The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is a cornerstone of Golden Dawn magic. It’s also one of the most widely taught, adapted, and sometimes abused rituals in modern occulture. Unfortunately, some of the written presentations of the LBRP aim to be so thorough and complete that they risk thoroughly overwhelming and confusing the beginner rather than helping them to learn proper practice.

That’s why my goal in this video, the first in a series, is to give you the “no-BS” LBRP. Simply put, my intent is to give you the minimum necessary amount of information to get you working the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram correctly and competently within the Golden Dawn tradition.

The LBRP is a fairly straightforward ritual, and the novice is likely to encounter difficulty in only a few areas. The first of these is in recalling the correct names to pronounce during the Qabalistic Cross; the second lies in remembering the correct names of God to vibrate in each quarter; and the third involves keeping track of which Archangel rests in which direction. All of these are simple matters of memorization that practice will quickly reinforce, and I treat each of these components individually within the video instruction.

Rather than including a lot of detail on visualizations, because this instruction is geared toward the novice I focus instead on the verbal and kinesthetic parts of ritual. After the student has achieved comfort and fluency with the ritual words and actions, they can then add visualization into the mix and begin building up the onion of symbolism layer by layer. Attempts to introduce instruction on visualization from the outset is a large part of what I feel contributes to “instruction bloat” in articulations of the LBRP, and overwhelms the newcomer to the practice who’s looking to gain an initial foothold.

For those of you who need a foothold, I hope this video serves you well.