Since the question of shields has been raised, I'll pass on a beginner's shielding lesson I wrote up about four years ago for use on the 'net. It's termed Shielding 101, although it should really be prefaced with a 100 level course, Energy Perception... Before I go on to the lesson, I want to make a couple of comments. I would recommend that anyone who has less than two years of experience, either in working in a group or of serious study alone, stay far away from Dion Fortune's _Psychic Self-Defence". It is NOT a book for beginners. I find neophytes frequently pick out all the parts they find exciting and ignore valuable, if prosaic advice on how to tell genuine psychic attack from imagined or falsified attack or even medical symptoms. So please don't read that book if you're a beginner, and please don't take this in the spirit of the old tale about children told not to stick beans up their noses. '-) When I am told tales of folks who keep being preyed on by psi-vamps I automatically think that the problem is either of inadequate shielding or of a lack of understanding of psychic energy and how to handle it. These things are really not best done in this format, unfortunately. So--as used successfully by TENS of students-- Shielding 101 Here's a clumsy attempt to tell you how shields are made. I say attempt, since this sort of thing is damn-near impossible to do except in person. Please be patient with me. I suggest you have someone read this aloud to you while you are trying to use it. You can also make yourself a tape and play it to yourself while working. The easiest way to think about shields is to envision the shields the Starship Enterprize can generate. You can do this too (and even "cloak" a little), though you won't be able to stop a phaser beam. In order to control your shields, you must understand their composition. They are made from the natural energy of your body, a sort of bio- electric blanket. (This is pseudo-science, but there is no other way to describe it. One of my pupils is a Ph.D. chemist, and even he cannot describe it in a better way.) You need to learn to perceive this energy. If I were in the room with you, I would draw a line in the air and ask you to see it. Please draw that line now, with your right hand. Can you see it? Please make it very real. First make it thin, then thick. Then change the color. You probably started with a line of white light. Please make it resemble a piece of metal. Then make it revert to the light. When you have mastered this, start making shapes. Make a pentacle, and then make it spin. Spin it until you have a single point of light, then slow it gradually. Push at it and make it move forward and backward. The stuff you perceive your shapes as being made of is what you use for shielding. EXPENSIVE SHIELDING Here is a hard-to-maintain form of shielding. Take a blob of that energy and drape it over your head. Pull it down over you like a nice, warm blanket. You may feel a certain deadening effect. If it is properly made, your shield should be permeable only to things which you want to let through. At this point, you are probably making your shield only from your own body energy. This is hard to maintain. Let me show you another way to make a shield. CHEAP SHIELDING Picture yourself exactly as you look now. Shut your eyes and see yourself. You are in a comfortable chair in a familiar room. But it isn't you---it is a "picture" or symbol of you. There is a blob of white energy over the head of that picture. Pull it down slowly..over the head, over the arms and chest, over the stomach, over the loins, over the legs, over the shins, over the ankles, down to the feet. Tie a knot under your feet. Now change the color and see how it makes you feel. How does a green shield feel? A blue one? A purple one? Which color seems "thinner" and "thicker" to you? Now remove the shield gently, letting it creep up from your feet and back to that cloud of energy above your head. Now, something difficult. Without your shield, or wearing the thinnest one you have found, reach out for other sources of energy. This energy is in the air all around us, coming from Mother Earth, from the magnetic fields, from each other, from pets, from plants. A good place to look for this energy is in a park. Trees let it off constantly. Pets who love their owners radiate it toward them all the time and are glad when we draw on it. To feel another person's energy, hold your hand above theirs and lower it until you feel a field coming off their skin. How far can you feel this feel affecting you? A person with really strong shields can touch another person with them from across a room. Can you increase and decrease your personal field so that someone else can feel the variations? Work on it. It is best to make your shield, not simply from your own energy, but from the energies around you. Once you learn to perceive the energy currents, making use of them to protect yourself will become second nature. My neice had a good experience with shielding. She was feeling bombarded by new sensations (new job) and was having a hard time. Her new co-workers thought she was snobby and snubbed her. Once she started shielding, they began to project their own impressions of her on that shield, and they started liking her! They thought she was being more open and accessible, while she was actually preventing her thoughts and feelings from reaching them. One can even project a sort of false impression on a shield, which is much like Romulan cloaking. It's an advanced exercise though, but it can be helpful. Kiwi Carlisle carlisle@wuchem.wustl.edu