include a widow developing her dead husband's neuritis; Miss E., troubled nightly by her dead fiancé, cured by telepathic treatment. Thought-atmosphere examples: a friend's stage fright, the annotator's depression in a drunkard's former room. The text distinguishes seen/heard hauntings, cites a friend's flat on a madhouse site prompting suicidal impulses, and begins a case of a babies' home with poltergeist and vampirism affecting an Irish nurse.

The text states that Celts are susceptible to psychic influence, noting that in a haunting babies succumbed first, then the sensitive Irish Celt nurse. Sounds of a phantom cart, coal being shovelled in an outhouse, a strange man crossing the hall preceding children's illnesses, and mysterious fires are described. The superintendent of the home consulted a mental healer, who consulted the annotator, who made a psychic diagnosis attributing the trouble to a Left-hand Path occultist maintaining himself as an earth-bound spirit by drawing vitality from children. Absent treatment ended the manifestations; enquiries revealed the house's haunted history and a former mysterious occupant with a laboratory. Neither healer nor annotator visited the house. A passage from The Confessions of Aleister Crowley describes Abramelin demons, Jones and Crowley seeing shadows and semi-materialised beings, and workmen affected by the atmosphere. The text discusses charged temple sites, disbanded monasteries, the group-mind of religious communities, curses on despoilers of Church lands, and haunted vicarages. Church ritual is called ceremonial magic, citing Evelyn Underhill. The annotator recounts identifying two sisters' magnetised first-communion crosses by touch, and compares this to feeling a dying rook. Cautions follow about ritual objects; the annotator senses magnetism from an original altar in the British Museum, describes the Buddhist, Ethnological and Egyptian Rooms, Stonehenge recharging, and Tut-ankh-amen's curse. Sympathy is expressed for the mummy against tomb robbers. Buddha statues, Dugpa magnetised statues, and an experience with a Burmese soap-stone Buddha emitting a ball of light are described. The text turns to thought-forms returning to their sender, lunatics' hallucinations, and finally non-human, soulless beings, their traits, conception, incarnation via a psychic vortex, and destructive relations with humans.

The text states that non-humans never live normally in full possession of their faculties, and that a single-element creature drawn into human life cannot assimilate three additional elements. It declares any mating between human and non-human hopeless, since non-humans are promiscuous and cannot satisfy human aspirations; a non-human is a pet animal, best managed like a kitten until the Dark Angel restores it to its kingdom. Humans may also enter elemental spheres, an undertaking for advanced initiates only. The text contrasts elementals with Spiritualistic controls, noting Spiritualism's organisation and Western Occultism's disorganisation from persecution. The Deva Kingdom fascinates many; attempting contact without initiation risks mental unbalance or obsession, producing effects like psycho-analytic ab-reaction. The annotator notes the arsenic-tonic sediment analogy. No Earth-element pathology has been encountered, though mountain-dwellers develop fear resembling claustrophobia. Water pathology draws men to drown; Swinburne is cited, rescued by a Breton fishing-smack while swimming far out, then chanting sea-poems. A school teacher feared rough waves and was cured by Co-Masonry initiation. Air is described as tricky, quarrelsome, sex-linked, symbolised by Serpent, Eagle, Scorpio, Dragon. The annotator recounts an Air initiation after which crockery smashed for a fortnight; the teacher advised contacting the Sylphs, which failed in London. On a windswept hilltop, friends performed a spontaneous deosil Dance of the Elements, ending the smashings. The annotator links Air and Water suicides to divine union and human sacrifice, distinguishing willing from unwilling sacrifice. Fire pathology is rare; Algernon Blackwood's "The Regeneration of Lord Ernie" is cited. The text discusses oversouls, forests de-humanising white men, tree auras, elms, orchids, tropical vegetation, Juju rites, the West Coast of Africa, Burmah, and the Caribbean.

The text argues that psychic self-defence requires understanding organised evil, noting that ancient faiths had evil gods—Shiva and Kali in Hinduism, Set, Besz and Typhon in Egypt, Pluto and Hecate in Greece—not devils. It states Protestant Christianity forgot its angiology, while Milton in Paradise Lost and the Qabalah chart both hierarchies. Choosing Qabalistic terminology, the text distinguishes Negative Evil (the thrust-block of Good, and the Principle of Destruction, called the Scavenger of the Gods) from Positive Evil, whose negative aspect is chaos and whose positive aspect is the Qlippoth. It explains the Ten Holy Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, describing how uncompensated force during emanation constitutes ten kinds of Positive Evil, personified as Archdemons, the Names of Power. The initiated adept controls demonic force first. The text recounts a geomancy experiment producing a stench of drains, cured by banishing. It reproduces H. Campell's letter from the Occult Review (December 1929) describing an Abra Melin working that unleashed an entity: recurring new-moon terrors, a bearded figure, a red serpent, jumping through a window, a red obelisk smashing the room, and eventual rescue by a female friend. The text warns about charms, second-hand books, magnetised books, and debased contacts, advising right motives and right associates, and invoking the Master for an initiator. It describes operators being "knocked out." The narrator recounts freeing a girl from her mother's second-hand elemental, during which the circle scattered and a member was hurled across the room, ill three weeks. It recounts Miss N. Fornario's death on Iona (Occult Review, January 1930). Finally it distinguishes ceremonial magic from ritual initiation, defends it against Mme Blavatsky's strictures, and compares its risks to motor racing and flying.

The text states that psychism, though genuine, causes self-delusion, and that a psychic is sensitive and suggestible, "over-engined for his hull," while the neurotic is "under-hulled for his engines." Occult discipline maintains control over these forces. It notes that the Unseen seldom seeks people, citing the Caterpillar's words to Alice, but study of occultism brings results. Neophytes often experience psychic disturbance, which may stem not from evil influences or entities but from unaccustomed force—likened to a child's feverishness on a seaside holiday, or "occult indigestion." Another cause is partial recovery of painful past-incarnation memories, whose emotion precedes the image. The text urges caution in judging an inexperienced student's impressions, while acknowledging Black Lodges and evil entities exist. It advises examining the record both of the accused group and of the accuser. It discusses the repressed sex instinct, describing a love-starved woman who joins an occult circle, is glamoured by a magnetic male leader, senses "the Kingdom of Pan," and brings charges of hypnotic influence or improper advances. The annotator states such stories rarely come from young pretty girls, notes "Old Maid's Insanity," and describes similar reactions when the leader is a woman, including a charge that the annotator was a man in disguise. The annotator explains that adepts emanate force involuntarily and live in seclusion, ending "in the Cross or the hemlock cup." Cases include an alleged adept selling furniture for drink, folie des deux, and periodic insanity tied to women's cycles—illustrated by a woman in the community house whose appendicitis-linked madness recurred. The annotator advises examining motive, citing a man alleging telepathic persecution without motive, versus the "Prayer Shop" man exerting influence. Chapter 10 discusses non-occult dangers of Black Lodges: drug traffic, vice, blackmail, and swindling, recommending the periodical Truth and the police against blackmailers.

The text discusses persons who, glamoured by enthusiasm, give away more money than they can spare, and notes that a solicitor can often secure a refund since courts disfavour excessive contributions to movements. It states the Fraternity of the Inner Light requires women proposing large donations to consult a financial adviser, and has refused upwards of twenty-five thousand pounds over seven years. It addresses drugs used to exalt consciousness, their coverage under the Dangerous Drugs Act, and warns of impurities and heart effects. It describes loose living camouflaged as occultism, citing a group leader who seduced pupils under pretext of initiation. It notes corruption dangers for boys and youths, cites Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and comrade of Joan of Arc, who slaughtered children, and mentions a privately circulated book calling a male child the ideal blood sacrifice. It considers charges of revolutionary activity, cites the Theosophical Society's Indian political associations, and refers to the annotator's book Sane Occultism. It recounts a request, with hundreds of pounds offered, to shelter a deported person—correspondence sent to authorities. It warns against organisations demanding large sums, cites an occultist charging £300 for initiation, and outlines three phases of belief. The next chapter examines psychic attack in nervous and mental disorders. It explains the mind as part of the personality, built on the Higher Self or Individuality, with an Editor's note clarifying the terms. It describes three instincts—Self-preservation, Reproduction, Social Instinct—flowing from the Logos, and distinguishes hysteria from neurosis. It discusses the endocrine glands, the Chakras of Tantric physiology, the four humours, and blood chemistry affecting emotion. It considers what happens when a neurotic or normal person takes up occultism, the Currents of Mars and Luna, the Qabalah, Qlippoth, Sephiroth, Archangels Raphael and Gabriel, and Luna as Diana and Hecate.

The text states that the unstable soul advancing by the Path of Saturn into the Sphere of Luna touches her Hecate aspect and comes en rapport with the Gamaliel, the Obscene Ones, whose chief is Lilith. It notes that the neurotic is often psychic, and that a soul once initiated but now incarnated as a neurotic comes under the Moon's dominion. It contrasts occultists' belief in demonic possession with modern medicine's subjective explanation, proposing common ground: psychology explains the mind's mechanism, while the occultist can show how visions are produced and dispersed by ceremonial magic. It discusses exorcism as palliative but not curative unless the origin is cleared, describing repeated exorcisms and patients kept well only by avoiding the Unseen. It states human consciousness has intake and output, cosmic forces reinforcing emotion. It defines obsession as hypnotic domination by an astral entity, and describes "assuming the god-form" in Egyptian magic. The second chapter turns to witchcraft records, corroborated across Scotland, Italy, Brittany, and classical and primitive sources. It describes drugs—poppy, hemp, datura, cactus buds—citing Paracelsus, the Borgias, Lucretius, and C. S. Ollivier. It lists three factors of psychic attack: telepathic hypnotic suggestion, invocation of agencies, and a physical link. It describes concentrated emotion, the soul spinning deosil or widdershins, and gearing to cosmic force. It details a Mars ceremony invoking Geburah, warns against invoking demonic aspects except by Abramelin's method, and describes rapport via magnetic links, Substitution, wax images, talismans, and artificial elementals. It cites Lady Burton and Sir Richard Burton, the Tut-ankh-amen tomb, and a guru silencing a concert singer. A letter begins recounting an Oriental "Z." offering initiation in Switzerland.

A first-person account continues: the narrator asks whether Z.'s Order is the Order of the Christ, is told it is, and accepts initiation while feeling all is not right. Calling mentally on the Christ, the narrator later declines Z.'s request to join him, resists his attempted "healing," and feels a shell form around them. A friend writes that she was told to help the narrator against hypnotic forces, and warns Z. will try again on the Inner Planes. In a vision, Z. seizes the narrator's arm to give a "higher initiation"; the narrator refuses, declaring nothing may come between them and the Christ, and everything vanishes. The narrator tears up the initiation card. F., a French musician introduced to Z., experiences astral dreams urging him to ask Z. for help, but calls on the Christ and they vanish. A psychic friend reports seeing the narrator seeking help for a young man. The annotator comments that Z. used mental power and hypnosis, calls manipulating others' minds without consent a crime against the soul, and criticises healing circles that concentrate on people without permission. Chapter 13 turns to motives. The text discusses charm-books, grimoires, love-philtres, aphrodisiac drugs and chocolates, and "Incense for the operation of Venus." It describes congressus subtilis, Lilith as Adam's first wife, visitations to saints and nuns, and George Moore's Sister Theresa. Cases are cited: a man dreaming of a married woman; a widow visualising her dead lover; two "changelings." Incubi and Succubi, thought-forms, and telepathic suggestion are discussed. Mr. X. persuades Miss Y. and another woman to pour love upon Mr. Z., destroying their lives. The annotator concludes an occult experiment used the women, linking sex force to kundalini and the Black Mass.

The text states that falling foul of an occult fraternity bound by oaths is dangerous, given the group-mind and its "contacts." Every initiation contains the Oath of the Mysteries with a Penalty Clause invoking a Being to exact punishment on those who break faith. The narrator recounts a candidate who screamed after taking the oath and abandoned occultism, and a batch of three candidates reduced to two when one fled. Another man, expelled from his Order, built a concealed temple of the Greater Mysteries behind Nottingham lace curtains in West London, then died of a heart attack at the seaside before beginning work. Another who published an Order's secrets fell into poverty and disgrace, hounded like Ahasuerus. The narrator describes writing articles on abuses in occult fraternities for the Occult Review, then experiencing unease, astral glimpses, demon faces, and a threatening letter from a supposed friend. Attributing the impulse to write to the Watchers, the narrator persisted. A plague of black cats followed, including a giant tabby "twice the size of a tiger," ended by an exorcism. At the Vernal Equinox, the narrator made an astral journey and confronted a female enemy in robes; a battle of wills threw the narrator back into the body, which had somersaulted across the room. After invoking the Inner Chiefs, the narrator succeeded and later found claw-marks scored across the back. An epilogue links this woman to the Iona death, where a girl was found with only scratches on her body. The text then turns to diagnosis: caution is urged, medical examination advised, lunatics and hysterics distinguished. Physical remedies follow—sunlight, avoiding sea and mountains, frequent food, hot baths, hot-water bottles on the solar plexus, open bowels—plus discussion of diet and vegetarianism, advising discontinuing occult practices during trouble.

The text opens with a cartoon-like image: before a four-poster bedstead a ferocious woman with a rolling-pin threatens her spouse, whose head protrudes from under the valance and who declares he will not come out. A victim who concentrates on mundane things is called a difficult target for a sorcerer; the text asks what the sorcerer can do if his victim is at the cinema laughing at Charley Chaplin. It cites the saying that one nail drives out another, and advises taking up a risky sport when fearing invisible dangers. Turning from physical to psychic factors, the text notes that physical disease does not eliminate the psychic factor; abnormal blood may cause a low psychism the occultist calls pathological psychism, treatable by closing psychic centres or excluding evil influences. Whispered suggestions can direct delirious wanderings toward peace. Three classes of psychic disturbance are distinguished: by-products of physical disease, malicious human action, and non-human interference. The doctor picks out the first and eliminates frauds. The occultist must distinguish incarnate from discarnate attack, using two independent psychics for psychometry plus his own case-history diagnosis, keeping psychic and scientific work separate. The text details taking psychometric specimens: suitable objects (garments, hair, jewellery), which materials hold magnetism (crystals, metals good; wood, paper, rubber poor), avoiding contamination, wrapping in "virgin" black or white silk, packing in a wooden box, sending to two psychometrists, and using horoscopes discreetly. The occultist should hold two interviews, record the case-history afterward, question discrepancies, avoid revealing suspicions, seek dates and places, consult ephemeris and Ordnance maps, note prehistoric, Roman, or Druid remains and unusual objects. It warns against rash accusations, citing a suicide following a wrong heart diagnosis, and advises confirming diagnosis against psychics' findings.

The text opens by comparing writing an account of methods against psychic attack to medical manuals provided to ship captains, noting the personal factor and that this book is a manual of first aid rather than a treatise on treatment. Potent occult formulae need special equipment, and formulae used indiscriminately lose potency, as with the worn-down adjuration "By Our Lady" cited via G. B. S.'s Pygmalion. The exorcist must achieve three interdependent things: repair the patient's aura, clear the atmosphere, and break the contacts. The text advises making a temporary clearance to gain breathing-space, best done by organised ritual. Any act performed with intention becomes a rite. Physical objects retain etheric emanations, called magnetism; boots on tables and outdoor garments on beds are inadvisable. Moving to a fresh place, wearing clean clothes, and keeping one's whereabouts secret are recommended. The text recounts the annotator's experience before an occult work: staying the night at a friend's flat, then walking across Hyde Park and feeling tension relax upon crossing the Serpentine's underground conduit, supporting the superstition about running water. Subtle forces are described as analogous to electricity blended with bacteriology. Water and salt are discussed: salt as the element of earth and crystalline, water as the psychic sphere; a salt-water solution serves as base. Consecrated baths, new clothing, and repositioning the bed are advised. Prayers for exorcising and consecrating salt and water, and for using it, are given, with instructions for the Sign of the Cross. Physical phenomena—noises, lights, clouds, odours, precipitations—are described; camphor in vinegar or diluted nitric acid prevent condensation. Etheric magic in the East uses hair, nail-parings, clothing, excreta, seminal fluid, and menstrual blood; disposal precautions are advised. Garlic and onions absorb noxious emanations, illustrated by a coal-mine rule.

The text distinguishes two types of practical psychic work: the meditative method, which meditates upon abstract qualities and belongs to the New Thought school, and the invocative method, which invokes external potencies using symbols and formulae. The text argues both should be combined, since forms serve as psychological devices, and defines superstition as the blind use of a form whose significance has been forgotten. It notes that a harmonising meditation is easier within a magic circle. Occult attacks are divided into thought-forms and currents of force. The text describes magnetic fields—immediate (twelve to thirty feet) and remote (a hundred to three hundred yards)—and mentions holy centres like Glastonbury and Lourdes. It gives instructions for making a magic circle: the operator faces east, makes the Qabalistic Cross touching forehead, solar plexus, right shoulder, left shoulder, and clasped hands, distinguishing the Equi-limbed Cross from the Calvary Cross. He visualises grasping a Sword of Power, draws the circle deosil (contrasted with widdershins, the witches' way), and invokes Raphael (east), Gabriel (south), Michael (west), and Uriel (north), closing with the Qabalistic Cross. Notes cover sealing the sleeping-place, retiming with the tides, and using church incense rather than joss-sticks. For elementals, the text describes drawing the Pentagram with the right hand and recounts the annotator's own experience: after withdrawing from work with an Indian occultist, the annotator saw his form in the room, sent a friend out, used the Pentagram and Names of Power, and a door panel split with a loud crack. Further devices follow: sealing the aura with a monkish formula, imagining plate-glass or a brick wall, forming a closed circuit against vitality-sapping, and looking above an aggressor's nose. It closes noting the sacraments and pre-Reformation churches as sanctuary.

The text states that psychic trouble often arises from an undesirable rapport, and that understanding it requires considering rapport as the passive aspect of telepathic suggestion. Two people in rapport are described as astral Siamese twins, with astral force circulating between them, compared to a mother and unborn child. This explains marriage, parent-child and pupil-teacher relations. Rapport can form between an individual and a group, other kingdoms, discarnate or superhuman beings. The less positive of two persons loses individuality; thus the Western occultist works through ritual with a group rather than taking personal pupils as the Eastern guru does. Groups mark their members, for good or detriment; a person of good character joining a degenerate group either withdraws or is blunted. Ideas and vital force can transfer through rapport, explaining some spiritual healing. Etheric transmission needs proximity; astral does not. The text describes breaking rapport. The telepathic link appears as a ray or cord. An operator may formulate a Watcher, an astral animal. A thought-form can be unmade by imagination; if it resists, it is an artificial elemental, banished by the Pentagram or, if ensouled by the magician's force, by absorption. The absorption method is detailed: harmonising through meditation on the Christ, discerning whether the form serves malice, lust, or vampirism, meditating on the opposite quality, then drawing and sucking it in slowly. Alternatively, forge a magical cross-handled sword, invoke a flaming torch of the Holy Ghost, hack and sear the cord, then cut physical communication. Substitution allows a friend to break the link. The annotator recounts a case: a woman invalid whom the annotator diagnosed as retaining Hatha Yoga powers from a Thibetan Left-hand Path incarnation. The annotator projected astrally, severed a black liquorice-like cord, and she recovered—until resuming occult study and relapsing.

The text opens with stories of guardian angels appearing at moments of crisis, and the Devon tradition that beating Drake's Drum will summon Drake to lead England's fleets, quoting Newbolt's poem. It cites instances reported by soldiers during the War. Referring to the Qabalah, it describes the Good and Evil Angel behind man's shoulders, equating the Dark Angel with the Freudian subconsciousness and the Bright Angel with the Higher Self, the Holy Guardian Angel Abramelin sought. The annotator states the Higher Self descends in spiritual crisis, recounting a mysterious voice that once instructed extrication from danger and experiences of expanded consciousness accompanied by memory of past incarnations. It compares the mind to a geared engine shifting between physical, astral, mental, and spiritual planes, noting how occultists change gear in psychic combat, and how mystical souls can outclass adepts. It discusses the Christ-force symbolised by Tiphareth, God the Father invoked against non-human elements, and God the Holy Ghost used in initiations. The text describes the "Occult Police," functioning on the Inner Planes. The annotator recounts an Indian occultist, X., organising a meditation group to influence the British group-soul, from which the annotator withdrew after being detected. Invoking the Masters, the annotator "called for the police" and was directed to Colonel Y., who confirmed via a sign at a lecture and took the matter in hand. X. left England; five months later, upon X.'s return, the Inner Voice directed the annotator to Mr. Z., a meeting arranged fortuitously. The text describes the Hunting Lodges combating Black Occultism, an encounter at a gymkhana concerning a Left-hand Path adept, and a symbol—a black Calvary Cross on scarlet. It denies centralised occult control, Bolshevik or Jewish direction, catalogues occultism's abuses, and suggests Bacon and Shakespeare shared an Order.

The text states the preceding task was difficult, that space prevented step-by-step proofs, and that readers were presumed to have occult acquaintance. It states the book is not a handbook but points toward areas needing investigation. The annotator pleads guilty to reviving medieval superstitions, arguing they merit study alongside subconscious psychology, and notes a witch-cult revival. It states the cited cases come from one person's experience. It then recommends books: Montague Summers's translations, Muldoon and Carrington's Projection of the Astral Body, Wickstead's Thirty Years with the Dead, Moll on hypnotism, Mitchell, Myers, Nicholl, Hart, and the annotator's own Machinery of the Mind, written as Violet M. Firth. It closes urging a psychologist's approach.