This past weekend, I got hit with a wave of sadness, a deep and sorrowful sadness that made me want to just sit down and cry. Being the self-aware magician that I am, I quickly realized there was absolutely no reason for feeling that way. I had slept really well the night before, I had been doing chores that make me feel good, like I’m fulfilling my roles and responsibilities as a man, and there hasn’t been anything going on in my life that would leave me depressed.
Random mood swings are one of the things I’ve learned are usually caused by a spiritual attack. Especially random feelings of anxiety or depression. Most spiritual attacks, in my experience, are caused by wandering nepheshim,* the shades of the dead. These spirits are supposed to fade away around 6 weeks after the body of a person dies. Some of them learn to survive on the extreme emotions of other humans, and they learn to trigger these extreme emotions in their vicitms, floating around causing depression or anxiety.
Note that I am NOT saying all depression or anxiety is caused by a spirit. Most of us have valid and real reasons to feel depressed and frightened at times in our lives. I’m talking about feelings that come out of nowhere when we should be happy, or were happy just a second ago.
What happens is a wandering Nephesh does whatever it does to attack. You feel a wave of fear, anxiety, or nostalgia about something that makes no sense in your current context. Your mind will likely go looking for some “subconscious” reason for the feeling and chances are good it will find something plausible; this is a trap. You will justify your feelings of sadness, pin it on some real event that legitimately makes you feel sad, and the false sense of sadness has now been replaced with a real source of pain in your life. By your own brain. And then you’re generating real depression, or fear, or whatever, and the spirit gets to feed.
Now, people die every day. I figure there are a few hundred fading nephesh per square mile, especially around graveyards, hospitals, and the cities where people die in accidents, gun fights, stabbings, etc. In old neighborhoods there are more of them, and the longer a place has been around, the more nephesh gather that figure out ways to survive.
So when the wave of random bad feelings hit me, I quickly analyzed whether or not it was legit, and finding no ready reason for the feeling, I started to banish.
Since I have publicly aired my opinion of the LBRP (pronounced “Elburp”), you can bet I didn’t use that. Instead, I went with something more in keeping with my own context. There are echoes of the Elburp in the rite I did, but only because I’m working from the same traditional sources as the Golden Dawn, but with a different overall intent and cosmology.
I was in my bedroom in the basement. I’ve found that basements seem to have more nepheshim, must be a chthonic thing. I sat down on my bed, and closed my eyes. I called out to my HGA, and pictured myself within my Altar Glyph, standing in the center, surrounded by the Four Princes of the Angles of the World, and the Seven Intelligences of the Planets. Beneath me were the bound Demonic Kings, hostile in the Elements, and above me was my HGA. Looking up far enough, I caught a glimpse of the Source pouring down like a fountain through the spheres in a long chain tha ended with my own manifestation.
This reminded me of my “Race and Value,” that is, my divine heritage and my position within the framework of eternity. Reclaiming this relationship is the cornerstone of Neo-Platonic philosophy, according to my understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads.
Next, I said aloud, in a low voice, “Nephesh, be gone now in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. [HGA name], remove this offending spirit. Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel, consecrate this ground for our defense; let no wandering shade or spirit of ill intent pass within this home.”
I then called on the Archangels of the Seven Planetary Spheres to consecrate the home and keep it cleansed and safe as well. I called them by name alone and kept the charge pretty simple: “By the powers of the Seven Spheres, I consecrate this house for our defense.”
The air in the room cleared noticeably, and the feelings of sadness dissipated. I noticed a marked improvement of the general tone of our familial interactions from that moment, and I was reminded forcefully that I hadn’t done any cleansing or banishing in the temporary house since moving in. (My altar is in storage, along with my Holy Water and Sage.)
So if you were wondering what I do to banish or cleanse on the fly, that’s about it. It’s short and sweet, and it works wonders.
*Quick refresher: humans have four (or five) “souls,” the Guf, which is the Mortal Body, the Nephesh, the Ruach, which is the Immortal Mind, and the Neschemah, which is the Immortal Spark of God (and some say the Chiah, the Life Force, or Breath of God, similar but not equal to Prana). The Nephesh is the soul that handles the amygdala response to events, and runs the autonomous nervous system of the body. It’s the emotional memory soul, it’s your cellular memory that remembers to form scar tissue where you were cut when you were 10 even 26 years later, it’s the survivalist, the main maintainer of our daily existence. This soul is also Mortal, like the Guf-body. It survives by feeding on the processes of your physical body, but when your body dies, it begins to starve to death. It takes 6 weeks to die and return to the ashes of Sheol, give or take, and it’s this part of the soul that sticks around after you’ve died, popping up in the passenger car seat when your loved ones are sitting at red lights thinking about how much they miss you. It feeds on extreme emotions, like grief, panic, rage, or ecstatic bliss. This soul can be kept “alive” by making regular offerings, like libations or burning incense and candles to your ancestors. Most of them just die, but some seem to feed off of geomagnetic forces, or become vampire spirits. They seldom remember much about the lives they lived, but they can generally recall the moments of their lives that were traumatic, or were extremely emotional. That’s why “ghosts” are seen walking the places they’ve died, or where they were murdered or whatever. They’re reliving their emotional memories, and are usually kept alive by some “energy” source they’ve managed to adapt to feed on.
