When reduced to their common denominators, banishing rituals are intended to set a psychic demarcation of time and space, within which ritual action is to take place. This is what's important. It can be compared to what a chemist might do in a workspace -- make sure that the area is free of contaminants by cleaning it thoroughly; otherwise the results of the work might be spoiled.Old banishing rites generally involved such things as visualizing the drawing of flaming circles around the operator, in addition to burning stars in all directions, robe-clad angels and/or castle-like towers on four sides, shafts of white light shooting through the middle of it all, while the operator screams at all the demons to get out! There is variation in the kinds of imagery used, but it's usually equally complex and superfluous.
Very few magicians who have been known to be literally dragged into a sulphur pit by ravening demons for failing to do a proper banishing. However, this is not meant to indicate that such techniques are not useful and important.
Most incarnations of Western Hermetic magic (Golden Dawn, Thelema, various shades of Witchcraft) use some variation of The Lesser Banishing Ritual Of The Pentagram (LBRP) as their primary banishing rite. The LBRP (affectionately known as the "el-burp") traces back to the 19th century British occult order, The Golden Dawn.
Briefly, the LBRP involves "grounding" oneself firmly in the center of a space, then proceeding to "draw" four visualized pentagrams in the air corresponding to the cardinal points of the compass. In the original version, each pentagram is accompanied by the visualized image of one of the four Judeo-Christian archangels (each associated with one of the four Elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water) "standing guard" on the periphery of the ritual space. If this idea appeals to you, there are a dozen or more books available that describe the ritual in detail, so I won't go into it much here. The Wiccans have their "Calling the Quarters", the Thelemites the "Star Ruby", so there are many variations on the theme one can explore.
However, this is about Chaos Magic. One of the premises is that magic proceeds from the deep mind, and few people really have the time and determination to internalize the imagery and meaning of the traditional archangels deeply enough into their minds to make it work well. Remember, these things must connect with your non-verbal, subconscious mind strongly in order to be magically effective. The image of a winged human clad in flowing robes must have been really impressive back in the 19th century, but after being exposed to Hollywood efforts like Stargate, Hellraiser and other blockbuster "occult" morph-fests, it doesn't have much of a kick for the 21st century mind anymore.
Source: boudicca.de
