Have you ever wondered how the teachings of the Golden Dawn, particularly the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or LBRP, have been so widely popularized? Or perhaps, how these arcane practices became almost an industry standard in the modern esoteric world? Stay tuned as we unravel these mysteries together.

In today’s episode, we’ll look deeper at the LBRP itself, the different stages, how it works and its purpose. How does this seemingly simple ritual reflect the Golden Dawn’s eclectic sources and significant role in contemporary esoteric practices?

Join me on this journey as we uncover the intriguing layers of the Golden Dawn and its influential rituals. Let’s step into a world that unites the esoteric, the historical, and the modern and explore together the captivating allure of this most influential ritual practice. Stay with me, and you won’t want to miss a single revelation.

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The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or LBRP was developed during the late Victorian era by the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. A detailed examination indicates that the LBRP draws from an extraordinarily diverse and sometimes ancient array of sources. This mix of various elements demonstrates how religious rituals and other “created customs” often combine a patchwork of pre-existing components, blending the recognizable with the enigmatic. The eclectic approach of the Golden Dawn pragmatically linked Christian and pagan interests or loyalties among its members. Furthermore, the design of the LBRP exemplifies the transformation of older, more adaptable esoteric traditions into codified and standard practices by the Golden Dawn within the milieu of the modern occult resurgence.

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) is arguably the most renowned ritual originating from the modern occult revival. It was primarily brought to the forefront by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn during the late-Victorian era, and it remains prevalent in diverse esoteric settings today. This is partly because many introductions to ceremonial magic persistently teach novices the LBRP, in a form that aligns closely with its original rendition by the Golden Dawn. The ritual is often criticized, as in the memoirs of well-known Golden Dawn recruit Arthur Machen, for its modern construction, composed of elements derived from a variety of traditions.

Established in London in 1888, the Golden Dawn was the first group of the English ritual magic revival to gain significant success. Its rituals, complex and filled with overlapping religious and mystical symbolism, were primarily sourced from the mysterious “Cipher MS.” a mysterious document which takes its name from the fact that it was written in a cypher derived from the Polygraphiae (1561) of the German abbot and scholar Johannes Trithemius. The Cipher MS came to light under disputed circumstances through the offices of the physician and Freemason William Wynn Westcott (1848–1925). The document’s authorship remains unconfirmed, but it may well have been composed by another Mason, the recently deceased occultist Kenneth Mackenzie (1833–1886).

It contains only a skeletal outline of rituals and doctrine: for example, it prefigures the LBRP and the other pentagram rituals of the developed Golden Dawn system, but it nowhere sets them out in full.

The rituals were primarily conceived through a combination of thorough academic research and mysticism, although the exact process of their creation remains unclear due to a lack of evidence.

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a protégé of Westcott, is usually credited for finalizing the rituals. He was known to invest significant time studying the Western esoteric tradition at the British Museum. However, Wheeler proposes that Westcott may have played a larger role than generally acknowledged in shaping the Golden Dawn system.

The LBRP was unique in that it was the only ritual, apart from grade ceremonies, introduced to members of the Golden Dawn’s first or outer order. It was given to initiates immediately after their initiation for their protection and to help them establish a connection with spiritual and unseen entities. The ritual was to be performed in the evening, while a slightly different version, aimed at invocation, was recommended in the morning. It was a fundamental ritual taught to initiates of the Golden Dawn’s outer order, offering them, as I said, protection and a basis for interacting with spiritual entities. The LBRP had various implications, such as a preparatory cleansing act before a magical operation, a means of warding off impure energies, a technique for managing intrusive thoughts, and a meditative exercise.

The Golden Dawn commenced its disintegration around the turn of the 20th century. The groups that sprang from its fragments, namely the Stella Matutina and Alpha et Omega, were largely inactive by the time the world was plunged into the chaos of World War II. Some of the Golden Dawn’s sacred rituals surfaced in an unauthorized version in The Equinox, a periodical helmed by Aleister Crowley, between the years 1909 and 1913. Later, between 1937 and 1940, Israel Regardie made the remaining rituals accessible to the public, having gained insight into them via his association with Stella Matutina.

Aleister Crowley played a pivotal role in safeguarding and propagating the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP). He weaved it into his written work, Liber O, published in 1909, marking the ritual’s first known appearance in print. Crowley then crafted a variant of the ritual in ancient Greek, dubbed the “Star Ruby”, which he unveiled in Liber XXV in 1913. Furthermore, he published another adaptation of the ritual, lesser-known but still noteworthy, in Liber V vel Reguli in 1929.

Interestingly, subsequent iterations of the LBRP came from Christian scholars instead of Crowley’s disciples. In 1915, Father J.C. Fitzgerald, an initiate of the Stella Matutina, put forth a streamlined and Christian-centric version of the ceremony. Then in 1930, Dion Fortune, a Christian esotericist, shed light on a critical aspect of the LBRP in her book, Psychic Self-Defence. Fortune advocated for the use of banishing earth pentagrams as spiritual shields and recounted her own usage of pentagrams coupled with “Names of Power” that she deemed too potent to disclose. These comments seemed to hint at fundamental aspects of the LBRP.

Post-Fortune, Israel Regardie entered the scene, publishing the complete text of the LBRP in his metaphysical work, Tree of Life, in 1932. Subsequently, he incorporated it into his extensive collection of the Golden Dawn rituals. Moving further along in time, Gerald Gardner, the architect of Wicca, inserted the LBRP into the early iterations of the Wiccan sacred text, the Book of Shadows. While the LBRP did not persevere in its full form within the Wiccan tradition, Gardner did pass down several components from it, including the usage of pentagrams and the practice of forming a magical circle referencing the cardinal compass points.

The first mass-market magic “self-help” book that endorsed the LBRP was “The Magician” in 1959, authored by W.E. Butler, a disciple of Dion Fortune. Since Butler’s time, the LBRP has found a place in numerous entry-level texts on esotericism and ceremonial magic, achieving a kind of ubiquity in the genre.

Our exploration now turns to the individual parts of the LBRP. For this, we will utilize the ritual text contained within Israel Regardie’s original Golden Dawn papers, a version that is largely identical to that employed by the original order.

The LBRP comprises several parts, and this episode will refer to the version published by Regardie, believed to be consistent with the original order’s usage.

One of its components, the “Qabbalistic Cross”, involves ritual actions and Hebrew invocations. However, the Hebrew language used in the LBRP exhibits certain inaccuracies, revealing that the ritual was developed by non-native Hebrew speakers with a limited understanding of the language. This further emphasizes that the LBRP is a constructed ritual rather than an authentic ancient practice.

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) starts with the practitioner facing east, a significant direction in many Golden Dawn rituals and rooted in Christian, pagan, and Masonic traditions. This eastward direction has symbolic ties to sun worship and is indicative of the amalgamation of diverse symbolisms present in the Golden Dawn system.

The LBRP incorporates the names of Kabbalistic sephiroth – Malkuth, Geburah, and Gedulah or Chesed – aligning the practitioner’s physical body with the Tree of Life. Despite these Kabbalistic elements, the ritual’s structure seems to be influenced by Christian practices, resembling the gesture of making the sign of the cross and reciting text similar to the Lord’s Prayer’s doxology.

Although there’s uncertainty regarding the original text of the Lord’s Prayer in biblical manuscripts, the doxology has a long history. It likely originated from a Hebrew Bible text from the First Book of Chronicles, which also inspired the Kabbalistic interpretation of the sephiroth names. The creators of the Golden Dawn were likely aware of this connection, as evidenced by a translation from the Zohar, the central Kabbalistic text, by Samuel MacGregor Mathers, a Golden Dawn figure, that makes explicit references to this passage.

The first occultist to note the similarity between the Lord’s Prayer doxology and the Kabbalistic sephiroth was Éliphas Lévi, not Mathers. Lévi, a former Roman Catholic seminarian, suggested the doxology held mystical significance and may have been reserved for the initiated. He also introduced a version of the sign of the cross that included Kabbalistic elements, suggesting a connection between the prayer, the sephiroth, and the four classical Greek elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The idea of controlling these elements through rituals, known as the “conjuration of the four,” is deeply rooted in Christian ritual magic and was integrated into the Golden Dawn system.

Lévi added another layer by incorporating the Roman Catholic sign of the cross, tying it to Solomonic magic traditions. This association of the cross, beyond the Christian context, reflects the Golden Dawn’s syncretic approach to symbolism, drawing on diverse religious traditions. This includes Rosicrucian and Kabbalistic associations, and even some anti-Christian sentiments, linking the cross to pagan origins and the Egyptian deity, Osiris.

Thus, the first part of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) emerges from a complex, eclectic intermingling of religious and mystical practices, including Kabbalistic mysticism, Christian observances, and ancient pagan traditions.

So, as we’ve seen, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) is a ceremonial magic ritual steeped in the Western Esoteric Tradition. In the LBRP, participants draw invoking pentagrams in the air and intone specific Hebrew names of God, each associated with a different cardinal direction.: YOD HE VAU HE (East), ADONAI (South), EHEIEH (West), and AGLA (North).

The origins of this practice can be traced back to ancient Jewish magic and practical Kabbalah. Divine names are integral to various rituals, including the Supreme Ritual of the Pentagram, which employs a different set of divine names in both Hebrew and the Enochian languages.

Each divine name in the LBRP corresponds not only to a cardinal direction but also to an element: East with Air, South with Fire, West with Water, and North with Earth. This association is part of a broader pattern of mystical correspondences found in the Western esoteric tradition.

Furthermore, these cardinal points and their associations hold solar symbolism: East symbolizes the sunrise, South represents the sun’s zenith, West corresponds to the sunset, and North indicates darkness. This pattern is also prevalent in Freemasonry, Hindu, and Tibetan traditions, where the clockwise motion signifies the path of the sun.

The Tetrabiblos, an ancient treatise by Claudius Ptolemy, serves as the source of attributing the four elements to the cardinal points, associating winds with each direction. Each divine name invoked carries a significant symbolic meaning. For instance, YHVH vibrated in the East, symbolizes the dawning of the light, underlining the intricate system of mystical correspondences central to Western Esoteric Tradition.

This tradition has been influenced by groups like the Golden Dawn, who developed an extensive system of correspondences linking Hebrew letters, Kabbalistic concepts, gods, colours, gemstones, Tarot cards, and more. Such patterns and their interpretation remain a subject of intense interest for practitioners of Western esotericism.

The interpretation of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), as it has been explained by Israel Regardie in the 1930s, may be unique to him and does not seem to be grounded in any prior commentary. The reasons behind Mathers’ allocation of divine names to the cardinal points might not have been based on any previous source but could have been arbitrary.

Despite the usage of authentic Hebrew God names, the correspondences used in the LBRP don’t seem to have strong foundations in the Kabbalistic tradition. The Jewish Kabbalistic sages did posit connections between cardinal points, elements, God’s names, and sephiroth; however, they didn’t necessarily use the same combinations found in the Golden Dawn system.

Moreover, a strand of Kabbalah taught by the Sefer Yetzirah suggests that there are only three basic elements, contrasting the four-element doctrine typically employed in the Golden Dawn rituals.

The founders of the Golden Dawn, including Mathers and Westcott, did not strictly adhere to the traditional source materials and were willing to deviate when these sources were inconsistent. They also didn’t limit themselves to drawing from the Kabbalah but also from Christian ceremonial magic. Mathers was conscious of this inconsistency, as evident in his translation of the Key of Solomon, where he assigns different divine names to the cardinal points than what’s found in the LBRP.

In essence, Victorian occult revivalists like Mathers and Westcott were not merely restoring old traditions but also codifying and solidifying previously more flexible ideas. The pentagrams drawn in the LBRP and its sister ritual, the Supreme Ritual of the Pentagram, have unique interpretations and associations, further highlighting the adaptability of their approach to Western esotericism.

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) employs symbolism that is deeply rooted in ancient religious and philosophical traditions. It begins with the invocation of four archangels – Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel – with their placement referencing both Jewish and pagan traditions. This positioning of the archangels, along with cross-based symbolism, reflects the Golden Dawn’s intention to harmonize Christian and pagan religious traditions, challenging Victorian dichotomies.

The invoked archangels are mentioned in various Jewish scriptural texts and had also been integrated into pagan magic. A related Jewish prayer, the “Bedtime Shema.” and the LBRP are thought to share a common source, given their similarity. In rabbinical Judaism, however, invoking angels in prayer is traditionally discouraged.

The practice of surrounding oneself with angels is found not only in Jewish traditions but also in Christian, Islamic, and Manichaean texts, with the specific angels and their directions varying across texts. Such practices can be traced back to Babylonia in the second millennium BCE.

The LBRP is an amalgamation of Near-Eastern paganism and Abrahamic faiths and positions the archangels at the cardinal points in a way that diverges from Agrippa’s correspondences, indicating that the Golden Dawn manipulated various concepts to construct their magical system.

So we can see that the LBRP is an amalgamation of Near-Eastern paganism and Abrahamic faith, and it also positions the archangels at the cardinal points in a way that diverges from Agrippa’s correspondences. This also indicates that the Golden Dawn manipulated various concepts to construct their own magical system.

The ritual also uses the pentagram and hexagram, two significant esoteric symbols, and situates the practitioner between these two representations of microcosm and macrocosm. This symbolism originates from a range of religious and philosophical traditions, including Pythagoreanism, Paracelsianism, Solomonic tradition, and Freemasonry, all these likely arriving at the Golden Dawn via the works of Éliphas Lévi.

In the Golden Dawn system, the pentagram signifies the microcosm, a symbol with roots extending at least as far back as Paracelsus and Agrippa, while the hexagram represents the macrocosm. This use of the pentagram could also be influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Faust”. The ritual concludes with a repetition of the “Qabbalistic Cross”.

(LBRP) as practised within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: eclecticism and codification. The LBRP, a modern ritual born in the late Victorian era, traces its roots back to a diverse array of ancient sources, as we’ve seen, including exorcism rites of pre-Christian Mesopotamia, Jewish mysticism, and Solomonic magic. Samuel Liddell Mathers, one of the order’s leaders, is credited for its formation. However, this eclectic assembly isn’t just a personal predilection but rather a characteristic of the wider esoteric revival, in line with the era’s trend of comparative cultural elements.

Although its sources were varied and potentially misunderstood by its practitioners, Mathers and his contemporaries were able to create a ritual that felt traditional and organic, contributing to the impression of age and authority. These rituals effectively engaged their participants, regardless of the artificiality of their creation, similar to invented traditions in new religious movements.

Notably, the Golden Dawn’s rituals embodied a certain religious ambiguity, incorporating language and imagery from both Abrahamic and pagan traditions, aligning with the pursuit of a universal truth underlying the particular phenomena of various spiritual traditions. This ambiguous religious stance catered to a wide spectrum of its members, ranging from conservative to counter-cultural.

Lastly, in creating the LBRP, significant choices had to be made to codify elements from diverse and fluid traditions. The process of codification sometimes departed from established traditions, and these choices set a precedent that subsequent generations of esoteric practitioners followed.

The immense impact of the Golden Dawn, often referred to as the definitive occult society in recent Western history, led to the standardization of its practices, largely due to the mass marketing of occult materials. Its methods were converted into a market-standard product and disseminated as popular books for beginners, making the choices made by its authors, however debatable or arbitrary, seem unquestionable. This gave the Golden Dawn an unwavering authority, widely accepted by followers, whether or not they had the capacity to question it.

The proliferation of Golden Dawn’s teachings wasn’t due to the advent of print, rather, it was the growing number of esoteric practitioners interested in utilizing it, coupled with a book-buying audience wealthy and literate enough to support a market for unique spiritual content. The Golden Dawn ultimately became akin to Microsoft within the esoteric subculture, its brand decisions taking on a life of their own in this modern, communicative world.

In examining the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), a seemingly simple ritual, it’s clear that it encapsulates the wide-ranging sources of the Golden Dawn rites serving as the cornerstone for modern esoteric orthopraxy. Despite seeming peculiar, the LBRP, much like the Golden Dawn and its members, fits well within its time and culture, as well as broader historical trends in ritual and religion.

(Wheeler, 2020)

This is it for today’s video.

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REFERENCES

Wheeler, G. J. (2020) ‘A Microcosm of the Esoteric Revival: The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram’, Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 1–40.

First uploaded 28 Jul 2023