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Underground > Temple >

Making magical tools

19:19 / 01.08.06

Further to the discussion in the tattoo thread and Mordant's suggestion of a thread to discuss creating magical tools, this thread now be it.

For me it has been vital to make or assist in making some of my own magical or ritual items, but I do have others which I have bought, like my singing bowl and my censer which is made of woodstone and is beautiful. I bought that in Glastonbury because I literally couldn't leave the shop without it.

I think if you make your own items, the ritual of making them becomes part of the magic itself. Bought items are fine because you can bless them, but for me they don't have the closeness and sense of purpose that made ones do.

I've made my own wand out of found Ash and went to 'collect' it in a shamanic ritual invoving mushrooms which I had grown. I have an Athame which was made for me by TBM; carved out of a solid piece of selenite and set with amethyst, amber and jet. These stone are all sacred to me for various reasons.

These items are truly precious things.

I mostly make my own incense and am currently making Kyphi. (It takes a little while.) For me incense is a vital tool and I love the ritual of making it; grinding it and meditating.

Some things you can't make. You can't make a crystal ball, but you can buy one and make a special cloth for it to sit on.

Made items are charged with the energy of the creator. To buy a magical ritual item someone else has made is a big risk, you have to put a lot of faith and trust in the creator. Having said that I've started making magical items to sell, like Sami knives. I don't know if I'd expect people to buy them for their specific 'only' ritual knife though.

19:54 / 01.08.06

At the moment I'm making a set of 52 playing cards backed by significant images. Tarot like, but dissimilar. Playing on the idea that life is a game etc. I'm intending to use them for spell casting and divination. They will be beautiful. Pics promised as soon as I start.

22:21 / 01.08.06

All this started with the question of making your own rune sets, so I'll say it's something I've been putting off for a variety of reasons. The biggest is just that I don't use runes for divination, so having a rune set hasn't seemed necessary. But I've also felt that while I'm good with a woodburner, wooden runes don't feel heavy enough to me. I've been thinking about either casting them in pewter, or etching them into iron coins. Oppinions?

I'm also a bit curious where others draw the line between personal magical tools and other types of spiritual, magical, or religious objects. I'm a very crafty person, but I find I am mostly creating regalia and altar pieces, rather than what I would call tools. I usually feel like ritual tools are just visual aids that I'm working around. I feel actually using tools is a weak area for me.

I've made all kinds of altar items and ritual regalia for various gods and powers. For example, I've made a crown for mediums who are posessed by Yemaya to wear at the Umbanda house I've only recently officially joined. And I've made special candles for each of the Vanir, which was a very intense process. But are those really tools? The candles mostly just sit on Their altars, and I bring them to light at devotional rituals.

I think only magical tool I've made so far is my old redwood staff. I didn't do anything complicated. I just happened to find the branch in the forest when I was 11 or so, so I took it home, stripped the bark and whittled and sanded the surface, and then soaked it in water for a few days (to drown any bugs) and oiled the surface. But I didn't do that with what I understood at the time to be magical intent. Just with the intent that the staff was going to be completely mine. It's only been somewhat more recently that I realized I'd been using it in ways I now consider magical.

--Ember--

Daemon est Deus Inversus

21:14 / 03.08.06

I don't think it's all that important. Again, I'm talking from a GD perspective. I don't place all that much emphasis on the elemental tools. You need balance of the elements on the altar. The elemental tools, other than that, are nice for grade openings.

What most people use, in our system, is the Lotus Wand. If you don't have a Phoenix Wand you can use a band on the Lotus congruent with the hour and ruler for planetary invcocations. It really doesn't matter if you make them yourself. They are personalized through use.

My advice to students has always been: 1) if you have the skills to make a first-rate tool, and if you take pride in making it, absolutely go that route; 2) if you don't, and it would distract your mind, just buy it; then personalize it by more frequent use.

21:58 / 03.08.06

There's always the in-between route - if you know somebody with the appropriate skills, you can work with them to design the tool that would be personal to you, and let them exercise their expertise in the actual construction.

I often feel that a unique, hand-crafted item holds more significance than a mass-produced item, even if I'm not who made it.

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

06:49 / 04.08.06

My advice to students has always been: 1) if you have the skills to make a first-rate tool, and if you take pride in making it, absolutely go that route; 2) if you don't, and it would distract your mind, just buy it; then personalize it by more frequent use.

That's entirely reasonable, as is Ember's suggestion of finding a competent craftsperson to do the job, personalising the widget to your specs. However, I'm finding that the process of aquiring the skill to make an item can be very meaningful in itself. I don't know if this translates well into other trads, but for me the time, effort (and frustration) required to gain such a skill can be an offering in and of itself.

07:27 / 04.08.06

Mordant - In general I completely agree with you. It does raise the question of what qualifies as raw materials, actually?

For example, I make a lot of necklaces for ritual purposes. For the most part, I accept starting with mass-produced string and beads. But there is a particular power - an herbalist - that has inspired me to actually make cordage from the raw plant material, and find ways to make beads from scratch as well. I haven't even started that project because I haven't yet figured out which plant to make cordage from, and I know the materials collection process for the beads will take a minimum of a year, if I'm diligent, so that I can get things unique to various seasons.

On the other hand, I'm putting almost as much effort into making my own kife. (I hadn't thought in terms of using it as an elemental tool. I just know I'll be needing something I can cut things up with.) The blade is pre-fab from a catalogue, though, and the blacksmith who is walking me through the process has machined the brass ends for me as well (though I might have liked to learn to use those tools, he didn't offer). But I chose the pieces and am shaping the handle to fit my hand, etc.

So I sort of see a whole spectrum of levels of being involved in creation, with different projects involving different levels of ... committment, I guess?

I mean, I do have projects made from animal parts where I started with the live animal (though not where I killed the animal myself - yet), but that's incredibly rare.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:26 / 04.08.06

It does raise the question of what qualifies as raw materials, actually?

I hear ya. The Beings I work with are pretty old-school when it comes to this kind of thing. Like you mention with the plant cordage, I'm re-booting my textile skills stage by stage. I did a lot of spinning, dyeing and weaving when I was a kid, and gradually I'm getting back into it. It's not easy. One of my tasks is to make a spindle, and I've been at it for months because I'm not 'supposed' to just go to the art and crafts place and pick out a couple of bits of wood. Some of the materials are hard to come by, and harder to work with. (You try creating a glass spindle whorl...)

09:42 / 04.08.06

I'd gladly try to make a glass spindle whorl... if I knew which part of the spindle was the whorl, anyway. Is this a drop spindle, or are you actually making a full wheel and frame spindle?

Please tell me you don't have to start from sand on the subject of the glass?

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:49 / 04.08.06

*frantic shushing noises* Don't give Them ideas!

It's a drop spindle, and the whorl is the round bit at the bottom. The idea comes from Viking-era spindle whorls that have been dug up made from amber and quartz, translucent materials. It's supposed to be a kind of meditation focus as well as a practical tool.

Right now we're starting, or re-starting gently. The glass whorl I spent ages drilling out by hand got broken so I've been gifted an acrylic bedknob to play around with instead. We'll see how that works out. In time I'll need to find a suitable bit of transparent or translucent rock and drill that out, but one step at a time.

10:40 / 04.08.06

This is going to be a short post as my eyes are starting to bleed for over usage of this PC, but I really enjoy painting yantras and similar diagrams.

Firstly, the expression of your ideas and intent in a physical form can't be bested. Takes it from out your head and into the world - just this alone as an act is grounding.

Secondly, simply the act of painting - applying colour, being meticulous, I find a comforting - a sort of meditation. I did some eye exercises years ago where I'd just fill in random shapes with colour. It's really fun, effortless and goaless activity. If they happen to look beautiful at the end of the process, all the better.

10:53 / 04.08.06

Mordant - do you work with Frigga at all?

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:44 / 04.08.06

Off and on--when She deigns to notice me. I'm a bit closer to Freyja.

13:33 / 04.08.06

I've made a lot of tools as gifts for other people. I find whenever I make something that I'm really focusing on it gets charged in the process. Which is particularly funny in the case of the hat w/ears I made my spouse last year. That beastie emerged with enough personality to hold a conversation with.

One of the most amazing tools I ever made is my hunting wand. It's a carved length of canine (probably fox) bone given to me as a gift that I one day picked up out of the bone box and obsessively started carving. Now I've never been good at detailed work or fine work but the way in which I was guided to bring out the wolf's snarling head was very magical. After being carved I set it with silver wire which helps move the energy quickly back and forth through the wand. I use it rarely but it never fails when I do.

I recently had to purchase a stainless steel ring for my suspension rig. I don't have the ability to make one but I purchased it from a craftsperson I hold in esteem. I charged it with fire and my blood at a ritual gathering a few months ago making it an extension of my intent. I left it gory for a few months until I was ready to use it and then washed it clean in the river near the space I'm using it in. It serves a very important function both mechanically and magically. Through using the rig, the ring gets recharged with intent and I have been able to reach out to that energy when doing suspensions. My ropes are charged through use rather than blood.

I feed my own blood to my tools (including my motorcycle and car) to strengthen our ties. I'm fairly cautious about what kind of blood I feed the items and pay attention to their spirits' needs.

20:05 / 04.08.06

Hmmm... That's a common thing I hear about others doing, and I've wondered at it. I rarely deliberately blood things I'm making, but it's not uncommon for them to bite me anyway. I currently have a nice chunk taken out of my pinkie from where the concrete mix from the power-specific stepping stones for the temple yard bit me.

I'm a bit closer to Freyja.

Oh, we'll get along well then. ;}

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:31 / 04.08.06

I have some tools that I blood and others I don't. Magic books, definately. My knife gets a drop every time I use her (she also gets a bit stroppy and bitey at times). My runes were blooded when I finished them, and get freshened up occasionally. My drum gets a drop now and again, also certain pieces of jewellery and the funny crow-feather-and-hair thingy that Odin had me make for His harrow. It's less about 'feeding' the item for me, more about creating a link--either to the widget itself or to the Person it's for.

(More ketchup over here.)

20:47 / 04.08.06

I suspect I'll be blooding the knife. I just dislike doing things like that without an awfully clear reason as to why I'm doing it.

Looking at other people's lists, I'm reminded of the comment "Paganism is a racket for the craft supply industry".

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:56 / 04.08.06

More like a racket for Elastoplast.

21:42 / 04.08.06

You lost me?

--Ember--

21:53 / 04.08.06

Elastoplast = Band-Aid, more or less.

22:05 / 04.08.06

*laughs* Ah. Yeah, that too. I wish there were better topical anaesthetics on the market. They don't do much damage, but papercuts and needle pricks on my fingertips definitely slow me down. Then again, maybe that's the point...

--Ember--

11:14 / 05.08.06

Looking at other people's lists, I'm reminded of the comment "Paganism is a racket for the craft supply industry".

Or maybe that the craft industry is the only place where one can buy such things? I am not sure why, but that comment and it's placement in this thread rattles me. To me it implies that pagans will buy things willy nilly without meaning or use and I don't think that's true. I would have been much more inclined to say that Paganism is "a racket for the crap cheap metal industry who sell pentagrams and skull rings to little kids for about a quid a go."

In general the craft industry is the the only industry which supplies pagans although it is increasingly becoming more commercialised with the silly teen spell kits. It is nigh on impossible to purchase some items, especially for ritual purposes from anywhere other than 'the craft industry.' And anyway, what does 'the craft industry' mean really to you?

12:02 / 05.08.06

...uh I thought "craft industry" meant the places I buy my raw materials and glue and stuff so I can make my gear?

20:21 / 05.08.06

Then can someone clarify?

00:07 / 06.08.06

I'm not sure what needs clarification Olulabelle? Can you be more specific?

[WARNING: GRAPHIC BODY MODIFICATION DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS]

On the topic of magical tools I'm starting to make small ornaments designed to hold intent easily and be physically heavy-ish(well noticable heft). The ornaments will eventually be charged by participants in a sin eater ritual I'm doing this fall. For the ritual they will be sewn into (using sterile sutures) into my upper back before I begin an ecstatic dance ritual derived from the ball dance.

I visited my friend's bead and rock shop this evening and dug around the bead bins looking for a few items to start with. Because of my intent things like plastic spoons and can pulls will be used as well as bone, shell, and other natural materials. I have a few categories of 'charms' I want involved animals, plants, humans, and things.

I'm going to make 33 of the beasties and hopefully 'open' them so when they are given/sent to the participants they'll be ready to absorb their sins. Sins here being things like grief, heartbreak, the ghosts of roadkill and animals raised for fastfood, poisoned rivers, discarded but never used tampons, guilt over the really shitty thing you said to your ex, and so on.

So these are simple tools but they need to be sturdy, energetically absorbent, and easily stiched onto living human hide. I'm open to suggestions iffin' you got any ideas.

06:50 / 06.08.06

And anyway, what does 'the craft industry' mean really to you?

Ah, sorry. Craft supply industry meaning stores that sell the raw materials for arts and crafts projects. I'm quoting a joke from my local pagan community, because we all know we can always make eachother happy with a gift certificate to the local bead shop or hobby store

As for shops that sell books and objects suitable for witchcraft, I suppose that's another angle, but I have spent so much more buying raw materials from Michael's than I have buying finished products from Ancient Ways that it doesn't really occur to me.

In any case, it's meant as a self-referential joke from one pagan to another, not as derision from an outsider who doubts the usefulness of said projects (dear gods, what a hypocrite I'd be!).

Sorry for the confusion!

--Ember--

21:01 / 06.08.06

Oh, oh sorry then!

As you were everyone.