Banishing Spells: How to Release What's Holding You

Banishing is not what you do to someone who hurt you. It is what you do for yourself, when you have decided that a situation, a pattern, or a presence needs to end. The distinction matters, practically and ethically, and most beginner content on banishing never makes it clearly. This piece does.

Banishing is the Spells cluster's most misunderstood category and, when done well, one of its most consistently useful. It sits alongside Protection Spells as the cluster's natural diptych: what you release and what you guard are two sides of the same working. The Spell Crafting for Beginners pillar covers the structural principles all of this rests on. The Sympathetic Magic primer explains why these techniques work.

What banishing actually does

Banishing creates distance. It removes, separates, and pushes away. The working operates on the principle of distancing: the thing being banished is moved away from the practitioner's field of influence, kept out, prevented from returning.

That is the whole of it. Banishing does not harm what it banishes. It does not punish. It does not reach across to the other side of the distance it creates and do anything to what is there. It simply establishes the distance and reinforces it. This is why banishing is ethically available to practitioners who would not curse; the working affects the practitioner's own sphere, not another person's.

This makes banishing more useful in more situations than cursing would be, because the majority of what we want to remove from our lives does not require harm to be removed. The job that is draining you does not need to be harmed. The habit that is holding you does not need to be punished. The person who needs to leave your life does not need to be hurt. They all simply need to go. Banishing does that work. Cursing does something different.

Banishing versus cursing: the line

A curse reaches out. It is an active working directed at a target with the intention of causing harm or difficulty to that target. A banishing turns inward; it clears, removes, and protects the practitioner's own space without extending any working toward whoever or whatever is being distanced.

The ethical weight is completely different. Sending harm toward another person raises the questions of consent, proportion, and the principle most traditions frame as returning harm to its sender. These are real concerns, and they are the right concerns to have about cursing. Banishing does not raise them, because banishing is not a working sent toward anyone. It is a working applied to the practitioner's own life, with the intention of removing what does not belong there.

Practitioners sometimes blur this line under emotional pressure, particularly when what they want to banish is a person who has caused real harm. The temptation to add force, to ensure they stay away, to make them feel the removal. The honest guidance is: stay on the banishing side. A clean banishing is more complete than a cursing-banishing hybrid, because the hybrid's cursing component keeps a connection alive. Distancing works better when it genuinely distances.

Banishing what is internal

The most overlooked category of banishing work is internal, and often the most valuable. A habit you are ready to be done with. A thought pattern that has run long past the point of usefulness. An emotional residue from something that ended months or years ago. The internal voice that speaks in someone else's criticism. The self-image that belonged to a version of you that no longer exists.

Internal banishings work through the same sympathetic principle as external ones: you are creating, through symbol and intention, a real movement of distance between you and the thing being banished. The burning paper does not know whether what was written on it was a habit or a person. The working operates on what you bring to it.

For internal banishings, the writing step is particularly important. Name the thing specifically and honestly. Not "my anxiety" but the specific anxious thought pattern. Not "bad habits" but the specific habit, described in concrete terms. The precision of naming is part of how the banishing works; the more exactly you can define what you are removing, the more completely the working can remove it.

Banishing what is external

External banishings address situations, environments, influences, and people who need to leave your life. The person who has become draining, damaging, or simply finished. The work environment that has served its purpose. The online space that is consistently harmful. The financial situation that needs to change.

For external banishings directed at people: the working creates distance and reinforces it, without doing anything to the person themselves. You are not harming them, compelling them, or reaching into their life. You are removing their access to yours. This is a meaningful distinction and it holds even when the person in question has caused real harm; the banishing addresses your side of the situation, not theirs.

The witch bottle tradition is, in part, an external banishing: the hostile working directed at the household is distanced and contained. The same logic runs through jar spells, knotted cords, and threshold workings that keep specific influences out. All of these are banishing in its broader sense.

Three techniques

Burning. Write what you are banishing on a strip of paper. Write specifically: name it, in the simplest possible language, without explanation or justification. Fold the paper away from you three times. Hold it in both hands and state the banishing clearly: "I release this. I remove it from my life. It has no more hold here." Then burn the paper in a fireproof vessel (a small cauldron, a ceramic bowl, an ashtray) watching it burn fully without rushing. The ash can be disposed of outside your home: scattered in wind, washed away with water, or buried away from your property.

Burning is the most immediate and complete banishing technique. Fire transforms rather than preserves; what is burned cannot be retrieved or reconsidered. Use it for banishings that need to be final.

Burying. Write the banishment on paper. Fold it away from you. Take it outside and bury it in earth away from your home: in a park, a field, at a public threshold, at a crossroads in the old folk-magic tradition. The earth contains and absorbs over time, breaking down what is given to it slowly and completely. While burning is immediate, burying is patient. Use it for situations that are complex, entangled, and require longer untangling rather than a sharp cut.

Some practitioners add salt and protective herbs (black pepper, rosemary) to the burial to assist the containment. If you bury a banishing, do not return to the spot. The working needs the distance it has created.

Releasing into water. Write the banishment on paper that will dissolve in water, or use a non-toxic ink on biodegradable paper. Take it to moving water (a river, a stream, the sea) and release it into the current with the spoken intention. Moving water carries away; the current takes the working with it and does not bring it back.

Environmental care matters here. Only release genuinely biodegradable materials into natural water bodies. The working should not leave physical residue in the environment. If you have no access to natural running water, a salt-water bowl with the intention of flowing toward the sea is a valid substitute; drain it away from the home when the working is complete.

Timing

Banishing work is amplified by the waning moon: the contracting, receding phase that runs from full moon to new moon. The moon's movement supports the working's direction: what is diminishing amplifies the intention to remove and distance. For the full lunar context, see Working with the Moon.

The period from the autumn equinox to Samhain is the seasonal window most supportive of release work. The year is tipping inward, the world is letting go of its summer growth, and the energy of completion and release runs through the season's character. The Solstice Sun Magic bonfire release worked with this principle at Litha; banishing at Samhain works with it at the year's opposite threshold.

Saturday is traditionally Saturn's day and supports banishing, endings, and the consolidation of boundaries. Dusk, midnight, or the hour before dawn (the liminal times) amplify workings that operate at thresholds. None of this timing is strictly necessary, but it layers the working's resonance and is worth attending to when possible.

Aftercare: what the working creates

Banishing creates a vacancy. This is the part most beginners do not account for, and it is where banishings most often fail. Something that occupied space in your life, even something harmful, leaves a shape when it goes. That shape will fill with something. The question is whether you fill it deliberately or let it fill by chance.

Good banishing practice has three parts: the release, the cleansing, and the refilling. After the banishing working, cleanse the space and yourself: smoke, salt, sound, water, whatever your practice uses. Then, within a day or so, make a specific statement or small working about what replaces what was removed. Not just the absence of the harmful thing, but the positive presence of something else. The relationship ended: what grows in that space? The habit released: what practice takes its place? The environment left: what does the new one look like?

This is not superstition. It is accurate attention to how change works. A vacuum draws. If you do not fill what you cleared, something will fill it for you, and it may not be an improvement on what you banished. The aftercare is half the working.

Common questions

Is banishing the same as breaking a curse? Related but distinct. Curse-breaking is a specific protective working; banishing is a removal working. If you believe you are the target of a hostile working, the Protection Spells piece covers the defensive side. A banishing can be part of a curse-breaking sequence, but it is not the whole of it.

Can I banish a feeling? Yes, with an honest caveat. Banishing a feeling works best when the feeling has outlasted its usefulness. Grief that has run its course. Anger that has been acknowledged and is now circling rather than resolving. The working is not a bypass; you cannot banish grief that still has genuine work to do. But when a feeling has become a pattern rather than a response, banishing it is legitimate practice.

Do I need to tell the person I am banishing them? No. The working operates on your side of the situation, not theirs. If a real-world conversation about the relationship is needed, that conversation is separate from and not replaced by the magical working. The banishing addresses the energetic and intentional dimension; the practical dimension requires its own attention.

How do I know the working has taken effect? Usually through a felt sense of shift: a lightening, a clarity, a sense that the thing being banished has less grip on your attention. This is not always immediate. Some banishings take days or weeks to complete in the practical dimension, even if the working itself is done. Trust the aftercare, keep the cleansed space maintained, and watch the direction of movement rather than expecting a single dramatic moment.

This piece is part of A Witch's Working Library: The Spells Cluster: fourteen pieces on the practice, theory and seasonal application of spell craft.

Sources

The banishing techniques draw on the wider European folk-magic tradition as documented in Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History (Hambledon Continuum, 2003), and on the sympathetic-magic framework covered in Sympathetic Magic: A Primer. The waning-moon timing draws on the lunar practice tradition covered in Working with the Moon.

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