Give It a Form, Then Banish It

A faithful working of Brodie-Innes’s account (short quotes from Flying Roll XXXIV), reframed as a doable practice:

1. Name the oppression. Register the specific felt sense honestly: an “exhaustion which seemed more than natural,” a heaviness, a dread that doesn’t feel like you. (Brodie-Innes suspected “the obsession of some vampirising elemental”; you need only treat it as a draining influence to be confronted and cleared.)
2. Set a protected frame. Lower the lights, make the space quiet and deliberate. Open with a centring/banishing rite to mark a safe container — Brodie-Innes used the Qabalistic Cross and an invoking Pentagram; if you don’t know those, use any clear opening that means “a protected working begins now”.
3. Call the feeling into a shape. Instead of pushing the feeling away, invite it to take form before you. Brodie-Innes traced an invoking Earth Pentagram with his hand and “called up the foul thing” to manifest; let your diffuse oppression condense into a single definite image — however ugly. Hold it at a distance, in front of you, not inside you.
4. Make it manifest fully, with words of authority. He commanded a “fuller manifestation,” vibrating names that carried, for him, total authority — JHVH, ADNI, AGLA, AHIH, and the Name of the Lord Jesus. Use whatever words of power are genuinely authoritative for you (a divine name, a vow, a plain firm command). The point is to see it clearly and to address it from a position of command, not fear.
5. Discharge it decisively. With concentrated will, release the held charge in one stroke — Brodie-Innes projected it “like a lightning flash” — and see/feel the form dissolve completely. One clean decisive act, not a prolonged struggle.
6. Close and seal. Banish the space again, declare the working finished, and ground thoroughly (light, movement, food, water). Brodie-Innes notes the recovery came after the working was properly closed.
7. Then take ordinary care. He and his wife “rapidly recovered” — but treat that as your state clearing, not a diagnosis. If the exhaustion or dread persists, see a doctor; the ritual addresses the inner sense of oppression, not its possible physical or psychological causes. (Sourcing note: a faithful paraphrase with short attributed quotations from Brodie-Innes’s Flying Roll XXXIV; the sequence — protective opening, invoking the influence to take visible form, commanding fuller manifestation with divine names, decisive discharge, recovery after closing — and the “London fog” / “toad and ape” / “lightning flash” phrasings are his.)

John William Brodie-Innes (1848-1923), the Golden Dawn’s Edinburgh adept and head of the Amen-Ra Temple, recorded this personal working in Flying Roll No. XXXIV. It is historically notable because, rather than simply banishing a presence with the Lesser Pentagram ritual, he first invokes it to take form and only then discharges it — a “give it a shape, then deal with it” approach distinct from a blanket sweep of the space.

Within the tradition it belongs with the Order’s banishing and exorcism discipline; psychologically it anticipates the modern recognition that externalising a tormenting inner content (naming it, picturing it, confronting it) restores agency better than wrestling something formless. It complements his clairvoyance work in Flying Roll XXV.; cf.

The deeper move — give a diffuse oppression a definite form so it can be confronted and released — recurs widely; Brodie-Innes’s signature is the explicit invoke-to-form, then discharge sequence inside a protective frame:

• Banishing the false vision (his own companion method) — names a bias and dissolves it with a corrective symbol; here he names an oppressive influence and gives it a hostile form before discharging it.
• The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram — clears a whole space rather than conjuring and confronting one form.
• Externalising/“naming the problem” (narrative therapy) & imaginal exposure (CBT) — giving a tormenting feeling a separate, describable shape so the person can face and relate to it from the outside.
• Active imagination, confronting the figure (Jung) — letting a charged inner content take form and dealing with it consciously.
• Shamanic extraction / release rituals — symbolically drawing out and discharging an intrusive ‘influence’.

Skipping the protective frame. Conjuring a menacing form without a clear opening and closing is needlessly frightening; the container is what makes confrontation safe. Always open and close.

• Confronting from fear instead of command. The whole point is to address the form from authority — held at a distance, faced, commanded. If you can’t get to a commanding stance, stop and ground; don’t dwell with it.
• Mistaking relief for diagnosis. A cleared feeling is not proof of what caused it. Persisting exhaustion, dread, or “being drained” warrants medical/psychiatric assessment — do that too.
• Prolonging the struggle. The discharge is one decisive act, not a drawn-out fight. Picture it dissolving completely, then close. Lingering reinstates the oppression.
• No grounding. This is vivid, charged imagery; finish with light, movement, food/water, and ideally a journal note, so you return fully to ordinary awareness.