GROUND. CENTER. PROTECT.
Mom Magick Ritual of Protection
I am a trauma survivor, a mom, an artist, and a person with a nervous system that can get very loud.
I live with PTSD, fibromyalgia, migraines, anxiety, dissociation, racing thoughts, and a body that sometimes reacts before the rest of me has caught up. I can panic. I can get angry and reactive. I can get overwhelmed by being seen or perceived. Sometimes I disappear so far into my own head that I barely feel like I am standing in the room anymore.
That is part of why ritual has become so important to me.
I need something physical. I need my hands to move. I need my feet on the floor. I need to turn my body, touch my forehead and chest, draw something in the air, say words out loud, and remember where I am.
For me, this ritual is about grounding, centering, and protecting.
I have always loved the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or LBRP, but for a long time I totally never understood what I was saying. The Hebrew words were beautiful, but they felt distant. I wanted to know what I was actually speaking. I wanted words I could feel immediately while my body was doing the ritual.
So I made this English version. I call it the MMRP, Mom Magick Ritual of Protection.
A quick note before I get into it
I am a practitioner. I am sharing where I am in my practice. I am learning as I go.
This is deeply inspired by the LBRP, but it is my personal ritual. It is a companion to my LBRP practice rather than a replacement for it. I still practice the LBRP, usually with my husband, and I still use the traditional Hebrew words when I do.
When I practice the LBRP, my English words often run through my head underneath the Hebrew. When I practice the MMRP, the Hebrew runs underneath my English. At this point the two practices kind of live on top of each other in my head.
The animals are especially new.
I only started bringing them into my ritual while I was writing my album ANYMALS. I love practicing with them now, and they have made parts of the ritual much easier for me to picture and feel, but I am still getting to know what they mean to me. These are personal correspondences that grew out of my songs and my own practice. I am sharing them because they have been meaningful for me, rather than presenting them as traditional LBRP correspondences.
My ritual has already many times changed since I first wrote this page. I expect it will keep changing.
If you are curious about the original LBRP, I really encourage you to go look it up and learn the traditional ritual too. There are many people who have spent much more time studying and practicing it than I have, and people practice it in different ways. I have also enjoyed looking at adaptations of the ritual, including Phil Hine's chaos magick adaptation and Paul Hume's Witches' LBRP. Seeing other people work with the structure helped me understand that I could explore what the ritual meant in my own practice too.
I practice what I can hold.
This is what I can hold right now.
TL;DR: The MMRP
Here is my current ritual in one place. The rest of this page below explains where it came from, what the words mean to me, and why I practice it this way. (If you're here for the full in-depth version, feel free to scroll past this part.)
1. Cross of Being: Locate
Begin facing East.
With the first two fingers of my dominant hand:
Touch forehead: Crown of Stars.
Touch chest/ or point down at ground: Root of Earth.
Touch right shoulder: Hand of Creation.
Touch left shoulder: Heart of Receiving.
Hands over heart:
“I am the bridge between Heaven and Earth.”
Open arms:
“I call the Light to me, and I stand in its truth.”
Locate the body. Above, below, right, left. Here I am.
2. Cast the Circle: Protect
I turn clockwise to my right through a full circle:
“This is my circle. Safe. Sacred. Sealed.”
Mark the boundary. This is the space is mine.
3. Four Stars: Orient
Moving clockwise, I face each direction and draw a pentagram:
East / Air: “I call the breath of beginnings. Protect this space.”
South / Fire: “I call the flame of courage. Protect this space.”
West / Water: “I call the tides of truth. Protect this space.”
North / Earth: “I call the bones of becoming. Protect this space.”
Breath. Heat. Water. Bone. I find the physical world again.
4. The Animals: Call the Guardians
Arms open wide, elbows slightly bent, palms facing up:
“Before me, Coyote, guide me.
Behind me, Seahorse, steady me.
To my right, Porcupine, protect me.
To my left, Skunk, ground me.
Above and below, Coyote, carry me through.
At my center, Crow, I witness.”
Guide. Steady. Protect. Ground. Carry through. Witness.
5. Close: Return
Repeat the Cross of Being:
Crown of Stars. Root of Earth. Hand of Creation. Heart of Receiving.
I am the bridge between Heaven and Earth.
I call the Light to me, and I stand in its truth.
Let everything settle back into the body.
Touch right index finger to lips. Breathe.
Stomp.
Return. Ground. Seal.
Why I made this ritual
One of the things I love about ritual is that it gives my thoughts somewhere physical to go.
I can think about a feeling forever. I can pull it apart, figure out where it came from, have twelve conversations about it, understand exactly why I am doing what I am doing, and still have my shoulders sitting somewhere near my ears. 😂
My body missed the meeting.
The MMRP gives my body something to do.
When I dissociate, I can lose the feeling of being fully inside myself. When I panic, everything can suddenly feel urgent. When I feel perceived, my body can react like being seen itself is dangerous. Anger can come up hot and fast. Pain and migraines can make my world very small. Sometimes my thoughts are moving so quickly that sitting there telling myself to calm down feels ridiculous.
But I can turn.
I can touch my forehead.
I can touch my chest.
I can draw a star.
I can feel my feet.
I can say, this is my circle. Safe.
I can locate myself again.
That is a huge part of what this practice is for me.
The ritual gives the pause a body.
The structure
I currently think of my MMRP in three parts: the Cross of Being, the Circle and Four Pentagrams, and the Close and Seal.
That is simply how I organize my version of the ritual in my own head.
Part 1: The Cross of Being
This is where I invoke the self and establish myself at the center.
I touch my forehead and say, “Crown of Stars.” I touch my chest, or sometimes point toward the ground, and say, “Root of Earth.” I touch my right shoulder and say, “Hand of Creation.” I touch my left shoulder and say, “Heart of Receiving.”
Then I put my hands together at my heart and say:
“I am the bridge between Heaven and Earth.”
I pause there and feel the cross of light around me. I try to actually picture it rather than rushing through the words.
Then I open my arms out to my sides and say:
“I call the Light to me, and I stand in its truth.”
This part has become very physical for me. Above. Below. Right. Left. Here is my head. Here is my chest. Here are my shoulders. Here are my feet.
Here I am.
Part 2: The Circle and the Four Pentagrams
This is where I create the container around myself.
I extend two fingers on my dominant hand and cast the circle by turning 360 degrees clockwise, moving to my right.
I say:
“This is my circle. Safe. Sacred. Sealed.”
Then I move through the four directions, still turning clockwise, and draw a pentagram in the air at each one while I say:
At the East I say, “I call the breath of beginnings. Protect this space.”
At the South: “I call the flame of courage. Protect this space.”
At the West: “I call the tides of truth. Protect this space.”
At the North: “I call the bones of becoming. Protect this space.”
This completes the circle.
Those four lines are tied to the elements for me. Breath of beginnings is Air and East: beginnings, clarity, inspiration. Flame of courage is Fire and South: protection, action, passion. Tides of truth is Water and West: emotion, healing, flow. Bones of becoming is Earth and North: grounding, structure, presence.
I like the elements because they bring me back to physical things.
Breath. Heat. Water. Bone.
My body. The room. The ground underneath me.
Earlier versions of my MMRP used crosses in the four directions. Eventually I went back to pentagrams because they felt better to me.
That is one of the little places where you can actually see my practice changing.
The Animals in the Invocation
This is where the MMRP has gotten way more personal for me recently.
After the four directions, I stand with my arms spread and say:
“Before me, Coyote, guide me.
Behind me, Seahorse, steady me.
To my right, Porcupine, protect me.
To my left, Skunk, ground me.
Above and below, Coyote, carry me through.
At my center, Crow, I witness.”
I wrote an album called ANYMALS: What the Little One Said, and I chose four animals I have always loved: coyote, porcupine, seahorse, and skunk. They are weird little underdogs. They have soft parts and sharp parts. They survive in very different ways.
While I was writing the songs, I realized each animal had started carrying a particular emotional conversation for me. Then I realized how naturally those conversations lined up with parts of the ritual I was already practicing.
The animals also began growing alongside the angels and names I use in my LBRP practice. When I practice the traditional LBRP with my husband, I still use the traditional names and imagery. In the MMRP, the animals have become another personal layer over that architecture. Sometimes when I practice the LBRP, I can even picture the animal and angel together.
These are personal correspondences that grew out of my music, my experiences, and my practice. I am still figuring out what all of them mean to me. I am sharing the map because it helps explain where the animals came from and why each one has the job it has in my MMRP.
The Correspondences at a Glance
Raphael → Coyote → guidance / survival
Michael → Porcupine → protection / anger
Gabriel → Seahorse → emotion / panic / steadiness
Uriel → Skunk → territory / belonging / staying
Metatron + Sandalphon → Coyote → falling apart / returning / continuing
Adonai at the center → Crow → seeing myself / pausing / choosing
These are personal correspondences that have grown out of my LBRP practice, my music, and my own experiences. They are a map of how I currently understand the MMRP.
Coyote: Guide Me
Coyote actually appears in two different places in my current ritual, and those two appearances come from different parts of my LBRP practice.
In the East, Coyote is Air and is inspired by Raphael. This is Coyote as guide: breath, beginnings, movement, clarity, finding the next direction. Coyote came from survival for me. Being left for dead. Getting back up. Hurting and being hurt. Licking wounds somewhere private, finding something useful in the scraps, and moving again.
Before me, Coyote, guide me.
I started calling Coyote above and below as well. This is a separate correspondence, inspired by Metatron above and Sandalphon below rather than Raphael and the East.
Above and below, Coyote, carry me through.
As the practice changed, Crow found the center, and this second Coyote began to feel more like movement along the vertical line: above and below, what came before and what comes next, keeping going, finding another way through.
So there are two different jobs here. Coyote in the East guides me. Coyote above and below carries me through. They share the same animal because both speak to survival and movement for me, while they grow from different parts of the ritual.
I am still living with that change. It feels right right now.
Porcupine: Protect Me
Porcupine is Fire and South for me, and this part of the MMRP grew alongside Michael in my LBRP practice. Michael has always carried a strong protective quality for me, and Porcupine gave that protection a physical animal body I could immediately understand: the quills.
Porcupine is the reaction that happens before I have enough information. The sharp word. The sudden anger. The part of me that senses hurt coming and prepares for it before the hurt even lands.
Then comes what I think of as the second arrow: the guilt afterward, the shame about reacting, the moment when the quills turn around and stab inward.
Porcupine has become a conversation between me and the part of myself that learned protection very early. Instead of immediately judging the reaction, I have started asking a different question:
What is my fight for?
The quills have a job. I can listen to why they came up. I can protect something tender while choosing where those quills actually need to point.
To my right, Porcupine, protect me.
The boundary moves with me.
Seahorse: Steady Me
Seahorse is Water and West for me, and this part of the MMRP grew alongside Gabriel in my LBRP practice. Water already gave me a language for emotion, movement, healing, and flow. Seahorse made that language personal.
Seahorse came from panic: the spiral, the freeze, the heat, the shame of having a reaction, the feeling that everyone can see something happening inside me, the terror of being perceived. Sometimes panic feels like being underwater while my body has forgotten that floating is an option.
“Behind me, Seahorse, steady me.”
I rarely need the water to vanish.
I can sway instead of brace. I can float. I can surface slowly.
Skunk: Ground Me
Skunk is Earth and North for me, and this part of the MMRP grew alongside Uriel in my LBRP practice. Earth gives me ground, structure, physical presence, and place. Skunk turned that into something more personal: territory, belonging, and staying.
Skunk came from some of the hardest parts of ANYMALS. The exhaustion of existing. Feeling like there is barely a place for me in the world. The voice that says nobody wants me here. Wanting the ground to swallow me. Wanting to disappear.
And Skunk stays.
Skunk never demands that the little one suddenly love the ground beneath her feet. She stays with her while she decides whether she can stand on it. By the end, the little one only wiggles her toes in the dirt. She is still here.
There is also a piece of Skunk that deals with apology and self-hate. The habit of shrinking, apologizing for existing, and treating my own presence like something that needs permission. Skunk pushes against that with “I am not sorry.” Taking up space becomes part of staying.
Sometimes grounding is beautiful and peaceful. Sometimes grounding is putting your feet on the floor and staying in the room anyway.
The boundary grows out of that. The spray is the boundary. The stomp is the seal. The tail is the warning. Skunk protects the territory because something inside that territory matters.
This space is mine.
So when I call Skunk in the MMRP, “ground me” carries a lot more than help me feel the floor. It means: help me occupy this space. Help me remember that I have a boundary. Help me stay while I decide what comes next.
Crow: I Witness
Crow came differently because Crow was already here.
Crow was already in Loui Crow, in my music, in the way I watch myself, and in the way I keep little pieces of things and turn them over until I understand what they mean. It took me longer to realize where Crow belonged in the ritual.
Crow belongs at the center.
There actually is no Crow song on ANYMALS. Coyote, Porcupine, Seahorse, and Skunk each get their own conversations with the little one. Coyote even returns for a second one. Crow stays silent.
I think that fits.
Crow has had a voice in other songs, and I am sure she will have one again. But in ANYMALS, Crow seems to have a different job. She watches.
The album lets the animals speak. Crow witnesses what they say.
That is also where she eventually found her place in the MMRP.
In my LBRP practice, the center is also where I vibrate Adonai. Over time, Crow began occupying that place in my personal MMRP imagery. I think of Crow and Adonai as belonging to different languages of my practice: one comes from the ritual tradition I am learning and practicing, while the other comes from the personal symbolic language that has grown around my own work.
“At my center, Crow, I witness.”
Crow has a simple job: see what is here. See the panic. See the anger. See the quills. See the urge to hide. See the part that wants to disappear and the part that wants desperately to be seen. See the little one. See the woman.
See what happened before deciding what happens next.
That is what witnessing gives me: a tiny bit of space between what happens inside me and what I do with it.
Sometimes that tiny bit of space changes everything.
Protecting the inner space
When I first thought about protection rituals, I thought mostly about creating a boundary between myself and whatever was outside me.
I still feel that.
This is my circle. Safe. Sacred. Sealed.
But protection has gotten more complicated and more interesting for me.
Some of the things that scare me come from inside.
The voice that says I am too much.
The voice that says I am nothing.
The voice that says everybody can see me.
The voice that wants me to disappear.
The flash of anger.
The panic.
The shame afterward.
And what ANYMALS has helped me understand is that even some of those reactions are trying, in their own clumsy little animal way, to protect something.
Porcupine raises quills.
Seahorse thrashes.
Skunk marks territory.
Coyote survives.
Crow watches.
So I think about protection differently now.
I am less interested in fighting myself.
I am more interested in figuring out what the animal is trying to tell me and what movement comes next.
The ritual gives me somewhere to practice that.
The sensory experience
Over the years, I have experienced all kinds of sensations during rituals.
Sometimes I feel temperature changes, warmth or coolness. Sometimes I have felt something that resembles a hand on my shoulder, a breeze in front of me, or a soft pressure against my back.
Sometimes I feel warmth moving through my body, especially around my shoulders. Sometimes I wobble or get dizzy. Sometimes I see geometric visuals, pentagrams, hexagrams, or light.
I hold those experiences as experiences.
The part that matters most to me is what happens when I suddenly become extremely present.
My feet are here.
My body is here.
The room is here.
I am here.
That is the moment when the ritual stops feeling like something I am performing.
I am the ritual.
Why the somatic part matters so much to me
I need this part.
I live in my head plenty. 😂
Ritual makes me move.
Turn right.
Raise the hand.
Draw the star.
Speak.
Touch the forehead.
Touch the chest.
Open the arms.
Feel the floor.
Stomp.
For somebody who dissociates, this gives me a sequence for finding my body again.
For somebody who lives with PTSD, anxiety, fibromyalgia, and migraines, my body can sometimes feel like the place where everything is happening at once.
Pain.
Alarm.
Heat.
Tension.
Fear.
Anger.
Exhaustion.
Ritual gives some of that energy a shape.
Some days I have beautiful visualization.
Some days I feel deeply present.
Some days my back hurts.
Some days my brain wanders off halfway through and I realize I have been thinking about groceries for the last thirty seconds. 😂
I keep practicing.
Perfection can take a seat.
Part 3: The Close and Seal
At the end I repeat the Cross of Being.
Crown of Stars. Root of Earth. Hand of Creation. Heart of Receiving. I am the bridge between Heaven and Earth. I call the Light to me, and I stand in its truth.
I let the energy settle back into my body.
Then I touch my lips with my right index finger and breathe.
And I stomp to seal it.
I especially love the stomp now because of Skunk.
The body gets the last word.
ANYMALS and the ritual
ANYMALS grew out of this practice, and then the album started changing the practice that helped create it.
Each animal became a conversation with my inner child.
Coyote Part 1 spoke with me about survival, being left for dead, getting up anyway, the hurting that happened and the hurting I have done.
Porcupine spoke with me about defensive reactions, the quills that rise before the hurt lands, the guilt after the sharp word, and the self-attack that follows.
Seahorse spoke with me about panic, spiraling, freezing, shame, and the terror of being perceived.
Skunk spoke with me about the exhaustion of existing, belonging, wanting to disappear, and staying anyway.
Coyote Part 2 spoke with me about what comes afterward. Licking wounds. Carrying what belongs with me. Continuing.
And somewhere in all of this, Crow found the center.
There is a lot of magick woven through ANYMALS because magick is woven through the life that made it.
But you can listen to the album knowing absolutely nothing about magick. Underneath all the ritual machinery, these are conversations with a little one inside me.
They are also conversations with the woman I am now.
I make this music because I need to hear it.
ANYMALS releases October 10, 2026, but you can listen to and read all lyrics here.
The song version of the MMRP
I also made a song version of the MMRP.
If you are new to the ritual, have little interest in learning all the movements, or simply want to carry the words with you, the song is another way into it. You can listen, sing along, or let the structure become familiar in its own time.
The recording that is currently streaming is an earlier version of the MMRP. I wrote and recorded it last year, before ANYMALS and before Coyote, Seahorse, Porcupine, Skunk, and Crow found their places in the ritual. So the words in the song differ from the current version on this page.
That earlier version still belongs here. It is a little snapshot of where my practice was when I made it.
The ritual kept changing after the song was recorded, especially while I was writing ANYMALS. I may eventually make a new version that includes the animals and reflects the MMRP as I practice it now.
For now, the original song still exists exactly where it belongs: one version of a living practice that kept moving.
The bigger picture
The biggest thing I keep learning through all of this is that the ritual lives in the practice.
Showing up matters more to me than getting every detail perfect.
Attention matters.
Intention matters.
Presence matters.
The MMRP keeps changing because I keep changing.
Six months from now I will understand some of these things differently.
The ritual works for me because I work it.
Resources and further exploration
If this page makes you curious about the LBRP, please go explore the original ritual rather than treating my MMRP as a substitute for learning it.
I have enjoyed exploring different approaches and adaptations, including Phil Hine's chaos magick adaptation and Paul Hume's Witches' LBRP. There are many teachers, books, traditions, and practitioners who can take you much deeper into the history and mechanics of the LBRP than I can.
I also practice the solar adorations from Liber Resh Vel Helios with my husband after the LBRP. I recorded an album called Adore the Sun that walks through those adorations.
My MMRP song, Adore the Sun, ANYMALS, and more about my practice are all here on my website.
Take what is useful as an invitation to explore. Leave the rest for the birds.
Then go learn.
Then practice.
Closing thoughts
I am a practitioner.
I am practicing.
This page is a snapshot of where the ritual lives today. I am sharing it because sharing my practice has become part of my practice, and because maybe somebody else has a racing mind, a hurting body, a frightened little animal inside, or a nervous system that could use something physical to do.
You can use my words if they speak to you.
You can learn the LBRP.
You can explore other adaptations.
You can find the words that your own body understands.
A Recent Practice
Here is what the MMRP actually looks like when I do it. This is a more recent version, with the animals now finding their way into the invocation too.
I like sharing recordings of the ritual every so often because this page makes everything look very organized. 😂 The actual practice is alive. I stumble over words sometimes. My mind wanders. Something changes. Something suddenly clicks. Then I come back and do it again.
I post my practice pretty regularly on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, along with the music and art growing around it.
If You’re Still Here...
Well, damn. You made it through the whole thing. 😂 Thank you for sitting with me this long.
May your feet remember the floor when everything gets loud. May your boundaries make room for both teeth and tenderness. May the frightened little animal inside you find somewhere safe enough to unclench.
