Thought I might try to wake the spiritualists up again So post your daily routine for spiritual practices (or the part your comfortable sharing) Might help a beginner design his/her own schedule, or inspire the armchair occultist out there to add practice to their impressive theoretical knowledge. But mostly this is just to spark some action in the spirituality section. And to start with mine is:

After waking up: One mala of one word mantra ( or the longer Fudo myo mantra during weekends) 10-20 minutes of chi kung

After getting home from where ever I need to be at that particular day: One mala of one of the elements mantra, depending on weekday. Taiji short form.

After sword practice: Meditation on one particular rune in the futhark in 24 day cycles. One mala of a mantra of my own design.
Read my grimoire.

Before going to sleep: 10-20 minutes of chi kung, one mala of om mani padme hum, and burning incense at my shrine

Well, let me be the first to reply... maybe get some talking points. Dreadfully long post, but oh well...

At present my daily practice is pretty simple.

Temizu 手水 - simple ritualized washing of the hands and mouth to help purify and demarcate any previous activities with the rituals that follow.

Proceed to very briefly working the Three Regulations as in Qigong (body, breath, and mind) while centering the large majority of my awareness in my lower dantian (丹田) as a center of the microcosm within the macrocosm.

I further center and ground myself with a type of cross of light visualization, but in addition to up-down and left-right beams of light I add a forward-backward beam to anchor myself in the six directions. I do not flourish it with any vibratory formulae like the Kabalistic Cross or anything, but merely being directional (both cardinally and in relation to my body) there still are symbolic power attached without any need to think about it. Then I do the OMNIL formula to top things off.

I then proceed to tap my teeth 36 times and swallow the saliva (I just do it once) and then perform the Pace of Yu.

Offer incense with the Daoist Incantation for Offering Incense 祝香神咒 (one of the the Daoist Eight Great Divine Incantations 八大神咒; recited in mandarin Chinese).

Set the boundary of the sacred space by drawing and visualizing a circle around the ritual area.

Performance of the Jintsuu Akuma Shibari no Hihou 神通悪魔縛りの秘法 (The Secret Formula of the Magical Power for Binding Evil Demons) - Sounds epic, but it's a short and simple ritual procedure taken from Koshintō 古神道. I find it appealing, which counts for a lot. It has clear influence from developments in medieval Shinto (15th to early 16th century developments at least, as far as I can tell), but I am not sure when this particular ritual practice was developed. It's reliant on incantations and hand seals/mudra with an initial empowerment, cleansing and protection by calling upon the protection of five kami, petitioning two kami to bind and subdue malicious demons and youkai, calling upon the power of Heaven and Earth in subduing these forces, performance of the kuji-kiri (which I think is important to remember is originally an incantation to six jia spirits 六甲 (yang spirits)), and a final incantation.

I then set the Later Heaven arrangement of the Bagua around the circle and the Azure Dragon to the east, White Tiger to the west, Vermilion Bird to the south, Black Tortoise to the north, and Northern Dipper/Big Dipper above and in the center.

I then briefly absorb purple Qi from the Northern Dipper.

Next I perfrom Isonokami Chinkonhou 石上鎮魂法, which is a method of Chinkon from Isonokami Jinguu. It may be easy to imagine it as a seated active qigong set. I feel it allows exercise in a variety of desirable practices and is built around the Ten Kinds of Spiritual Treasures or "ten kinds of treasures embodying the kami" 十種の神宝 there's more that could be said concerning these Ten Treasures, but for now those interested can read some basic info at http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwo ... ntryID=295
I will probably practice the Isonokami Chinkonhou for some months before mixing up my practice. I figure this practice will be a springboard to further explorations into the value and possibilities found within working with the concept of the Ten Treasures which "adorn the inner space" according to the Yuiitsu Shintō Myōbō Yōshū written by Yoshida Kanetomo.

I frame the ritual with the centering and grounding cross of light and OMNIL formula. I've decided I'll also tap the teeth and swallow the saliva after Chinkon from now on as well.

At night before sleeping I also perform pretty much everything except the Chinkon. That more or less serves as my "Banishing Ritual" or LBRP equivalent at this point.

Though various details were left out that's more or less my daily practice at this point. I also train in martial arts, both "external" and "internal" styles, so that figures into my practice. This practice is, of course, always subject to revision and refinement. For a number of months I used to do a Yijing divination daily and wish to get back into that routine. I also want to institute a more systematic training of qigong again with some different active qigong sets, standing meditation, and walking meditation. I'll probably also pick a couple of my internal style forms and/or qigong sets from my martial arts style to practice daily. It's also important that I get back into regularly doing OBE exit attempts everyday, as this is really essential for other practices I wish to engage in.

Though the above describes the direction I want to take my practice for the next few months, I also want to analyze and compare Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics and Crowley's Book 4 and associated libri, as well as the opinion of more contemporary writers to get an idea of other practices to work on and benchmark assessments. By benchmark assessments I mean that rather than going at it like this: okay, now I can sit in my asana for 15 minutes without moving, now I should do that and focus on breathing... okay, now I can sit motionless and focus on deep breathing for 30 minutes, time to work on not-thinking, and so on, I think it is more useful to do an good integrative practices like a good qigong regimen or just sitting in meditation and working on awareness and quiescence. As opposed to doing some systematic, goal oriented practices that seem more like fighting your own body and mind, I'd rather just do a useful practice and test my mettle later or just let it come naturally.

Akashiel, your daily routine seems pretty well thought out and useful. If you don't mind sharing, what do you use for the elemental mantra? I am just curious. Right now I am more focused on the five phases, eight trigrams, celestial stems, and earthly branches, and so don't really want to get involved with "elements" right now (be they Greek or Indian), but in the past I had considered doing something like this before. My idea was to use the mantra, mudra, and seed syllable of the appropriate Deva for Wind, FIre, Water, and Earth. I don't think I had a good idea of what to do about Void/Akasa, but doing the practice focused on Akasagarbha might have been an option. That or on Sunday and Monday focus the practice on the Moon and Sun Deva. I suppose I could use the mantra for the Seven Luminaries as they are associated with Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Sun and Moon and so came to have a correspondence with the Five Phases, but right now I do not have the knowledge to discern how Indian/Vedic and Chinese astrology might have mixed here and want to avoid Buddhist religious symbolism for the time being. Right now I need to get a better working knowledge of Chinese correspondences and correlative cosmology.

Well to be honest, the elemental mantra I use are my own creation based on some (Probably butchered) sanskrit that I got from an old dictionary. The form I use most often is "Om aham asmi Ap/vayu/agni/Bhumi" Meaning "Om I am Water/Wind/Fire/Earth" while imagining first the elements affect on my body and the my body being made of that element. I dont really care if my pronunciation or grammar on these is correct as they are only used to get into a state of mind and make sure I dont stay in that state too long. Also though more of an aspect of existence than an element I do "winter mantra" meditation on at least one day a week. Probably a side effect of living in Finland and loving cold weather

Right on. Have you ever experimented with the "mantrical" method of sigil creation in CMT? The ideas of CMT are interesting theoretically, but not really my thing.

My daily practice was interrupted by some disparaging and uprooting events, but pretty soon I should tweak it out again and hopefully make some great progress. Hoping to start teaching some internal martial arts, which should be a good experience.

*tumbleweed blows by*

Well, as a general question to anyone, how important do you consider "banishing rituals" in daily practice? Things like the LBRP are the bread and butter of a lot of Western magicians, do you implement a ritual like it in your practice? What about practices like the Middle Pillar?

Ummm.... CMT? I'm going to assume this means chaos magick theory...Or hope so anyway, I'm pretty bad at unfamiliar shortened words. Chaos magick ain't my forte, all the knowledge I have from it is conversations with some friends and a few books. I havent actually even heard of this "mantrical" method, not all that surprising considering its been years since I tried any methods of creating sigils. Sounds somewhat interesting though. Lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram (or a modified version of it anyway) I only use before and after fairly major stuff like summoning, unless the particular grimoire I'm trying says differently or has its own ritual to replace it.. Apart from the actual experience I dont consider it's effects being all that useful to me in everyday life.

University ate me.

After waking, purify mouth and hands. Go to central kamidana in the living room. Offer water, salt, and rice, light candle and incense. Say morning prayer; sometimes rote, sometimes just whatever is on my mind, sometimes a simple "good morning and thank you."

Feed children and myself, drink tea or coffee with Amaterasu. Then, it's on to homework. Right now I have Chinese Thought, so the philosophical study I consider part of my current routine.

Then, housecleaning... with as much emphasis on spiritual purification as physical cleanliness...

At the end of the day the children and I gather at kamidana again and offer some of tonight's supper, usually incorporating at least one of the morning offerings. Night prayers are said and reports given.

Also, during bath and shower time, focus is on spiritual purification as well.

Most currently, there is friend that I have also made time to go on a soul retrieval journey for, and nightly I work on healing for this person as well.

So that's my current routine, and with how much time is spent on other things lately, it surprises me that I can still carve out that much time for spiritual endeavors and focus.