the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

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Something that I've found to be very effective and meaningful in my spiritual development is a ritual called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP). I first learned it from Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick and have performed it on and off for years now. Lately, I have come back to it, and I can really tell the difference on such things as dream recall, for instance. I see ritual as a moving meditation, and this simple yet effective performance is such a good example of that. The archetypal elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water come together and are purified in you. When I look to the east and visualize air, I use the memory of when I used to walk off of Skyline Drive near my home and sit on a cliff's edge to look off into the distance past the river and miles beyond. When I look to the south and visualize fire, I imagine a desert landscape with the sand beneath me and the hot sun baking into my flesh. When I look to the west and visualize water, I usually imagine a waterfall or a babbling brook from one of my nature hikes in the nearby hills. And finally when I look to the north and visualize earth, I think of ferns and trees growing up between the moss-covered stones as I take in the fresh scent of the black soil. The next step is building the Archangels, and that's always been a bit more difficult for me because, of course, I don't have anything from direct experience to base them on. Raphael is perhaps the easiest, but the rest are more difficult for some reason.

This is a celestial magick - one far removed from that which the average person might think that magick is all about, i.e. conjuring demons or casting a spell to bring yourself some money, etc. This part of the Great Work helps to clean you up and strengthen your aura - it's kind of like taking an Astral Shower, if you will. When I did this in the past for any length of time, people around me reported experiencing "little nasties" or little spirits hanging about. These can lead you to feel like you're being watched or cause you to think you're seeing movement - like a shadow - right on the periphery of your vision. It used to really irritate my fiance at one point, but we don't notice them that much any more. I recall one of my most triumphant moments many years ago when a good friend came to spend the night with me up in Fayetteville at my apartment. He slept down in the living room where I had been doing my ritual work, and the next day while we were having lunch, he mentioned to me that "something" had been bothering him for most of the night - a shadow which kept bouncing up next to him in and out of his vision and causing him to feel weird. This friend may be a bit superstitious but is not one to really be all that open-minded into things spiritual at all. "I did that!" I exclaimed, and even though it wasn't an intentional result, I knew it meant that I was really making some ripples on the Astral Plane.

This ritual is such a great one for setting apart a sacred space, both physically and mentally. I do it in combination with the Middle Pillar, which just energizes some of the central chakras, and a standard sitting meditation. It's helping me to scrape off the dross of my anxious thoughts and put into motion some thought forms which gather the good stuff to them. Slowly I am beginning to separate the story of me from the reality of who I really am...

For those of you who may be interested in this, here's a really great document I found long ago which describes the ritual and the theory behind it in nice simple terms:

The Essential Skills of Magick

If any of you have had experiences with this ritual, please let me know!