In Ceremonial magic circles, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is the “King” of banishing rituals. It’s considered to have everything that you need in it, and considered by some to be somewhat untouchable. It’s the kind of thing you don’t really question, and a fundamental building block to further practice. The question here is why? What do we really get out of something like this? What does a “Banishing ritual” actually DO?
I’ve been doing this a long time, and I started in the Ceremonial practices. I considered the LBRP the foundational ritual of my practice, and with good reason. The LBRP, and most good banishing rituals by extension, do much more than just banish. When I poked at what a good banishing ritual does, I came up with the following things, in rough order of most effective.
1. Grounds and Centers YOU. A quick bit, designed to, over long practice with it, act as a kind of shortcut to meditation, for finding the right head space for the rest of the ritual to be effective.
2. Cleanse and purify the working space. This is the banishing part of the banishing ritual. In the LBRP this is accomplished using Divine Names as methods of conjuring purely elemental energies without a personality really attached, allowing you to push negative or unbalanced energies away.
3. Setting wards and defining sacred space. This isn’t exactly a “full circle casting”, but it IS close. This is often where spirits or entities are invoked to guard the space that you’ve just cleansed. The best banishings invoke entities that you’re working with regularly, and spirits with strong elemental or planetary ties are best.
4. Raising your personal vibrations and casting out negative energies. “For about me flames the pentagram, and within me shines the 6 rayed star”. This is I think a large part of what makes these kind of rituals so integral to progressive spiritual development. Over time, this is what sharpens the energies within you to the level of being able to handle more refined spiritual energies.
5. Grounding and centering again, in the new refined and cleansed energies. Sure, this falls into the step above as well, but this is about really integrating this, and is what allows these energies to go deep enough to make more changes.
For many people, the LBRP does these things quite well. For some folks though, they’re not comfortable with any number of the aspects of this ritual. Not liking the monotheistic bent, not really working with the angels, no inspiration or tie to the Kabbalistic structure of the ritual as a whole can all leave a bad taste in the mouth for some. What are the things you might need then, if you’ll be writing your own? Of course you’ll want them to do all those things, but also you might consider the following.
1. Can this be done both with and without tools? This is the kind of ritual that should be able to be performed anywhere. Nobody should be able to take it away from you, but you should also be able to fluff it out if you need the drama for some reason. Tools should be optional for a banishing, I think.
2. In the same way, this should be visualization heavy, so that you can do this completely mentally if you need, but also have a “standard” way of doing this, so that you can have a series of actions and words, that trigger the ritual. It IS a ritual, and should have something to perform or DO.
3. Once it’s designed, this should be something that you eventually memorize, again, so you have it everywhere.
4. There should be a place somewhere in the middle of this kind of ritual where you can add things that are about moving or training your personal energies. Traditionally with LBRP practice, you can put the Middle Pillar stuff inside the ritual, so you’re not doing it multiple times.
Diving in here, let’s start with grounding and centering. In the LBRP this is a component called the Kabbalistic Cross. While it’s done in Hebrew, the words themselves are the tail end of the Lords Prayer, roughly. Thine, Kingdom, Power, Glory, Amen (which means something like to the ages, or to eternity). Visualization wise, this ends up being the concept of pulling an energetic line from kind of above, through your body, down deep into the earth, AND BACK UP TO THE CENTER OF YOUR BEING. Then, extending this out side to side, to infinity to the right and left, and a kind of expansion outward of your energetic shell so that it pulses and brightens. For me, it would be appropriate to outline not just the 4 directions, but 6 (or more properly 7). The 4 directions, up, down, and of course, collecting and empowering yourself with these in the center of your being. I don’t have a huge issue with the Lords prayer here, or the Hebrew, so I’ve never felt the need to mess overly much with this. I do add a visualization in front and behind, but I’ve never messed too much with the “script” here.
Next comes this idea of cleansing and outlining the ritual space. In the LBR, this is the pentagrams for which the ritual is named, keyed into 4 different Divine Names. Flavors of divine energy, charged with the 4 different elements. The pentagrams act as doorways, opening up to raw elemental energy, the pure energy pushing everything that isn’t clean or pure out, and the visualizations act as such. I’ve experimented in the past with using various languages, or pseudo languages to invoke the elements directly. This is also done with planets sometimes, although for a daily ritual, I find that a little clunky personally, it certainly can be done if you like it. This is also the point where you outline the boundaries of the sacred or magical space.
Next, guardians are invoked to protect the space you’re working with. These for me almost always are tied into COMING OUT OF the doorways created in the step above. While it does work best to invoke entities that you’ve worked with before, this is also a way to build a good, solid working relationship with some entities. While I don’t hate the structure of the LBRP here, with each entity invoked separately, I’ve also used things that are a bit different, invoking all of them at the same time. I’ve used scripts like
“I invoke ye, ye angels of the celestial spheres. Ye who are the guardians of the gates of the Universe, be ye also the guardians of this mystic sphere. Keep far removed the evil and unbalanced. Strengthen and inspire me so that I might preserve unsullied this abode of the Eternal Gods.”
Of course, you can write your own, and invoke any spirits you would want, although again, some ties to the energies you’ve already created are a help.
For raising your own energies, the small bits about pentagrams and hexagrams serve this function in the LBR, but it’s probably the least solid portion of this. I could make an argument for sections of the Bornless ritual here
I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire!
I am He! the Truth!
I am He! Who hate that evil should be wrought in the World!
I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth!
I am He, from whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth!
I am He, whose mouth ever flameth!
I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light!
I am He, The Grace of the Worlds!
"The Heart Girt with a Serpent" is my name!
This is felt more than visualized exactly, as a sort of vibrant energy, although basic light/electricity visualizations can certainly be useful. This would be also where we put things like energetic circulations, so that you’re circulating the more intense energies.
For the final part, I always suggest repeating the same grounding and centering as in the first part, as a way of almost bringing you back to the beginning of the ritual, dialing the energies back to almost where they were.
Hopefully, this helps you all get an idea of how to form something like a daily banishing ritual. Daily practice of something like this once you get it figured out are of a great benifit to most folks practice.