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THE TREE OF LIFE 171
priests, and is contained in one of the chapters of the Harris Magical
Papyrus. It is a ritual of Banishing to be performed at the Four
cardinal points, formulating in the Imagination a Guardian in the
shape of a Dog, which was supposed to be terribly destructive to
any attacking force. I shall not attempt to describe it, but I give
it verbatim from the Papyrus.
" Arise, Dog of Evil, that I may instruct thee in thy present
duties. Thou art imprisoned. Confess thou that it is so. Horus
it is who has given this commandment. Let thy face be terrible
as the storm-parted sky. Let thy jaws close pitilessly. . . . Make
thy hair stand up like rods of fire. Be thou great as Horus and
terrible as Set ; equally to the South, to the North, to the \Vest
and to the East. . . . Nothing shall stop thee, while thou settest
thy face in my defence . . . while thou settest thy face to protect
my paths, opposing thyself to the enemy. I bestow upon thee the
power of banishing, of becoming noiseless and invisible. For thou
art my guardian, courageous and terrible."
This form of banishing, in any event, should be accompanied by
the Pentagram Ritual. It is used mainly in difficult operations of
evocation, where there might be some danger of a particularly
malignant entity attracted to the Temple breaking rhrough an
ordinarily consecrated Circle to the detriment of the Magician. It
has also been used in the invocation of Horus, or the inteIligences
of the planet Mars, when the astral sphere was particularly desired
to be thorougllly clean and pure. It need not be emphasized, I
feel sure, that if this method is employed the formulation in the
imagination of the dog guardian should be just as precise as that
given to the Pentagram, and the Theurgist should attach importance,
so far as concerns the figure in his mind's eye, to the data given in
the conjuration itself.