Banishing Rituals

Hi all,

I just wanted to get some opinions on banishing/cleansing rituals. Do you do them before/after readings or working with the cards? I personally have not, and as I get deeper into the ideas around pathworking and meditation with the cards I have read several books which say this is something you should do. To be quite honest, some of the rituals (like the LBRP) seem totally rooted in magickal protection/superstition, which I understand the stated purpose for but do not connect with either rationally or emotionally and do not feel comfortable performing.

I'm sure there are some who would say I'm taking a huge risk by not performing these, while my personal feeling on it is that by accepting, believing and performing these rituals I am somehow validating and creating a subjective synthesis in my mind that there are entities that I must protect myself from - in other words, a self-perpetuating fear that by doing the rituals only serves to invite those fears and beliefs more into my consciousness by putting stock into them.

Anyway, I'd like to hear some opinions - thanks in advance!

Bill

Tarot cleansing

I was concerned with this issue too... Basically, i use one deck for my own readings and other deck for other people. i put cards in the sun as i couldn't come up with sth better. after doing reading for a person i felt quite negative, once i literally washed the deck with wet cloth lol i'd love to learn what other people do too
Ruth

you take a big risk by performing rituals that don't feel right about or are not comfortable performing. a few people devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to very elaborate an exhausting ritual just to prepare for a reading, which IMO is self defeating. and then there's an almost equally time consuming ritual to close the circle and so on.
but the bottom line is never do what you're not comfortable with. you, the reader are in control. that's all that really matters.

Unlike the ouija board and some other methods where you consciously call on entities of unknown type, tarot doesn't work like that as it comes from within yourself.
There have been threads on rituals and protection.

- some folks have used the cards to contact spirits, and they need to protect and centre/ground.
- I would say relatively few readers that I have heard discuss it do anything like this normally. Including me, btw.
- lots of folks, including me, do make an effort to ground after the reading. Could be something as simple as drinking a cup of coffee or tea, just an act that brings you back fully to the material plane.
- if you are doing a lot of readings I gather drinking a lot of water helps. I have never done a large number of readings in a row, but some very experienced folks attest to this.

My opinion on your question: 1. Don't do any rituals that you ae not comfortable with, even the LBRP which is the most basic magick spell.
2. You are quite safe with tarot unless you choose to use it to contact spirits then a higher level of protection would be indicated.

Marion said:

Unlike the ouija board and some other methods where you consciously call on entities of unknown type, tarot doesn't work like that as it comes from within yourself.
There have been threads on rituals and protection.

- some folks have used the cards to contact spirits, and they need to protect and centre/ground.
- I would say relatively few readers that I have heard discuss it do anything like this normally. Including me, btw.
- lots of folks, including me, do make an effort to ground after the reading. Could be something as simple as drinking a cup of coffee or tea, just an act that brings you back fully to the material plane.
- if you are doing a lot of readings I gather drinking a lot of water helps. I have never done a large number of readings in a row, but some very experienced folks attest to this.

My opinion on your question: 1. Don't do any rituals that you ae not comfortable with, even the LBRP which is the most basic magick spell.
2. You are quite safe with tarot unless you choose to use it to contact spirits then a higher level of protection would be indicated.

Click to expand...

This makes a whole lot of sense to me. I also never do any banishing rituals. One, because I've never read about one that I'm comfortable with; Two, nothing bad has ever happened to me because I hadn't performed one; Three, a deep breath or two is all that I've needed to help ground me (but then again, I've never done even half a dozen readings in a row, so it would probably take more than that).

Hi Bill

I don't do any banishing or cleansing rituals and never have. What are we banishing exactly?

IMHO I'd say you were taking a risk by performing these when one you don't feel comfortable doing so and I very much agree with you in creating a fear and an idea that you must protect yourself from something bad. This is very much where people get the idea that tarot is bad, evil, risky etc etc.

When reading what do you have, paper, ink and your mind and maybe working with your intuition. If you have no serious mental health problems and a deck you can work with as in enjoy and use the images then you really have nothing else to worry about IMO.

Summer x

Well, I banish the cats from the surface I'll be working on, but other than that, I never banish anything. There's no need to.

I wouldn't put my cards in the sun because the sun fades things so fast. I know some people put theirs in the moonlight to "charge" them, but I haven't ever been able to find any batteries to run down on mine, so they continue to work just fine without that.

I don't cleanse my decks because they're not dirty.

To echo what many others have said, I think it's important that you stick to what is comfortable for you - and if something isn't comfortable or compatible for you, leave it out.

Banishing sounds so heavy! Unless you feel that there is something to be banished, that just seems inappropriate.

If you feel the need to cleanse the deck, others have made several practical suggestions, and I would again agree that you find something that feels right and makes sense to you. For myself, if I'm looking to cleanse an object, I might leave it alone near a window that catches moonlight, and perhaps leave it there for a complete mooncycle for a little R&R.

Great replies, everyone. I am encouraged by the responses too, which tells me that my instincts are correct. I think it's most important for me to feel that what I'm doing (whether it be reading, meditating, or pathworking with the cards) is natural and feels "right". For example, I feel that I'm a pretty balanced and grounded person, and I feel that if there are forces either a part of (or even external to) my concious mind that show up in my work with the cards, that I still feel safe in knowing that my higher mind/consciousness is always there to ground and protect me. If I ever reached a point in the journeys of my own inner consciousness where there was a danger of some kind of psychological/spiritual attack or imbalance, I feel I would be warned of that way before it could really do damage. I trust that my higher consciousness would let me know that.

In the travels of the unconscious mind, there are bound to be things that manifest that are scary and/or threatening. Whether they are "real" or not is immaterial. How much power we give them is truly the only power they have, in my opinion. That is not to say that they don't have an effect on us - we all have things in our life that if we were to actually characterize and face directly (speaking regarding what we encounter in a pathworking/meditative card working state) would be very frightening to see as visually manifest in the form of a monster/demon/whatever. I'm sure that my mind's representation of my addiction to nicotine, for example, would be a pretty ugly beast, and very threatening, since it's a continuing struggle for me against this entity. But, it's not something that hasn't already been there for a long time, and something that I haven't already tried to face down on a conscious level many times. A visual manifestation in my mind would be frightening, but I believe I would also recognize it for what it is, and it could not take any energy or power from me that I don't already give it. Regardless of the fact that it does exist within me and that it is something very real to me, it's not something that can scramble my mind or possess me, any more than it already does in my external reality. (As above, so below!)

Anyway, thanks for the responses - if anyone has experiences with meditation or pathworking that relate to this I'd love to hear about it!

Bill V

billv said:

Hi all,

I just wanted to get some opinions on banishing/cleansing rituals. Do you do them before/after readings or working with the cards?

Click to expand...

No, I just do the cards. However I do feel out situations and if something doesnt feel right before or after a reading I will act on it.

billv said:

To be quite honest, some of the rituals (like the LBRP) seem totally rooted in magickal protection/superstition, which I understand the stated purpose for but do not connect with either rationally or emotionally and do not feel comfortable performing.

Click to expand...

I think most people are not clear on the purpose of these rituals, which is not surprising since most of them are reprints or rip-offs of Crowleys or Golden Dawn and come without the preliminary RELEVANT
instructions.

To drink clear water, go to the source. ie. Liber O.