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Apophenia: I think it's unnecessarily alarmist to state that reporting the results of one of the most fundamental of magical exercises ... is akin to revealing one's sexual intimacies.
Not everybody minds revealing their sexual intimacies, for that matter. Sometimes the lack of over-sharing isn't for the speaker's sake. Mostly I avoid giving personal examples if I'm worried I'll be percieved as always going on about myself rather than contributing to a more generally applicable conversation.
In this case I was also reluctant to give answers in the form of examples before I was sure I understood the question being asked.
Te: 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.
Sounds like a variation on the basis of my prefered method for getting rid of internal issues. I'm not sure how it would help get an unfriendly spirit out of my hall?
Daytripper: Banishing should be for semi-aware, mobile thingies.
That's my understanding of the concept as well, and the examples I will give are based on that conceptualization. However, I've noticed that a lot of the same steps are involved in cleansing a place of non-personified gunk as well.
Has anyone had a circumstance that required banishing as the most efficient and fundamentally-functional way to deal? Because I haven't and I'm curious as to what particulars would result in such a situation.
If getting unwelcome spirits out of a medium's body count as "banishing" then yes, several times. In fact, I can't really think of any other way of getting a useful result when the actual desired result is simply for the spirit to get out of it's current location. I can think of a variety of methods, both friendly and forceful, for getting the spirit to depart the medium's body, but I can't think of acceptable alternatives to departure.
Haloquin: And the metaphor is presumably an internal one, not related to external beings that have been there longer than you?
Well, the metaphor of the property manager could quite clearly involve things that ARE external beings, and even ones that were there before you - depending on how they got there, etc.
For example, when I moved into the house I currently live in with my primary SO, there were some ugly things around here that had come in when the previous owners were going through a nasty divorce and custody settlement. We had no desire to live with the gunk, and I had no desire to wait until it starved for lack of similar drama generated by me and my primary, or worse, prompted similar drama.
Sure, the gunk that had been attracted by their divorce lived here before us, and were sepparate from me and my boyfriend. Does that mean it/they had more right to stay than we do? I don't think so. And frankly, the landwights and housewight don't seem to think so either - both the locals and those who had chosen to come with us from the old house.
It was a simple thing to shoo the unhelpful kinds away from the house as part of the larger process of cleansing and warding the place when we moved in. And I'm very clear when I do such things that I'm NOT trying to pick a fight with the true natives - since we moved in only a few miles from where I grew up, I'm pretty comfortable with them. But we ARE going to live here, and anywhat that's willing to work with me on finding a harmonious balance is welcome to stay.
After we (by which I mean me, Seidhjallr, and the Mama of the Umbanda House I'm in - my primary SO is more of a Secular Humanist and chose to not be directly involved) did that thorough cleansing and warding, only two problems remained. Neither is personified, and only one is particularly mutable. The other is simply a sort of... maiasma... psychic graffiti, if you will... left behind in the master bedroom where the previous owners shared a bed during their divorce. (The placement of the bed within the room is pretty obvious given the shape of the room.)
The other is harder to explain, and probably off-topic, though I will go into more detail if requested.
She did something very odd, she channeled it through her own body to deal with it. I am very much of the opinion that I don't want to put anyone elses rubbish into my body if theres any other way of dealing with it
I tend to agree - this is especially true in the case of Healing, with me. I know many who heal by pulling the badness into themselves, and in the long run they seem to have taken on rather a lot of crap to themselves. Some of them bravely - if not downright pretentiously - assert that it is their burden to bear as a healer, but I tend to dissagree.
On the other hand, there's stuff like Sin Eating, and folks who identify with carrion eaters and such have yet another method entirely for dealing with stuff like this, and it clearly DOES work for them when they do it right, so I let them handle it their way, eh?
It's literary, but vivid, and I think potentially functional, so I'll give the example: In Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold, the main character finds herself in service to the Bastard of No Season - the sort of trickster God of all things out-of-pattern. He is, amongst other things, the one who handles demons. She finds out later on that the way he handles them is by empowering (almost posessing) his priests to swallow them whole, thereby passing the demon on to him, after which they're nobody's problem but his.
Mako: Sometimes things that need to be banished are well aware that they don't belong and their presence is harmful, and are actually attracted to this.
This is true, and in at least one example of my direct experience, this was at least partially the case. Due to the nature of the unwelcome being, however, attempting to punish Him would have been very ill-advised, so we simply did our best to protect against His return once we'd gotten Him to leave.
Though it might be more productive to simply make friends with them.
This is true, though it doesn't always prevent the problem. In the other major case of my experience, the being in question fully considered us friends, and we were quite fond of Him. The harm was not entirely understood, and basically unintentional, but the desire to not return to where He belonged was very strong. However, we knew the one who normally guarded Him would keep Him home once we got Him to return there, and that a bit of distance would give Him a clearer view of the problems He was causing, so that was mostly ok.
Autumn is the season of retrospection and meditative insight, for shedding old skin and dumping the excess baggage of external attachments and emotions accumulated in summer
Really? I find this MUCH easier to do in Spring - Spring cleaning to sweep away the Winter depression. Summer isn't when I tend to collect baggage. Autumn is when I am generally trying my hardest to keep holding on to the good things Summer brought me.
Trouser and Saturn: I would agree with pretty much everything you've said there about Western conceptualization of space and ownership relative to the concept of banishing, provided that we can include conceptualizing our own bodies as the space that is home to our identity.
--Ember-- |
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