There are some people who refer to themselves as psychic vampires who claim they need the energy from others in order to feel healthy. The health claims are spurious. And calling oneself a psychic vampire may make you sound cool, but in earlier days before vampires became "cool" they were referred to as energy leeches and looked down upon by the magical community.
I don't believe that people are born needing to drain energy from others. It is a behavior that they learn and develop over time. In a way it is a form of addiction. It is totally possible to become addicted to energy just as it is to food, to drugs, to sex, or gambling, or any other thing. Energy makes us feel better for a period of time, then we need another "fix" so we take energy from another so we can feel good again. Learning to give up on this practice is hard because it deprives us of something that makes us feel better. But until we can turn our back on it and find another way of dealing with our needs then we remain addicts.
Creed12, they were certainly not made by magic and they were not hunted. They are people just like you and me. They are the ones that just tire you out by constantly making demands on your time, resources, kindness, and willingness to help.
To add to what Lark posted, I think there are different sorts of energy vampires.
The ones that take up people's time and make them feel disempowered or afraid, I believe are abusers of social power. This can overlap with the power of psychic energy, but can mostly be a mundane thing. Look up the ''Wheel of Power and Control'' that is used as a model for understanding domestic violence.
For those who believe in subtle energy, there are practitioners who either call themselves or are called leeches or vampires. I don't believe that they should automatically be looked down on, as long as they fulfill their needs in the most responsible and harmless way that they can. If that's a given, then it doesn't matter if it's really something they need to do, or if it's something that they only think they need to do, or if they're even doing the thing.
My favorite method of protection that I read of was the Earth Blanket. If you feel that you are having your energy taken away from you, then you can probably feel subtle energy. There's a lot of it in the earth. With your mind, grab that Earth Energy like a blanket over your head and cozy up. The Earth Energy will continue to flow around you and into the leecher, who might not like the flavor because this leech aimed for People. This won't hurt the Earth, it's basically a Grounding Meditation in the reverse direction.
In a pinch, you can think of the ''leeching spell'' as a hose. There is the feeding part, and the linking part. If you can find the linking part with your mind, push it away into the earth.
The only issue with your assistance Aeon, is that if the psychic vampire is aware of their actions and actively is seeking energy from you. If both those conditions are met and they are dead set on stealing your energy, simple shields and energy techniques aren't going to affect their ability for long.
You have to build a shield that is actively aggressive towards foreign energy; this makes the effort of removing energy from you more than you are worth to them. If you give them a hard enough time, they will generally go find someone else to remove energy from.
The ones that don't go away are the ones you should be scared of; because you may have to bind or curse them to keep them away from you/others. In those cases you have to be very skilled and/or very lucky as those things have a lot of viables. If you ever end up finding yourself the target of one of these folks, I'd talk to another energy vampire or otherwise a skilled practitioner.
