To Banish Death
I previously posted about an attempt that I made during my younger years to ritually connect with a person’s spirit. That terribly failed attempt is tied to this experience in that they were both attempts focused on the same person. In both cases, the situation turned out much more intense than I would have ever imagined possible at the time.
These were not the first rituals that I would do, although I’m sure that they’re the only ones which are interesting enough to talk about here. For reference, there was a long period during that time in my life that I practiced the LBRP as often as I could, and when possible, I also performed the rituals of the rose cross, the middle pillar (including the circulation of the body of light), and had temporarily memorized the SIRP*. All of these rituals and a few other practices were performed as described in the book Modern Magick.
The results of those rituals were decent in that the rituals produced the desired outcomes. Typical describable results included the temperature of the room becoming more comfortable (often cooler), the floor typically became warm, and, the LBRP being a banishing ritual, the room simply felt cleaner and more comfortable.
So I had no reason to believe that the result would be any different or more significant when I put together the idea to banish death from this person. Essentially, I expected to have to take a “wait and see” approach to the outcome.
Hah. This is where one could easily use the heavily cliched, “You should not mettle with powers that you do not understand!“. Not that I would have listened, of course.
The ritual that I used to attempt to banish death was a slightly modified version of the I.O.B. Technique described in Modern Magick. Though this in my opinion is an almost purely psychological exercise it is nonetheless easily altered for other uses. Donald Kraig himself stresses that a student should go beyond simply re-acting the rituals.
I doubt that he had this in mind, but it was the perfect vehicle.
Identify. Objectivity. Banish. Those are what the letters in I.O.B. represent. To put it simply, you identify your problem, you create via visualization an object that is that problem, and then you banish the object and consequently banish the problem. Simple.
Or so it would seem, yet “simple” does not mean “easy”!
As always, I started by performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and, though I don’t remember if I did, it only makes sense that I would have raised energy via the Middle Pillar ritual. From there, I went into the modified version of the I.O.B. and my attempt to banish death began.
The visualization for “death” is a pretty obvious one, and instead of a silver chord attaching “the object” to me I visualized it as being attached to her. So there I stood in my circle, the visualized specter of death standing outside of its protective boundary with a silver chord stretching from it and on into the distance to the other person.
Using my fingers like scissors, I reached out and snipped the chord. From this point forward the spiritual struggle was on.
Things changed quickly. I remember that the temperature of the room began to rise as I stepped forward to draw the first of the four banishing pentagrams. Before I finished drawing even the first I could feel my strength - my energy - ebb out of me.
I began to feel the initial effects of being physically tired as I finished drawing the first pentagram. I was hot, uncomfortable, and began to take longer breaths. Then I walked to the North and began to draw the second.
My arm rose in the beginning gesture to draw the symbol and as it done so the first bead of sweat formed on my brow. Only five simple movements to complete the pentagram, and before I had so much as finished the starting gesture I began to have to take deeper breaths. My finger moved down from above my head as I drew the top point of the star, and what was at first a simple bead of sweat on my forehead had now found its way down to my chin.
The change was extreme. Had the visualization become something more real than I had thought possible or was it simply the energy of what I was trying to banish? Either way, it was pulling my strength from me like a giant leach. I may as well have been porous.
As I finished the second of the four pentagrams sweat was a sheen on my body and I literally felt as though I had been working out with weights beyond my abilities. I was at the point that had I been working physically I would surely have sat to rest; but I didn’t dare. I couldn’t. If I stopped the banishing…
I walked to the West of the circle. My legs felt heavy and my breath came to me as though I had been running. My sweat, which was now covering my entire body, was starting to soak into my robe. I paused for a moment in an attempt to catch my breath before lifting my hand to draw the third star.
Suddenly it was as though great weights hung from my arms and legs. It was an effort to lift my hand to simply begin drawing the symbol, and as I done so, my continued loss of strength made it a task for my legs to support me. My muscles ached all over.
I finished the third star and then walked toward the South to draw the fourth and last pentagram. My body was too tired, however, and my knee gave out from under me. I went down onto one leg, and with a gasp I pushed myself back onto my feet. With my robe absolutely soaked with sweat, I moved into the fourth pentagram…
I finished it, obviously, but it was extremely difficult. My body was taxed as much as it could physically be and I was light headed from weakness and dehydration. I collapsed into the center of the circle, breathing as though I had just sprinted miles for my very life and my body ached enough to support that idea. By then, my arms would not have been able to push me into a sitting position.
Whether it was the temperature in the room or just me, the heat took an uncomfortable ammount of time to fade and I needed a good twenty minutes simply to catch my breath. It was quite some time before I was able to get up and remove my robe, which by then had dried a noticable ammount was more damp than wet in most places.
The evening eventually ended with a nice cool glass of water and a good, long sleep. Also, I thankfully knew someone who was willing to put my robe through the washer. It needed a wash. Badly.
I feel like it’s important to say that I don’t think that I was (or am) so powerful that I could actually have gotten into a struggle with “Death” and won. Is it possible? Greater ones than I have tried. This was only a specter - a representation, quickly dreamed up for the purpose of a simple ritual. Whether I “won” the struggle or it simply let me go after I completed the ritual isn’t for me to say.
Was the ritual a success? I don’t know. I can only say that this attempt to banish “death” occurred before my attempt to connect with the person’s spirit, and that I never heard from the person again. I did hear through word of mouth that the person had made it through their ordeal, but I can’t take that at face value because this person knew how much I had come to care about the girl in question and no proof was ever brought to me.
So… I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
* Note: I personally think that Kraig’s name for this ritual, S.I.R.P., is rather over exagerated. It feels much better to me personally to refer to it as the G.I.R.P.. That is, the Greater Invoking Ritual of The Pentagram.
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