Banishing

Banishing is the counterpart to invocation — where invocation calls in, banishing sends away. In practice it is performed before ritual work (to clear the space of distracting or unwelcome influences) and after (to dismiss energies raised but no longer needed). The most widely-known banishing ritual in Western ceremonial magic is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), which combines specific gestures, Hebrew divine names, and pentagram visualisations to clear and consecrate space. Simpler banishing methods used across many traditions include smoke-cleansing (with juniper, rosemary, or garden sage), salt or saltwater sprinkling, clapping or drumming, and clear verbal declarations. Banishing is also directed at internal states: clearing fear before a challenging task, doubt before creative work, or attachment to outcomes before divination. The mechanism, regardless of metaphysical framing, is closer to deliberate attention-reset than to literal energy displacement — which doesn't reduce its usefulness as a practice.

Banishing rituals are among the oldest documented ritual forms. The Akkadian *Maqlû* anti-witchcraft series (~1st millennium BCE) is a nine-tablet ritual of burning effigies and banishing curses. Biblical accounts describe casting out unclean spirits — Mark 5 and Acts 19 are the most-cited New Testament instances. Tibetan Buddhist *gtor-ma* protector practices and Shinto *harae* purification rituals appear in continuous textual transmission from the 7th–8th centuries CE. The modern LBRP was systematised by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn after its founding in 1888 by William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, and William Robert Woodman; the ritual was first published in Aleister Crowley's *Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae* (1909). It remains the most-practised banishing ritual in Western esoteric tradition.

Pick one banishing practice and use it consistently rather than collecting variants. Smoke-cleansing with rosemary or juniper, saltwater sprinkling, or the LBRP each work — what matters is repeated use, which trains the practice into a reliable attention-reset cue. For the LBRP, Israel Regardie's *The Golden Dawn* (1937) and Donald Michael Kraig's *Modern Magick* (1988) give workable step-by-step instructions; perform daily for several weeks before judging its effect. Skip the 'only love and light may remain' add-ons that float around online — they soften the operation without doing anything mechanically. Perform once at the start of ritual work and once at the close; further repetition through a single session dilutes focus.