The Circle of Witchcraft: Part One

Recently I have been thinking about the Circle again. The Circle that some witches cast to step between the worlds, to orient to and commune with the Mysterious and Mighty Ones, to contain, focus, and raise the power we gather, and to hide our work from those who would wish us harm.

I am currently co-teaching Reclaiming Elements of Magic - the foundational core class of the Reclaiming Tradition, first taught in the Californian summer of 1980 by Starhawk and Diane Baker - with Pandora, one of my elders in the Craft in two of my Traditions. She is also a dear friend, smart and funny, and a co-conspirator who I simply adore.

In the first session - in this case we began with Air, this is how Pandora began in Elements - Pandora took us through a Reclaiming-style casting of the Circle. In Reclaiming we often cast Circles by taking our knife (or I see people use wands, feathers, staffs, and hands too) and directing power/fire from the Earth and the Stars through the tool and casting out either into the midnight point (north or south depending on hemisphere) or the east and moving sunwise. At each direction we cut or draw a flaming pentagram as a way to seal and ward the space in that direction, but also to open that direction to specific spirits we either name specifically or broadly. We trace the fire from pentagram to pentagram, completing the Circle, and then gesturing above and below once more we wrap ourselves in the Circle entirely. In Reclaiming most often I hear this spoken of as: going between the worlds, creating a magical container, and lending protection and invisibility to the workers within the bounds of the Circle. Pandora also said something rather simple, which maybe I was taking for granted, but hit me over the head with a magnetic thud at the time, “We are making a place for the Gods to be. If we call them, then we need to give them a place to be.”

I had read things to that effect multiple times in “the literature”, but my Wildwood relationship to the Circle was more about orientation to the landscape/cosmos and tracing the edgeless edges of things, anchoring and flowering as the Holy Centre which is here and now, as well as anywhere and anywhen. Interestingly my first forays into casting Circles as an 11-12-13 year old were more like this:

Ground and centre.
Feel for and conjure the Elemental forces to ride the roads of the directions and then begin to whirl and swirl and mix and mingle around you until you are in the fulcrum of a spinning wheel of power, a vortex.

I am not sure where I pulled that from, possibly one of the books I was reading at the time. It was deeply potent.

It evolved into something strangely closer to a Reclaiming-style Circle-casting from age 14-16. I would gesture to and conjure the Direction and an associated Element and then I would move sunwise from point to point and conjure that Elemental power with me as I walked. So in the southern hemisphere where I mainly reside I was moving an Airy force from East to North and then a Fiery force from North to West, etc. I had read about Elemental Kings - Paralda, Djinn, Niksa, Ghob - and Guardians of Watchtowers but none of that sang to me at the time. What did sing to me was working directly with the Elemental Spirits: the Sylphs, the Salamanders, the Undines, and the Gnomes. I have copious notes in old high school journals of working directly with them and invocations I had written to them.

However, by the time I entered the Coven of the Wildwood nearly 20 years ago now, the Circle-casting we did was decidedly specific, with very specific words that have a great deal of meaning to me and seem to pull power out of the air. Similar to the Reclaiming-style of magic I entered in 2010-2011, it was about moving between the worlds primarily, but as well as this it is about engaging directly with the Wildwood. There was not so much conscious attention paid to protection or power-containment, these were side-benefits if considered at all.

I have heard it said by some that when we effectively cast the Circle we are all moving into the same Circle of Witchcraft that exists beyond time and space. Therefore all the Mighty Dead - those witches who know the Circle - are there with us. Perhaps the Mighty Dead of our particular Houses and Traditions, but yes, the Witches who have passed, who have moved through Mystery, kissed the Cauldron, and watch us still. And yes, it is a place for the Gods to be with us as well. A place that holds us all together in blessed liminality, riding that hedge.

In the Feri Tradition the Circle is certainly a place to be with witches and away from prying eyes. It is also a lens by which the we can ‘see’ the Gods and the Gods can ‘see’ us.

The Circle rests upon other tricks at times, like the Crossroads and the Compass, which are also their own phenomenons and mysteries, those who tell you otherwise may not be paying close attention.

This may help elucidate such matters: Crossroads, Compass, Circle: Witch’s Ways of Becoming

Image: The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse (1886).