Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Canine

So the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Canine was one of those life lesson kind of moments. Early on in my CM magickal career, I was completely fearless and quite sure that having seen it done once made me an EXPERT. I mean how hard could it be??? In some ways that is a really great way to approach magick, but boy does it leave a mark when you miss. It was a great lesson on two counts: first magickal due diligence and second there is NO MAGICKAL WHITE OUT.

Now let me set the scene for you, as painful as it will be to my ego. I had SEEN a whooping one LBRP, yes count them one and had not bothered to study it more than a cursory glance. I was about a month into my CM experience and really didn't see the point to all of this ritualistic gobbledy gook. I had gone out to dinner with one of Frater POS housemates and upon returning found him in excruciating pain and completely annoyed with the neighbors barking dog in the back. At the time I did not really know him, but I felt bad for his situation. So I told him to wait a minute and I would "fix it". The 4 cokes I had with dinner were being rapidly processed through my kidneys and I would just be a minute.




In the interim I made a personal My Gal sign of silence in the general area of the dog. It is basically some sort of left over mnemonic trigger that I just didn't forget from the last incarnation. It is done by making the whole shadow puppet talking hand and envisioning the word "Silence" while closing the mouth of your shadow puppet hand. For this old D&D nerd, I likened it to a cantrip. It is quick and easy. As I walked away making the sign, the dog shut up and the Frater "tsked" at it. The dog started barking again.

I turned on my heels and said "Do not sabotage me. This will only take a minute."

I made the sign again and the dog shut up. Again he tsked and harrumphed, as the dog sprang back into action. Now I was getting peeved.

I made the sign AGAIN and told him to "Just wait a minute." The dog shut up again and the Frater sulked. After a minute I returned and realize that I now had to actually DO something. Shit. In reality I had no idea what to do. But that did not actually slow me down. I could not be bothered with such trifling details. I stepped out on to the porch, which is now my porch and shut the door behind me.

My mind raced as I tried to figure out what to do. After a few seconds, that seemed like an eternity, I fatefully decided to perform the first and (and thankfully) last Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Canine. The now infamous LBRC. I had a plan and I was running with it until the wheels fell off. Which in this case was starting the first time I walked through the door and opened my mouth wide enough to stick my foot WAY down my own throat. I had a GENERALISH idea that you drew pentagrams and I knew that you started in some direction but I didn't have time for such details. No Q cross, no Archangels just down and dirty. Mainly because I didn't remember them! I faced West because it felt right ( me and my infamous direction sense - Go water!) and accidentally banished Air simply by Holy Guardian Hamster prompting and sheer dumb luck. The pentagrams were visualized and I pushed every bit of energy (fear and ego is a lot of energy for me) into the direction I was facing. I did not know to SEAL that energy. Serious technical mistake! I turned windershins because I wanted to do it opposite of the normal way for whatever bizarre reasoning in my head. By the time I got around to the East element of Air, the neighbors sliding back door opened up and someone took the dog inside. SUCCESS!!!! I was so pleased. I marched back inside to the two of them standing there. They were both dumb founded for a minute that the harebrain scheme worked. I said " I fixed it and your welcome!"

My dinner partner literally hit the ground laughing. It was a good 5 minutes before he regained composure. All he could say was "Well she sure fixed it" in between sobs of laughter. Frater POS on the other hand was still harrumphing and grumbling.

I thought "how ungrateful!" Didn't he realize how well that worked?

And he thought "Oh shit what did she just do on my back porch???" He unfortunately was right.

So as I left the house, ubber pleased with my temporary success, I noticed that dogs were barking all the way home. Odd I thought, but I put it out of my mind as just a coincidence. After 3 days of howling and whinning dogs, I KNEW that something had gone terribly wrong. I had not sealed the energy and all of it was back feeding into a choir of dogs barking. Oh shit. After another day of this I had to go explain what I had done to my mentor and get advice on how to straighten this out. When he was done laughing at me, he helped to see the sealing problem and performed a few more LBRP's with me to get rid of it. That was the first time that I heard the prophetic words "There is no magickal whiteout" and he bid me a good night. I knew that this ride was not over yet and I desperately wanted to get off. Too bad for me. My mentor never questioned my abilities only my methods, or specifically lack of methods...

The upshot of this was that I did indeed get rid of the barking dog. That unfortunately allowed every cat for 200 miles free range of Frater POS lawn and garden areas. He was and still is not pleased with that lo these many years. After my HELP, he was running a one stop liter box against his will and was about to KILL me. After a lot of rock gardening he fixed some of the problem. 4 years later I attempted to straighten out the issue when again the words came back to me "There is no magickal white out". After several more years, there is now a barking dog over there and less cats in the backyard, but it will never be completely undone. Since I now live here and garden here, I am intimately aware of my Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Canine on a daily basis. Funny how that works :)

So when I talk about magickal due diligence and thinking through the ritual BEFORE you do it, I am speaking from a painfully personal perspective. For all of the joy it caused... there were great early lessons in there that I would not trade even if I could. We know more than we think and we need to look before we leap. We do however need to leap sometimes. Otherwise you just won't move. There is no safe way down the path, but you might want to open your eyes at some point :) Otherwise you get a lot of cats in your yard :)