Stripped of its dating debate, the rite itself is a short, fixed sequence a solitary magician performs at the start or close of a working. It opens with a version of the Kabbalistic Cross, the practitioner touching forehead, chest, and shoulders while vibrating a short Hebrew phrase, then traces a banishing pentagram in each of the four directions while vibrating one of four Hebrew divine names associated with the cardinal points, and closes by invoking four archangels, again one to each direction, before repeating the opening cross.
Every element is meant to be performed with deliberate visualization, the traced pentagram imagined as a line of light that remains fixed in the air after the hand withdraws, rather than as an empty physical gesture. Its stated purpose is exactly what its name says: banishing, clearing a working space of whatever unwanted influences might already be present, and establishing a stable, balanced field before more demanding magical work begins, which is why occultists across otherwise very different systems adopted it as a standard opening regardless of what tradition their main practice belongs to. It is deliberately short enough to perform daily, and many ceremonial magicians do, treating it less as a dramatic invocation than as routine hygiene for the working space, comparable in function, though not in content, to another tradition's daily fixed observance performed for similar reasons of regularity.