by Starhawk
In the relaxed silence that follows, we all put a hand under the saltwater bowl and lift it together to the sky. We call on the moon by her phase, new, full, or old, and ask her to change us as she changes, to take our old, tired troubles and fill us with fresh, clean energy and new starts. (Alternatively, you can imagine a drain in the bottom of the bowl, draining all the icky stuff down into the center of the earth, where the heat and pressure of the earth purify it. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as my old mother used to say.) Setting the bowl back down again, we sprinkle one another with the water, asking blessings and healing for one another. “May you be cleansed, may you be purified.” Depending on the mood of the group, this may be quite solemn and holy, or it may turn into a water fight, complete with shrieks and giggles.
The “Tree of Life Grounding” and the “Saltwater Purification” are the basic exercises we teach beginners and use most frequently. But they are only the beginning. There are as many ways to ground and purify as there are people creating ritual. We rarely do anything the same way twice. Creativity and a sense of humor lead us in a thousand different directions, and we are constantly experimenting, finding new ways to get Younger Self to come out and play. Rob used to do the shortest grounding ever heard, “Roots down, branches up!” when he was in a hurry. Raven used to pause in a “Tree of Life” when our roots touched the center of the earth and do a purification right then. “Send any old tension and worries down your roots on a breath and a sound, into the hot heart of Mother Earth. She knows what to do with them!”
Creating Sacred Space: Casting a Circle
After grounding and purifying, you will be ready to cast a circle. For your circle to have power, you will need to prepare yourself by meditating on the directions: east, south, west, and north. You will need to do some firsthand observation of Mother Nature in action. She’s been busy all around your own front door, by day and by night. Now it’s time for you to begin to notice what she’s up to.
Exercise: Preparing to Cast a Circle
Start by meditating on the east. Try to get up early enough to be outside at dawn. Find the brightness of the rising sun; that is the east. The east is not an abstract spiritual theory; it’s as familiar and practical as breakfast.
Observe where the sun first strikes your neighborhood, your block, the house or building where you live. Open all your senses to the dawn. Do you hear a change in the sounds of birds, frogs, and insects? In the sounds of traffic? Is there a breeze that springs up or dies down at dawn? Take a deep breath. How does the air smell as it changes from darkness to light? Sense for coolness and warmth, dampness, heaviness or lightness of the air. Notice how the dawn invites you to make a fresh start. When you are finished, say, “Blessed be the east.”
Over the course of several days, do the same for noontime, sunset, and midnight. Look for the sun standing high in the south at noon, and feel its strongest heat and brightness. Open all your senses to noontime, just as you did to dawn. Notice how the noontime invites you to action. Say, “Blessed be the south.”
At sunset, you will be facing west as you watch the setting sun. Once again, open all your senses to the west. Notice how the half-light invites you into the dream world. Say, “Blessed be the west.”
Try to find the North Star in the sky at midnight. Facing north, open all your senses to midnight. Notice how the silent dark, the stillness and cold, touch your deep sense of awe. Say, “Blessed be the north.”
Take your time with this exercise. Grounding your spiritual practice in your own personal, unhurried observation of Mother Nature will pay rich dividends for you. Becoming a practicing witch is not a race against the clock; it’s the work of a lifetime. Soon it will begin to feel easy and natural to find the directions. Try it at the grocery store, at work, or picking up the kids. Wherever you are, your world is bounded by east, south, west, and north. When you can easily and naturally feel your orientation to the directions, you are ready to cast a circle.
Exercise: Casting Your First Circle
Many women and men like to cast their first circles around their bedrooms, but kitchens and favorite outdoor places run a close second. We often cast our circles holding a sharp, double-bladed knife in our strongest hand, but fingertips work just fine, as does a pen, a feather, a stick, or whatever appeals to your Younger Self at the moment.
Ground and purify, say out loud, “Let this circle protect me from all that is harmful, and let in all that is healing.” Face the north. Stretch your arms out towards the north, and feel the energy humming in the tips of your fingers or humming through your fingers and your knife. You’re alive. I promise there is energy in the tips of your fingers. You may need to adjust your attention to feel the light, living hum of your body going about its wondrous business. If it’s difficult to feel, try rubbing the tips of your fingers together, snapping your fingers, clapping your hands. Now feel again.
Next, walk around to the east, feeling your fingertips, or your knife, drawing an arc of energy through the space. Have you ever seen the afterglow when children swing sparklers around on the Fourth of July? Some people “see” magical energies like that, some people sense them as physical sensations like heat or cold, some sense them as though powerfully imagining them. Whichever door to the Otherworld works best for you, walk right through it like Rose.
Now, facing east, allow your own impressions of the east at dawn to flood your imagination and memory. Hold that image as strongly as you can, and say out loud, “By the air that is her breath.” Continue around to the south, and when you’re facing the south, let your impressions and memories of the noon sun high in the south flood your imagination. Say, “By the fire of her bright spirit.” Continue to the west, and let your mind fill with the image of the setting sun at twilight. Say, “By the waters of her living womb.” Continue back to the north, and remember the North Star at midnight. Say, “By the earth, which is her body,” closing the circle at the exact spot where you started.
Turn and walk back to the center of the space you’ve marked. Here stretch one hand as high as you can reach, and stretch the other toward the earth. Imagine the arc of energy you drew around the circumference of your circle springing up above and below and all around you into a sphere of glowing energy. Say, “By all that is above, and all that is below, the circle is cast. We are between the worlds. What is between the worlds can change all the worlds.” It is done. We have cast a circle.
Creating Sacred Space: Invocation
We cast a circle before a ritual first of all to exclude the ordinary responsibilities and distractions that make it difficult to focus and concentrate. This is very similar to bowing when stepping onto the mat at a martial arts practice or the moment of silence and prayer that opens many twelve-step meetings. We compose our minds and spirits and prepare ourselves to enter another “world” where different rules apply.
The second reason for casting a circle is to contain the energies of the participants so that power can be raised and directed to a purpose. As Starhawk wrote in The Spiral Dance, to boil water you need a pot.
A third reason for the circle is that it allows us to intentionally invite in powers that we may find helpful in our work. We call these invitations “invocations,” which just means that we are using our voices (voces in Latin) to call something “in.” Witches in the Reclaiming tradition always begin ritual by inviting the powers of the four elements into the circle.
When we say that there are four elements, we are not referring to the periodic table of the elements that scientists use to describe atoms. We are referring to the ancient science of many earth-based cultures that knew that there were three physical states, air, water, and earth (science would now refer to them as gas, liquid, and solid) and one other state, fire (or energy). We call these the Elements of Life, because they are what we each need for life. Each human being, each animal, and each plant needs clean air, fresh water, healthy soil or food, and an energy source in order to live. Our lives can ta
ke place only in the delicate balance of all these. We animals take in oxygen and food and breathe out carbon and excrete nitrogen. Meanwhile, plants feed off nitrogen and breathe in carbon while breathing out oxygen and producing food. The sun warms our planet and sets the great ocean and air currents in motion, the moon pulls the tides, and we swing through the great cycle of our seasons and our weather. No matter how we vote or whether we are rich or poor, none of us can live outside the balance of these elemental cycles.
In our tradition, each element corresponds with one of the cardinal directions: east with air, south with fire, west with water, and north with earth. And we begin each ritual by calling on (invoking) the power of the elements and reminding ourselves of exactly where we stand, amidst the balance of the Elements of Life. Our lives depend on nature, and now in the twenty-first century, the green and living planet we call “nature” depends on us.
Exercise: Invoking the Elements of Life
Face the east in the circle you have made. With your strongest hand, draw an invoking pentacle at the easternmost edge of the circle. The pentacle is like the air lock in a submarine; it allows the powers that you are specifically inviting to enter your circle without disrupting the protective power of the circle. Say, “East, Powers of Air, I thank you for sustaining my breath. Come springtime, new life, clarity of vision, eye of hawk, be welcome.” Or, even better, use words of your own as you develop your own associations with the directions and elements. Walk around to the south, and draw another invoking pentacle. Say, “South, Powers of Fire, I thank you for sustaining the dance of my life. Come hearth-fire, noontime, come heat of sex, transforming anger, come Ever-dancer, be welcome.” Walk around to the west, and draw another invoking pentacle. Say, “West, Powers of Water, I thank you for sustaining my blood. Come surging tide, moon-pulled, dissolver, heart’s love, whale song, twilight, be welcome.” Walk around to the north, and draw another invoking pentacle. Say, “North, Powers of Earth, I thank you for sustaining my body. Great Bear, cave-dweller, winter-sleeper, silent earth and fertile field, midnight, be welcome.” Coming back to the center of the circle, call the center. “Center, I thank you for sustaining my spirit. Hub of the Great Wheel, hearth, Orb-weaver in your web, cauldron’s brew, be welcome.”
INVOKING PENTACLE
BANISHING PENTACLE
In Reclaiming circles, different people often volunteer to call each direction/element. Or the whole group can call the elemental powers together. Some of the most effective invocations I’ve experienced have been wordless, a slowly building whistle of birdsong and breath in the east, a riot of snapping fingers and clapping rhythm in the south, crashing sound of waves and lonely, longing cries in the west, stamping feet and deep humming tones in the north. These are invocation styles that bring the whole group in, and the power flows strongly. In a trained group there is no need to explain the qualities of each element.
Creating Sacred Space: Devoking
The next chapter of the Elements Path will show you how to complete the creation of sacred space with the invocation of the Goddess and the God. For now, though, we need to devoke our circle. We try not to leave our magical energies carelessly strewn about without folding them up neatly and putting them back where they belong, inside us. Magical energies are real, and they come out of our physical and energetic bodies. For long-term physical and mental health it is important to replace and renew the energy we use in magic. For this reason, careful devocation and complete closure at the end of each magical working is a healthy practice for every Witch.
A simple magical rule for devoking, or undoing any magic, is to do everything backward, leaving nothing out. So to devoke a circle we first say thank you and good-bye to any powers that we have specifically invoked. First we thank the deities and the center and say, “Hail and farewell!” Then we draw banishing pentacles in each of the directions, closing our air locks, as we say good-bye to the earth, the water, the fire, and the air, thanking them specifically for the help we got from them during the ritual. Then we open the circle by saying, “By the earth that is her body, by the waters of her living womb, by the fire of her bright spirit, by the air that is her breath, the circle is open, yet unbroken. May the peace of the Goddess go in our hearts. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again!”
Like Rose, we have asked questions and found out why we were uneasy in our old castles. We have created a doorway out of our old castle, out of our normal consciousness. When we want to walk between the worlds, we can create sacred space and invite Younger Self to come out and play. Now we will begin our study of the elements, by working with the element air.
The Power of the Elements
In Witchcraft, each of the four elements corresponds to a direction, to a magical tool, to colors, and to many plants, stars, and stones. These correspondences add to our magical tool kit, so that if a Witch wants more energy on a certain day, she can drop a tiny gold earring of a lion, calendula petals, a drop of lemon oil, and some whole grains of wheat into a tiny square of orange cloth, hold it up in the sunlight while facing south, and hang it around her neck. She has invoked the power of fire (while reminding herself that if she wants energy she has to eat healthy food), and she will feel it with her all day long.
In the early training of each Witch, she or he learns not only how to ground, purify, and cast a circle, but also how to invoke each element, and she is introduced to the magical techniques that correspond to each. As we work through the story of the Twelve Wild Swans, we will stop along the way and learn about the powers of each element in turn.
Air
Magical techniques that correspond with air include breath control and visualization. The tool of air is the athalme, the Witch’s black-handled, double-edged knife. The task of air is the creation and protection of boundaries. The power of the wise corresponding to air is “to know.”
Breath Exercises
The air we draw in with every breath is a work of art and history, created by Mother Nature. It contains the outbreath of ancient plants and algae, the exhalation of oceans and volcanos, a bit of smoke from last year’s forest fires, the exhaust from yesterday’s traffic. Our breath is the end-product of myriad natural processes (including human activities). It connects us to all the living and the whole life of nature.
Basic Breath Meditation
Breathe in, knowing that the whole life of nature feeds you. Breathe out, knowing that you feed the whole life of nature. Keep breathing deeply in and out until you feel fully energized and connected to all things. Raise your arms up above your head and breathe out a giant “thank you.” Rest for a moment with an open mind, and see what Mother Nature sends back to you. This meditation alone, practiced regularly, will be a wonderful foundation for a personal spiritual practice.
Many Different Breaths
When I was preparing to give birth, the midwives taught me three basic breaths. The first was a simple, slow breath from deep in the belly. This breath was to help keep me calm and centered during the painful intensity of the contractions. The next breath was a quick shallow inbreath, followed by a quick blowing for the outbreath, as though I were blowing out a candle. This breath was to help me control my impulse to push, if it came too early, before I was completely dilated and ready to give birth. The third breath was a deep, powerful, pushing groan, to help get the baby out when it was time.
These simple breath techniques, which are already familiar to many women who have given birth and their partners, show us an important bit of wisdom about our breaths. Different kinds of breath correspond to different physical, emotional, and spiritual states. By changing your breath, you can create change in your body, emotion, and spirit. Try practicing the three breaths of the laboring woman, and see for yourself how each breath makes you feel.
Practice using the first breath to calm and center yourself in difficult moments, the second to control an unwise or untimely impulse, and the third to give you the power to do the impossible (believe me, giving birt
h seems impossible until it actually happens). You may not want to use the third breath in public unless you are actually moving furniture or practicing the shotput. For some reason people think it’s odd when women walk around making sustained groaning sounds from deep in their bellies.
There are many breath techniques besides these three, but these are a wonderful starting place, already familiar to many women. By simply observing your own breath habits and patterns and consciously using your breath to help yourself, you can get to know yourself better and add powerful tools to your spiritual tool belt.
Honoring Air: Giving Back
In the previous exercises we worked on ways we can use air to help us. Now it’s only fair to work on some ways that we can help the air. This is the law, the heart of earth-based spirituality. We give to nature, and so we receive. We receive, and then we must give back. Ignorance of this law and disregard for it have painted our species into quite a corner now at the turn of the millennium.
So now it’s time to make a start in your own commitment to the air. First you need some information. Where does the air you breathe come from? What is “upstream” from your prevailing winds? What’s “downstream” from you? Who breathes your exhaust? Whose are you breathing? Is there one thing you can change in your own life to help keep your air cleaner and healthier? Next time you do the basic breath meditation, commit yourself to making this one small change when you breath out the big “thank you” at the end of the meditation.
Visualization
In addition to breath, another magical technique associated with the air is visualization. When we close our eyes and rest in the blue-black of inner space, odd, glowing afterimages appear as though on a screen in our minds. In dreams, we can “see” a complete and detailed drama that takes place within our minds, and we can even participate and take action there. We can learn to “see” scenes and visions with our inner eye while we are awake, also.
