Often when the concept of banishing is considered within magick, it used to indicate a cleansing and/or clearing out of space. This can involve physical objects, but also includes spiritual energies that may have been worked with, but are not part and parcel of you and your environment. Farber's example of a traditional magickian doing a banishing is an excellent example of the traditional approach to banishing:

Before beginning s/he unplugs the telephone, turns off the television and locks the door. S/he then makes sure that anything contrary or unnecessary to hir work is removed from the circle. This may also involve very basic cleaning, sweeping out any dirt or dust, cleaning the floors, walls, ceiling. To our hypothetical magickian even the slightest imperfection may disturb the ritual, for you never know what will cause a distraction. (Farber, 1995, pp.15-16)

This traditional approach does work for a person. When I banish, before and after working magick, I sometimes visualize the energy being cleaned away and will even do some of the things mentioned in the quote.

However sometimes banishing needs to occur in a different way. Sure you can take the phone off the ringer and physically clean your space, but what if you have some magickal workings that you're working on that are in the room you're doing the banishing? What if you work with an entity and that entity is housed in an object in the room you work magick in? And finally what if you just want to challenge your discipline? There is another way to do banishings…if you're willing to learn detachment.

For instance, I have on the walls of my home, sigil paintings by myself. These sigil paintings are always being charged and fired. Now traditionally sigils are gotten rid of soon after they are created. The energy of the sigil is banished by some way of destroying it. Of course the act of banishing is also the means of getting the energy to work, to manifest the desire. But I find that my sigil workings are intensified, not through a destruction of the sigil, but through the retaining of the sigil and the keeping of it in a place where I see it everyday.

Although some would argue that by seeing the sigil everyday I'm preventing the manifestation of the desire, I find that after a couple days I have forgotten the purpose of the sigil and in fact have made the sigil become part of the background, part of my subconscious. I am banishing the sigil by detaching myself from it, so that it no longer has meaning despite the fact that it continues to exist in a material form. I find that this kind of practice is good for discipline purposes, because if you can learn to block out what is around you, learn to make it meaningless, than you can work magick under circumstances where you can easily be distracted and not have the benefit of doing a traditional banishing.

The principle of detachment, with banishing, works through finding no meaning in what is around you. If nothing has meaning around you, then it has no power to affect you. We detach ourselves from the meanings of what we have or what other forms of magick we're working and in doing so we banish those energies, not so much banishing those energies from the room, but banishing it from our consciousness, so that we can focus on matters at hand. When we banish through detachment, the distractions might still exist, but we ignore them by our will. This is an effective way of disciplining yourself when doing magick and also realizing that meaning is a constructed reality as opposed to an inherent reality.

I also approach banishing through the concept of zeroing. This discipline of banishing involves a high level of discipline: "Whether it is called 'detachment,' or 'uninvolvement,' or any other term, amounts to a control of consciousness at a very high level. We live from one level higher than our activities all the time, because we work on something from somewhere. To fully control happenings on any particular level of existence we must operate on it from another. If we want to become anything, we must also 'not-become' everything else" (Gray, 1969, p. 24). To not become everything else, involves banishing everything else, but you can't necessarily use the traditional approach of banishing to do that. You might not have the time physically clear everything out, just to avoid distraction. Instead you must focus on what you wish to work with and block out everything else, making it part of the background, as opposed to being relevant to your reality. And though it is in the background it does not exist, because what your focus is on is the magickal act you are doing. However while theory is fine and well, an actual exercise is even better.

What you wish to do is a sensory exercise. Because it is our senses that bring us stimuli, we must first learn to quiet the senses, so as to be able to focus are energy elsewhere. It's best to do this exercise in a highly distracting setting. If you can banish all the distractions in such a setting than your home or wherever you work magick will be a breeze in comparison.

I recommend some place outdoors where there is a lot of activity, such as a plaza in a city or a place indoors with a lot of activity, such as a mall. Regardless of where you go what you want to do is focus on one of the five senses, blocking the other senses out. For instance, touch everything around you and really feel the texture and ignore everything you see, hear, smell, and taste. The idea is to learn how to focus your attention on one specific sensation, while detaching yourself from the rest. If you get distracted start over. And if you feel self-conscious about doing this activity, remember that detaching yourself doesn't just include physical sensations, but also emotion. Examine why you feel self-conscious and then detach yourself from that feeling.

Another way to do this exercise is to pick an object and look at it as intensely as possible. Begin writing about that object, describing it in as much detail as possible. Again the key is to focus to the point where nothing meaningful exists but that object. If something distracts you, bring your attention back to the object and start over. By learning to focus like this, you discipline your mind and at the same time banish what is around you by choosing not to regard it as meaningful.

By starting this exercise physically you can also achieve an appreciation and understanding of how your body can distract you through sensation. They key to taming the mind, is in part found through taming the body, learning when to feel and when to detach. Once you've mastered focusing on a physical level, apply the detachment principle to the mental level. Detach yourself from the physical sensations you are feeling and focus on a concept you desire to bring into reality. Visualize the concept in concrete terms. How will this concept manifest into reality? And how do you fit into this concept? Ignore any stray thoughts, focusing only on becoming the concept you wish to manifest into reality. Everything else does not exist. All that does exist in this moment of manifestation is you and the concept you seek to manifest into reality.

The important thing to remember about zeroing is that it does require discipline. I favor discipline in my approaches to magick, because learning how to focus and concentrate under any circumstance allows you to be on top of any situation you are in. Nor do we always have the time or luxury to do a traditional banishing. But by learning how to detach ourselves from what is distracting us, we negate any power the distraction has on us, and in fact we take that power and add it to the focused manifestation desired. So we actually the take the energy that would distract us and add it to the magick we're utilizing. We do this by not becoming that which distracts us. Once you take the meaning from something, you take the energy as well and so you can use that energy and put it into the meaning that is currently relevant to your efforts.

Sometimes, as well, you may find that the traditional approach to banishing won't work because of the environment. For instance, how do you banish a pesky co-worker? I've found that by learning to detach myself, learning to no longer put meaning into the co-worker, that the situation changes. The co-worker is banished, just part of the scenery and you are free to pursue your tasks without being distracted. Still you might wonder that if you do this much detachment that there might be less interest in everything around you. The most important thing to remember about this type of banishing is that you determine the meaning of everything in your life. What I mean by that is, it's up to you to determine what/who is meaningful to you and when what/who is meaningful to you. When I'm focused on magick, nothing else matters, but once I'm done I invest meaning in what matters to me when I'm not engaged in a specific act of magick.

Regardless of how you choose to banish, remember that the goal of banishing is not merely to remove distracting influences, but rather is to help center you so that your efforts can be directed toward what you seek. By accomplishing that goal you will do successful banishings and manifest the desire you want, into reality.

Works Cited

Gray, William G. (1969) Magical ritual methods. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc.

Farber, Phillip H. (1995) Future ritual: Magick for the 21st century. Chicago: Eschaton Productions, Inc.

About the Author

Taylor Ellwood is currently pursuing his PH.D in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice at Kent State University. He is the author of Pop Culture Magick and co-author of Creating Magickal Entities. Taylor is currently writing his third book Space/Time Magick as well as more articles. Check out Taylor's webpage at chaosmagic.com

or through his LiveJournal

Taylor can also be contacted at ashmage@hotmail.com