Banishing Spells & Third Party Removal: Cut What No Longer Serves You
There comes a moment in every person's life — and often many moments — when something or someone needs to go. The relationship that's become toxic. The colleague whose energy drains the room. The ex who refuses to let go. The pattern of self-sabotage that keeps circling back. The job that's suffocating your spirit. The grief that's outlived its purpose and become a wall instead of a wound.
Banishing magic exists for this moment. It is some of the most ancient, most practiced, and most immediately effective magic in the world — because the need it addresses is as old as human community itself. People have always needed to remove harmful things from their lives, and they have always used both physical and magical means to do so.
This guide covers everything: the history of banishing magic, how it works, the specific practice of third party removal spells (one of the most searched forms of spell work today), the relationship between banishing and cord cutting, and how to build a practice that helps you consistently clear what isn't yours to carry.
The Ancient History of Banishing Magic
Banishing is among the oldest documented forms of magical practice. It appears in the earliest written magical texts and in the archaeological record of virtually every human culture.
Mesopotamia: Exorcism as State Practice
In ancient Mesopotamia, banishing evil spirits, demons, and harmful magical influences was a formal profession. The āšipu — a healer-magician — was trained in elaborate banishing and exorcism rituals. The Maqlu series was primarily a banishing text — a series of rituals for expelling harmful magical influences, breaking curses, and removing demonic presences.
What's striking about the Mesopotamian record is how seriously the state took this work. Temples maintained āšipus on staff. The king could summon them. Detailed manuals were maintained and copied for generations. This wasn't fringe practice — it was essential public health infrastructure.
Ancient Egypt: The Power of the Wax Figure
Egyptian banishing magic was sophisticated and multifaceted. The "execration texts" — among the most fascinating objects in Egyptian archaeology — are ceramic vessels or figurines inscribed with the names of enemies, harmful forces, and potential threats to the kingdom. They were then ritually broken, symbolically destroying the harmful force.
This practice — writing the name of what needs to be removed and ritually destroying the vessel — is the direct ancestor of many modern banishing spells. The principle is identical: focus your intention, symbolically enact the removal, seal the working.
Ancient Greece and Rome: Binding and Banishing Tablets
The Greeks and Romans used defixiones — curse or binding tablets — to restrain, remove, or neutralize enemies, unwanted romantic rivals (relevant to third party removal magic), opponents in legal disputes, and competitors in business or athletics. Thousands of these lead tablets have been recovered from wells, graves, and sanctuaries across the Mediterranean world.
Many of these specifically involve love triangles and romantic rivals — making defixiones among the oldest recorded third party removal spells in existence.
European Folk Magic: The Power of Salt, Iron, and Fire
In medieval and early modern Europe, banishing magic was practiced by cunning folk and ordinary households alike. Salt sprinkled at thresholds, cold iron hung near doors, fire used to burn written names or objects — these were standard household protections against unwanted influences.
The burning of written names or objects representing what needed to be removed was ubiquitous across European folk traditions. Bay leaf burning, the burning of written petitions, and the use of black candles to drive away harmful influences all have deep roots in this tradition.
What Banishing Magic Does
Banishing magic works on several levels simultaneously:
Energetically: It creates a clear, intentional severing of energetic connection between you and what's being banished. Whether that connection exists in the form of thought patterns, emotional attachments, or literal shared energy between people, banishing ritual creates a clean break.
Psychologically: The ritual enactment of removal — burning the paper, burying the object, sealing the jar — gives the unconscious mind a powerful symbolic message: this is done. It activates the parts of the psyche that respond to symbolic action, often accelerating emotional processing and release in ways that verbal intention alone cannot.
Practically: Banishing magic often works in concert with the practical steps you need to take. It clears the resistance, shifts the energy, and sometimes opens unexpected doors — a situation resolves itself, a person moves away, an opportunity appears that makes the change possible.
Third Party Removal Spells: What They Are and How They Work
One of the most searched types of banishing magic is the third party removal spell — magic specifically designed to remove an unwanted third party from a relationship. This might be someone interfering in a romantic relationship, a toxic influence on a family member, a manipulative presence in a friendship or workplace, or an energetic connection to an ex-partner that's preventing moving forward.
What it can do:
- Sever energetic connections between you and the third party, reducing their pull on your thoughts and emotions
- Create space for healthier dynamics to emerge
- Remove the energetic "hooks" of manipulation or inappropriate attachment
- Shift the energy of a situation so that the third party naturally moves away or loses influence
- Support your own healing and release so you're not energetically pulling the situation toward you
The most ethically and effectively framed third party removal spells focus on your own freedom and sovereignty, not on controlling others: "I release all energetic connections to [person]. They are free to go their own way. I am free to go mine. All hooks are removed. All cords are cut."
Cord Cutting: A Powerful Companion Practice
Cord cutting is a specific type of banishing/release magic that addresses the energetic connections between people — what some traditions call "cords" or "attachments" that form through significant relationships, particularly intense or difficult ones.
A simple cord cutting ritual:
What you need:
- A black candle (for absorbing and releasing)
- A white candle (for your own energy and clarity)
- A piece of cord, thread, or string
- Scissors or a knife
- Optional: black tourmaline or obsidian for grounding and protection
The process:
- Light both candles, placing them a foot or so apart.
- Hold the cord between the candles, one end near the black, one end near the white.
- Close your eyes and visualize the cord as the energetic connection between you and what you're releasing.
- Say: "I cut this cord. I release all connections between myself and [name/situation/pattern]. What is mine returns to me. What is theirs returns to them. We are each free."
- Cut the cord cleanly.
- Let the black candle burn for a while, visualizing the severed connection being absorbed and neutralized. Let the white candle burn, visualizing your own energy returning to you — clean, whole, free.
- Dispose of the cut cord (buried or burned) and snuff the candles.
A Complete Banishing Spell
This spell is adaptable for removing any harmful person, energy, pattern, or situation from your life.
What you need:
- Black salt or regular salt
- A black candle
- A piece of paper and a pen
- A fireproof dish
- Optional: black pepper (banishing), cloves (binding the harm away), or cayenne (speed)
The process:
- Write the name of what you're banishing on the paper. Be specific: a person's name, a pattern ("my self-sabotage around money"), a situation, an energetic attachment.
- Sprinkle black salt or salt around the candle in a circle.
- Light the black candle.
- Read what you've written aloud. Let yourself feel it — the weight of it, the readiness to release it.
- Speak your banishing: "You have no power over me. No hold on me. I release you fully and completely. Be gone from my life, my energy, my thoughts. I am free."
- Safely burn the paper in the fireproof dish.
- As it burns, visualize the connection dissolving. The attachment releasing. The space that was occupied by this now being filled with light.
- Dispose of the candle remnants and ashes outside your home.
Timing Your Banishing Work
- Waning moon: As the moon decreases, so does what you're releasing. The most powerful banishing time is the dark moon — the days just before new moon.
- Saturday: Saturn's day — excellent for banishing, boundaries, and endings.
- Midnight: The liminal hour between days, powerful for release work.
After the Banishing: Supporting the Work
- Cleanse your space: Smoke cleanse with sage, palo santo, or rosemary. Sprinkle salt. Open windows.
- Protect yourself: Follow a banishing with a protection spell or spell jar to seal the space that was cleared.
- Grounding: Banishing can be energetically intense. Ground yourself with physical activity, time in nature, a bath with salt and herbs, or a grounding meditation.
- Hold your intention: Don't undo the spell by obsessing over what was banished, reaching out to the person, or revisiting the situation compulsively.
Recording Your Banishing Work
Banishing magic is some of the most emotionally significant ritual work you can do. Having a journal dedicated to your magical practice — where you record your banishing spells, what you were releasing, how you felt, and what shifted in the aftermath — serves multiple purposes:
- It witnesses and validates the significance of what you're doing
- It helps you track whether the spell worked and what aspects of its working unfolded over time
- It allows you to identify patterns — what situations keep recurring, what you keep needing to banish
- It gives you a record of your own magical effectiveness — evidence that your work creates real change
Final Thoughts: Your Right to Clear Space
Banishing magic is founded on one of the most fundamental truths of healthy living: you have the right to clear your own space. Physical, energetic, emotional, relational — you are allowed to remove what harms you, what drains you, what keeps you from becoming who you're trying to become.
This isn't cruelty or aggression. It's discernment. It's the witch's understanding that you are the sovereign of your own energy, and that maintaining the quality of what you allow into your space is one of your most important responsibilities to yourself.
Banishing is not about hatred. It's about choosing health. That choice is always available to you.
