The most important thing to remember about the use of ritual tools is this: the tools are unimportant -- we have all we need to make magic: our bodies, our breath, our voices, each other.
However, ritual tools can be useful to remind your subconscious that you are in a different place -- a place between the worlds -- when you are working ritual magic. They can also be used to direct energy. Some of the more traditional Wiccan tools and their correspondences are:
| Tool |
Element |
Direction |
Sphere of influence |
Wand (or Blade, depending on tradition)
Censer (Incense burner) |
Air |
East |
Mind, intellect, ideas, abstract learning, theory, dawn, spring, wind and breath |
Blade (or Wand, depending on tradition)
Candle |
Fire |
South |
Creative energy, courage, healing and destroying, willpower, noon, summer |
| Cup |
Water |
West |
Emotions, daring, the unconscious, intuition, twilight, autumn |
Pentacle
Crystal |
Earth |
North |
Material gain, the body, health, money, birth and death, midnight, winter |
| Cauldron |
Spirit |
Center |
"Soul", spirituality, transformation, change, transcendence, immanence |
| Broom |
Spirit |
Circumference |
Purification and protection - used to psychically cleanse an area or to guard a home by laying it across an entryway |
| Bell |
Spirit |
Circle |
Purification - used to psychically cleanse ritual areas and personal energy fields |
This table is a combination of what I was taught and what works for me. Feel free to embellish, rearrange or completely ignore this system. Native Americans use a six-direction system; the Norse used nine, including their home realm of Midgard. To be effective, ritual must speak to you personally, and ineffective ritual kills spirituality.
Music
A particularly important ritual tool in the Church of Amazement is music. We’ve used everything from a simple percussion circle to a highly orchestrated chant CD with 15 harmonizing vocalists to create our aural magic. Music tends to increase personal involvement in the ritual and produces freer flowing energy. A list of commonly used songs and chants and a selection of pre-recorded ritual music appear later in this book.
Music can be used prior to a ritual to set the mood; during, to create sacred space, as an invocation and offering to Deity, and to raise energy; and afterwards in celebration, as well as a gentle return to normal space.
