Banishing Is Essential in Magical Practice
[Banishing is the] process of causing a spirit or nonphysical force to depart or withdraw from manifestation. Effective methods of banishing are essential in magical practice. As the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice points out, being able to stop a magical process is just as important as being able to start it in the first place! There are at least two effective ways to banish an entity or energy, one using ceremonial magic, the other relying on natural magic.
The ceremonial method relies on specific banishing rituals such as the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which uses geometrical symbols and divine names to persuade reluctant or intrusive spirits to depart. The method of natural magic, by contrast, relies on the use of physical substances that are held to be inimical to the entities to be banished. Thus iron or steel is traditionally used to banish nature-spirits of the faery type, and noxious herbs such as asafoetida are burned to drive away spirits of all kinds. In ancient times, this latter approach was taken to much further extremes, as in this recipe from Egyptian sources for an incense to exorcise evil spirits:
Pound together honey, fresh olives, northern salt, piss of a menstruating woman, ass-shit, tomcat-shit, pig-shit, the plant ewnek…so as to make a compact mass and use for fumigation around the man [who is possessed by spirits] (quoted in Lindsay 1970, p. 234).
As the above suggests, banishing is closely related to exorcism…
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