Binding spell

Binding spell was a kind of spell employed to contain a target, securing it from performing an unwanted action. Some of its uses were to made an individual imprisoned,^[1]^[2] dormant,^[3]^[4] or immovable.^[3]^[5]

History[]

In 1418, the monk Thelonius used the ritual Circle of Kayless to bind Moloch the Corruptor within a tome. After the demon was freed in 1996, Giles and Jenny performed the ritual to imprison Moloch again, forming an online Circle with Jenny's technopagan contacts around the world.^[1]

Giles mentioned a binding spell he needed to perform on Acathla to make sure that it remained dormant and its dimensional vortex was sealed tight. He described that the spell was very difficult, requiring the creation of a protective circle around the target and reciting something in Aramaic. After Giles got Buffy to talk about what had happened in her fight against Angel, he confessed to Willow there was no spell.^[6]

After the Sisterhood of Jhe opened the Hellmouth, Giles performed a binding spell from Hebron's Almanac capable of containing the Hellmouth spawn.^[7]

The Angel Investigations team performed a spell to bind Skip to the Earth dimension. With a circle of sand of the red palm around him, Skip woke up trapped inside a cylinder of red light. They also threatened Skip to perform a spell to bind him in a Sphere of the Infinite Agonies.^[2]

In his fight against Willow, Giles used the incantation "vincire" to contain the witch and her powers within a binding field. Willow float unconscious in the air, and Giles described that the spell put her in a kind of stasis for the time.^[3]

After an unsuccessful attempt of exorcising a Plagiarus demon from Hannah, Giles performed a binding spell to contain the demon within the little girl. Giles chanted: "To soma, ei filaki. Ei zoe mou, o toixos." (From Greek: "The body is a prison. My life, the wall.") With the final word "stamata" ("stop"), Giles sacrificed a dear memory, binding the demon to some day remove it permanently. When Angel eventually killed the reawaken Plagiarus demon, the memory Giles had sacrificed went to him.^[4]

While in another dimension, Willow cast a binding hex to trap a Hyberrax. Touching large stones, she chanted: "Yewla Khash... Teska Neik." The creature became stuck mid-air when it tried to jump over the rocks, and the Hyberrax would continue immobile for six hours, which allowed Marrak to stab and kill it.^[5]