The Witch's Guide to Ritual. Cerridwen Greenleaf
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Consecrating Your Ritual Tools
You should design a personal consecration ritual for your magical tools. Use the following ritual as a simple “temple template” to build on. In essence, in this ritual you are dedicating yourself and your tools for the betterment of all and setting a foundational intention for your good works. Every time you acquire a new tool or treasure, perform this rite. As you grow in experience, you can embellish the ritual. Refer to your Book of Shadows. Is there a certain phase of the moon that brings you more clarity? Should you use corresponding colors, crystals, essential oils, incenses, and herbs for your own astrological sun and moon sign? Is there a specific deity with whom you feel an affinity? Use these correspondences to begin designing the rituals of your dreams. The more associations you learn and use, the more effective your power will grow. Keep good notes of your ritual work in your BOS, and soon you will become a “maestro of magic.”
Ritual Tools That Need Charging
You will need a symbol of each of the four elements—air, earth, fire, and water—such as: a candle for fire, incense for air, a cup of water, a bowl of salt.
One way to design your own ritual is to look at Chapter 8, which explains the four elements. Choose a symbol from the information there or from the appendices. Also let your instinct guide you to choose as you wish or what you are inspired by.
Take the new ritual tool and pass it through the scented smoke of the incense and say:
Now inspired with the breath of air.
Then pass the tool swiftly through the flame of the candle and say:
Burnished by fire.
Sprinkle the tool with water and say:
Purified by water.
Dip the tool into the bowl of salt and say:
Empowered by the earth.
Hold the tool before you with both hands and imagine an enveloping, warm white light purifying the tool. Now say:
Steeped in spirit and bright with light.
Place the cleansed tool upon your altar and say:
By craft made and by craft charged and changed, this tool [fill in the actual name, bolline, Book of Shadows, etc.] I will use for the purpose of good in this world and in the realm of the gods and goddesses. I hereby consecrate this tool ______ .
Other tools you will use in ritual are more intangible. These include your breath, your intuition, your psychic powers, and your ability to focus your mental powers and spiritual intentions. Because they are intangible, only your intention can purify them. From time to time, you will use colors, herbs, oils, crystals, and numbers. Many of these ritual correspondences and associations have been passed down through the centuries, whereas many of them were invented by modern authors. Information on them can be found in the appendices in this book.
Crystals can also be charged. But tools that come from nature and are not “manmade,” but are of divine design, such as flowers, feathers, and herbs, already contain an intrinsic magic of their own and can be used as you find them.
Your tools will collect and hold the magic that lives inside you. They will become instilled with your energy and stored at your altar or in your sacred space. They will become your power source and will magnify the strength of your ritual work. Your altar should be a place of peace and meditation where your spirit can soar. Adorned with your treasured objects and the tools of your practice, it is a place of focus where you can enrich your life through ritual. You can create a wellspring of spirit so you can live an enchanted life every single day.
You can also perform rituals and make magic without any tools or implements at all. Your intention alone is extremely powerful. This simple approach could be called “Zen magic.” When you perform ritual in this way, you are one step closer to the methods by which early men and women created ceremonies.
Establishing a Power Source: Creating a Personal Altar
Before there were temples and churches, the primary place of reverence was the altar. The word altar comes from a Latin word that means “high place.” With a personal altar, you can reach the heights of your spirituality and grow higher in wisdom. You construct an altar when you assemble symbolic items in a meaningful manner and focus both your attention and intention. When you work with the combined energies of these items, you are performing ritual. Your rituals can arise from your needs, imagination, or the seasonal and traditional ceremonies that you find in this book and in others. In her marvelous collection, A Book of Women’s Altars, Nancy Brady Cunningham recommends “bowing” or placing your hands on the ground in front of your altar as you end the ritual. “Grounding symbolizes the end of the ritual and signals the mind to return to an ordinary state of awareness as you re-enter your daily life.”
An altar is a physical point of focus for the ritual, containing items considered sacred and essential to ritual work and spirituality. An altar can be anything from a rock in the forest to an exquisite antique table. Even portable of temporary altars can suffice—a board suspended between two chairs, for example, can become sacred space if it’s consecrated. You can also create more than one altar if you have the room or have multiple, specific needs, such as attracting work, creativity, love, or healing. You can also have altars dedicated to various deities, if you desire to go deep into the energies of those gods or goddesses. You can also create shrines to honor a deity. A shrine is a place devoted to a divinity that becomes hallowed by that association. A shrine can be any size that suits your circumstance, such as a corner in a room, an entire building, or even a small shelf or windowsill that receives the light of the moon and sun. You can also use a large space or create a home temple space that accommodates highly complicated and intricate rituals for regular use with a large group.
Tradition usually places the feminine Goddess space on the left-hand side of the altar and the masculine God space on the right. Once you are comfortable and experienced with ritual work, you can begin to customize the altar.
Tripods: Mobile Altars
Outdoor altars are usually of a temporary nature—the beach is a wonderful place to set up a one-day altar on driftwood with seaweed and shells. There, unless the beach is too crowded, you can commune with the water deities and seek your deepest reaches of spirit. Forest, farm, and meadow offer earth and sky and the sanctity of nature in which to build your altar.
In Athens during the classical period, the lane leading to the temple dedicated to the god Dionysus was called the Avenue of Tripods because it was lined with small tripod altars; this was a holy road indeed. Tripod originates in the Greek word meaning “three footed,” and these altars functioned as the sites of offerings. A three-footed altar is more practical for outdoor use than a regular four-legged table because it is stable on uneven ground. For your outdoor rituals, therefore, it’s best to acquire a tripod that will provide a steady surface for your ritual work performed out in the holy realm of Nature.
At Delphi, the revered oracular center, the Pythoness and her sisters prophesied from the sacred seat of power, a tripod.
Fireplace Altars
Vesta is the Roman cognate of the revered Greek goddess, Hestia, “first of all divinities to be invoked” in classical rituals. In Greece, they had public hearths called prytaneums that came under the domain of the most revered Hestia, protector of “all innermost things,” according to the great philosopher Pythagoras, who also claimed that her altar fire was the center of the earth. The altar of Vesta in classical Rome was tended by the Vestal Virgins and was also believed to be the very