Banishing Rituals -- LBRP

In the previous post, I mentioned the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. It seems that use of this ritual was recommended quite a lot in the GD as a general solution for opening and closing rituals. Also, apart from Crowley's hyperbole, it was highly regarded by Israel Regardie, who recommended it as an entry point of sorts into the Golden Dawn system.

Before addressing the ritual itself, I'd like to quote Peter Carroll again (Liber Kaos this time):

The traditional lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram devised by Golden Dawn adepts is becoming progressively less useful as time advances. Nowadays, few
people are sufficiently committed to Hebraic mysticism or kabbalistic studies to derive much power from the god names and angelic images. The persistency of the increasingly inappropriate lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram and imItative
variants of it in other traditions is evidence of a continuing requirement for a ritual of this type.

I mention this because personally I don't know how wise the "just do it" attitude is with this kind of material. If the symbols aren't understood well enough for the practitioner to have some degree of clarity, this kind of ritual might be a waste of time or have undesirable side-effects. Nevertheless, the ritual is a useful (and influential) example of a banishing procedure. This is it (quoted from an online version of Crowley's Liber O):

(i) Touching the forehead say Ateh (Unto Thee).
(ii) Touching the breast say Malkuth (The Kingdom).
(iii) Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah (and the Power).
(iv) Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah (and the Glory).
(v) Clasping the hands upon the breast, say le-Olahm, Amen (To the Ages, Amen).
(vi) Turning to the East make a pentagram (that of Earth) with the proper weapon (usually the Wand). Say ("i.e." vibrate) I H V H.
(vii) Turning to the South, the same, but say A D N I.
(viii) Turning to the West, the same, but say A H I H.
(ix) Turning to the North, the same, but say A G L A.

Pronounce: Ye-ho-wau, Adonai, Eheieh, Agla.

(x) Extending the arms in the form of a Cross say:
(xi) Before me Raphael;
(xii) Behind me Gabriel;
(xiii) On my right hand Michael.
(xiv) On my left hand Auriel;
(xv) For about me flames the Pentagram,
(xvi) And in the Column stands the six-rayed Star.
(xvii-xxi) Repeat (i) to (v), the Qabalistic Cross.

I am not going to attempt to describe every Qabalistic correspondence implied in the above ritual, in no small part because I don't feel fully qualified. Suffice to say that the ritual assumes a complex system of symbols, associations, and correspondences which serve as a sort of basis for its construction. For now, we'll gloss over this and just tackle some basics.

Steps (i) to (v) above constitute the Qabalistic Cross. You may remember hearing very similar things in church, depending on your background. You'll notice, though, that step (i) sort of designates the subject of a sentence and the rest is a statement about what is being designated to that subject. This is an entry point for a basic understanding of what's happening symbolically.

Just taking it as a general statement, "Unto thee" is very vague, isn't it? Making a cross on the body and saying Hebrew words that parallel Christian church phrases at first will probably lead the reader to suppose that the entity being addressed is "God", that old white guy in the sky. Not necessarily. Israel Regardie states that the entity being addressed is the practitioner's higher genius of sorts. Also, "Unto thee" is said while touching the forehead, which could be related to the brain or the third eye chakra depending on taste. Actually, the forehead is at the front of the brain, so one could even say the frontal lobe. The point here is that it begins and ends with a way of dedicating certain things to "higher functioning", whatever the practitioner may conceive that to be. If one's idea of "higher functioning" is clear, this can be a quick aid to concentration and keeping thoughts from going to less important things.

The practitioner then draws a circle of fire around him/herself in his/her imagination, with a pentagram of fire located at each of the four cardinal directions. The directions, the archangels, the god-names... these things I'll set aside for now. I think this part of the process is in many ways more along the lines of what one might naturally think of when thinking of "banishing". Notably, the circle is intended to be a line which external influences cannot cross.

I want to talk next about steps (xv) and (xvi). This is actually the heart of what I want to point out about this ritual. What the hell are those pentagrams about anyway? The upright pentagram is a symbol with a number of associations, and I won't go over all of them. The main thing I want to point out is that one name given to the pentagram is the "Star of the Microcosm". Having drawn the pentagrams, the practitioner makes a statement about the "Six-rayed star": the hexagram. The hexagram is also known as the "Star of the Macrocosm", and it is being placed (in one's imagination) in "the column", which is essentially an imaginary line going through the center of the body.

I'd like to suggest a plausible interpretation of this moment in the ritual: The microcosm (we might say the internal universe) is identified as occupying a space outside of oneself and the macrocosm (we'll say the external universe) is identified as being condensed into a space inside of oneself. Viewed this way, the entire universe has been turned inside-out!

So in the above, I've given a couple more ideas that seem to have been integrated into a very popular Banishing Ritual. Next post I'll try to talk about why this kind of ritual seems to be considered useful even on its own, regardless of whether it begins/ends another activity or not, and also regardless of whether there is some specific influence being banished or not. Stay tuned!