I would like to know if you really need to perform LBRP before every invocation I read so there are a lot of mages who do not operate this banishing and go straight to it … one magician told me that if I expect and believe that invocation may be a danger and it will be risky so it really will happen and IT will be risky is there someone who does not operate LBRP at all? I have been increasingly confronted with the fact from some experienced mages And they tell me that it is nonsense and that it does not do at all that it is not needed but now in it I have a little confusion
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Me, and lots of us on here, I never even came from a traditional ceremonial magick background and it is honestly still too redolent of Abrahamic stuff for my liking.
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I have experimented with and without LBRP before various ceremonies. Here is a list of pros and cons for both:
If you do perform LBRP,
Pros
-You remove unwanted energies or entities from your space. Depending on your intent, this can also work great to prevent imposter spirits if you tweak the ceremony a bit.
-Helps you get into the mindset that you are God in the ritual, which can be helpful to step out of the idea of being part of the mundane and into the sacred.
Con
-If you are planning on using it both before and after the ceremony, the repetition can be a bit annoying.
If you do not use LBRP,
Pro
-you avoid using the same ritual twice if you are planning on using it or another form of cleansing at the end of the ceremony.
Con
-unless you use an alternative form of cleansing, the unwanted energies you did not banish may interfere with your working. It will also be easier for impostors to get through.
-using alternative forms of cleansings may require either more work or ingredients, which will make your ritual more costly.
-skipping this step will also make you have to work a bit harder to slip into the state of mind needed for invocation. LBRP at its core is not just a banishment rite but a form of ritual prep. It will have to be substituted with another form of meditation.
To be honest, I rarely perform LBRP as part of my ritual prep due to some other rituals I favor more (smudging to cleanse and a ring of black fire to consecrate the space and act as a ward for impostors). But I do use it as part of my closing of the ritual or if I feel it necessary for that particular rite. That’s part of growing as a sorcerer, you experiment with many different forms of magic, master it, and then decide whether or not to continue using it. I hope this helps in some way.
Edit: I failed to answer your question. No, it is not necessary but it can hold benefits, especially if you learn to tweak it once you mastered it.
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It depends entirely upon the system of evocation you work within. Almost every working system of ceremonial magick has some sort of banishing/clearing ritual to perform before an evocation/invocation to prevent interference from outside forces. As @Dralukmun mentioned above, it sets the stage, so to speak, for what is to come, and establishes a boundary.
In the Golden Dawn system, the LBRP serves to do more than banish the unwanted though. It is also used to develop the basic skills, such as visualisation and energy manipulation, necessary for the more intensive magick.
If you are a beginner, daily performance of the LBRP upon awakening, and before sleep, will develop your skills like nothing else.
It is NOT necessary, but any mage worth his or her salt keeps it, or something similar, in their pocket for those times when removal of energies and spirits becomes necessary.
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To take a completely different paradigm, core shamanism since I shared a tutorial with load of people here, you first get a mentor, your spirit animal (“power animal” as it’s called in that system) and they help you somewhat by travelling with you, advising you where you can safely journey.
Later, you learn to structure your own shields, visualise unwanted energy being burned off you, and so forth. there are also “shamanic dismemberment journeys” where you experience spirits picking or hacking, or burning, your flesh clean off, these are about removing energies and links to things that are harmful to you, you usually get clothed with new flesh, or bathed in light, sometimes the spirits will cut you open and insert crystals or archetypal symbols or shapes, which are the way energy appears as your power is restored.
None of it has anything to do with angels or Abrahamic godnames, and yet it works, and so do the evocations of the tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of magicians and priests performing evocations of deities into icons or sacred spaces, over many millenia.
So if you like it and want to do it and it aligns with your worldview, great. but I have little to no use for it, so this is why i am presenting the countering point of view here, not to “argue” that one must never ever use it, in some knock-down, drag-out, “last man standing” kind of way, just to show that it is entirely dispensible.
If you want to get good and certain that you are as one with the All, the Divine, or whatever, you can examine what that means to you. This is what I came up with: My Invocation Of Inner Divinity
Some will argue an established method is best, and have all kinds of good and valid reasons for that statement: I counter that creation is the act man shares with the Divine, so creating something, and even changing and updating it, is by default a way to honour divinity within; choose what makes sense to you, and means you step up to the work with absolute conviction.
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Exactly. It depends on the system you practice within.
The LBRP has become standard in the Western Ceremonial Tradition, and is taught as necessary within that tradition. It doesn’t apply to anything outside of that tradition though.
The ceremonial tradition approaches spirits in a more controlled way than a tradition like shamanism, or Voudon. In a tradition like Voudon especially, the idea of controlling the LWA doesn’t even occur to them, and being possessed or “ridden” is seen as a high honour, something generally frowned upon in the ceremonial tradition which traces back to the fear based grimoire tradition of Solomon.
Ultimately, it is up to you. There are numerous rituals the LBRP can be replaced with, or you can create your own, or you can dispense with banishing altogether. I generally use a banishing incantation, like the one out of EA’s Kingdoms of Flame, but like to keep a few different banishing rituals tucked away for times when they may be needed.
Sometimes, I work without banishing at all. It all depends on my mood lol
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Hell, I am somewhere in the middle between the two. My beginnings still play a role in my current path, which is geared more towards my family’s folk magic. Some parts of it are completely random, in formal, or come very close to shamanism. On the other hand, some ceremonies are very formal with a solid structure within that rite, leaning more towards a similiar vibe Ceremonial magic has. Which is probably way I have the stance on LBRP as I do.
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Rather than using only the banishing form of the pentagram ritual twice, I generally advise people to use the banishing form prior to whatever they’re doing, then the invoking form of the pentagram ritual following whatever they’re doing.
This is one of those things that rustles my jimmies, the rituals of the pentagram and hexagram are not just banishings, they also have invoking forms to take in healthy new energies, while banishing form is more along the lines of taking a spiritual poop to flush the system of undigested and extraneous energies to increase optimization. Israel Regardie suggested a 60/40 balance in favor of invoking forms of the rituals for those that practice them.
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I feel it really depends on your spiritual alignment and those you primarily work with. There are various means of warding your space and proper cleansing that would not require you to do this before every ritual. If you are aligned with a particular current you really shouldn’t go about invoking one that would clash with the core ideals of that current. I would certainly take into consideration the alignment of your soul before doing something like the LBRP. I suppose this ties in to remaining devoted to a spiritual path to build momentum in your craft.
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LBRP is a good thing to practice so it gets you into the mindset of cleansing and banishing your ritual area. But I wouldn’t say it’s required every time.
In Esoteric Taoism there is something called a wei qi field. This doesn’t require any external entities, only you and your own power. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to link, so look up the work of doctor Jerry Allan Johnson, he’s from a Mao Shan sect. They’re the left-hand path of Taoism, and they work with spirits a lot. If you message me I can hook you up with a book regarding their experience of spirits and how to banish and purify, which doesn’t require any adherence to Kabbalistic rituals such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.
I know some others too, in which I am training to become proficient before practicing magic, that are not related to Jewish mysticism if you also feel an aversion to it. One includes linking noise with magical intent, using bells, gongs, or even pans to spread that intent to cleanse the area.
I also wanted to add some more information regarding their practices. Esoteric Taoism has a lot of knowledge regarding exorcism, though they don’t usually do that since they’re not Christians and don’t consider spirits evil, and have a lot of rituals about countering magical attacks. This is because in places like Indonesia, you have Javanese shamans that curse people all the time, same in places in Northern Thailand, so the Taoists have very outlined approaches to countering magic, especially destroying enemy altars. I have not tried this myself, but it might be worth it to look into this practice.
Taoism is complementary, their principle of the Way is sometimes similar to that of Pythagorean One. They also don’t believe in evil spirits necessarily, just various kinds of immortals, the highest being Celestial Immortals, which some Daemons, and most Gods fall under. Most Daemons as we know them are considered Terrestrial Immortals, slightly below Gods. Their definition of a demon is actually based on a thought-form.
There is a practice within Taoism, and Japanese Omyodo, where you construct a powerful thought-form that is passed down from generation to generation. This thought-form becomes very powerful and exists to “eat” other spirits, so is useful in exorcism. This is where the Japanese term Shikigami comes from.
I’m fairly certain that what we in the West call the Goetia, are called Lu by Mao Shan sects. I’m not sure if this is shared with other, more orthodox sects like the Celestial Master or Lotus tradition (Lotus tradition is a fusion with Buddhism). I’m also aware that when one Taoist master looks at another master’s book, the first thing they look for is the Lu who authenticates the book as legitimate. This is because they view Lu in the same way as the Greeks and Romans viewed Daemons or Daimons, as divinities, not evil spirits, that were often guardians and teachers to humans.
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