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Banishing..!

  
  

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Porn Star Justice
14:05 / 14.06.04
The past week has been really awful.

One of my dogs died, I almost got fired from my job, I almost got my ass kicked by a woman who I was trying help because she'd lost her wallet and a group of joy riding kids pulled a gun on me a block from my home (the last two happening within an hour of each other).

Yeah, you can look at the positives on most of these (I didn't lose my job, I didn't get in a fight, I didn't get shot) but I still feel like I have some seriously bad mojo hanging over me lately and would like some advice on how to banish it.

I've had some good luck with sigil magic when trying to obtain things (new job, new apartment, new girlfriend) but have never tried anything to alter my reality by banishing an "evil spirit".

Any thoughts, suggstions or advice?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
18:25 / 14.06.04
You need an uncrossing. Simple as that.
 
 
FinderWolf
18:37 / 14.06.04
Also, never underestimate the effectiveness of simple, carefully-worded affirmations (sort of like conscious hypnosis or NLP). Repeat to yourself throughout the day "I attract only positive and beneficial people and events." That one's worked well for me.
 
 
Joetheneophyte
10:19 / 15.06.04
whilst more ceremonial it might be worth doing the Middle Pillar Exercise or some such derivative

this should have the effect of cleansing your aura and making anything that might be clinging onto you , leave your person

Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick is ceremonially based but it has good advice about astral nasties

Do a websearch for "Reality Creator" and "Hermes" and look up the site, much freebie info about cleansing your area, environment and astral body

hope that helps and good luck and best wishes to you
 
 
This Sunday
23:44 / 12.04.07
Am I the only one who can't be bothered with the whole 'banishing' deal? Anything more than a 'fuck off' or 'behave yerself, or there's the door, don't let it hit you too hard on the way out' seems a but, well, unnecessary or uncivil.

Total, get to fuck styled banishing is something I couldn't do to a neighbor, a random stranger, friend or travelling soap salesman.

Same with the whole lockdown generating-borders thing (I typed that, the first time, as 'generating-boarders' which may illustrate the issue pretty well in its own way), which is something a lot of people, daily and regularly, magick-inclined or magick-without-knowing-it or whatever seem to do reflexively. It's why we have picket fences and office cubicles and room dividers. It's why we turn our head from some people, why we don't hear some people when they're trying to get our attention by following three feet behind and clearing their throat like some raspy snake.

But you don't do it when you're trying to have a conversation with someone. You don't, I'm presuming, generally go to New Place X and start kicking out the squatters, renters, and local hangabouts. If someone turns out to be a complete jerk, a manipulative, lying, vile pathological shitstorm of annoyance, though? I can set down some guidelines of acceptable behaviour, but I'm not going to 'Forever be gone, ye thing of evil!' or put them in a box and stash in the back of the closet.

I'd rather not deal with someone or ignore their presence than try to remove them totally. Like banning someone from an online messageboard or communications network being less a way of stopping them from getting anything from or seeing that messageboard and its materials, but acting as a broadstroke ignore function.

Or, am I putting a weird lens on other people's practices that doesn't necessarily reflect what they're doing?
 
 
Daemon est Deus Inversus
00:22 / 13.04.07
Oh, you don't banish other people; you banish an excess of a certain type of planetary energy which, as a by-product, attracts the person(s) who might be the problem to you. That's why the general form of the B.R.H. is banishing Saturn.
 
 
EmberLeo
00:38 / 13.04.07
Or, am I putting a weird lens on other people's practices that doesn't necessarily reflect what they're doing?

I think you're taking things a bit far in one direction when there's several different things going on.

"Banishing" does seem to be a category, rather than a single act. There are various ways to banish, and quite a few different things one might be banishing. Only some of them are personified.

That said, ignoring somebody only works if their response to being ignored doesn't involve escalating their attempts to adversely affect you.

I'm not going to simply ignore somebody who is stalking me with a baseball bat, eh? If a spirit, entity, or influence is actively causing harm, there's good reason to banish it.

--Ember--
 
 
This Sunday
01:15 / 13.04.07
I'm not going to simply ignore somebody who is stalking me with a baseball bat, eh? If a spirit, entity, or influence is actively causing harm, there's good reason to banish it.

This sounds good, but, really, um, if someone is harrassing you with a bat, evicting them from the country, so to speak, is not going to be really effective at keeping them from smacking you with the baseball bat in the way that, not getting hit with the bat or refusing to take the blows would, yeah? Then you can emmigrate them the hell out of your face, but would you particularly need to? Or, would it then just be a matter of non-involvement?

Kicking the unwanted out of your backyard always seems to put them in somebody else's. Taking the baseball bat away and reminding them to behave just seems easier, politer, and less involved. And cheaper. And less likely to be a permanent maneuver, which always strike me as a bad idea.

Eviction/banishing always seems to be a situation tantamount - to my mind - to admitting you're at the mercy of X, rather than that you're allowing or permitting anything. I'm not going to hard-and-fast a statement about 'people don't use you, you allow people to use you' because that implies an inherent fault in 'you' there. Which there isn't, in that way, for virtually anyone. I will approach the notion, however, that looking at the situation from that sort of angle, it is easier to dismiss otherwise intense actions or cruel/vile ambience directed at 'you.'

Surely, we've all had problems with people, with places, with whatever, that down the line, we've reconnected with, at least on the level or looking at, meeting, or having a cup of coffee with. And others we may never do that with, but wouldn't wish into someone else's home or life, either. That's all.

The only solid hardline response, would be total dismissal. Total removal. Otherwise, it's just shifting around, and removal is just displacement. Pity the poor people where the displaced have been moved.
 
 
EmberLeo
02:08 / 13.04.07
Taking the baseball bat away and reminding them to behave just seems easier, politer, and less involved.

*blinks*

Um... I think we're thinking of very different paralells here.

Why would somebody be coming after me with a baseball bat in the first place? Anybody malicious enough to come after me with a baseball bat either has something against me personally, or generally broken enough judgement that simply taking away the bat and saying "don't do that" isn't actually terribly likely to deter them from harming me.

It sounds like you're thinking in terms of a kid swinging a baseball bat around with no particular target who hits me because they aren't paying attention, while I'm thinking in terms of an abusive ex-boyfriend coming after me with a blunt weapon because he wants to cause major physical harm.

--Ember--
 
 
EmberLeo
02:10 / 13.04.07
I should probably clarify that I don't assume anybody with a baseball bat is out to get me (metaphorically, or literally). My point is that there ARE situations where banishing is more effective than pretending something isn't there.

--Ember--
 
 
This Sunday
02:21 / 13.04.07
I'm not saying 'pretend something isn't there' so much as, if you have the power and capacity to forceably remove, to kick something out, so to speak, it stands to reason that you probably have the power to disarm. In the same way that putting violent disfunctionals on a one-way train out of town implies, to get them on that train, the capacity to disarm or render impotent, and the further act, the excision/removal. It simply strikes me as extraneous. You send the unwell to a hospital or a school, perhaps, but to Siberia, Australia, Alcatraz or - if they're a convicted murderer, say, in several southeastern American states - the United States Marine Corps?

I don't mean 'politer' as applying to the no-gooder, either, but to the residents of wherever one would be banishing that no-gooder to. Quite a bit of annoyance in the history of the world could have been avoided simply by people deciding not to take the undesirables of whatever cut, and exporting them like discount cargo to other people's homes.
 
 
Unconditional Love
09:40 / 13.04.07
One form of banishing could mean to destroy utterly, i used to see a problem with that, but these days i have realised that demons metaphorical or otherwise need to be destroyed utterly sometimes, people may argue that isn't possible, but once it has been achieved just once, then you know it is well within the possible to utterly destroy anything that may be considered unwanted.

To banish is not necessarily to bind or to exile, it can be total & utter annihilation. Working with Sekhmet has taught me such of late.
 
 
jentacular dreams
09:54 / 13.04.07
How can you tell the difference between something being destroyed and it merely being removed/replaced?
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
12:21 / 13.04.07
I don't think that things can be destroyed, however they can be altered to a completely different state; I guess the difference between the two comes down to perception, such as how I can't perceive how my body is altered on a day by day basis, however on a year by year basis I can.

Somewhere on barbelith is a funny cartoon of a what looks like a pissed off smurf wizard, telling a demon five times its size to "get the fuck out of here"; pity I can't find it at the momment.
 
 
LykeX
15:59 / 13.04.07
I don't mean to get all something-or-other, but this banishing discussion seems to me like a whole lot of armchair theorizing.
I think this thread would be both more useful and more interesting if we could get some direct experience in here. You know, "That happened to me last year and I did so-and-so." That sort of thing. So far, Finderwolf seems to be the only one giving advise from personal experience.
 
 
Mako is a hungry fish
16:20 / 13.04.07
Maybe it's just me, but the idea of recounting experiences of a deeply personal nature to an online community whose individual members may or may not appreciate them, isn't appealing. If this were a discussion on how best to stimulate an orgasm, I wouldn't be giving intimate details for people to wank over; I'd rather speak with experience, than of experiences.
 
 
electric monk
16:57 / 13.04.07
I'm still not sure what's being banished here. "Negative" "energies"? Intrusive spirits? Bad luck? If we could narrow that down, it'd help me to know which of my experiences to draw on in my response. I realize the original intent of the thread was a request for help with bad luck, but we seem to have veered into different territory, hence my confusion. I have some things I think would be relevant, but I'm working from assumptions and don't want to drag the thread somewhere it doesn't need to go.
 
 
akira
18:56 / 13.04.07
I dont know if this will work for you, but after having a 'neg' attached to me for a few years, my advise is eat it. Meditate, find out where it is, rip it off, put it in your mouth, swish it round, crunch on the fucker and swollow it. Worked for me.
 
 
EmberLeo
19:21 / 13.04.07
The problem is, "Bad Luck" can have many sources, including a simple lack of sufficient Good Luck. Banishing isn't necessarily the best way to solve the problem.

Personally, when I seem to be surrounded by mishaps, I consider myself to be the problem, and work on figuring out how I got out of synch with my environment.

Quite a bit of annoyance in the history of the world could have been avoided simply by people deciding not to take the undesirables of whatever cut, and exporting them like discount cargo to other people's homes.

Ahh. Well, I suppose that depends on if they have somewhere to go that they DO belong, and if that's where you're sending 'em. The few times I've been involved in banishing, it was a matter of saying "Not only do you not belong here, but your presence is harmful, and we find it unacceptable. GO HOME!"

I don't think that things can be destroyed, however they can be altered to a completely different state

Okay, bu there's a difference between "Protons don't go away" and "You can't kill that tree" eh? I mean, if you take something apart so completely there's nothing but component molecules, atoms, or particles left, I think you've "destroyed it utterly".

I don't mean to get all something-or-other, but this banishing discussion seems to me like a whole lot of armchair theorizing.

Meta discussions do tend to sound that way, whether they are based on experience or not. I have concrete examples to share, but they're not of the "Banishing Bad Luck" variety, per se, so I haven't offerred them up yet.

--Ember--
 
 
Quantum
19:48 / 13.04.07
exporting them like discount cargo to other people's homes.

I'd see it another way. If you banish fear, the fear doesn't land on someone else. When a rainbow goes away it doesn't go somewhere else.
 
 
EmberLeo
19:53 / 13.04.07
Quantum: That is indeed my philosophy if I'm dealing with something that is not personified.

--Ember--
 
 
This Sunday
21:43 / 13.04.07
Quantum, you ain't never been to the Valley of Retired Rainbows? Missing out.

See, those aren't 'getting rid of' though, they're transmuting. Or transliterating.

Fear doesn't go away, it's just become something else. Rainbows don't go away, the reflections just don't hit right. Nothing stops reflecting light, it's just the moisture going wide and far until we lose the benefit.

Dispersal (rainbows) or growth/change (fear) aren't really 'banishing' or 'getting rid of' are they? You can kill a tree, but then you've just got a big piece of wood in its place.
 
 
illmatic
21:43 / 13.04.07
he idea of recounting experiences of a deeply personal nature to an online community whose individual members may or may not appreciate them, isn't appealing

I couldn't disagree more actually. If people cease to base their posts on personal experience, the whole forum becomes a bag of wank. Magic is such a strange and subjective field, much closer to art than science, that you need to practice it, think about it, question and interrogate one's methods, results and the theories, ideas and concepts around them. Posting here should be an extension of that process.

Posting here should be about the sharing of experience - one of the big faults of magical discourse is, IMO, the idea that different individuals will achieve uniform results from the same practices. Thus "one size fits all" spellbooks, rituals and the like. The same practices impact differently on different psyches and bodies. Having this reinforced through the sharing of experience has shown me what a rich, interesting and diverse a field this is, and how personal one's magic needs to be. But I'm getting off my point... *

How much one choses to to reveal is up to the individual, but there are ways of writing about your experience that don't give away too much. I think it's unnecessarily alarmist to state that reporting the results of one of the most fundamental of magical exercises - possibly the first thing the majority of practitioners try - is akin to revealing one's sexual intimacies.

Anyway, to lead by example. I haven't experimented as much as I don't usual work in the Western tradition. The relative absence of banishing in the traditions I work within is of interest in itself. I see the opening rites I use as more "reminders" and "condensations" than banishing.

The banishing I've worked with most was a quick visualisation taken Steven Mace's work. I did this for quite a long time and I find even thinking of it now makes me recall the situations I used it in - works toilets in a call centre! - and the people I was involved with at the time. It's become an anchor in an NLP sense, for these memories.

I feel that the rite, at the time I was doing was an anchor for something else, an attempt to shift one's state to something more resourceful - a mood of clarity and clearness, largely by visualistions working to disrupt the negative thought loops and so forth running in my head. It worked well enough, but I found that , as should be obvious, "bigger" problems wouldn't disappear because of these technique. The distraction often served to get me a better mindspace for dealing with these thoughts and issues though.

I've had similar experiences using other NLP anchors, and often fires the ones I have set up for to induce positive states. I found on one occasion that the negative mood I was completely stopped, was interrupted by a few moments of bliss - and the negative state simply took over again! Much like the sun nipping back behind a cloud. "We return you to your regularly scheduled programme".

I'm not sure what this has to do with the banishing of bad luck, but the topic, and subsequent discussion seems rather woolly to me anywy.

*and I'm not trying to imply that there's no uniformity of experience ever, across individual practitioners - a topic for another thread possibly.
 
 
Unconditional Love
22:25 / 13.04.07
Ok i used to have addiction problems during my twenties, they were demons that were personified through a series of behaviors, thoughts, emotions, relationships to others and wider social interactions.

Now its possible to claim that i transformed these demons that possessed me into certain behaviors, or that i destroyed those behaviors, since i no longer engage with those behaviors in any way what so ever i think of them as destroyed.

If i would of considered replacing smoking for chewing gum, that to me would of been replacement rather than transformation, if id of taken the sum total of concentration unconscious and otherwise devoted to smoking and put that into another form say singing for example i might consider that transformation, thou it is still oral expression its not so much replacement but quite a distinct transformation.

On my own terms i destroyed it, it is no longer there nor is the desire too, i could make up a story of transformation for it, but that wouldnt be true, its just not there, one of my motivations at the time was learning to sing, but i dont sing the learning stopped ever so quickly as another addiction became an even more destructive demon at the time. Which again was destroyed without replacement or transformation.

Things can be reduced to emptiness or nothing because in a certain sense emptiness and nothing are spaces, internally or externally. They are only created when you try to perceive what is there, they become a space, or if your frame is more material filled with fields, but if your point of reference is not (in personal perception) they are literally nothing, these things of emptiness. Yes exactly how can you have these things of emptiness? Then you have to ask was there anything there to banish in the first place except a different set of conditions/perceptions arranged in a different way to create differing effects to behaviour or the environment?

Banishing then becomes conditional to perception as do creation and destruction or the fluid states that act as categorical boundaries to the notion of the concepts that are being used to describe the perceptions and internal interactions involved.
 
 
Unconditional Love
22:38 / 13.04.07
Ramsey dukes also writes some very interesting things about demons in his little book of demons (title may be wrong) he has some very interesting ideas on how to banish, transform disengage, employ and destroy. He writes some passages in regards to his own experience of depression which i found very useful.

Some things are much harder to destroy than others it seems, and the alchemical option of transformation does seem more resourceful, or shape shifting if thats more pertinent.

But i think to a large degree it comes down to perception of (especially in self transformation/disengagement) consciousness, wether one views consciousness and its percieved contents and perceptions as substantial or perhaps insubstantial or transient. Does a demon have a soul? or from old fashioned view points are deceptions shattered by the revealing of their illusions?
 
 
trouser the trouserian
06:13 / 14.04.07
"Not only do you not belong here, but your presence is harmful, and we find it unacceptable. GO HOME!"

Is this a quote from Enoch Powell's magical diary?

  
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:25 / 14.04.07
What Apophenia said there, really. The most useful material I've read, here and elsewhere, is created when someone has sat down and said "Okay, so I did this, this, and this--and this is what happened when I did it."

Obviously there are some things you just don't talk about. You learn stuff that's for you alone. You experience things that shouldn't be shared. That's understood. But the results of a banishing ritual are very, very unlikely to come under that heading.
 
 
Unconditional Love
11:40 / 14.04.07
I think i get your point trouser, but i am not sure i follow where its coming from or in response to what?

The idea of destruction is in relation to creation, if a person has developed there own set of personal demons, or they have formed out of situational factors, conditional creation, then it is possible to think of conditional destruction to remove what could constitute unwanted personal behaviour or influence.

The idea that a person should tolerate there own behaviours that they find self destructive, example smoking, without trying to banish or destroy them, but just understand them and continue to give them unwarranted attack upon themselves is self defeating.

There is a conflict between those behaviours in a person that allow for a more comfortable easier and happy life and those that make life a more self destructive uncomfortable process.

I percieve demons as destructive forces that make my life harder to live and more uncomfortable than it needs to be, especially when they exhibit behaviours that increase the levels of ones own self destruction.

Thats not so much fascism, but cleansing purification and banishment of ones own personal demons, it is not the other that is to account for those behaviours but ones own self perception and relationships that i may have formed. The severence of such relationships to the behaviour that is self destructive has always marked my own self conquering as more successful.

As you give up smoking you dont go into environments that are full of smokers and create relationships with them to keep you in that environment, you may instead choose to frequent environments where people are trying to actively destroy the habit.

Admittedly thinking in certainties can be a dangerous way to approach an area, but when a behaviour is self destructive it can be a useful tool to employ to severe destructive behaviour and relationships. Sometimes closing a door, putting up a fence is nessecary for a safe environment for self healing to take place, other times it may be more nessecary to open to new influence depending on individual circumstance.

I think i should make it clear that all of the above is in regards to self, self perception and the relationships one has formed to there own behaviour. Ownership of ones own behaviour, self and self perception being a good starting point to create change or destroy what is unwanted about oneself.
 
 
Haloquin
11:41 / 14.04.07
Not to be too theoretical, but isn't the 'dispersal' of a rainbow the destruction of it? If you disperse a rainbow it is no longer in existence, the light may be, the water from the raindrops may be, but the rainbow itself isn't.

If you kill a tree, that isn't necessarilly destroying it utterly, although burning it to ashes or dismantling it at a cellular level could easily be considered total destruction.

In killing a tree you are left with a dead tree, in dispersing a rainbow, you are left with... no rainbow. This seems to be the banishing related to 'total destruction' and would presumably tend to be related to energies/constructs rather than beings. Or is this too limiting a view? Could you say that everything an atom once was part of still exists? And, more importantly, could you say it with good reason?!

To apply this to banishing... sending an entity home is different from transmuting negative energy, eg, fear and different again from clearing a space to work in, akin to sweeping the psychic dust out. These could all be considered types of banishing, right?

I also don't tend to start magical work with a banishing, the opening/closing bits of my rituals, tend to be like Apophenia said; reminders. Consecreting a space, or more specifically, reminding myself where I am in relation to the world. In the past I tried banishings to open and close for a few rituals, but it didn't make a magical space, to my mind, just an empty one. Which, I assume, is why you then pour energy into the space.

I work a 'banishing of negative energies/mindsets' in a transmutation kind of mind set, I have come across the theory that if part of you is bound up in muck its better to transmute the energy rather than cut a part of yourself off, and I guess this relates to the 'eat-it' approach Akira mentioned.

Daytripper;

Were you talking about situations where something already lives there and you try and kick them out because they bother you? Rather than a banishing of negative energy or actively malicious beings? As that could be an interesting ethical question... if someone finds themselves forced to live somewhere and can't go anywhere else for the time being, and there's someone/thing there that is actively trying to make them go away, what right do they have to kick the previous occupant out?
 
 
Saturn's nod
11:58 / 14.04.07
I think my stuff is not greatly different to others' but I'm willing to share some of how I've been thinking about it.

In my own practice I intend to turn over whatever experiences I'm having to maximize my learning and the benefit to the whole rich and awesome earth. I believe the experiences I have can be turned to good purpose. One of the examples that impresses me most: when Viktor Frankl was in a Nazi death camp he survived and even managed to inspire others by imagining himself lecturing to a group of students in the future. He internalised that audience of young people who needed to learn the skills he had, and used his imagination of them to reinforce his choices of response in the dire situation he was in. He saw himself explaining to them how he had survived, and used that to help himself do so. He used his imagination to bring forth resources that enabled him to act in accordance with his greatest values even under extreme threat.

So if I find myself in my comparatively v minor bad stuff - last night when I was on the street late after leaving the opera a large and grubby person (whose body language was telegraphing psychosis if my instincts are correct) approached me and began talking to me and I felt threatened - I reach for my source of safety: that eternal power of compassionate love, which brings low the mighty and raises up those who have been trodden under, the power which brings forth springs from the desert and sets free all who enslaved.

As Barry Patterson says: if in doubt, invoke! I guess for me feelings of being under threat only come when I feel a sense of being cut off from my resources. People in challenging situations manage to work and produce good changes when they are connected and anchored to outside resources. The way I do that is to remember I am part of life and I am dedicated to helping bring forth the sustainable future, for humanity and all the other beings we share this planet with. At my best I feel life reaching through me to show the way I should go. When I'm in that current, I am not afraid.

I have a mantra from a book by Louise Hay: "I am safe. This situation works out for my highest good. I am divinely protected and guided. All is well.", and it works for me as I use it to re-establish my sense of safety. Also I've been learning to add Peggy Parsons' trauma-avoidance techniques, referenced here.

I guess the belief underlying my choice of these particular techniques is something like this: bad luck only sticks to me if it finds something in me to stick to. If I am grounded and centred in the most powerful positivity and compassion, whatever I encounter is transformed in connecting with that energy to the service of highest aims. Wherever bad stuff sticks on me, is pointing out work that I need to do to make progress towards a world where there is less injustice/hatred/ignorance.

I do my personal practice to do spiritual housekeeping: ask what I am manifesting in my own space that is acting as a hook to match my pattern with the pattern of the bad luck? I believe if I take responsibility for my own 'housework' - the pattern I build in my own home space - it can reflect the values of peace and justice that I long for. As I move out from my home spaces into spaces where I don't know what my influence is, I encounter differences, they reflects stuff for me, about what I need to know and what I need to change in myself to move forward towards my goal of sustainable human civilisation.

Then when 'my own house is in order', people are only going to be aware of me and connect with me if they want to connect with that energy, which pretty much means they are allies or growing that way. Then my responsibility becomes to show good behaviour in accordance with my values. I believe that if I feel I am under threat at any time, my safety lies in reconnecting with the source of power - life and the urge towards the future kingdom of abundance, peace and justice - and the energy that floods through that connection sorts out whatever is tangled in the current presenting situation. I believe that if I am fully connected to that teaching and healing power, the lesson is presented to any wrongdoer, whether it is me or another.

The incident last night might seem a bit trivial, I'll freely admit: I was scared by this person, I connected to my safety and trusted that connection. Something changed in his face, and he bowed, and walked away and I was able to get to the station in time for my train. I don't know what he saw but I take the attitude it's not my problem if he doesn't make it my problem. I think most of the people I actually feel threatened by are being attracted by something other than my core intentions and are repelled if I manage to connect to clarity in my aims.This is a tiny example but I find myself in a pretty safe life now: in seven years I've made a lot of progress and don't any longer live in the proverbial city council estate where the police are always sent armed, but live somewhere politer. But, I started that trajectory by connecting to the good stuff, and I think it works so it makes me safe and even if there's danger around it doesn't notice me, but I might be fooling myself.

Trouser's point's an interesting one. I guess my own approach of connecting with my own spiritual source to demonstrate what is in accord with my highest values, and allow the other to choose their own response, is partly chosen because it's not xenophobic. Where the other is able to unite with me in our shared commitment to the future, there's no problem left apart from the age old and continuous ones about how what real needs are, what a sustainable future actually looks like, and how we get each person's needs met. My choice of source is partly chosen because I haven't yet met anyone who doesn't share the desire for a peaceful and just future for the planet: only people who haven't got their eye on the target for various reasons, or with whom I disagree about what that future looks like. Maybe when I've finished writing my thesis and get out more, perhaps when I have further developed my ability to stay centred in the good, I will to a greater extent encounter those who are are opposed and need to change? Lamb's war, innit - by which I mean - all my experience including how to deal with bad luck, is part of the story I'm embedded in, about realizing heaven on earth.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:01 / 14.04.07
Perhaps also perceptions of the idea of banishing may change dependent on the relationships formed to the notion itself, my primary focus is self transformation/ self improvement, if the focus is more on relationships to others and the social interactions involved and politics i can well see how that perception would change the focus on the idea of banishing.
That then brings up the question of the place of freedom and free will in relation to magical practice and how it is approached.
 
 
---
12:21 / 14.04.07
I've had some good luck with sigil magic when trying to obtain things (new job, new apartment, new girlfriend) but have never tried anything to alter my reality by banishing an "evil spirit".

Get. Fucking. ANGRY. Fuck banishing.

Go mad. Get pissed off. You're in your own territory here, your own space. Fuck whoever jumps in on it, because it's your right to have your own space. Scream if you have to. Release the tension. Feel what it's like to have that hatred for the shit that keeps you down, then move on. Let the hatred go. It's an illusion, a habit, and part of your learning process. Just remember that the releasing of the energy is the art of it. That is the trick right there in itself. Don't get attached to the negative feeling. Feel it, experience it, learn from it, then move on. Fuck banishing.

Just remember to move on when you're done. That's as important as any other part of the process. Maybe the most important part.
 
 
LykeX
13:30 / 14.04.07
Mako:

Just to clarify. I certainly don't want you to share anything you consider too private. However, like Apophenia said, magick is a very subjecive field and if people don't reference their own experiences, I often find it difficult to determine whether they are, as you say, speaking from experience, or simply talking out of their ass.
Therefore, I am not so much interested in what people think or have read, as what they have actually done and the results thereof.
 
 
This Sunday
13:52 / 14.04.07
I'm not going to get into details of any particular instance, right now. For extenuating reasons. But, I will say I've never apparently been in a situation where I felt that a banishing was necessary. Where a total removal was necessary. (Maybe I'm just lucky that way.)

'Behave' is a powerful word, as are 'knock that shit off right now' and I'm having a difficult time visualizing when the 'total removal' would be necessary. Especially in the 'completely destroyed' model of banishing, which I'm not sure I agree with as a plausible event, even.

Now, I can't put a hunk of wood stuck in the ground to being a living tree again, sure, but y'know, with a simple garden hose and playing with the waterflow, I can get a rainbow, make it go away, and get it back, no problem. If I could work up a way to regather the exact same moisture as the first time, I could probably even get the exact same rainbow back. And there's probably already a science for doing this.

But I wasn't thinking of banishing in terms of a job I don't like or a habit or something. That seems a bit like kicking the lightbulb out of the house for not turning on right when you flick the switch. Banishing should be for semi-aware, mobile thingies. People, dogs, and boojums can all be banished, because they, ostensibly, understand 'Don't come 'round no more' but a craving or a chair? Those you just use as necessary or channel into something else. If the pot don't hold water, use it as a sieve, and all that jazz.

My initial concern was with pre-you/me occupants, though, if that clarifies that issue. My current concern is the whole 'totally destroyed' thing.
 
 
Unconditional Love
14:45 / 14.04.07
Well ok. Lets say we have a house and we are the landlord and we have been renting out rooms and we also live in that house, we have several tenants that we had been getting along fine with, until we decided to redecorate.

We needed to redecorate the whole house, including the rooms they were staying in and give the house a complete face lift on the outside.

Now some of the tenants were more accepting than others and allowed decorating to go forth and others wanted to negotiate the design, and some just bolted there doors shut and locked themselves in. Others took to sabotaging the plans of the land lord to redecorate.

Lets say our landlord has been pretty patient and tolerant with his tenants and although he has managed to decorate a majority of the house some of its occupants stiil are trying to sabotage the repair job.

So the land lord gets impatient and a wee bit angry and has ideas about buying a new home and locking the remaining tenants in with the old house and starting a fire, because those tenants have just pushed things a little too far, and burning them alive seems appropriate. (anger can be a horrible emotion)

Its a horrible narrative and metaphor, truly horrendous filled with despair and hatred and murder. If the saboteurs were to allow the landlord to redecorate and perhaps remove a few of the tenants that cause alot of trouble and move less troublesome tenants in, then i doubt the landlord would seem so intent to torch the building and buy a new house, he just wants to redecorate after all, but so many tenants seem to react badly to change, even when forewarned years in advance.

Its also down to the land lord needing to know that he has some control of himself and that self discipline to a degree requires majority control or greater force, if majority control becomes an issue, greater force becomes the fall back position in the current circumstance.

Negotiate, diplomacy, patience, tolerance if 7 years later they are still taking the piss, kill every last one of them go to war. When a group of tenants have been that abusive of the landlord he may just decided that the can of petrol and the zippo is looking really attractive.

Its metaphor based in the reality of feelings, its not going to literally happen. But flame and fire are a good way to cleanse, and if your tenants like hiding in the dark away from the light then pulling back all the blinds kicking open all the doors and letting the sunlight flood in helps to get the process of cleansing by fire started.

Burning all the shells away.
 
  

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