"The Olympic Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram"

The following is an adaptation of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to the Graeco-Roman Tradition, and so it is called the “Olympic Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.” Such a “translation” is possible because the LBRP is an enactment in a Qabalistic framework of certain shamanic practices that are nearly universal. Once the underlying shamanic cosmology has been identified, it’s relatively straight-forward to reexpress the ritual in the terms of another cosmology, such as the Graeco-Roman. That is, many magical operations are evolved forms of shamanic practices that are nearly universal, at least in the Europe and Asia, but probably also elsewhere. Therefore, if one can recover the original shamanic practice underlying a magical operation, it is relatively straight-forward to “translate” that operation between magical systems or between cultural traditions.

Godwin (Light in Extension, pp. 29-38), on the one hand, recommends against using Greek God-names in the LBRP, but on the other gives a Greek analog to the LBRP which makes use of many of the same associations as mine. I think Godwin’s arguments against constructing a Greek LBRP, based on incompatibility of the systems, lose their force once one sees through the ritual to the underlying shamanic cosmology and practice. Although, as he says, there is no direct evidence that ancient Greeks used anything like the LBRP, it is nevertheless a basic shamanic technique for establishing sacred space and the Cosmic Axis (Eliade, Sham., 184-279), which must have been familiar, in some form, to ecstatic practitioners in ancient Greece and elsewhere.

In any case, the present banishing ritual is based on the Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements, and so is more in the ancient Hellenic tradition than the older Olympic Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (OLBRP), which I made available on the internet in 1993. In particular, the older ritual made use of assignment of Elements to the Directions that is used in Ceremonial Magic, Wicca and many Neo-Pagan traditions. However, in this new ritual, Earth is in the West and Water in the North (as opposed to the more familiar Water in the West and Earth in the North). If you find it too difficult to adapt to the ancient Hellenic assignments, then you may prefer the older OLBRP.

The text of the ritual is accompanied by full annotation and references to sources. This information should make clear which aspects of the ritual follow from ancient tradition, which come from more recent magical traditions, and which are a result of my own speculation or arbitrary choice; such information is all too often missing from Neo-Pagan reconstructions. A slightly abridged version of the annotated older OLBRP. was published in The Caduceus: The Hermetic Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 15-34. The original LBRP can be found in Israel Regardie’s Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic (Vol. III, pp. 68-70, 94-95), in his Middle Pillar (chs. 3, 10), and in many other books.