Protection and cleansing

The teaching

As apotropaic custom from Babylon to the Golden Dawn teaches it.

The line at the door

Protection, in every tradition, begins with a boundary. A home, a body or a holy place is marked as inside, and what is unwanted is turned back at its edge. The Greek word apotropaic, turning away, names every charm made for that work. The door and threshold, the window, the hearth and the cradle are the places most guarded, because there the inside meets the outside.

The oldest guards are images set at those places. In ancient Mesopotamia an expectant mother wore the head of the demon Pazuzu, who was held to drive off Lamashtu, the harmer of mothers and newborn children. Egyptians wore the eye of Horus, the wedjat, and set the dwarf god Bes and the hippopotamus goddess Taweret over childbirth. Greeks painted great eyes on their drinking cups and set the Gorgon's face on shields and on the roofs of temples, so that harm would meet a stare stronger than its own.

The mezuzah

On the doorposts of Jewish homes is fixed the mezuzah, in obedience to the command to write God's words upon the posts of the house and upon the gates. It is a small parchment, written by a scribe with two passages of Deuteronomy, the first beginning Hear, O Israel, rolled and set in a case on the right-hand doorpost, slanting inward in many communities. On its back is written the name Shaddai, read as the initials of the words Guardian of the doors of Israel, and many touch it and kiss their fingers as they pass.

Here the sources differ on its meaning. Popular belief has long treated the mezuzah as a guard of the house. Maimonides taught that it is a commandment and not an amulet, and condemned those who wrote names of angels into it, for they turned a commandment meant to keep God's oneness before the mind into a charm for their own benefit.

Salt, water and smoke

Salt keeps food from corruption, and so it stands almost everywhere for what keeps harm from spreading. In European custom a line of salt is laid across a threshold, or a pinch thrown over the left shoulder after a spill. In Japan little cones of salt are set at the doors of houses and shops, salt is sprinkled on the body on coming home from a funeral, and sumo wrestlers throw it into the ring before a bout. The old Roman rite blessed salt and water and mingled them, and holy water is still sprinkled through Catholic homes.

Smoke is held to carry prayer upward and to drive impurity out. Frankincense burns in the censers of churches and temples, and in many lands rooms are filled with the smoke of herbs or resins on feast days, after an illness or after a death. The tradition's own care goes with it: a window is opened, nothing smouldering is left alone, and anyone who finds smoke hard to breathe keeps to water and words.

Christians bless their houses at Epiphany. The priest or the family carries holy water through the rooms and writes above the door in chalk the year with the letters C, M and B, for the three kings Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, which are also read as Christus mansionem benedicat, may Christ bless this house.

Words for the night and the road

Every faith has its words of protection. Jews and Christians say the ninety-first psalm, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” and Jewish custom says it before sleep. The Breastplate of Saint Patrick sets Christ before and behind, beneath and above, on the right and on the left. Muslims say the Throne Verse and the last three chapters of the Qur'an at nightfall. Theravada Buddhists chant the paritta, the protective discourses, among them the discourse on loving kindness, which the Buddha is said to have given to monks who were frightened in the forest.

In each faith's own understanding these words protect by setting the one who says them under God, or, for the Buddhists, under the power of truth and goodwill. They are prayers and not commands, and they ask for nothing against anyone.

The banishing of the lodge

Ritual magicians clear a space with a banishing before any other work and again after it. The standard form is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which the Golden Dawn gave its Neophytes as their first practice. It begins with the Qabalistic Cross. Facing east, the magician touches the forehead and says Ateh, thou art; the breast, Malkuth, the kingdom; the right shoulder, ve-Geburah, and the power; the left shoulder, ve-Gedulah, and the glory; and with hands clasped at the breast, le-Olam, Amen, for ever, amen: the close of the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew.

Then, turning to each quarter in turn, the magician traces a pentagram in the air and vibrates a name of God into it: YHVH in the east, Adonai in the south, Eheieh in the west and AGLA in the north. Back in the east, arms outstretched, the magician names the archangels of the four quarters, Raphael before, Gabriel behind, Michael at the right hand and Auriel at the left, and declares that about him flames the pentagram and in the column stands the six-rayed star. The Qabalistic Cross is made again to close.

The order teaches that the rite clears the space about the magician of unwanted influence, sets the self at the still centre of the four quarters and steadies the mind, and that its invoking form, traced the other way, calls the forces in. Its students are told to work it daily, and before and after every other rite.

Protection and common sense

The faiths themselves set protective rites beside ordinary care and never in its place. A man asked the Prophet whether he should tie his camel and trust in God, or leave it loose and trust in God, and he answered: tie it, and trust. The mezuzah goes on a door that also has a lock. Where the danger is a living person, the lock, the neighbours and the police come first.