A few things I’ve learned that I’d like to share. While I will try to make it sound as simple as possible, these techniques do require practice over time and some mastery before moving on to more difficult exercises. I’ve learned many of these over the course of several years, and would recommend you attempt at least a year’s worth of practice to each exercise if not more if you are an absolute beginner. This is by no means a complete guide to all vampirism, I only know what I learned myself, but I hope these will help those interested, as well as help cultivate new and interesting ideas.
Energy Work & Energy Vampirism
First and foremost being able to sense and manipulate energy is a necessary skill. If you’re entirely new to energy work, my first advice is to do stretches. Stretch your body, and you can do either basic yoga or tai chi in addition if you so choose as these are great exercises for physical stretching and getting to know your body’s energy. You don’t have to be an expert in martial arts or have to specifically be able to do complicated yoga poses to be able to harness physical movement as technique. Focus on your breathing when you stretch, and stretch out every limb and all your body.
Energy Sensing
Practice sensing the energy of your body and where it flows to and from, especially try to find where you have pooled the most energy, and/or if you have an energy blockage. I had quite a lot of energy blocked once and simply doing daily stretches for a week helped unblock it and give me more vitality. Exercise, in general, also aids in overall physical health and increase in energy, so if you are physically capable, doing jumping jacks, pushups, or even something very easy every day (and you don’t have to do many) will absolutely increase your vitality.
If you have an altar you can practice sensing the energy of the objects on your altar. While not a required technique, I do find it to cultivate not only for vampirism but in witchcraft and spirit work in general as it can aid in sensing the properties of ingredients, objects, and their uses. I also use this technique to scan items and objects when I have a spell laid out already to try and match the abstract feeling the spell has to an object that could potentially boost it.
Beyond magic, you can do the same for objects to sense their associations (or lack thereof) with entities. This is also how I create altars, I find objects that feel like they would either be approved of by my deities, or that have similar energy to them. Being able to focus and hone that ability to sense connection between an object and a spirit is very useful not only for working with that spirit but for future energy work.
Energy Sensing Exercise
Take something very simple and easy that perhaps you may already be familiar with. It can be an ingredient you use in your practice, or a special object, or even a sigil. While there are various methods, an easy one would be to lay your hand over the object and breathe steadily, imagining a pulling or radiating sensation in your hand. It can be faint at first. There should begin to be a nagging feeling in your mind or body, not quite like a voice the way entities communicate, but an instinct that you feel this object could be used for. Stick to that instinct, feel it out in your mind. Sometimes, these feelings can be hard to communicate exactly into words, but chase that instinct and try to find any synonymous match to that object’s energy, either physically around you or what it reminds you of in your mind.
For example, if I scan an object, I may start to feel an abstract cool sensation. If I chase it, it could lead me to extra-sensory feelings or memories or an instinctual imagination that shows me a cool breeze, perhaps, or something that reminds me of ocean waves. Interpretation is then up to you and what you associate with that. Creativity is important, as well. A breeze doesn’t always mean “wing element” but can be calming, healing, and you can take it further, such as calming anxiety, healing psychic wounds, etc, depending on how far your energy senses reach.
Keep in mind energy doesn’t come from, solely, physical or living things is also important. Ideas and abstract concepts also have energy. Drawing energy from a process, drawing energy from literal technology, and so one can prove important, as well as other things: creativity, art, destruction, passion, movement, sex, community, prayer, and so on for the other concepts and actions. In witchcraft you draw energy from crystals, candles, graveyard dirt, nails, incense, moonlight and sunlight. You can do this for yourself just as you would a spell. But the energy manipulation is often key.
Energy Manipulation Exercise
Touch the first two fingers of both your hands together. Feel their warmth, their micromovemnents, for some it can begin to feel almost itchy. Practice feeling energy between them. Once you start to feel it, you can attempt creating balls or strings of energy. Cup your hands together as if you are holding something very small, like a bug you do not want to crush. In the center of your palms, focus there until you can feel energy pool between them. Move your hands as if you are creating a snowball, squeezing the energy into its shape. Creating energy balls as practice is like the artist painting spheres — necessary practice in order to see the basic shades and values. Practicing this enough will allow you to then take your energy and shape it better.
Practice more and more with this manner. The misfortune of some practice like this is that it may leave you with even less energy before it leaves you with more. Like physical exercise or any other forms of practice, you have to be Bad at first in order to get Good.
For somewhat more advanced exercise: gather as much energy as you can and condense it into as small and tight of a ball as possible, spin it at a specific speed between the thumb and forefinger, and be able to smoothly manipulate it’s turning, as though you are spinning a marble. As simple as it sounds, it’s difficult, and feels like the energy equivalent of tensing a muscle tightly for a long period. However, it can help train you to make energy work second nature.
To practice finesse and reflex, you may call upon a spiritual entity to help you practice another exercise. For myself, The Vampire, Bael, and some other gods aided me in many exercises. Create a shape of energy in your hands, or have your spiritual partner create one, then begin rotating it. Try to transfer it between your hands and theirs without disturbing its rotation or shape at all, as if your and their energy were perfectly in sync and as one.
Additional Energy Vampirism Techniques
Once you have begun to try these with greater ease, even if it is not perfect, imagine as though you have a tendril, a disembodied hand, or something that is an extension of yourself. If you are aphantasmic, you don’t have to imagine it as much as you need to try to shape your own energy using hand movements.
You can begin to practice on living things, draining their energy or otherwise manipulating it. Start small. Fixate on your target, such as a plant, and reach out to it with your own energy, your extended hand or energy tendril. If need be, physical motion with your hands can be very helpful until you can learn to use minimal movement if you desire to be more discreet. If you can combine your focus of mind, steady breathing techniques, and basic energy work, you can attempt to draw the energy of your target into your body.
If you decide you want to, you can also initiate drawing energy by physical contact. You can use this in subtle ways or more obvious ways, from an accidental brush in public to outright sex magic. Even a slight brush, however, can be used to plant your energetic “proboscis,” if you will, on someone or some thing.
When you draw energy inward, inhale. You can do so slowly, think back to anti-anxiety techniques that require you to inhale and count. When you inhale, draw in that energy with your breath as though you are inhaling it as vapor or scent. Pause, holding your breath for a few seconds, before exhaling to allow you to absorb the energy into yourself. You can also, if possible, imagine or feel the pulse of your heartbeat. With every pump, draw energy into yourself and imagine it through your veins. There are many ways you can use the timing of your body to draw energy in, but these are the two easiest as they are more palpable for learners. In time, you may begin to be able to drain energy without touching someone with your own.
Necromantic Vampirism
The living are not the only things that one can draw energy from. All spiritual things can be drained of energy, but it is up to you, the practitioner, to be able to learn one’s own limits and proper targets. An extremely powerful demonic entity would likely not be very pleased if you attempted to weaken or drain its energy without permission, but utilizing the goetic and ceremonial magic bindings can help one keep such spirits at bay and protect oneself if necessary. However, most of these concepts are meant to be used on the spirits of the deceased and lesser spirits of nature.
Devouring: Sin-Eating, Soul-Eating, and Invocative Cannibalism
Devouring is a more advanced aspect of vampirism and necromancy that one should be careful with. It’s not the same as simply taking energy from another person, it is taking qualities of an entity or person into yourself. This can be done both banefully and benevolently, occasionally known as white necromancy and white vampirism.
Sin-Eating is common in some European cultures, especially Christian and in particular Welsh ones, in which a person takes on the sins of another person who has either deceased or will be deceased to cleanse their spirit and allow them access to heaven. There are different semantics to each culture, but a common form of Sin-Eating is to eat bread at the gravesite of the deceased to take on and devour their sins, cleansing the departed. Sometimes there would be an appointed sin-eater of a given town who would be the one to take on the sin-eating ritual at every funeral or pre-funeral rites. Most cases mean that the sin-eater would be the one to carry the burdens of all others’ sins, damning their own mortal soul so that others have peace.
Other variations include eating other wheat or grains based foods, alcohols, or even channeling sin from either the deceased or the living into one’s own body to transform into excrement. Útiseta, mediumship, possession, or other channeling means can also be used to draw out the spirits of the deceased and take on their sins into one’s body spiritually and convert it into spiritual energy, cleansing it entirely or redirecting it into magic. Spiritual cleansing rituals can take place during or after the channeling to cleanse both the spirit and the channeler of sin.
Soul-eating is closer to more traditional vampirism in that it does drain the life of an individual, but rather than devouring energy from a living thing, one can instead consume entities, such as malefic spirits. Soul-eating can be similar in ritual to either sin-eating, channeling, or energetic vampirism depending on one’s personal beliefs, preferences, and entity one wishes to devour. Typically this is done for lesser entities, such as spirits of animal bones to be exorcised, but can be done to cleanse malefic spirits from a premise granted that it may have malefic effects thereafter for a time and would likely require an additional cleansing ritual for the devourer.
One can also take on the qualities of beings or entities by devouring them. In a similar instance that entering trance while wearing the skin of a bear can grant one the power and courage of a bear, devouring the spirit of a bear from its claw can also grant one its power and courage. Keeping in mind that invocational techniques can transform one’s own spirit over time compared to a more brute-force style of soul-eating lasts longer more immediately – they each have their benefits and detriments for the practitioner. It is important, however, that positive influences aren’t the only thing you devour.
Unlike invocation, you take into yourself all the raw qualities, including negative effects. This is the main downside to devouring, unless your intention was to cleanse those negativities, then you may feel the symptoms for a few days or weeks depending on the strength of both your own energy and spirit, and the one you devoured. This is where invocation’s upside is asking a stronger spirit to give you a specific quality or set of qualities without the negative attachments.
Devouring Exercises
The egg is sacred to many cultures for being a literal embodiment of life. One can use the egg to channel the energy of a target. You can write the name of your target on the egg, and leave it out for a day, collecting all their life energy into it. Once it has absorbed all that it can, you can cook the egg, preferably by hardboiling to keep it inside intact symbolically, and eat the egg to devour the energy collected. This can be used for not just energy vampirism, but also as a form of sin-eating or cleansing. For those who want to heal but not take on the weights of someone else’s misfortunes, throwing the egg against a hard surface to break it can also heal the individual by breaking their misfortune.
For devouring a metaphysical target, begin small. You can do this easily enough with the energy of plants or small animals attached to bones and other objects. Sense their energy, what kind of energy they give you. Sense the properties they have inside them and focus on that. Bring it into your body, absorb all of it until you can no longer feel the spirit’s nature. The objects themselves may still have magic abilities, but the spirit formerly attached to it will be inside you, becoming part of you the way food’s energy does. You can attempt this technique on enemy parasites, as well, devouring them for spiritual nutrients, but it is up to you to be able to properly feel if they will benefit or harm you. Think of it like real-world insects — some are toxic, and some are full of protein.
Attempt to create a small thoughtform. Feed it with a specific goal in mind. Courage, wisdom, a personality trait or several, or create a thoughtform based off another source. Allow it time to grow and cultivate so that it isn’t a waste of your own energy to simply devour it first thing. Once you feel it has grown enough, bake bread or cook a small meal, gathering it into your cooking. You can, additionally, only devour part of wat it has gathered if you decide to keep it alive like a battery or spiritual pantry. Eating the meal should be enough.
It’s polite to thank thoughtforms and spirits for feeding you their energy. You don’t have to, but it’s nice.
Astral Transformation & Necromancy
I made this post about some astral hexwork techniques, please give it a read:
I sometimes practice seiðr, and at times use seiðr as a means to search for energy. Seiðr is a type of Norse magic that utilizes trancework as well as weaving and spinning thread primarily as a form of magic, to be extremely brief. Thread was used as a way to connect with the world as all things were interconnected by threads of fate. I use such trancework and literal threads in vampirism to connect to the target or to connect to energetic leylines through astral travel, out of body, lucid dreamwalking, and so on. One can bind their target with literal threads, or they can use threads to connect to them. If not the literal ones, then you can search for the fate-threads that connect you to them. You can also, when in astral body, search for energetic leylines that you can siphon energy from.
Another technique called Útiseta, or “Sitting Out” as it is often translated, is a type of necromantic seiðr that can be utilized for receiving wisdom from the dead, communicating with spirits, becoming possessed by spirits, or simply traveling with other spirits, among many other uses you could potentially make for yourself. Historically, it is the process of sitting out on top of a burial mound, chanting to oneself until the spirit leaves the body, usually through an unnatural yawn. The person’s soul would then be able to travel, as well as receive wisdom from the dead in which you sit.
There are many cultures in which spiritual shape-shifting is achieved through the remains of an animal, among the common methods is wearing the animal’s skin. A cloak of feathers, a hide or fur to cloak or drape around oneself, or even just holding the bones or remains of the animal, especially the skull in one’s hand, can help invite the shape of that animal or the animal’s spirit into one’s body to become it. This is utilized in seiðr as well as other Norse magicks, such as the Berserker and Ulfhednar who used the skins of bears and wolves to transform their spirits to fight battles.
Astral Vampire Exercise
An astral technique I use for astral projection uses music and rhythm. I have a ritual bath and then cloak myself in my sacred space. When I do this, I put on the music I need to listen to. There are specific songs I listen to that have lyrics I use as mantras. I first start singing the song, and swaying myself in time with the beat. After some time, my words will melt into mumbling as my spirit takes shape outside of my body. It is here I begin to focus on my transformation and what shape I desire to take. My two common shapes are a snake and a bird.
For the shape of a snake, I sit cross legged and cross armed, and move my body as though I were slithering, swaying side to side with my head taking lead, leaning forward slightly. I focus my energy into the length of my spine, feeling as though it could slither right out of my body, and imagine that it does, that the base of my skull becomes the snake’s head as it slithers off my body. I touch my head to the floor and close my eyes, my astral self becoming this snake.
In this form, I slither towards my target where I bite their astral form. As my BALG post has briefed, not many people protect their astral selves as much as their physical ones, so I often go completely unnoticed. Through biting, I do one of three things: cause harm in general, inject an astral poison into them, or drain them of their life and energy. Injections can be anything, but I usually pour all of my negativity and hatred into the bite to cause them deep misfortune and misery, expelling my feelings and making them suffer emotional and spiritual disturbances.
It can take a few attempts to retain the astral shape, as sometimes distractions can pull you out of the form, or it fizzles due to the general flow and shift of one’s thoughts, especially those who may have intrusive thoughts or attention deficit. This is normal, try not to be frustrated, simply try again even if it’s just for a minute or two. Understand that if you have a hard time with lengths of time, don’t feel bad. You are not inherently weaker or less powerful than someone who can sit still and meditate for hours at a time, we all learn at different paces, and the additional challenge of being forced to learn under a mental time crunch due to neurological reasons, though frustrating, can be helpful in the end.
You can use this technique for any qualities, and they do not need to be explicitly animals of this world, or any singular animal. Rather, you can create a new astral body, shape it to your desire once practiced the previous energy shaping techniques.
Transforming Someone Else
In my culture, one can transform not only one’s own soul but someone else’s. I will not be sharing those specific techniques and rituals, but there are others I have learned that I am willing to share. There is no specific exercise as this is a point where you can explore many possibilities from the techniques you have learned, but a few ideas that I have experimented with before (though I am still in need of more practice myself).
Transformation of someone else can be easy or hard depending on the target and your accumulated practice. If they are a weak target, it can be easier, but strong-willed targets who are resistant or unaware of your working can be harder, especially for hexwork. You can transform a meek soul into a lion, or a strong and mighty individual into a pathetic worm, but both take practice, a culmination of all previous techniques, and an excellent grasp on both your own energy and the energy you will be working on. There are a great many factors that go into a work like this, so please bear in mind I cannot account for every single possibility, and you can utilize any and all previous techniques.
First and foremost, you should decide whether you will be using your own energy, if you will be invoking the spirit or energy of something else, or if you will create a thoughtform to channel through. When using your own energy, it is best to do on a willing target for beneficial purposes as not to harm yourself. It is possible to use your own energy to taint someone else, but not recommended unless you practice on weak or friendly targets to get better at shielding yourself. Plan beforehand what the target is going to be transformed into. This can be either a short-term guided astral travel, or a long-term transformation.
Ritualizing your space is important to help keep all necessary energy inside the space. Cleanse yourself of all negative influences, then set a cleansing and banishing ritual to clear your space of any and all interferences. The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram will do just fine.
When using your own energy, reaching into your target with it can give you a sense of what they feel like, and how you can manipulate it. Think of your body and energy as a syringe. You can inject your own will into them, as well as transfer the energy of something you devoured into them. You can especially focus on lessening negative qualities of yourself or something you devoured by transferring it into them, but keep in mind this can leave you drained, like a blood transfusion. You can also gift someone positive qualities, such as if you are feeling generous as to share your confidence, but it will, again, leave you drained and lacking in that quality until it heals and replenishes.
Using the previous astral techniques, you can enter the astral and find your target there, as well, and instead of transforming your own spirit, you can ritualize and transform theirs. Manipulate it in your hands like a sculpture, weave it with literal threads, pull spirit from their spine, use the pelts or feathers or other symbolisms you wear to transfer into them and give them wings or bear’s nerves of steel or the high anxiety of a rabbit’s prey instinct. Using the spirits of the dead, you could ask their assistance to attach to the target, essentially possessing them.
It is important to know and understand that if you attempt these latter techniques without proper experience, you can harm yourself spiritually and can accidentally entwine your energy and spiritual being with someone or something else, which can be difficult to undo by yourself when it leaves you constantly drained.