Predation when harmonically balanced is an essential part of sacrosanct natural order. I studied the predator/prey relationship extensively for Ancestral Airs as a feature of the animal clan stories, as well as developing the attitude toward doctoring malevolent spirits as hunter-gatherers do.  In both the spiritual world and the biological one predation is wholely based on vulnerability and opportunism. Preying on the strong is most often an act of desperation fueled by starvation. This shifts somewhat in the mating rituals of animals (and probably humans too) where the young, virile ones try to out do the weaker but wiser older ones. Youth does not always prevail. The same concept tends to govern spirit handling where we might, for example, live in such a way as to invite predatory spirits to prey on us. Such ways of livng create vulnerabilities that include, in part, losing the protection of benevolent spirits or set up the perfect environment in which predatory spirits thrive. The third scenerio seems to take place between practitioners and malevolent spirits whose existence is threatened by the strength, knowledge and healing ability of the practitioner, that through helping others heal, takes away the breeding and feasting territory of the malevolent. The flip side to all of this is the essential feature of balance in nature and a thing that is divinely created as in all the sacred twins of light and dark, summer and winter, day and night, and so forth. The dance between these elements and the predator/prey relationship is found everywhere in healthy, well balanced ecosystems. Perhaps what we have failed to remember are the prayers. Hunter-gatherers conduct deeply spiritual rituals in preparation prior to hunting. These rituals insure that the prey, like the hunter, is entering into the sacred dance.