The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP)

Brian's Confusion - Someone hit Jesus over the head with Plato's complete works is an interesting discussion of whether the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is a valid part of modern Pagan practice or not. (If it's not, that's Wicca and Druidry rather stuffed, since both their circle-opening procedures are derived from it.)

In my own (almost daily) performance of the LBRP, I've removed the references to Yahweh and his ilk, but kept the archangels - seems to work fine. Angels are Zoroastrian anyway (though not with Hebrew names).

The other bits of Hebrew (A Ta Malkuth, Ve Geburah, Ve Gedulah, Leolam, Amn) in the ritual don't bother me - I regard it as addressing the Universe, not some jumped-up desert wight. I also find it helps to visualise the Lust card from the Thoth Tarot at a certain point; the card has a particular symbolism for me.

Much modern circle-opening practice is derived from the LBRP, so it is good to be familiar with it. I have tried various morning-meditation practices and this is the one I have stuck with the longest. Which is strange as I wouldn't have expected it to be up my street at all; but it pushes a lot of the same buttons as T'ai Chi (and some other ones that T'ai Chi doesn't do), but is easier to remember.

I am taking the view that it is a good idea to do the thing for quite a while in the original before modifying it. But Yahweh et al were the first to go! My cosmology includes angels as sky-wights, so whilst I do not take the view that gods and angels are the same, as some late Pagan apologists and the Hypsistarians claimed, I can include them in my world-picture.

There's a cool bit in The Fifth Sacred Thing (Starhawk) where Elijah appears to a witch, and says that after centuries of talking to Jewish women, he has changed and mellowed. Maybe the archangels have undergone a similar process through centuries of hanging out with ritual magicians...?