Having recently found myself “distracted by life,” I felt I needed something like a more thorough version of a banishing. What I ultimately did, I found to be highly effective. I therefore thought I’d share it here. It’s a similar sort of ritual to what some might call a “house cleanse” – hence, a Tenebrous house-cleansing. It should be relatively easy to perform for anyone familiar with Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness’ Rite of Banishing.

Introduction

Background circumstances

Lately I’d been strongly feeling I could use an energetic reset. There are several major factors in this:

• I’ve been off work for four months, but will be returning shortly. This kind of long break is by no means an unusual career pattern for me. Nonetheless, it requires a significant shift in mental focus. I’d increasingly already been doing “refresh” rituals of various sorts in early September, January, and April to acknowledge such shifts.
• For most of the time I’ve been off work, I’ve been dealing with home renovations. These necessitated a variety of strangers coming into my living space. Don’t get me wrong, all of them have been very professional and considerate. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s unusual for magickal practitioners to find this kind of thing a bit spiritually-disruptive.
• I am very close to the conclusion of my Venus stage of Tenebrous initiation. This year-long endeavor triggered significant upheaval in my interpersonal connections and how I navigate them. I’ve therefore sought space for myself to process these changes undistractedly, to maximize what I can learn from them.
• As of a few weeks ago now, I’ve been suspended from X. I strongly suspect there was no ideological motive, either left (“she’s Nazi-adjacent!”) or right (“she’s a devil-worshiper!”) involved. Rather, I think some algorithm just classified me as “sketchy” over whatever vague triggers. At the same time, Musk has probably left X too understaffed to have much of anyone to appeal this to. They don’t reply to my queries, therefore I’m moving on. This does, however, necessitate reorganizing my daily routine as far as social media promotion of my book goes.

None of these things are particularly “bad”. But together they’ve given me a sense of being off-baseline, and of needing a new baseline to return to.

Developing a Tenebrous house-cleansing

Because of having so much going on, I decided to do an enhanced version of my usual Rite of Banishing. And as I found what I did to be very effective, I thought I’d share it here. So here’s what this entry will cover:

1. A bit of background re: Tenebrous ritual, especially for those who may not have read my book.
2. How the house-cleansing builds on a Rite of Banishing, and how (generally) to do it.
3. Some brief reflections on common left-hand-path practitioners’ rationales re: when to banish and when not to. (I wound up just putting this in the concluding thoughts.)

I’m hoping that anyone with a degree of magickal experience will be able to get something out of this entry. For an in-depth understanding of all finer details, though, it’s best if you read Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness.

Generalities of Tenebrous ritual

My general magickal praxis could be termed “Chaos Magick mentality in ritual magick format”. Magick, I believe, has core principles which, once internalized, can be effectively implemented in many ways. The Chaos Magician in me thus says, “you can just ‘make stuff up’: all that ‘ancient tradition’ put on pedestals was ‘made up’ too – in the past!” But the ritual magician in turn says, “nonetheless, having a set protocol for magick reinforces that yes, we’re doing magick now – and when I perform magick in that state, I get better results.”

I thus tend to divide my rituals into three phases:

1. An opening phase, which establishes departure from ordinary reality and entry into a magickally-efficacious state of mind. This entails both precursors such as donning ritual garb, lighting candles, etc., and evocations, e.g., in my case, of Archons, Fallen Angels, Abominations and Ancient Ones from the four directions.
2. A performance phase, in which one brings about “change in accordance with will” via symbolically-significant actions. In this stage, I issue my statement of intent, and dramatize its attainment in some way, e.g., visualization, manipulation of props, etc.
3. A closing phase, wherein one expresses appreciation toward the powers of magick and then returns to normality. I most-typically close by burning a bundle of herbs as an offering, and thanking the Dark Gods. The termination of ritual is marked by touching the ground, blowing out the candle, removing ritual garb, etc.

Now, some magicians won’t use openings and closings (though I do argue for them), and others’ will vary from mine. In concept, though, openings and closings should not vary much between the same magician’s rituals. Most of this post will therefore focus on what is distinctive for the ritual under discussion: the performance phase for a house-cleansing.

Tenebrous philosophy of magick

I feel the need to add one more note before proceeding:

Those unfamiliar with my path may presume from the mention of Dark Gods and other entities that I see theism as inherent to my magick. This, however, is not actually the case. As Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness explains, it is the magician’s choice whether to interpret the directional evocations as calling upon literal entities or figurative forces. I myself am not necessarily consistent in this interpretation between all rituals I’ve performed over the years. Put frankly, though, metaphysics do not really matter here – only the magician’s sense of being in an extraordinary space matters.

It should further be noted that the ritual at hand does not require any Dark God’s participation to “work.” One could include an entity’s assistance if one wanted to. But I think it’s far better for anything banishing-adjacent to understand the ritual as just using your own power. One thereby affirms important Satanic values such as personal sovereignty, resilience, and self-reliance.

In saying this, it’s not my intent to put down theistic Satanists who do involve Satan in all their magick. I want the reader to understand where I’m coming from, though, re: i) being theistic needn’t mean that you involve your gods in everything you do, and ii) evoking theistic concepts does not inherently translate into rejecting classic Romantic-humanist values commonly associated with Satanism. To the contrary, I see things like banishings as upholding such values by asserting that it is always your right as an individual to put up whatever boundaries you feel are necessary.

Performing a Tenebrous house-cleansing

Preparation prior to the house-cleansing

Magick-wise, this ritual doesn’t require much preparation beyond what a banishing normally would. However, two recommendations to help things go smoothly:

1. Familiarize yourself thoroughly with your living space if you have not already done so. In particular, for every room and hallway, consider: i) what is the shortest path from there to a door you pass through to go outside (e.g. in a house, outdoors; in an apartment, to the public hallway), and ii) which wall of each room stands farthest from that room’s exit? These issues will be relevant to the ritual’s visualizations, as per below.
2. Acquire either a sage bundle or an essential oil vaporizer with an oil such as clary sage, citronella, lemon, thyme, etc. You don’t “have to” have this. Using it in the closing offering and/or after the ritual, however, is good for reinforcing the working’s intent.

I also have a very important mundane recommendation in accord with what my book calls the Principle of Limited Realization – i.e., you get the best magickal results when you act with the causal instead of swimming against its current. That recommendation being:

I strongly urge you to physically, thoroughly clean your whole home before the ritual.

Do not tell yourself “ugh, that’s so mundane and I don’t feel like it.” Don’t pull some kind of Gnostic “matter doesn’t matter” bullshit. Do not get all “don’t tell me what do, Mom!” because you’re one of those bitter uber-rebel-perma-child types of Satanist. Just accept that this is one thing that Jordan Peterson is actually right about and clean your damn room.

After all, if you can’t kick your will into gear to bring about that kind of causal change, how do you expect it to be strong enough to affect the acausal?

Wording used in the house-cleansing

In terms of words spoken, this ritual requires only a handful of additions to the Rite of Banishing’s wording:

• The statement of intent should clarify that one is banishing energies not only from oneself, but also from one’s home. The latter is indeed implicit even in a regular banishing, but should be made explicit here. For example, “banish all energies that distract or hinder me, and forbid them from lingering in my living space!”
• The intensifications directed at the four directions change in but one small detail: amend “purify my will / mind / body / spirit” to “purify my will / mind / body / spirit and its dwelling place.” Thus, the full text for the command to the south becomes “Archons, purify my will and its dwelling place, for I am the black flame that cannot be extinguished!” And similarly for the other three commands.
• The statement of accomplishment shifts similarly to the statement of intent. For example, “thus do I cleanse myself and my space!”

Visualizations used in the house-cleansing

The self-home parallel

The visualizations are the most important component to turn a banishing into a house-cleansing.

My inspiration for this comes from some hallucinogenic experiences I’ve had, during I found the concept “the home is to the homeowner as the body is to the soul” made vivid to me. What follows isn’t exactly that, but does entail a sort of mapping of one’s living space to one’s self.

In accord with such a concept, one can draw the following parallels:

• Will = motion, agency, action = pure consciousness = hallways
• Mind = identity, work, connection = the persona or social self = living room, office, wherever one spends time with others either in person or on a computer
• Body = vigor, hygiene, refreshment = the physical self = kitchen, bathrooms
• Spirit = dreams, transcendence, privacy = bedrooms and ritual chamber

The visualization

After issuing the statement of intent and proceeding with the command to the south – “…purify my will and its dwelling place…” – one visualizes as follows:

1. Picture, with as much clarity as you can, a hallway in your home.
2. Start at whichever point in that hallway is farthest from the door that leads outside. From that point (e.g. perhaps a wall, perhaps the threshold of a bedroom, etc.), envision a pure, fiery, cleansing energy rising up out of the floor. Breathe in as you focus on this image, gathering the energy in force.
3. Then, as you breathe out, picture the energy flowing forth along the floor, consuming all other energies, sweeping them away. Exhale slowly enough that by the time you finish, the energy sweep washes out the entirety of the area in question as it arrives at the door leading outside. You may have to do this several times to get the ideal timing right, breathing in to gather the energy, and breathing out slowly enough for it to flow smoothly to the door (Note: I live in a small, two-bedroom apartment; if you live in a giant house, this will probably be harder for you than it is for me. Difficulties with this part of the visualization are the main reason I recommended preparation step 1 above.)
4. Do this breath exercise as many times as you need to feel you’ve dispersed all stagnant energy from that area. If there is more than one hallway, proceed to visualize the next one and repeat; etc.

Visualization flow

The overall working then proceeds as follows:

1. Clear hallways first, with the “fire” visualization in the south
2. Then, social and/or work -oriented parts of the home, with the “air” visualization in the east
3. Next, kitchen and bathroom, with the “earth” visualization in the north
4. Finally, the most private parts of the home, with the “water” visualization in the west.

Envisioning elemental energies doing the cleansing in each case, as I hint at in the previous section, is one option. But you can also just picture a more general cleansing energy and use it for all four visualizations. I’d personally tend toward a pale golden or pale blue light in the latter case, but individual preferences will vary. Hence why I put the elements in quotation marks: it’s more of a designation for organization purposes than a necessary aesthetic component of this particular ritual.

Those familiar with the breathwork in the Fifth Key’s meditations (here’s a somewhat-detailed description of one of them) should be able to translate the intuitive energy-awareness thus-developed into this context, such that the flow of the ritual comes naturally to them. But don’t fret if you “lose” the flow or can’t seem to make it “go” where you want. Try patiently a few times, and if it doesn’t work, take note of where the failure occurs and move on.

Closing the house-cleansing ritual

On finishing the “water” visualization, you may want to “sweep” each area once more before issuing the statement of accomplishment.

An offering that itself has cleansing properties can be good to present in the closing. Hence what I recommended above in preparation step 2, re: sage, essential oils, etc.

But if there’s something specific you always use for offerings – e.g., blood – it’s also fine to use that. Doing this, concluding the ritual, and saving burning herbs or vaporizing oils for afterward is also a valid approach. Another related option would be to incorporate the oils into a bath after the working.

An important recommendation for “after” is to stay off your phone until at least the next day. You just finished sending distracting energies out of your space, after all. Don’t be the dope who goes “herp, derp, let’s bring them back in!” immediately upon the conclusion of the ritual.

Finally, if you encountered energy-direction obstacles you felt you couldn’t clear satisfactorily, post-ritual (not during) is when to reflect. Could it be that you would benefit from meditating more regularly to gain more control over energy-direction? Or is there something about a particular room you had difficulty with – e.g., its arrangement, past events that have occurred there, etc.? Journaling these and other aspects of your experience of the ritual is always a good thing to do.

Concluding thoughts

I can think of several situations in which sinister-path practitioners might be averse to this kind of ritual. These might include:

• Living amid chaotic energies, though unpleasant, serves some current purpose of yours – e.g., perhaps enduring it is part of an initiatory endeavor.
• You’ve got other magickal workings in-progress, and your intuition warns that house-cleansing would disrupt those workings.
• You have a shrine to a dark entity/force set up in your home, aimed at encouraging it to saturate/corrupt your whole living space over time.

The house-cleansing can be done in such a way that you decide to skip certain rooms, cleansing the rest. But these are all cases where I can also see someone saying it is not for them. And that is also valid.

At the same time, I often think about how many magicians I’ve known who are sensitive, introverted types. And how diverse factors – preoccupation with “life” demands; getting fenced-in by ideology; unhelpful alternative-scene discourses that portray being a messy person as “cool”; etc. – can lead such people to underestimate the extent to which they might really benefit psychologically and spiritually from an energetic cleanse.

So I hope what I’ve described here might be of some use – to that kind of person in particular, but also to magicians more generally.

Thoughts? Let me know in the comments.