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Banishing Rituals In A Flat That's Apparently Haunted

  
 
Alex's Grandma
01:17 / 28.07.04
I'm fully aware of how silly this must sound, but if anyone, seriously, knows the best way forward, do advise, if you could.
 
 
electric monk
02:37 / 28.07.04
Just to clarify: Your intention is to banish the spirits from the house?

Sorry, I can't help, but I will pull up a seat and listen in.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
04:35 / 28.07.04
Well, you could do 'banishing rituals' in a flat that's 'apparently haunted' - but to what end? I'm not sure if you're asking would they disturb the 'ghost' or if they would be efficacious in getting rid of it.
Is this one of them 'purely hypothetical' situations or is this something you're involved in?
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:38 / 28.07.04
There's no one size fits all solution. Depends entirely on the size and severity of the duppy, and what sort of a case it is. I'm not sure that banishing rituals such as the LBRP are overly effective in getting rid of a spirit with a strong attachment to a specific location. You'll likely make them retreat a bit, and they'll probably run off to a quiet corner for awhile after the banishing, but part of the problem with a haunting is that they have nowhere else to go and don't know how to leave the turf they are attached to.

How you would go about facilitating their removal is dependent on the personality of the duppy, and requires a degree of diagnostic work. Some of them are really sorry characters that should be handled firmly but with tact, as if you were dealing with an abused child or a mentally ill person. In this sort of case you might want to perform a psychopomp function for them and deliver them on to wherever they are meant to be, which can be a tricky business in itself sometimes. Other spirits might just be mean bastards, bad presences, the ghosts of nasty fuckers who are continuing to be nasty fuckers beyond the grave. You would take a different tack in this sort of instance and the dialogue with spirit might be more reminiscent of a fight. You might want to try and tame and bottle them, for later use...

I wouldn't go anywhere near trying to clear a haunting without first performing diagnostic work and getting a good sense of what it is your dealing with. Ghost stuff can be pretty fraught. Learned that one the hard way. Unless you know what you're doing, are used to working with spirit, or are looking to get some practical experience in this area, I'd advise a bit of caution about leaping in. If the haunted flat was in London, I might be persuaded to have a look at the situation for you.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
09:36 / 28.07.04
Gypsy is quite right - presences in houses are very complex situations and as such, a comprehensive approach is merited. Based on my own experiences of magically checking out houses where there seems to be a presence (not neccesarily going in to 'banish' it note - just to provide a different perspective and suggest some further strategies) I'd say that it's useful to build as comprehensive a 'picture' of what's going on as possible. So initially, what I might look into is the short- and long-term 'history' of what's been perceived by the people in the building. Is there a pattern or any consistency there to what's being perceived? Have other people other than those immediately concerned perceived things? Has the building (and the surrounding locale) any history of anomalous events? Have there been any deaths in the building? Are the people in it experimenting with psychedelics or summoning goetic spirits in the basement? I recall one 'haunted house' I looked into where there'd been two attempted suicides, and it'd been squatted by a variety of people doing hard drugs and experimenting with magical evocation. It was also right next to a disused church and its cellar had been formerly used (up until the early '60s) for 'laying out' the dead. It's hardly surprising, given all that, that it had an 'unusual atmosphere' to say the least.
This sort of research needs to be continual as the 'investigation' proceeds. I'd also want to talk to the people concerned outside of the building itself. And looking at how people who are reporting the 'events' can be interesting in itself - sometimes they might be scared or worried, but I have encountered people who appeared to be 'getting off on the situation'. I recall one guy who, in a shared house where people were reporting doorknobs being rattled and 'footsteps down the corridor' wove an elaborate story around the occurences and retold it (adding further embellishments) whenever things seemed to get 'weird'. Cultural and social interactions can contribute as much to a situation as anything else.
As for going into the building itself, initially, I'd just want to spend some time in the place - at different times of the day/night and 'open myself' to impressions - recording anything that seems pertinent. It can be useful to involve other people at this stage, so that you can compare notes. It's also useful to get other magicians involved - again, so you can compare notes and work out what you think needs to be done (if anything).

A useful book to chase up would be The Witches' book of Ghosts & Exorcism - by Robin Skelton & Jean Kozocari. Despite the horrible title, it's a fairly level-headed approach to dealing with hauntings and so forth, and seems to be largely drawn from the authors' practical experiences, rather than the usual occult theorising & woffling.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:16 / 29.07.04
Ok, to clarify the situation, such as it is:

I'm not particularly psychic myself, nor would I want to be, but since I've been living here ( and it's built on a graveyard near a disused church, sure, but then to a certain extent so's a lot of North London, so that in itself isn't really a problem, ) I have had the feeling that the atmosphere round here's slightly charged, shall we say. It's not so much anything you'd actually see, more just sense, that feeling that somebody's looking over your shoulder, or watching you on the bus - as I type this for example, I've got it right now, this fairly definite sense there's someone else in the room, and while whoever it is isn't exactly malign, or anything like that, they are, on the other hand, nevertheless there.

But as an open-minded sceptic when it comes to this stuff, and, as I say, in a situation where I couldn't honestly say it's exactly a problem - there are no manifestations that I can see anyway, no plates moving round on the kitchen table, no ominous writing in red on the walls, I was largely inclined to just let it go by.

And I sort of am still.

So what's changed lately is I have a new flatmate ( who's absolutely not the type to say this sort of thing to seem clever and interesting, ) who as she moved in quite casually announced, well you do know this place is haunted though, don't you ? ( There are three of them it seems, and this is why I say apparently haunted - I haven't seen them, but she has, and I do tend to trust her, and it's not as if there's any real incentive for her to comment on the state of the place, psychically, spiritually, one way or the other. ) And as far as she's concerned they're fine, to be fair.

So this why I worry about banishing rituals - going off at this half-arsed seems a bit like attempting to rewire the electricity over something minor you don't quite understand, with the potential of the whole thing blowing up in your face. I really wouldn't to make enemies of things, so far, that seem more like acquiantances.

However, that said, and if there's an easy way of doing it, I would like them gone. Because it's not all that easy to get to sleep around here, or to avoid waking up around Four in the morning, feeling like somebody's watching you doze.
 
 
doctorbeck
08:17 / 29.07.04
just intersted from a theorietical perspective, are ppl suggesting that there really is a disembodied spirit that a magical ritutal will really get rid of or are we more talking about a psychlogical / psychosomatic stressor that might be overcome by the use of rituals in order to make someone feel less stressed / distressed and thus reduce the intrusive thoughts / experiences / sensations?

or am i just taking an unhelpful and dogmatic positivist position?

thanks

andrew
 
 
illmatic
09:30 / 29.07.04
I think the answer there is "whatever you feel most comfortable with". There's a strong awareness evidenced in Gypsy's and Absence's posts above that many different factors may be contributing to a situation one construes as a haunting - from the subjective and personal agendas of the participants, enviromental factors etc - it's not just "disembodied spirit - it's real like us" (or "real in the same way that your butcher is real" to use Crowley's phrase). Approaches to rid the area of "whatever-it-is", if this is appropriate, should factor in all these different elements.

However, if I was involved in this kind of situation, and I felt the appropriate response was a ritual, I'd feel much more comfortable - for the sake of simplicity if nothing else - to see myself as interacting with something "real". Whether you regard this as simply theatre to achieve a psychological effect, or actions impacting on something intangible with it’s own reality is one of the vexed questions in magickal practice. (As can be evidenced by several other threads in the temple see here for instance). Most people seem to start off with an agnostic or skeptical point of view, those who stick with it tend to shift their opinions.
 
 
*
01:00 / 30.07.04
I would say think more in terms of "solving the problem" rather than "getting rid of the spirits". When in a house with a lot of activity I've often found it sufficient to ward the bedrooms strongly and leave the rest of the house pretty much alone, and since it sounds like sleeping soundly with them around is the main concern, you might just go with that. If they aren't doing anything actively threatening, then you might just try drawing up a housemate agreement sort of thing-- "Look, this is my room and I sleep here, and polite housemates don't just walk into their housemate's bedroom when te's sleeping. So stay out unless you're invited."

They may very well have a beneficial effect, and with that in mind I wouldn't kick them out altogether unless you really decide you have to.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:59 / 30.07.04
They may very well have a beneficial effect

Well this is the thing, I do have a feeling that they probably do. In very much the same way that an over-protective parent would do though, and while I can fully appreciate what Dr Freud would say about this, and would normally concurr, I'm not totally sure if that's the appropriate response.

Which is to say, perhaps a couple of sigils, or drawings on the wall, without necessarily getting into a fight, would seem like a much more productive way forward, y'know ?
 
 
Seth
12:40 / 31.07.04
In agreement there. I'd be very careful about the guns-blazing approach for this reason - whatever is in your house may be there for a very good reason.

I don't have a great deal of experience in this area, but one case I did examine involved a little girl who caused mischief in the upstairs rooms of a friend's house. When I visited her using shamanic methods all it took was one look out of the window to see why she had chosen to be there. Her presence was keeping a lot of other stuff away...
 
 
*
16:18 / 31.07.04
With that in mind, I'd suggest a selectively-permeable ward on the bedrooms, however you conceive of that. I usually favor the good old fashioned "I'm building a wall out of my will" approach, modified by a sigil which specifies what I want to keep out and under what circumstances, and this is usually very open-ended. For example: "Keep out anything which will hurt me or severely bother me, while allowing entry to most things with good intentions and feelings toward me unless I specify otherwise." Or sometimes even "Keep what's not supposed to be here out and let in what is supposed to be here." I leave it up to my subconscious to decide on the specific rules to apply to that. It usually works pretty well. I rarely have to actually frame this in words, either; just the intent is sufficient.

Alternatively, you could turn off your awareness when you want to sleep or otherwise be left in peace, having created an alarm-servitor to get your attention if something of that sort is actually threatening you. Because the problem here seems to be not so much these entities' presence, as the inconvenience that your awareness of them causes.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:27 / 01.08.04
For example: "Keep out anything which will hurt me or severely bother me, while allowing entry to most things with good intentions and feelings toward me unless I specify otherwise."

Blimey. You might want to get a lawyer in to look over that before you sigilise it, just to make sure that there are no clauses in there that might be open to misinterpretation by the ghosts.
 
 
Lord Switch
10:53 / 01.08.04
Well the real question is:
what do you believe about ghosts?
that they are spirits of the dead?
That they are bad energies?

And what is your reality tunnel?
Do you do witchy style magick?
freeform shamanism?
Ritualistic?
voodoo inspired?

And then take whatever banishing ritual that you know works.
If you are conditioned into the LBRP then that should work perfectly after even the first time.
Are yiou a lavey satanist?
Clean the air with the bell, then it´s done.

and if it doesn´t work there might be a very very specific reason. I´ll tell a story now if may:

When me and my boyfriend moved in into the halls of residence, min dyou this was ages ago, he wasd completely new to the magickal part of everyday life. The only contact he had had with the supernatural was when he was 15 and one of his stupid friends tried ut the goetia, and it worked, but the guy who did it went into some kind of epileptic seizure. Go figure.
The room we moved into was a maternity ward some 20 years ago. My boyfriend started seeing ghosts everywhere andhe acused me of having been "invoking or summoning something".
No matter how many time I banished with My usual way of banishing, as soon as he´d been home for a bit, it always came back.
At that time I was new to high magick and the [Caliphate] o.t.o., but i still tried the lbrp as well.
same effect.
The "spirits" phenomena went so far hat you could see cats stting on out cupboards from the corner of your eyes and things like that. then one night, when Michael was very very drunk, the "entity" took posession of his body. I banished the thing properly.

It was first then it dawned on me. This wasn´t a real poltergeist or anything. Most of the time, haunted houses and rooms aren´t "real" hauntings. it´s usually a person creating and re-creating the effect.
thats why banishings sometimes don´t work. They only wrk untill the person responsible re-creates the thing that haunts.

My tip: if the thing comes back after banishings, then try either talking to the people you live with, or examine if you yoursel aren´t the one responsible for creating it.

/My reality tunnel/

Hope this helps.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:28 / 07.08.04
I've got it right now, this fairly definite sense there's someone else in the room, and while whoever it is isn't exactly malign, or anything like that, they are, on the other hand, nevertheless there.

I've lived in two houses that were basically haunted. My brother used to see an old lady watching him from the corner of his bedroom though he swears now that it was his imagination. Of course that doesn't work when you recall him describing it in vivid detail. We talked to my mum about it and she said that I shouldn't be frightened of ghosts, that I should ask them to go away if they're antagonising me and that's what she's always done. And you know it works. Sometimes you have to ask three or four times and when they're really stubborn you have to scream at them to fuck off but seriously, it's their home too and are you really the kind of person to put someone out on the streets with a banishing ritual?
 
 
BARISKIL666
02:35 / 08.08.04
The ghost lived there before you!Whose house is it anyway? I live in a "haunted" house,but they don't give me grief and vica-verse.
A basic banishing will work on you,not the ghost.I can tolerate ghost's, but I couldn't live with a person who wasn't a partner or immediate family because I'm a person who likes lots of space,can't even have neighbours within a hundred yards!So it's just a matter of coming to a comprimise I think,you tolerate each other with accepted rules,or one of you moves house!?
 
 
*
02:56 / 08.08.04
Blimey. You might want to get a lawyer in to look over that before you sigilise it, just to make sure that there are no clauses in there that might be open to misinterpretation by the ghosts.

Why do you assume I'm necessarily using sigil magic? That was my attempt to translate something which is more or less raw, wordless intent at the time I'm working. Sigil magic is great and all, but when I'm doing a shield or a ward it's usually raw energy with a clear although not necessarily verbal intent behind it. It's worked all my life, with few exceptions.

Admittedly it looks complicated on paper, but it's not in my head.
 
 
slinkyvagabond
21:36 / 15.08.04
Wow, this is really my night for posting. Third in a row - there's a lot of interesting stuff on the board tonight. And my other reason is that this is my first night alone in my new place and my cats are acting freaky (though I think that's just their little ways) so you know obviously I dropped into magic to talk about ghosts. That will help me get to sleep. With every light in the place on.
I'm with Ann d L and her ma on this one. I think you should just ask nicely first. Ask them to leave you alone if you don't feel like being watched. As to the question of whether these are some kind of entity as "real as your butcher" or in my case my friendly local Tesco checkout person or the workings of your mind the "please leave me alone right now" approach works either way. When I was a mere slip of a girl, myself and a friend, as many early pubescent teenagers do, used the Ouija board a few times. She was a bit of an addict to thing and in consequence certain beings began to hang out with her an awful lot. Her technique was just to ask and occasionally yell at them to leave her be. I was slightly more skeptical but I found that even if I was unconvinced that a presence was anything more than my overactive imagination the act of asking (out loud, just as you would a corporeal person) calmed me. I have ever since I was a small child with even more of an overactive imagination kept certain symbols and objects near or in my bed. Their presence is immensely psychologically comforting. Teddy! Anyway, if you find that these beings are unthreatening this, or a ritualised form of this, is probably the best approach. If you feel that they are looking out for you then this is most likely the case. You may end up not being able to sleep without them.
 
 
SteppersFan
09:46 / 16.08.04
Dr Beck, your question about whether it is "real" or not is a good one. My view / experience is that you do stuff, and stuff happens; maybe it is all in my head, maybe not, but the experiences are real. It's kind of an irrelevant question in a way. FWIW, at the moment I am working on the assumption that it's all in my head, but that is principally on the advice of the spirits / voices in my head / visions, etc. You can be a resolute materialist and still "do" "magic".

As to the issue under discussion -- it's less about the "ghosts" than about your feelings about them, so that's where you should probably start, since they don't seem to be manifesting specifically for you. It's interesting your friend has pronounced that there are ghosts -- I'd examine that further, since it's out of character. (You're sure it's not a windup?)

Practically speaking, I think as others have mentioned the key thing is to stop being bothered by them, stop "noticing" them. Analogy: we leave cheek by jowl with slugs and spiders and dog poo etc but don't let them bother us too much in every day life -- got other things to do. So you might want to do a little bit of magic where you ask them to leave you alone, no offence, and then do a BIG bit of magic consisting of giving the flat a total, thorough, complete, top-to-tail brush-up, wash-up, re-organisation and ideally, new paint job. If you're superstitious, you could try sweeping the front and back door, and sprinkling salt-water round the windows of each room, saying an appropriate spell.

Gypsy: "bottling spirits": Oooh, macho!
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:32 / 16.08.04
"Yes, me friend
We deh a street again
Yes, me friend, me good friend
Dem say we free again
The bars could not hold me
Force could not control me now
They try to keep me down, yeah!
But Jah put I around. Yeah!
Yes, I've been accused many times
And wrongly abused, now
Oh, but through the powers of the Most-I
They've got to turn me loose
Oh! Oh! Oh! Don't try to cold me up on this bridge, now
I've got to reach Mount Zion, highest region
So if you a bull-bucka
Let me tell you this :
I'm a duppy conqueror, conqueror. Oh, yeah!"
 
  
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