The Mind Gift is a general reference to the psychic abilities of vampires, which allow them to perform three principal functions: telepathy, telekinesis, and pyrokinesis. With the Mind Gift, a vampire is able to read mortals’ minds, especially when the vampire is asleep in a coffin or has dug far below the earth, remaining in a century-long torpor. The Mind Gift also allows vampires to telepathically perceive the thoughts and mental images of mortals and immortals alike and telekinetically move objects, such as unlocking and opening doors, turning off car engines, pushing immortals to the ground, pulling mortals closer, rupturing a blood vessel in the brain, breaking a bone, and more.
The Mind Gift is partially hindered in the maker-fledgling relationship. After a vampire transforms a mortal into another blood drinker, the maker and fledgling lose all telepathic communication, although each can still affect the other telekinetically.
Like the Fire Gift and the Cloud Gift, the Mind Gift is an ability that develops over time, usually over the course of many centuries. Although minor abilities arise early on, such as the ability to read thoughts after a century or two, the greater abilities of telekinesis can take as long as a thousand years to develop.
The full ability of the Mind Gift can also be inherited through the blood. When an immortal is turned into a vampire with the blood of an ancient vampire (for example, Jesse Reeves by Maharet), or when a younger vampire drinks the blood of an older vampire (Lestat drinking from Akasha), that young vampire gains the full power of the Mind Gift, able to naturally employ telepathy, telekinesis, and pyrokinesis whenever needed.
Only one known method is used to prevent vampires from employing the Mind Gift, which is to wrap them totally in iron binds, the way Cyril wraps Baudwin. This completely prevents the vampire from using any form of telepathy.
The Mind Gift appears in The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), Prince Lestat (2014), and Blood Communion (2018). For more perspectives on the Mind Gift in the Vampire Chronicles, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Blood Curse, Cloud Gift, Crippling Gift, Dark Gift, Fire Gift, Iron Curse, Jesse, Lestat de Lioncourt, Maharet, Mind Gift, and Spell Gift.