The familiar Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram has four main parts: the Qabalistic Cross, a circuit of four pentagrams, the archangelic invocation and a concluding Qabalistic Cross. A quiet room and enough space to turn are sufficient for following the published structure; special furniture is not needed to understand its movements.
1. Begin with the Qabalistic Cross
Stand facing east. Touch the forehead while saying Ateh ("Thou art"); touch the breast or lower body for Malkuth ("the Kingdom"); touch the right shoulder for ve-Geburah ("and the Power"); touch the left shoulder for ve-Gedulah ("and the Glory"). Bring the hands together and finish le-Olam, Amen ("for ever, amen"). Pronunciations vary between English-speaking ritual traditions. This short sequence establishes a vertical and horizontal axis around the standing person.
2. Trace the four pentagrams
In the east, begin the usual banishing-earth pentagram at the lower-left point, draw to the top, down to the lower-right, up to the upper-left, across to the upper-right, and back to the lower-left. At its centre pronounce YHVH (often vocalised as the four letters). Move clockwise to the south, maintaining a connecting line, and repeat the pentagram with Adonai. Continue west with Eheieh and north with AGLA, then return east, completing the circuit. The directions are geographical directions, not whatever happens to be the front of a desk.
3. Invoke the four archangels
At the centre, facing east, use the familiar arrangement: Raphael before, Gabriel behind, Michael to the right and Uriel (also spelt Auriel) to the left. The invocation then refers to the surrounding pentagrams and the six-rayed star. In the familiar quarter attributions, Raphael is associated with air, Gabriel with water, Michael with fire and Uriel with earth. The language combines Jewish divine names and Christian-Hermetic ceremonial interpretation; it is not a liturgy of ordinary synagogue worship.
4. Repeat the cross
End with the Qabalistic Cross as at the beginning. The repeated gesture deliberately encloses the work, rather than leaving the circuit open. A reader studying several printed instructions will encounter minor differences in pronunciation, visualisation and the placement of gestures. Keep one documented recension consistent while learning it, instead of combining individual lines from unrelated adaptations.
How to learn it without memorising everything at once
First practise locating the four directions. Next learn the star's five strokes on paper. Learn the four names in compass order—YHVH, Adonai, Eheieh, AGLA—and then the archangels in that same circuit. Finally add the opening and closing cross. Once each part is familiar individually, the full sequence becomes much easier to follow. Checking a drawing of the pentagram against a reliable ritual diagram is worthwhile: verbal descriptions of five intersecting lines are easy to misread.
How to check that the pentagram has been traced correctly
Think of the five points as top, upper right, lower right, lower left and upper left. For the banishing-earth figure the sequence begins lower left, then top, lower right, upper left, upper right, and back to lower left. On paper, each movement should cross part of the figure and produce a five-pointed star, not a five-sided outer pentagon. The line connecting the quarters is distinct from the star itself. The sequence should be mastered slowly rather than relying on a rapid flourish that can hide a wrong tracing direction. A convenient rehearsal uses four cards labelled east, south, west and north, laid around the room. Speak the divine names while looking at the cards; then add the pentagram; then add the archangels and the two crosses. For the first attempts, a quietly spoken name is easier to coordinate with the gesture than a prolonged theatrical pronunciation. The original use of the word "vibrate" belongs to a specific ceremonial approach to the voice, which may be learned after the underlying sequence is familiar.