Yes, plus a number of Chaos (Khaos?) Magicians have supposedly used Lovecraftian rites to invoke the imaginary deities of the Cthulhu mythos.
I presume that Psi Vamps are carrrying out a similar act i.e. changing their personal reality by mental effort, but not changing reality for others?
Is it all about altered perceptions or does anything “real” happen?
Well… altered perceptions can have real results.
There is a real, quantifiable and objective difference between walking into a party with your shoulders slumped and the assumption that you’re ugly and boring… and walking into a party with a smile on your face and the belief that you’re charming and witty and people like being around you.
Past a certain point, consensus reality really is tremendously malleable.
Which, I’d argue, is the point of modern mysticism. Wicca, IIRC, has a ritual called “drawing down the moon”. Older systems have rituals of invocation and evocation. The idea, I’d argue, behind most if not all of the traditions is a path of guided change towards a goal. In general, greater strength of will and intellect, as well as physical and emotional health. You can do that by summoning the presence of Thor every Thursday and becoming His avatar, or by believing that you’re a “psivampire” who gains power by feeding off of people around you.
But as to whether or not magic is real (as opposed to magick), the answer I’d have to give is no. You can’t fly. You can’t live forever. You can’t stop a bullet. You can’t read minds or any of that jazz. But you can induce a change in reality in conformity with your will.
Books like the VB (or, I’d again recommend Crowley’s work, especially the Book of Lies and Book of the Law), simply aim at breaking you out of consensus reality far enough that you can start programing and metaprogramming your own ‘trip’. It’s part of the point behind koans, or Gurdjieff’s deliberately mind-hurting language in his fiction. Past a certain point, habitual conceptual ‘grids’ can be torn down, and people can learn how to build their own, new ones.
I object to this phrasing. You’re not inducing a change in anything other then your own behavior, which of course has impact on those around you. It’s no different then Dale Carnegie, which isn’t filed in the Religion section of your nearest bookstore.
You’re allowed to be wrong. 
A distinction without a difference.
Whether or not you’re healthy, emotionally stable, physically fit and fun to be around is most definitely an actual, factual, real change in objective reality. The point is that there isn’t such a strict delineation between ones "own behavior’ and the world around them. The two are part and parcel of each other.
Magick also doesn’t only refer to inner, emotional states. Convincing yourself to train for a marathon is as much a magickal act as is training your mind to analyze new situations according to the Sephirot.
Well, yes, there is a significant difference in that How to win friends and influence people didn’t deal with a person’s ‘spiritual’ side, or revolve around Ghostic theology, or Hermetic mysticism, or include the use of rituals and such.
There certainly appears to be a part of the human mind which is uniquely susceptible to ritual. I’d even argue that ritual itself plays an important role in allowing the mind to ‘let go’ a bit and that we may even need some symbolic constructs in order to progress down certain paths.
Now, if you want to call it religion, you can call it religion. Although, of course, it’d generally go in the New Age/spirituality secion of the local bookstore. 
A distinction without a difference.
The end result is the same, leading one to conclude that the ritual is not intrinsically necessary in changing one’s behavior. Yes, it can help, and baseball players follow complex rituals when batting or on a hitting streak, because it focuses the mind. But why does dressing it up in Ghostic theology make it a religion any more then David Ortiz clapping his hands and adjusting his gloves before stepping into the batter’s box.
My objection was to the phrasing induce a change in reality in conformity with your will. Reality isn’t changing - the same rules apply. Nothing is conforming to your will - that’s not what people are responding to. You are changing your behavior to elicit a response. On one level it’s no different then a rat in a cage pressing a level to get a pellet of food. Granted, that’s a gross simplification but dressing up some basic human psychology in fancy terms is little different.
Just to be clear, I have no problems with it if it works for you. Personally, I think it reeks of stuff like that Oprah Winfrey recommended book about wishing for things and making them come true.
Correct, but it is useful. And althouh the end result is the same, the process matters. Like saying that, for instance, losing weight by diet and exercise or losing weight by liposuction.
If Ortiz credited his victory to supernatural forces, I’d happily credit that as a religion.
But that ‘response’ is part of reality. People aren’t seperate from reality, after all. You don’t have the change the rules of reality to change reality. If I walk out to my driveway now, get in my car and drive it straight into a tree, the rules of reality stay exactly the same. But the actual contents of reality have changed by +1 smashed up car and -1 working car.
That’s why I’m been emphasizing the difference between objective and consensus reality.
Thanks for your response. I’ve read the book of the Law and a couple of biographies of Crowley and I think you are correct.
Some of his writing made me slightly uncomfortable, but I suppose that was the idea.
Bullshit.
Your church tells you can’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t. Especially seeing as how you’re a bad-ass predator. Don’t let those wimps tell you what you can and can’t say!
How do you reconcile your belief in psychic vampirism with the chapter in the Satanic Bible instructing satanists to avoid psychic vampires and their ilk? It also admonishes satanists not to become psychic vampires.
Am I missing something here?
Well I think what characterizes vampirism is the strict predatory nature of it. If you go beyond that then it’s pointless to even use the word vampire, and is just a ‘hip’ post-modernization where you bastardize the term so that it means whatever you want it to mean.
Interesting.
Heh, I’m not that into multicultural equality. My equanimity only goes so far. I know what it’s like to be empathically assaulted by other people’s emotions, but one must learn to endure and control things. Some people are just highly sensitive.
Everyone sends and receives energy every day. We are ‘feeding’ off of each other right now, in a reciprocal fashion, by having this conversation. That’s going a little too far and redefining the term into meaninglessness. IMV. If it’s merely the feeding off of ambient energy, then we all do that. We all give off energy too. Anyone that walks into a room that’s nice relaxed and calm, they will begin to relax. Anyone who walks into a room where people are fighting will become agitated. That’s feeding off of the energies in the room.
At the point where you have redefined vampirism to mean whatever you want it to mean, then that’s fine, but the mainstream definition of vampire is an undead creature that feeds off the life-force of another resulting in a net-drain of essence from that person. In which case I don’t understand why people would use the term vampire to mean something more fluffy and hippy. It’s kind of like LaVeyan Satanism, why use the name Satan unless you really mean Satan?
If you want to get into a deeper discussion of Qi/Prana, we can, but not in the public forum. Too many psychic vampires on this forum who live for nothing more than the pleasure of denigrating people for being superstitious, however they choose to define superstition.
To put this into perspective, from my point of view, a vampire is someone who feeds off of a person’s , not their [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi]Qi.
Chaos Magick addresses this. While the ritual itself is only a focusing activity, generally Chaos Magicians find that certain rituals lend themselves better to certain activities. Not that they are strictly necessary, but that you’ll use a Rosicrucian ritual when doing a mass enlightenment Theurgy, or an OTO ritual when you want to have a mindblowing orgasm.
The notion that human psychology and the impact upon reality should be separate and distinct is one of the common problems with these ideas. You declare a strict separation whereas others might not. Comparing it to the simple tool use of the rat in the cage doesn’t invalidate it in any way. Knowing how it worked in a rational way doesn’t change the fact that it worked. Where once there stood a Druid’s sacred grove, there no stands a Cathedral. What was once majestic trees is now majestic stone. It doesn’t matter that the stones were hewed in a quarry. The will of people made that happen, it changed reality. Maybe not the fundamental principles, but it did change something about reality. Form is as much a part of reality as the laws of physics.
Excellent perspective. I hadn’t thought of integrating the two world views like that, but it really works well in this case. Also accounts for the subconscious or subtextual connection between vampires and sex.
Well in Shiatsu/Acupuncture you disperse excess Qi. It’s a standard part of the practice. You are not generally absorbing it into yourself, but the notion of getting rid of unnecessary Qi and letting it flow back into the world around you is not so radical in and of itself. Also the idea that others may benefit from such Qi isn’t all that terribly radical. This could be why Qi Gong, Tai Chi, or Yoga classes benefit from the group participation.
That’s an excellent point about the sexualization of the vampire mythos.
Fixed the link for those interested:
Jing
Well, yes, but not out of the body; generally you want to hang on to your qi, although you might not want it where it is at the moment. Dispersion of qi usually means unblocking a meridian or point so the qi can flow. Actual excess qi, as opposed to a relative excess caused by a deficiency of something else or by stagnation, is pretty rare. Did see it once in a guy who masturbated so much he was ejaculating blood, though. Trying to raise his kundalini, ironically enough (to bring a third worldview into it!) Our TCM teachers were terribly excited in the clinic that day.
You never want to lose your Jing, although we have to in order to make babies. According to my teachers, anyhow, there’s no such thing as excess Jing.
And I think this now officially ranks as the Most Esoteric Thread Ever on the Dope. Take that, Tolkien geeks!
Ah-hah! But what type of Sex Magick would Gandalf use?
WhyNot Yes, your point is well made. Though my understanding is that Qi moves in and out into the environment. Ta Qi and Gu Qi being the most obvious forms of that. You’re right about dispersal, but there are some dispersal techniques such as Gua Xa (sp) that seem to disperse Qi into the greater environment. Generally yes you want to maintain Qi as much as you can. And no, one does not want to ever disperse Jing.
Then again from the other angle, you can take your comments and apply them to how pantheon’s version of an elegant, kinder gentler vampire doesn’t really jive with the TCM paradigm.