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We're all mad in here
A few years ago a friend of mine got involved in some serious witch warfare. With his group scattered and destroyed, he naturally wanted his revenge. Long story short, the antagonist group got away yet again with their actions unpunished and with an even firmer standing and the others receded and licked their wounds, one of them even changing country. Whilst I wasn't personally involved in such an event, it served as a lesson. In the magical community, especially when you come out of your room and start interacting with others and putting forth actions and words, there are going to be those who want you in their game or dead. Territorial law and magical supremacy, one rooster to fuck all the chickens and so on. Sometimes it seems you are powerplaying influence more than learning magic, or maybe the both just walk hand in hand. Also, if you are in working in group, your group is as strong as the weakest person. Always foresee that, when the shit hits the fan, your mates will gather their belongings and make a run for it leaving you alone to contend with the raging maniacs after your carefully built egregore. In the end, what counts is your ability to stand on your own two legs and protect your castle.
Take a highway to the end of the night
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
Despite the poor translation work of Exodus 22:18, the sentiment displayed here is seen throughout European cultural history from the Greek Circe to long after the witch-craze of the Renaissance. Echoed by both African and Asian counterparts, the witch, more than the sorcerer, is an object of fear and persecution for she is like an arbitrary force of nature who, antagonistically, fulfils her tasks not with the greater good of the society in which she is inserted, even if on the fringes of it, in mind but with her own and in some stances, that of her master(s). Whether by worshipping perceived evil spirits or simply exploiting them to do her bidding it's the conjunction of the manipulation of natura and self serving motives that links the Witch across the globe. Of course, this is the perspective of those that, rightly so, fear her. I can assure you that, for good or for evil, witches know better than to go about flailing curse after curse simply because they can.
From the existing documents, the seeds for post modernism were planted some 26 centuries ago, when the Greeks decided to innovate by rational inquiry and research and thus Philosophy was born. It may not have been called by that name back then, when man was still trying his best to break from the conservative order and one may even argue that the status quo has always played the same controlling factor then and now but it still remains that the individual and rational search for truth, despite what that truth may be, as well as its discussion, critique and rebuttal, have seen their beginning in Greece. From then till now, many schools of thought emerged, revolutions happened and changed the social constraints but one thing remains constant: Humankind's search for truth, for meaning, for whys and hows. In that act of freedom many traditions got sacrificed as humankind replaced paradigm with paradigm, refined theories and developed laws and axioms. But, as with everything, that honest desire to understand, rethink and adapt, got severely misused by the pagan and occult community at large who used it to further a personal agenda based on disregard for hard work. To react against tradition, one needs to be a part of tradition first. There needs to be a living problematic requiring solution. Often times, in our enlarged community, what happens is exactly the opposite. And so we come face to face with 101 book readers, who read that "anything goes" and propagate that virus because, after all things considered, magic is psychological and there isn't really anything bad out there. It's all in your head, and following your relative belly button will wield better results than reading a bunch of books and talking to a bunch of people who might force you recognize that maybe you just don't know it all. Tradition gets a door slammed on its face without even being understood, or studied. In this depredation, tools got the sharp end of the stick and are now treated as minor mind helpers and glamour lenders to theatrical rites where one gets to play a witch or a magician.
The fashion accessory
If you have a similar experience to mine, you have seen this once too many times: random noobie read 2 or 3 wiccan books and got introduced to the notion of liturgical tools. He/She browsed the web for some shops and found some really cool Egyptian Athames and some sparkly wands. But it just so happens that, adding on, getting a full set of pretty ritual items (ahem, items that resonate with you!) is going to be quite expensive. And then he/she wonders if they are truly necessary.
- You don't need any tools to work magic/ You only need yourself to work magic
It's true. You don't. But typically, the people that say this are people that have very little experience in magic and even less with the tools themselves. Whilst not necessarily required to work all aspects of magic, and there are quite a few magical "practices" that dispose of them (the Evil Eye and several other actions of fascination for instance), tools always have had their place and their function, some of them accompanying you from the beginning of your magical lifetime to your grave. Tools marked the appearance of the genus Homo and the first hominid to bear it was a handy man. The importance of tools in our evolution and survival is directly translated into their importance in our mythic mind, thus we see gods and other archetypal images being equated with them and often times they are as formidable as the objects they wield, their very character being defined by the array of magical items they possess. Cauldrons and cornucopias of abundance, spears that never miss their targets, girdles that arouse desire have both powers by themselves and are an extension of the spirit they belong to. It is also not an uncommon action in mythology for gods to seal their tutelage of the hero offering or borrowing him their very own prized possessions, thus marking the continuous relationship between humankind and the sacred and initiatic, tools being that vehicle. Likewise, the hero often quests to the otherworld for a magical object that will enable him to complete his objective and without it he would be powerless to do so; in turn, the object lies awaiting the one soul capable of using its abilities. Looking at the iconographic tools of the Witch, one finds her accompanied by the broom and the cauldron just as the magician is often seen with a staff. Many others mark that elusive quality of witchdom. From the witch's ladder to the familiar, they all share a commonality: they are living, breathing entities with a life and a will of their own. In these subtleties of life and unlife, the witches tools have three main purposes that are revealed as she crosses the boundaries between worlds and as helpers and tutelary spirits reveal themselves: their ontological and practical purpose, their symbolic purpose and their transformative purpose. Each of these purposes are a testimony to the witches ability and progression along the liminary paths. The f<ct that many of them are common household items displays their ability to act as connectors between the seen and unseen world, thus a weaving tool is both a weaver of cord and also a weaver and manipulator of fatum . Blessed are the hands of the witch that craft a web of protection and success on the embroidery that embellishes a student's cape* and cursed are the hands that write wrongdoers doom on the parchment that fire will set free. The relationship of a witch with her tools is one of power. Power attained, power regained and power bestowed, multilaterally. These actions are not to be marked by sparkle or shine but blood, bone and soil. To obtain these items one does not go to ebay, one goes down the lonely road to prepare the gallows and hang. It's by dying that we birth our tools. We woo, we bargain, we take oaths that constrain and free us, we forge relationships and we are owned just as much as we own. By accepting these tools, and they come with a price, we are willingly taking a compromise with the path itself.
Likewise, if you use your tools to keep your focus, you need to put down the tools you own. 70%, if not more, of neophyte magical training is based on building mental discipline. This means hours of thought control, developing concentration and awareness, keeping the mind empty, creating and maintaining complex sceneries with sound, image, smell and taste, doing the previous whilst moving and so on and so forth. Adding to this, prior to ritual, there are ritual baths to soothe the mind, preparation of the ritual space, meditation, introspection, contemplation, communion, prayer, grounding and centering. All these actions enforce and maintain focus. If you need your tool kit to keep your mind from wandering about what's on TV or what your boss told you earlier on, you don't need tools. You need to allot yourself one hour per day to develop your focus. When you stop relying on sticks and stones to work that's when you will be able to actually use those sticks and stones to do what they are supposed to.
"…they forget that the ceremonies they perform have function, have purpose simply beyond tradition pr habit of worship. When ceremonies and rules become all important"**..then magic is forgotten.
This leads me to one last point. When magic is not magic but a theatre. I have emphasized this before, but will do it again. When our actions are empty, when they are devoid of actual necessity and real action, we are not doing magic. We are staging magic. Magic comes from the interconnection between operator and the world. When we need to rationalize and think that a certain something symbolizes fire and is basically a portable phallus, then we aren't operating the thing but the idea of the thing. Of course that, in itself, there's nothing wrong with operating ideas. Ideas are what drives the world, but what drives ideas are emotions and needs and I take after the axiom that what better represents a cutting knife is a cutting knife, born out of the need to cut. None of my tools represent anything other than themselves and what they do or did at any point in my life. For me there are no goblets representing water and the feminine principle or non-cutting letter knives representing air or fire or anything that anyone had in mind. Tools are to be operational and truly representative of what they are. In this, I hope to achieve both a nod to tradition and a rejection of the past aristotelic based ideas that plague and cloud coming into being and our awareness of being. But my motives aside, and pardon me for the drunkenness, what I mean to say is that only that which is rich and full of the "sound and fury" of itself will accomplish its bliss. Bliss folks, it's all about bliss and effectiveness. Nailing the nail, kicking the universe's ass.
*In Portugal college students use a traditional garb that usually has embroideries about what school they belong to, about their gf's and bf's and all sorts of stuffs from charms to ladies boobies and beer brands.
** From some random horror story I read.
