What things were like in Whare Ra

A few blogs have appeared attempting to discredit Pat Zalewski, and to a lesser extent my own involvement with Whare Ra.   You might find long winded blogs out there penned by people who have never even visited New Zealand, let alone talked to Whare Ra people. They all insist that Pat, Christine, or Tony, or myself had nothing to do with Whare Ra and attempt to prove it.

One of the weird things I have noticed about the Internet is that you find a lot of Black is white comments, which deny things which I actually saw and took part in.  When it comes down to it, these comments are usually written by those who do not have any real connection to the Golden Dawn and have lineage envy.

I have written a chapter in my book Beyond the Sun about my Whare Ra involvement and will add some more details when it becomes available through Skylight Publishing next year.  Pat has recounted his experiences in the above video which makes for some jolly interesting viewing.  Pat points out that people claim that he does not follow the "Whare Ra way" as if they were experts.  However the temple did not run like that.  Every senior adept had a view about what was going on and each of them taught their students accordingly.  Pat had Jack Taylor who was the most experienced Hierophant in GD history holding the job in Whare Ra under Mrs Felkin.  The fact that Pat was trained AFTER the Whare Ra has closed is meaningless, in fact he received a better quality of training than some Whare Ra people received in the 1970s.  Training continued after Whare Ra closed its doors and there were even some initiations carried out. Must of the ritual techniques could be clearly seen in the Order of the Table Round.
To add to Pats video I would say something that many modern Golden Dawn people would not understand.  Chances are to be a member of a REAL golden dawn order might not be the fantasy you want.

In Whare Ra you were a student and you knew your place.  This whole having to listen to students pontificate intellectual knowledge or demanding grades was unheard of.  When you were ready for a grade you were told to take a test. If you could not do a lesser ritual of the pentagram ritual you would not get to 1=10.  Getting to 5=6 meant that someone thought you were special.  Those who reached the 6=5 and 7=4 had proved themselves over years of service to the Order and not because someone thought it was the right time.  This would create an order which sounds good on paper, but with the "kids of today" would find autocratic and limiting.

Someone has made the bizarre claim that this blog somehow means that I think that Golden Dawn Lineage is important.  It seems the story has been picked up by Watchers of the Dawn who asked me for a comment. My regular readers will be pleased to know that I did not have a brain hemorrhage and start renouncing everything I have ever said in my books about this particular side show.

All lineage to the Golden Dawn is made up... if you are any good at what you do you don not need lineage anyway. 

I had some good training from the Whare Ra people, and others.  If I did nothing with it, it would be useless.

Beyond the Sun released

Beyond the Sun – the secret teachings of the Missing Golden Dawn Order  (click to order)

“This book contains the Secret Inner Order Teachings of the missing order of the Golden Dawn – Whare Ra. Whare Ra managed to keep secret and above all keep running long after the other Golden Dawn magical orders had given up the ghost. Closing in the late 1970s the Order was founded by Dr Robert Felkin nearly 100 years ago. Working in New Zealand, Whare Ra became a secret forefront of occult teaching.

Nick Farrell publishes the Second Order Rituals of this Order including the 6=5 and 7=4 in their complete and unedited state as well as the 6=5 training papers and lectures. He also examines the history of Whare Ra and provides commentaries to the rituals.

Contained in this book are the 6=5 experiences of the poet WB Yeats and other adepts who went through the various initiations. It also contains magical exercises inspired by the Whare Ra material

This book is limited to 100 copies and was published on the anniversary of Robert Felkin’s death.

 

This limited first edition is selling out faster than I expected which is good.  Thanks everyone.

THIS HAS NOW SOLD OUT 

THANKS EVERYONE

The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea is not a Golden Dawn Group

For a long while I have described the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea as a traditional Golden Dawn group. From today it is not and we will stop describing ourselves in that way.

MOAA will no longer look to the past for any particular knowledge or security, but to its future.  And rather than trying to pour new wine into old skins we will be more secure in our own independence and ability to move in our own direction.   

The word “Golden Dawn” has come to mean the tradition which encompasses all its off-shoots including the modern renditions of the Stella Matutina, Smaragdum Thallasses and the AO.  However most of these traditions do not run anything like the original Golden Dawn and have been chained to an egregore which is largely hostile to and undermines their activities. 

The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, with its emphasis on experimentation and developing the magical tradition is completely at odds with this “golden dawn” egregore. In fact in our opinion this particular egregore has done its best to commit suicide over the last 20 years.    Its use by Greek Fascists has placed another nail in a coffin which has been sledgehammered by people trying to turn it into a cult or a business, or by kids, armed with a copy of Regardie trying to set up Magical Orders without knowledge or ability.  

It should not be necessary to summon the ghost of a long dead and dysfunctional order to prop up an order which in most cases works much better.  Self-confident groups which have something real to offer do not need to evoke the past to describe what they are doing now or in the future.

The Aurora Aurea Vault

In any event the historical Golden Dawn egregore is nowhere near as magical as the groups that replaced it and is a quasi-masonic shadow of the modern groups that bear its name.   In our view the use of this egregore actively works to undermine the ability of good groups to function within the 21^st century.

That is not to say that the “Golden Dawn” methods do not work.  Indeed the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will continue to use the rituals and general structure of the Smaragdum Thallasses (Whare Ra) order, which was descended from the Golden Dawn but resolved its egregore problem by rewiring itself. 

The Whare Ra Vault

As Smaragdum Thallasses found its own roots to a hermetic source independent of the Golden Dawn, so has the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea.  We have developed our own contacts and method of using the Smaragdum Thallasses system and have our own set of goals which we feel would be constrained by continuing to adopt the old Golden Dawn egregore and name.

Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will also be seen as being part of a wider “golden dawn community.”   To most people looking at our system we would probably appear to be a bunch of “Golden Dawn people” who emphase magical techniques, but at a deeper level, particularly within our second order, we are not and I feel it is time to make that clear.

In many ways this statement makes us “new” and will be the beginning of work we will be doing to distance ourselves from the “golden dawn” egregore and evolve our own connect with the source behind it.  We will be updating our websites and material accordingly.  While Aurora Aurea is Latin for Golden Dawn, placing it in a “dead tongue” means that it goes to a “different place” and or own lineage and egregore.

 MOAA continues to be a traditional magic order, but is not a traditional Golden Dawn order.

The goals of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea:

1. Fuse the Inner and Outer plane traditions of the Smaragdum Thallasses (as expressed by the Dion Fortune tradition and the pure Golden Dawn).

2. To develop a scientific and individualist approach to magic.

3. Restore a balance between religions within magic so that a person might develop their own religious understanding free from any dogma.

4.   To provide magical training to those who are ready using the latest communication methods.

5. To experiment with new methods of magical expression and to share that information.

6. To eliminate any discrimination within occultism on the basis of sex, religion, race, sexuality or beliefs.

7. To establish better communication between Western Mystery traditions to the enhancement of our own.

8. To encourage each student to develop their magical gifts to the best of their ability so that they can take a pivotal role within an evolving humanity.

10. To assist a student and adept in the attainment of their own spiritual destiny.

11. To continue to study and adapt the Smaragdum Thallasses system.

12. To create a magical order where practical techniques are given priority over intellectual understanding.

Issued in the Hour of Venus on the Day of Venus

20 December 2013

Testing a secret chief

One of the reasons I have insisted on my secret chiefs test is because it is very important that there is some form of scientific testing of the concept.  One of the reasons I have kept banging on about it is to knock a particular problem on the head.

If you are running a group you can tell the world that you have a Secret Chief which gave you extraordinary information.   You can say that out of all the other magical orders, this superman gave you the best occult information which is available which “he” refuses to let other magic groups have.  What you are telling the world is that you are better than others because there is a system of Secret Chiefs out there, and they are only talking to you.  You can tell them that this secret chief gave you grade material for the 8=3, 9=1 and 10=1 grades which means that you have a system which carries on well into the future.
If any outside group calls you out on this, you can imply that they are jealous that they do not have your secret chief and are still relying on a system which was more or less stalled at 5=6.
But the secret chiefs are strangely selective about who they picked and what information they gave them.  For example Paul Case was famously contacted by Master R and yet he insisted that his order only go as far as 5=6.  Felkin’s Whare Ra went to 9=2 although these were mostly administrative more than magical grades.
One of the good parts of about having information put into higher grades is that few people will ever see them.    If the outer order of a Golden Dawn temple is working, then less that 10 per cent of people will get to the 5=6 level.  There is a big exodus after people reach the 5=6 too and the number of 6=5s is absolutely tiny.   So it means that by the time people reach a level when they can get your secret chiefs teaching there are going to be very few in number, if any.   If they get to that level, there is no guarantee that the material is any good.  They might open the secret box and discover it is empty, which if your secret chief never existed might be the case.
So what you have is effectively Jam tomorrow scam which is protected by the fact that you claim these teachings are so special that they have to be kept secret from the great unwashed. 
That would be all very well but that means that the only way anyone has of testing your secret chief’s abilities, is to look at those people who they gave the teaching too.  
 Have they shown signs that those teachings have transformed them into intensely spiritual beings or even competent magicians.  Have these secret chiefs made the mistake of imparting their secrets to paranoid megalomaniacs. What magic do they do?  What is the quality of their particular teaching.  When I write something I am forced to acknowledge the influence of my teachers, so what is the standard of the work of these particular “secret chief influenced” orders?
The only other choice, as Pat Zalewski has said is to prove that your secret chiefs exist.  Pat believes it should be done with academic rigor looking at the documents that these Secret Chiefs wrote and judging them by those.

However the answer from those who believe in Secret Chiefs is that no documentation was given out due to the secret nature of the instruction.
But as Pat pointed out even Felkin brought back rituals and instructions he got from Steiner, such as the Etheric Link ritual and the Process documents, which makes the no documentation claims a nonsense.
“Even a cursory examination of charters and letters between various high level hermetic orders that existed from the 19th century would render that claim toothless,” wrote Pat. 
 He finds it odd that people are expected to believe is that an SC gave detailed instruction to Mathers for his Second Order (including rituals) and the SC nor Mathers wrote any of this down.
 If a Secret Chief told   Mathers the Convoluted Forces information and he had to remember and pass it on verbally it would have been a task that defies any common sense analysis.
Yet there are those who continue to insist that they have met secret chiefs.  Pat said that he had a conversation with one Chief who claimed that he had met a secret chief.
“I asked him how he knew he was and the answer I got was “I just knew”.  Well that sums it up! No proof, just talk,” Pat wrote.
 This is why I am being silly about the grade signs.  This is a perfectly legitimate way of testing if someone is a secret chief which can be useful to a working order.  If they do not know the password of the aion, then they will know less about MOAA than a neophyte which need to use it every day.  If they do not know the grade signs of the 7=4 then they do not know as much as the physical chief of the order who they are supposed to be guiding.
“Just knowing” that someone is a secret chief is not enough.  If physical chiefs exist then they have to provide physical proof of their existence.
It is worthwhile noting that Mathers only ever met one person he thought was a physical secret chief.  He failed to test this person with the grade signs which would have indicated that they were a fraud.  Had he done so the history of the end of the Golden Dawn might have been a little different.  That Secret Chief was the con-woman Madam Horos.

Whare Ra gets it wrong

Whare Ra’s reputation for being the world’s most enduring and thorough magical order took a battering this week after it was discovered that the Golden Dawn order lived with a glaring mistake for more than 60 years.
Whare Ra operated successfully in Havelock North from 1916 until the late 1970s making it the most enduring and successful Golden Dawn orders.  Its training programme was rigorous and detailed and created adepts who trained other generations of adepts.
But it appears that the system had flaws including a brilliant howler which went un-noticed by Whare Ra members, and people who studied the history of the group afterwards, including me.
The Whare Ra pillars have been preserved by the Chivalric Hall  Society in Havelock North.  There they have been studied, measured, their cartouche’s copied into several books and compared with those created by Regardie.  
Then this week I was contacted by the Felkin Society Trust who were curious to know if I was aware of any unique tradition regarding the Whare Ra pillars.
“We have gone through all the paperwork, including Regardie, Mathers and articles on the pillars within the Golden Dawn tradition and we can’t find a reason for it.”
The problem is really obvious if you look at photographs of the pillars and know there is something wrong.

Can you see what it is yet?

The cartouche for the white pillar has been placed on the black pillar and the black pillar on the white.    This would have taken a lot of effort because they painted the images in reverse colours.
It is enough to give any pedant a stroke, given the fact they seem to have apoplexy if they see a comma wrote in a ritual typescript.  My first thought was that someone had repainted the pillars and flipped them (the pillars do have a fresher coat of paint) but that would take an even bigger effort (ever tried to cover black paint with white?) and would not be a logical thing to do as you would be literally trying to make a cover-up
What difference does it make?  Well, not much really. The white pillar is supposed to contain all the second order mysteries and the black one the first Order.    It is obvious as the First Order is all about the Judgement hall of Maat  and this shown on the black pillar.   Much is made of this in the Whare Ra portal ceremony.
But what it does mean is that for 60 years Whare Ra used dodgy pillars.  It is inconceivable that no-one noticed the fact and it must have been something that was continually discovered and forgotten.  Perhaps marine archaeologists might uncover the bodies of those neophytes who were dumb enough to point out the mistake wearing cement shoes in the waters of Hawkes Bay.
Otherwise I would expect to have seen a flourishing “oral tradition” among Whare Ra members which explained why they had a different set of pillars from the rest of the Golden Dawn and indeed the Stella Matutina.  The fact that there was not one, nor had anyone mentioned the mistake, probably meant that they had not noticed.  Hell, I have sat with the things in front of me for hours and I didn't spot it either.
But if any of this blog’s readers might have a reason why Whare Ra flipped the cartouches on the pillars we are going to have to put this one down to a cock-up which no-one noticed, or cared about, for more than 60 years.

UPDATE:

It is starting to look like it was deliberate, although I can't say I agree with the reasoning.  Pat Zalewski replied in his group:

I actually addressed issue this in my 0=0 book some years ago and also in my GD Ritual Commentaries book(pp.127-132). It is more of a case of "Whare ra gets it right" rather than the other way round. The drawings on the pillars that Brodie Inness gave relate to both the 0=0 and 5=6. The problem was the 0=0 was on the white Pillar and the 5=6 was on the black. Felkin solved the problem and switched it back to match what was being taught. You can also see this from an alchemical colour perspective as well the Blackening to the Whitening. I don't have a date the pillar drawings were issued out in the GD that Regardie published but Tony Fuller may be able to help there. In my books I left the pillars in the GD colours for the sake of tradition with a caveat of what was taught at Whare ra and why. I have also broken down
The pillar plates to match aspects of the 0=0. I am firmly siding with Felkin here, regardless of what Brodie or Mathers had on their pillars. I am told some temples never had any plates on them at all. THE Z PAPERS MAKE THIS OPTIONAL- WHICH IS A GET OF OF JAIL CARD IF THEY GOT IT WRONG.

Tony DeLuce added:

The reason why the S.M. swapped the shoulders the sashes are worn on ( they were trying to match the pillar inscriptions to the First and Second Orders rather than the Pillars themselves)... The G.D. and the A.O. wore the black sash on the right shoulder and the white sash on the left shoulder - if you lay down on the Temple floor on your back with your head in the East and your Feet in the West you get the picture 

In my view this makes a symbol which is simple too complex. In the Mathers paper on the pillars it was fairly simple. The black pillar always represented the first order while the white the second order.   The drawings therefore represented a process in a logical sequence.  The scene in the Judgement Hall is perfect for the 0=0, but has little to with the 5=6.  
The ciphers are not specific about what spiritual diagrams you should use (Mathers used the book of the dead). The original golden dawn hung the drawings from its square pillars (it meant they could be taken off for other grades)  and had images of the Kerubs placed on the tops.  The pyramids were wood through which a candle was threaded.

The 125th chapter is to do with Judgement and the 42 assessors.   Its symbolism is to do with judgement after death (as the anon commentator points out below). Almost everyone is familiar with this chapter.  The 17th is more obscure, indeed a big chunk of it was missing from the Ani Papryus.
However the entire 0=0 is to do with recreating the 125th chapter particular scene.  It would be strange if it were associated with the post 5=6 state of being.
 Anon commentatorr (below) makes the point that the white pillar is after death and the black pillar is before.  However that does not work as both of the chapters of the book of the dead are post death states.  The 125th chapter is judgement, while the 17th allowed him to go forth in the afterlife in any shape he wanted.  It was also designed to provide the dead person with the esoteric knowledge they needed in the afterlife.
Where Anon commentator might be correct is that the spell can be recited on earth to create magical effects.  It is formatted like a question and answer session which suggests an initiation sequence.
But the 17th chapter is incredibly involved and certainly beyond the scope of the first order.  It is also more focused on the evolution of the spirit so that it is connected to Ra.    After rising with Ra in the morning, itt ends with the image of Rehu the lion.  Rehu was the phallus of Ra. This would be perfectly acceptable image of second order work.
Since it appears that the flipping of the pillars by Whare Ra was not a mistake, then we are left with the question “why?”   You could argue that the 17th chapter happens before the Judgement Hall, however the Book of the Dead is not linear (or literal) and the numbering was a more modern scholar’s technique.    It also required Whare Ra to change the sashes around.

In Defence of the Lesser Invoking Pentagram

I have had a few comments about the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram use being overstated.  It has been something I have been saying for ages.  Below is an article published in the Hermetic Virtues Magazine Volume 2, Issue 3.


The lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram is considered the most important ritual of the Golden Dawn, in that it has been borrowed by almost every magical order in the last 120 years. Along with its chum, the cabbalistic cross, it is performed before every ritual. But have we made a mistake? What if it is NOT the lesser banishing ritual that is the most important, but the INVOKING one?

When we look at the Golden Dawn, we assume that the original adepts got it all right and that the things we know and love about the Golden Dawn were there in the first place. Yet study of Golden Dawn history and texts has revealed the original Golden Dawn was nowhere near as complete as later developments. Things that are happening in modern Golden Dawn orders are a lot more magical and interesting than anything Westcott and Mathers dreamed up but since the lines between the past Golden Dawn orders are cut, we often miss something important from the past that is staring directly in our face.

In my previous papers on the Lesser Banishing Ritual, I was looking at its use in terms of the Sphere of Sensation and the 0=0 ritual. I had come to the conclusion that the LBRP was a microcosmic re-enactment of the 0=0, which, if performed daily, would instill that important initiation's symbols into the Sphere of Sensation. However, there was a flaw in this idea and that was the concept of banishing. Why would you need to banish all the time? True, the 0=0 ritual is about a four-fold purification and consecration but there is also the connection with the divine forces that is the opposite of a banishing.

The breakthrough came when I was talking with a very experienced magician who is not connected with the Golden Dawn tradition. She flippantly said that one of the problems she had with the GD tradition was that it was "banishing, banishing, banishing all the time. If you keep doing that you will have nothing left!" She believed that the Golden Dawn was told to do an LBRP before every ritual (which the modern Golden Dawn does). But was this true?

For years I had known that the Golden Dawn had an invoking ritual of the pentagram, but had never actually used it. So I wanted to find out what the original GD used – an invoking pentagram? – and I went back to the original instructions and knowledge papers to find out.

Surprisingly, the rituals of the pentagram papers for the outer order were consistent since the beginning to the closure of Whare Ra but what I saw when I read them was something I didn't expect. For years, like many people, I had assumed that I knew the banishing ritual of the pentagram, so didn't actually read the paper other than to check that I was saying the same words as everyone else in the order. Looking at it with fresh eyes, it revealed some things I didn't know. Firstly, the ritual described is called the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram – not the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

Secondly, the knowledge paper does not describe the banishing ritual at all.

"Make in the air towards the East the invoking(1) PENTAGRAM as shown, bringing the point of the dagger to the centre of the pentagram…."

The banishing ritual gets an aside in the last paragraph of the paper; "For Banishing use the same Ritual, but reversing the direction of the lines of the Pentagram."

The first thing that crossed my mind was that the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram was considered much less important than its invoking cousin and is simply a footnote. This is the complete opposite of received wisdom.

The next thing that was clear is that the invoking pentagram was different from the method that the modern GD teaches to do the banishing pentagram. In the modern GD, the divine name is projected into the pentagram using the sign of the enterer at the point that the name is vibrated. This is not described in the knowledge paper,where the divine names are placed in the invoking pentagram with a dagger. The implication is that a banishing ritual of the pentagram would be carried out the same way. So where did the idea of a projection sign with the pentagram come about?

In a second paper for neophytes, The Uses of the Pentagram Ritual, the projection sign is mentioned. The neophyte is instructed to imagine an image of an obsession and project it "out of your aura (sic) with the saluting sign of a neophyte and when it is about three feet away, prevent its return with the sign of silence." The lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram is then performed to dissolve it.

This a minor point, but it certainly indicates that modern GD groups do their Lesser Pentagrams a slightly different way from the original order. This is fine, as the reasons used, i.e. the outwards projection of energy using the divine names, are valid and are an enhancement of the original idea.

Another GD paper suggests that a neophyte should use the banishing ritual at night and the invoking one in the morning. I assume that was because the banishing ritual would enable you to sleep better!

However, it is also clear that, other than the reference to getting rid of obsessions, the banishing ritual is not any more important than the invoking one. Indeed, when the paper talks about using the lesser ritual of the pentagram to enhance visualisation skills, it is talking about the invoking and not the banishing.

Call ye Aszbel for the delivery of fine Pizza 

Let us look at the other witness. Now, while I still think Aleister Crowley is the most over-rated magician since Paul Daniels, he is a valid historical resource about what he was taught about the 'LBP'. His take on the ritual, which says that the little ritual is the key to everything magical, appears in Magic without Tears but fails insofar as it is not clear whether it is to the banishing or to the invoking that he refers. The fact that he refers to the rite by its traditional name of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram probably means that he is referring to the invoking pentagram rather than the banishing.

The only other reference we have to the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is in inner order documents, where it points out that they work because they are have similarities to the Earth pentagrams of the inner order (They are not Earth pentagrams because they are not opened by spirit or have the sign of an Ox in them.)

"This lesser ritual of the pentagram is only of use in general and unimportant invocations. Its use is permitted to the outer order that neophytes may have protection against opposing forces and might have some idea how to attract and come into communication with spiritual and invisible things."

So now we have some idea of how the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is supposed to be used by those in the outer order and how it is just as important to use the invoking pentagram as it is the banishing one.

The banishing is designed to protect by repelling the sphere of sensation from lower astral nasties and connecting the person to their higher self. It can be used to remove those parts of your personality, such as habits, that you do not want.

However, the invoking ritual is just as important to this process. The invoking allows you to bring things into your life that you want and brings about your connection with spiritual forces. In other words, the banishing ritual of the pentagram is the purification and consecration aspects of the 0=0 ceremony, while the invoking ritual mirrors those aspects of the 0=0 which draw your higher self to you.

In the 0=0 ceremony, the candidate starts with their sphere of sensation so black that it is impossible to see the four pillars of their sphere of sensation. During the four-fold purification process the aura is cleared. However, the candidate is also exposed to spiritual forces represented by the visible and invisible godforms. The danger, then, of just doing lesser banishing pentagrams is that you would not be drawing these forces to you.

Recently a person who came into contact with a temple I know said that he had been performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of Pentagram every day for 15 years and had felt it had not got him anywhere. It was suggested by the head of a temple that he try the invoking pentagram instead and suddenly everything changed for him. He started making the spiritual and material progress he craved.

So it is clear that the obsession with the banishing pentagram needs to be tempered by the same amount of use as the invoking one. In fact, as a spiritual practice, they should be used at least on a 50/50 ratio with the emphasis being on the invoking.

Angelic guardians are all very well, provided that you
Do not blink!

The question, then, becomes how this can be done when we are trained to perform a banishing ritual as a form of protection before all our workings, including meditation. Well, the answer lies in what the LRP actually does. The GD material implies that both the invoking and the banishing provide protection, by virtue of the divine names, the angels and the pentagrams and the fact that the six rayed star is placed in your aura.

When you are drawing your spiritually-empowered pentagrams and calling up your angelic guardians, you are saying that you are human and manifest the elements of Spirit, Fire, Air, Water and Earth. You are asserting the dominance of spirit over the elemental nature. You are binding this statement into a magic circle, powered by the divine energy of your higher self. This is most of the protection you need. This divine force spiritualises the room so that anything that does not operate on that frequency cannot get in. All you need to do is to tune your sphere to either throwing things away or drawing things towards you.

The banishing protects you from internal and external harm when you need it. If you are being attacked by the denizens of hell, you would use the banishing ritual to get rid of them. If you aren’t, you don’t need it. The likelihood of the forces of darkness being interested in the first magics of a 0=0 is incredibly low, although it is possible that your own shadow might cause them a few headaches, so you might end up using a banishing more often than you think.

If you want to attract an angel, you would use the invoking one before your working. So if you were doing your general daily meditation, you would perform the invoking pentagram ritual because you would want to gain information. However, if you were meditating on your own shortcomings, you would do a banishing, because you would want to get rid of something inside you. If you were doing a middle pillar exercise, it would be an invoking pentagram because you would want to draw the powers of those divine names to you.

Besides drawing other forces to you, the Invoking Pentagram has a direct effect on the person performing it. Rather than becoming 'guardians' and 'protectors', the Angels and divine names work differently when you perform an invoking pentagram. What you are doing is drawing their energies into your sphere of sensation. Over a period of time this would have a tremendous positive effect on the person's spiritual life.

If you are actually on the moon, do you banish or invoke?

While there is something to be said for the GD's morning and afternoon alternating invoking and banishing rituals, it my opinion it would be better to do one ritual in the morning independent of any other rituals or meditations you might perform. This ritual would be guided by the phase of the moon. So you would do a banishing on a waning moon and an invoking on a waxing moon. You could then divide your magical programme into things you want to get rid of, in the waning moon, and things you want in your life in the waxing moon.

It also begs another question. Before each working, the temples of the modern orders of the Golden Dawn perform a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to protect the working. Since we have seen that the working would be protected by either the invoking or the banishing, it might be time to re-think this idea. It might be that the invoking is more appropriate.

Our modern orders have in many ways moved forward but perhaps it is time that the Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram was restored to its former glory and becomes the subject for more experimentation.

(1) Emphasis is mine.