The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is one of the most widely practiced and rigorously studied single rituals in Western ceremonial magick, a complete working that cleanses the ritual space, centers the operator, and invokes the protection of the four archangels. Practitioners use it both as a standalone daily discipline and as the opening movement of longer, more complex ceremonial work.

Its power rests on three interlocking parts: the Kabbalistic Cross, the Drawing of the Pentagrams, and the Archangel Invocation. Each section addresses a different dimension of the practitioner and the space. Together, they create a cleared and consecrated field suitable for further magickal operation.

History and origins

The LBRP was developed within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the British ceremonial society founded in 1888. Its precise authorship is uncertain, but the ritual draws on older Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian material synthesized by the Order’s founders, including William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The ritual was part of the Neophyte grade curriculum, taught to initiates as their very first formal working.

Israel Regardie, a former secretary to Aleister Crowley and later a Golden Dawn initiate, published the Order’s full grade materials in his four-volume The Golden Dawn (1937), making the LBRP available to the wider public for the first time. Since then, it has become the standard opening and closing practice for ceremonial magicians across many successor lineages, including Thelema, the Builders of the Adytum, and independent Hermetic practitioners.

In practice

The ritual is performed standing, facing East, in a space large enough to turn in place. You will use the dominant hand to trace pentagrams in the air and to make the gestures of the Kabbalistic Cross. A ritual dagger (athame) is traditionally used as the pointing implement, but the index finger works equally well, particularly for beginning practitioners.

A method you can use

The Kabbalistic Cross

Face East. Touch your forehead and vibrate the divine name Atah (meaning “Thou art”). Touch your chest or solar plexus and vibrate Malkuth (the Kingdom). Touch your right shoulder and vibrate ve-Geburah (and Power). Touch your left shoulder and vibrate ve-Gedulah (and Glory). Clasp your hands at your chest and vibrate le-Olam, Amen (forever, Amen). Visualize a pillar of light descending from above your head through your body into the earth, and a horizontal bar of light extending shoulder to shoulder.

The Drawing of the Pentagrams

Turn to face East. Using your pointing implement, trace a large banishing Earth pentagram in the air: begin at the lower-left point, draw up to the topmost point, down to the lower-right, across to the upper-left, across to the upper-right, and return to the lower-left. Stab the center of the pentagram and vibrate the divine name YHVH (pronounced Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh). Visualize the pentagram blazing in blue-white flame.

Without lowering your arm, turn 90 degrees to the South, drawing a connecting arc as you go. Trace the same pentagram and vibrate ADNI (Adonai). Turn to the West and vibrate EHIH (Eheieh). Turn to the North and vibrate AGLA (an acronym for Atah Gibor Le-Olam Adonai). Return to East, completing the circle of flame.

The Archangel Invocation

Return to the center, face East, and spread your arms into a cross shape. Say:

Before me, Raphael. Behind me, Gabriel. On my right hand, Michael. On my left hand, Uriel. For about me flames the pentagram, and in the column shines the six-rayed star.

Visualize each archangel as a vast, luminous presence: Raphael in yellow robes with the winds of the East; Gabriel in blue with the waters of the West behind you; Michael in red to your right with a flaming sword; Uriel in citrine, olive, russet, and black to your left, holding steady and firm.

Close with the Kabbalistic Cross again, exactly as you began.

The complete ritual takes between five and fifteen minutes depending on the depth of visualization and vibration you bring to it. Experienced practitioners extend it considerably through deliberate breathwork and sustained visual imagination. Beginners are better served by moving steadily through the form until it becomes embodied, rather than pausing to second-guess each step.

Regular practice builds what Golden Dawn teachers called the Sphere of Sensation, a trained and clarified aura that becomes progressively more sensitive and more resistant to unwanted psychic interference. Many ceremonial practitioners report that daily LBRP work, sustained over months, produces a noticeable shift in mental clarity and in the quality of subsequent ritual and meditative states.

In myth and popular culture

The LBRP itself is a modern ritual, but its component elements have deep roots in mythological and religious tradition. The four archangels named in the working, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, appear in Jewish scripture and apocrypha, Islamic tradition, and Christian devotional literature. The invocation of these figures as guardians of the four quarters draws on medieval Jewish protective prayers, including the bedtime Shema, which asks for angelic guardians at each direction of sleep.

The Kabbalistic Cross derives from a Jewish mystical context in which the divine names it employs (Atah, Malkuth, ve-Geburah, ve-Gedulah) are drawn from the doxology appended to the Lord’s Prayer in some Christian traditions and from Hebrew liturgical material. The blending of Jewish mysticism and Christian angelology into a single working reflects the syncretic character of Renaissance Hermeticism.

In popular culture, the LBRP appears as a reference in several works of occult fiction and nonfiction. Alan Moore’s graphic novel series Promethea portrays a version of the ritual as part of its Kabbalistic journey narrative. Dion Fortune’s novel The Sea Priestess implies LBRP-style banishing work in its ceremonial scenes. The ritual has also been discussed on record by musicians associated with esoteric practice, including Jimmy Page, who was an active student of Aleister Crowley’s work and a collector of Golden Dawn materials.

Myths and facts

Several common misconceptions circulate about the LBRP, particularly among those new to ceremonial practice.

• A widespread belief holds that the LBRP is only useful as a preliminary “clearing” step and can be skipped once you are experienced. Experienced ceremonial practitioners consistently report the opposite: daily practice deepens the ritual’s effects over years, and it remains valuable at every level.
• Many people assume the LBRP is a Wiccan ritual because it is widely practiced in contemporary Paganism. It was developed within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ceremonial organization with no direct Wiccan lineage, and entered general use through Israel Regardie’s publications.
• It is commonly thought that the divine names must be vibrated at high volume to be effective. Traditional teaching holds that vibration is a quality of resonance and intention directed into the body’s cavities, not a matter of loudness, and the practice can be done silently in visualized form when silence is required.
• Some practitioners believe the ritual summons the archangels as external beings who must travel to attend. The Golden Dawn understanding is that the archangels are cosmic principles that are already present and that the ritual is an act of attunement and recognition rather than summoning.
• There is a belief that performing the LBRP daily will strip protective entities or spiritual allies from the practitioner’s sphere. The banishing pentagrams are directed at unwanted influences and are not indiscriminate sweeps; devotional relationships with specific entities are not dissolved by the working when conducted with clear intention.