There was no true concept similar to pure "psychic vampirism" in folklore traditions. The rise of material/industrial Western capitalism, empirical scientific techniques and the cultural meme of Descartes' mind-body division all strongly influenced occult theory from the 19th century on, and this was the birthplace of the "psychic vampire" idea. Prior to that, even though vampires, ghosts, and many supernatural beings were thought to be essentially bodiless, they still were believed to consume physical substance and matter. Vampires ate food, drank wine and had sex with living people, or tried to. Ghosts sometimes were thought to consume food, or some phantom element of food, which was the basis for the almost universal practice of grave offerings: putting the favorite food, drink and comforts of the deceased on or in the grave. In many cases, grave offerings were made to prevent the dead from leaving their tombs and seeking out food in their former homes. Succubus demons were thought to seek out sex with young men specifically to obtain a physical substance--semen, which has always been closely related to blood in mystical thought. In The Iliad, Odysseus gives the ghosts in Hades blood to drink, and the blood gives the ghosts temporary power to speak audibly. In all times when real belief in vampires was a factor, it was always assumed that supernatural beings and the dead required physical matter, whatever benefit they gained from that matter. Writers who fail to understand this are projecting their own modern mindset onto our ancestors in an earlier age--an error which happens constantly in the field of popular vampire studies.

By the time 19th century occultists considered the question of "psychic vampires," the vampire panics in Europe were long past and literal belief in vampires had become rare. The vampire had been a metaphor and a fictional/poetic figure in English-speaking tradition for nearly one hundred years. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was some theorizing among occult writers concerning "astral vampirism." Henry Olcott suggested that some of the exhumation accounts in the 18th century panics might be explained by premature burial and astral vampirism. The "vampire" had actually been buried alive and sustained itself in a state of suspended animation in the grave by sending its "astral form" out to suck blood or "life force" from sleeping victims. Occult writer Franz Hartmann developed a theory of a psychic vampire as an "astral tumor," or a mindless, malignant form of psychic cancer. He proposed that a psychic vampire was "a force field of subhuman intelligence that acted out of instinct," attached itself to the astral body of a living person and slowly drained that person of health and vitality. Occultist Dion Fortune related a case in which a number of people complained of nightmares about the same neighbor, who confessed to deliberately attacking them magickally while they slept. In the 1960's, parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo suggested that some kind of astral vampirism might explain certain reported hauntings in which the victims seemed to be drained of health, energy and strength. In this case, the psychic vampire was a disembodied portion of a deceased human being, that would eventually dissipate over time.

Cases that seemed to suggest "astral vampirism" were rare, however--so rare that the early occultists were not particularly interested in examining them or speculating about the phenomenon. "Magnetic vampirism" was a term applied to living people who seemed to act, in Franz Hartmann's words, as "psychic sponges," drawing life force from other people and animals constantly, involuntarily and unconsciously. Hartmann believed this was caused by an alien entity that attached itself to a human host and turned the host into a "psychic sponge."

The theories of occultists and parapsychologists, however, reached a small and specialized audience. They were not widely read by the general public, and they didn't really influence the general concept of "a vampire" held by the average person. A much more commonly recognized notion derived from the Vampire Metaphor as it was applied to certain personality types. Two early short stories demonstrated this concept of a metaphorical "vampire" that didn't suck blood, but literally lived on the health and vitality of those close to him or her. This metaphorical vampire used dependency, guilt, helplessness, manipulation, and a profound selfishness to exploit the good nature of friends, family, partners and servants, causing them to work and live for the vampire's sole benefit until their health failed and they died. In Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "Good Lady Ducayne" (1896), a young woman barely escapes from a kindly old lady who has gone through a series of paid "companions" like so much Kleenex; and in "Luella Miller" (1903) by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, a clinging, helpless woman attaches herself to one hapless, "helpful" person after another as each one wastes away and dies caring for her. The metaphorical vampire, for most of the 20th century, was a "psychological vampire"--a selfish, self-absorbed, needy, demanding human who ruthlessly exploited and used others with complete disregard for their needs and well-being. It's notable that in the Modern Vampire Myth (aside from the femme fatale "vamp" of the 1920's and '30's), the stereotypical bloodsucking vampire was almost always male--but these "psychological" vampires were almost always female.

By the late 1960's, this metaphorical "psychic vampire" was once again being discussed by occult writers and authors of vampire non-fiction. Anton LaVey fulminated against them in a whole chapter of The Satanic Bible in 1969, Anthony Masters mentions them briefly in A Natural History of the Vampire in 1972, Stephen Kaplan talks about them in Vampires Are in 1984, and from then on they're included in most of the "real vampire" books (along with the usual misinformation about the universal vampire myth and accounts of various "true vampires of history"). However, despite the fact that the authors of these books describe psychic vampires as "draining energy," none of the cases they cite contain anything that could not be fully explained in sociological and psychological ways.

No matter how the "psychic vampire" was defined, however, one detail was unvarying: "psychic vampires" were undesirable people that nobody wanted to be around. From LaVey on, the attitude toward them is uniformly unforgiving and hostile: "psychic vampires" are selfish, using, exploitive, harmful and dangerous individuals and if you detect one in your vicinity, the recommended course of action is to leave the area yourself, or get rid of them. Some writers offered advice for "shielding" or protecting yourself from their predations, but no one--I repeat, no one--seemed to think that "psychic vampires" could "feed" harmlessly, or should be tolerated, or needed to be "understood" as just poor souls with an energy deficit.

I can't establish just when that attitude changed--and it's possible that, outside of the self-defined "psi-vamp" community, it never really has. There are a number of books currently in print discussing "psychic vampires" (or "spiritual vampires" or "energy vampires") as negative, dangerous people to be avoided and defended against. What did change, dramatically so, was the willingness of large numbers of people to embrace the identity of "psychic vampire" and turn it into a more or less positive role model. "Psychic vampires" or "psi-vamps" were not just misunderstood creatures suffering from an inborn "deficit" of something that required them to "feed"--like Sanguinarians. They quickly began to regard themselves as superior beings because of their purported ability to "feed on energy."

In all those vampire and occult writings after 1969, the self-defined "psi-vamps" had found complete justification to embrace the mystique of the Modern Vampire Myth, without having to actually do that gross and icky thing that vampires do: drink blood. Being unhindered by that kind of physical fact of life, the "psi-vamps" were able to fully unleash their creativity in deciding what they were "feeding on." In 2002, I wrote the following, based on the psi-vamp websites and fora at that time:

.....Psychic vampires are people who report having a pronounced need to enhance their natural state of being by drawing, absorbing, "draining" or "feeding on" some kind of "energy." Most psychic vampires claim that the kind of energy they require is life force, or "pranic energy," that is to say, a specific type of energy produced by living things and the biosphere as a whole. While this is the most common "energy" craved by psychic vampires, other types of "energy" that are identified, and differentiated from "pranic energy," include sexual energy, psychic energy, emotional energy, magickal energy, negative energy, astral energy, and atmospheric energy (for example, thunderstorms), and there are others mentioned, as well. These "energies" are given conflicting and overlapping definitions, however, and the explanations of exactly what "energy" is (in this context), and how the psychic vampire uses it tend to vary from one individual to another. Most psychic vampires "feed" primarily from other human beings, but a great many report being able to "feed" from non-human living things and from other sources. In some cases, this is an emergency substitute, but some psychic vampires attempt to "wean themselves" away from human sources altogether for different reasons. Some psychic vampires hold the opinion that it is more "evolved" or advanced to progress beyond feeding on humans.
.....Some psychic vampires report an ability to absorb "energy" from material sources, including fresh vegetables, rare meat and blood. Although many psychic vampires have an interest in blood-drinking, they do not seem to crave or lust for it as do blood vampires. It remains an open question whether psychic vampires who have an interest in blood, but who do not actually drink it, may be reacting to the power of suggestion, and feel interested in blood because they self-identify as vampires and on some deep level associate vampires with blood. But this is a question that psychic vampires themselves will need to puzzle out.
.....Like blood vampires, psychic vampires feel that they must "feed" on the energy they require on a regular basis, and many report physical feelings of discomfort if they are denied access to a source. Symptoms of "energy deprivation" include extreme fatigue, depression, mood swings, immune system suppression with an increase in illnesses, uncontrollable "draining" of non-targeted sources, negative reactions from others close to the psychic vampire, insomnia and anxiety. Psychic vampires often discuss methods of finding energy sources and "feeding" reliably and harmlessly, and these methods vary to a high degree. Some examples include psychic vampires who "feed" during sex, those who "feed" on large crowds, those who draw energy from the natural world and visit parks or wilderness when "hungry," and those who "feed" by finding people in highly energized states and either calming or further provoking them.
.....Unlike blood vampirism, psychic vampirism may be diagnosed either subjectively by the vampire or objectively by observers. Symptoms that one is a psychic vampire oneself include mood swings, dizziness, alternations between high energy and fatigue, headaches, a distinct feeling that one is pulling or drawing energy or emotions from other people, and similar feelings. But more and more people are being "diagnosed" as psychic vampires by other self-defined psychic vampires, on the grounds of numerous criteria. These include observed effects of the suspected psychic vampire on others (fatigue or depression in the presence of the psychic vampire, a sensation of phantom "tendrils" or attachments, a sensation that something is being pulled or drawn out of the body or aura) and direct psychic perception of the aura or energy field of the suspected psychic vampire.
.....Psychic vampires are developing a completely independent subculture of their own and have their own acknowledged leaders and their own vocabulary. They are also developing a consensual agreement on what being a psychic vampire feels like, both to the psychic vampire and to others around him or her, especially psychically sensitive others. Some psychic vampires identify what they call an "energy signature" that allows them to interpret whether another person is a psychic vampire, as well as what specific type they are and how they function. Such signatures are often read and interpreted during direct contact over such media as online chat or the telephone. Training methods adopted from modern magical traditions, standard psychic development disciplines, meditative paths such as Taoism and other sources are being introduced to help psychic vampires learn to control their "feeding" and learn to "manipulate energy."

It wasn't that I disbelieved the "psi-vamps" when they asserted that they were experiencing real symptoms and real distress, or that there appeared to be a cause-and-effect between "psi-feeding" and the effects of "feeding" on the target. But my long experience with psychic and energy work eventually convinced me that there was something else going on. If a phenomenon is objectively real, you would expect it to be described consistently more often than not. But the "psi-vamps" couldn't seem to figure out just what they were "feeding on." As I explain in The Truth About Energy, it's a physical and logical impossibility to "feed on energy." However, influencing, manipulating, and inducing pronounced changes in one own's energy state, and that of other living things, even at a distance, is another matter entirely. In Energy Mediums I explain what I felt that the "psi-vamps"--at least, many of them--were actually doing.

I also felt that a certain percentage of self-defined "psi-vamps" were in fact Sanguinarians who refused to come to terms with their condition--especially in the case of those who described themselves as "psi-blood feeders" or "hybrids" who reported a need for both blood and "energy." In 1997, I stated that I believed all "real vampires" should drink blood, even though some never would get to that point due to inhibitions or other factors. Under some pressure, I retreated from that statement, but not from the opinion.

I feel that much of the divisiveness between self-defined "psi-vamps" and Sanguinarians in the Vampiric Community comes from the essential unreality of the "psi-vamp" experience. The "psi-vamps" can only convince themselves that they're "psi-feeding" for so long, even those who are gifted at influencing energy states in a way that sustains the illusion. While the "psi-vamp" community has been growing, it also sees a high turnover. Most of the Sanguinarians who were around the community seven to ten years ago are still here. Many of the well-known "psi-vamps" and "psychic vampire" websites are not.

I have a suspicion that deep down, self-defined "psi-vamps" don't really believe in what they do. In their hearts, they know their "psi-feeding" is an elaborate rationalization. This is one reason that they're so hyper-sensitive about being "accepted" as vampires, and so defensive at any suggestion that they don't really "need energy." It's a form of "identity politics" for them. As often is the case, the people with the least concrete justification for the identity are the most energetic, strident, and uncompromising about claiming it. The problem the self-defined "psi-vamps" have to confront, of course, is that blood drinking vampiric people have one obvious advantage. Blood drinking is provable. We can debate why we need it and what effect it has on us, but if anyone wants proof that we actually drink blood, all they have to do is hand us some. The self-identified "psi-vamps" have no such mechanism available to them as objective proof that they "psi-feed." All their evidence is subjective. So, they have to replace direct demonstration with rhetoric, fervent emotionalism, cries of discrimination and claims of moral superiority. "We are real vampires," easily turns into, "We're the only real vampires." (I'll be fair and allow that this works both ways--other groups do the same thing.) Self-defined "psi-vamps" who claim to have "evolved past the need to drink blood" and now "feed on a higher level" are rather like the "ex-gays" of the Vampiric Community.

I am far from convinced that "psi-feeding," if it were possible, would be "more ethical" or morally superior in any way to blood drinking. Assuming for purposes of argument that "psi-feeding" was possible, could there be anything more unethical and immoral than stealing a person's essential life energy? If it were possible, I'd consider that analogous to actual cannibalism: carving flesh off and eating it. Yes, the wounds might heal--and the "energy body" can repair itself. But the "energy body" is so complex, and so vital to our well-being, that "stealing" and "feeding off" part of it would be an act of highly anti-social aggression. Some self-defined "psi-vamps" claim they have "energy donors"--but how do you "donate" some of your vital energy to someone else? Furthermore, many self-defined "psi-vamps" claim that they "feed" off people unawares (in big crowds, say), and repeat the self-justifying rationalization that "they're not hurting anyone" and the donors "don't even realize what's happening."

Well, your pocket can be picked without you knowing it, too, but that doesn't make the mugger ethical or harmless.

This applies even more to "deep core feeding" and "feeding on soul energy" which are described by some self-defined "energy vamps." If such a thing were possible, I would consider that to be not merely "unethical," but outright demonic. What kind of creatures "feed on souls?"

Blood drinking is innocuous in contrast. Blood is a neutral biological product (just like urine, semen, sweat, and mother's milk). It's intended by nature to become obsolescent and is replaced by the body constantly. Some people even have medical conditions in which blood donation enhances their health. The physical body allows for blood loss--it's built into the system calculations. Throughout history, human beings have siphoned off, donated, shared, and shed blood, without causing death, for all kinds of reasons, most of them intended to be beneficial in some way. It's also difficult, if not impossible, to get blood out of someone without their knowledge, if not their consent. If you take blood against someone's consent, it's extremely difficult to rationalize that you're "not hurting anybody" or that you need it more than they do.

Maybe I'm biased, but there seems very little doubt whether "psi-feeding" or blood drinking is "more ethical" or less harmful. Provided that the donor is freely cooperative and agreeable, blood drinking has very few ethical problems attached.

I have no particular agenda regarding "psi-vamps" and their self-definition. I am making my case here and that's the end of it--it stays here. I'm not out to convince the Vampiric Community of my point of view. What does concern me is the divisiveness that this issue continues to engender in the Vampiric Community, and the fact that I feel self-defined "psi-vamps" are suffering because they're not getting what they truly need. In the case of Energy Mediums, that means acknowledgement and training; in the case of self-defined "psi-vamps" or "hybrids" who are really Sanguinarians, that means a sufficient intake of blood to meet their true needs. But if the current state of affairs can't change any time soon, I at least hope that perhaps we can all refrain from shooting "wannabe" and "poseur" bombs across one another's bows.

See the links at the end of Energy Mediums for more information about the "psychic vampire" community.

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