All about the Magick Wand

15.10.2009 | Author: SororZSD23 | Posted in Magick

The wand is the quintessential mythical tool associated with the magical worker or occultist. It also is an important ritual implement in Western magic and mysticism.

Like the sword and dagger, the wand may represent the element of air or the element of fire. Whereas the blade is an aggressive magical weapon that penetrates and cuts through space and is traditionally used in banishing operations, the wand commands and moves energy. As a ritual tool representing air, the wand it rests on the eastern side of the altar. As an implement representing fire, it rests on the southern side of the altar. As a meditation on the air element, the wand is associated with space, mind, healing, communication, and intentional movement in space. As fire, it is associated with magical will and qualities such as command, heroism, determination, and efficiency.

The wand also represents the male and solar regenerative principle, and the path of the secret fire and cosmic emanation. This refers to the middle pillar of Qabala and the shushumna of Tantric yoga (the path of Kundalini), and the caduceus of Hermetic mysticism, which itself has both solar (fiery) and mercurial (airy) associations, and refers to the the speirema in Greco-Roman mysticism. Little is known about the mysticism about the speirema but it is presumed to be the Greco-Roman equivalent of Kundalini. Speirema means “serpent” or serpent energy.

In modern magical fantasy, such as the Harry Potter series, wands are depicted as weapons.  However, the wand is a tool that mages uses for concentration and direction of energy. Why does a mage concentrate and direct energy? To cause change in accordance with will; not to duel or attack someone. In other words: the wand is a prop that helps the mind focus and direct energy in relation to a magical intent.

In the second part of Book ABA (Book IV) by Aleister Crowley and a Scarlet Woman or two, the meanings of various magical tools are discussed. The wand was an important tool for Crowley. He referred to it as a symbol of the mages magical oath, being the path and commitment to attainment of True Will.

“This Will is the wand in your hand by which the Great Work is accomplished, by which the Daughter is not merely set upon the Magical throne of the Mother, but assumed into the Highest.”

In a footnote, Crowley et al explain these terms in mystical language that have their roots in Qabala and Gnostic concepts:

“. . . the Absolute is called the Crown, God is called the Father, the Pure Soul is called the Mother, the Holy Guardian Angel is called the Son, and the Natural Soul is called the Daughter. The Son purifies the Daughter by wedding her; she thus becomes the Mother, the uniting of whom with the Father absorbs all into the Crown. See Liber CDXVIII.”

He also says:

“The Magick Wand is thus the principal weapon of the Magus; and the ‘name’ of that wand is the Magical Oath.”

“. . . the real Magical Will must be toward the highest attainment, and this can never be until the flowering of the Magical Understanding. The Wand must be made to grow in length as well as in strength . . .”

History

Just like dinosaurs are thought to have shrunk into birds and small reptiles over the course of evolution, the wand may be a mini-version of the staff or scepter. The staff or scepter is a stylized version of weapons such as the club or pike. The person who held the staff or scepter in a community was the one who held the power.

The wand or staff also may be related to the ancient mysticism related to snakes. Snakes came to be associated with evil in traditional Judaism and Christianity and some forms of Gnosticism. This might have been a backlash to other traditions in which the snake was thought of as a wisdom entity and a symbol of renewal/regeneration, eternity, and the life/death cycle: the ouroboros, which swallows its tale in the act of self-consumption and also symbolically, self-insemination.

The snake may have been equated with the magical staff and used in miracle working feats by ancient spiritual teachers—such as Moses. If you press on a snake’s head in a certain way, you can temporarily paralyze it so that it takes the form of a staff or a pole. When the “staff” was flung onto the ground, the snake would revive and appear to be a snake again. Such an event is described in the Book of Exodus (7:8-13):

Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “If Pharaoh says to you, ‘Produce some marvel,’ you must say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down in front of Pharaoh and let it turn into a serpent. To Pharaoh Moses and Aaron went and did as Yahweh commanded. Aaron threw down his staff in front of Pharaoh and the court, and it turned into a serpent.  Then the Pharaoh called for his sages and sorcerers and with their witchcraft, the magicians of Egypt did the same. Each threw his staff down and these turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of the magicians.”

Aaron was Moses’ brother and apparently held political or magical power because Moses often is depicted telling him to use his staff to make magical catastrophic events occur. Like in stories in the New Testament, the magical actions of the protagonists aren’t considered to be “magic” but acts of God, whereas the exact same actions performed by the enemy/rivals/non-believers are labeled “witchcraft.” It is biased and ironic perspective that was carried into medieval times and the present. Indeed historian Michael Bailey conjectures that the New Testament story of the magical sparring between Peter (who like Jesus may have been a legendary character) and Simon Magus (an actual historical person) may have been interjected into the Book of Acts to dissociate early Christians from being thought of as magi (which Jesus’ miracle-working suggests that he was).

Indeed, early Christians may have looked upon Christ as a kind of magician. A third-century fresco discovered in the catacombs of the St. Callisto Chapel in Rome shows Jesus holding a wand in his right hand while raising Lazarus from the dead. In another example, a gold glass plate from the Fourth Century, now housed in the Vatican Library, shows Jesus using a magic wand to raise Lazarus from the dead. In a series of images on Christian sarcophagi dated to the 4th and 5th century, Jesus is depicted using a wand to resurrect Lazarus, turn water to wine, multiply loaves and fish, and heal the widow’s son.

The staff/wand also may have had its origins with the staff of Asclepius, Greek god of healing  It is a single serpent encircling a cypress branch—a reference to a certain benign, tree-climbing snake that was common in the Mediterranean.

The staff represents the power of knowledge and healing and came to be confused and conflated with the caduceus of Hermes. Rather than the art of medicine, the caduceus of Hermes represents the balance and union of opposing or complementary forces and the self-integration, mastery, and transcendence that is achieved by the person who can unite opposites. It is regarded as the western equivalent of the path of Kundalini in Eastern mysticism.

The Wand and Women

The ancient Druids seemed to have regarded the wand as a magical extension of the phallus. They carried wands with acorn tips to suggest fertility and luck. But the first literary reference to a wand, which appears in the Odyssey, does not associate it with male power or sorcery or the male regenerative organ. The wand is wielded by the sorceress Circe (pronounced Kir-key).

Circe was associated with the goddesses Diana and Hecate, which in turn were later associated with the Fate (pronounced like fa-tay)—Italian fairies. Italian fairytales were the first place that fairies appear in literature. They are depicted holding wands, equating them with the sorceress Circe. They were the counterpart to more malignant and threatening idea of female power, which also was related to Diana and Hecate. This was the mythical witch.

The fairies depicted were different from those in Northern European tradition. They were full-sized, elegant, goddess-like women who would protect and perform favors for those mortals that they took a liking to.

They evolved from the idea of the Fates (Roman/latin, Parcae; Greek, Moirae; Teutonic, Norns), who spun, wove, and cut the thread of life; to  whom even the gods bowed; and were forerunners of the idea of the triple goddess

The flipside of the wand-wielding fairy is the mythological witch. The lore drew on myths about Lilith and “Herodias” (aka Herodias’ daughter, Salome, who was responsible for the death of John the Baptist and, according to legend, became a “spirit of the air”). In medieval Italian, Herodias is rendered as “Erodiade,” only a short linguistic step away from “Aradia,” the legendary patron of a popular form of modern Italian witchcraft (Stregharia).

Rather than a wand—the miniature version of a scepter or phallus—the witch was depicted with a bifurcated branch—that is, a bune wand—or else a broom.

Medieval literature on witches—and notes from witch trials—report that witches rode to witch’s Sabbaths on either bune wands, pitchforks, or brooms (also called besoms). Eye witnesses report that persons who went through the motions of “riding” brooms, etc. only wobbled or collapsed.  Why? Because “broom riding” may have been a shamanic ritual. The poles of the pitchforks, brooms, etc. were thought to have been smeared with an ointment made of hallucinogenic and generally toxic substances that, among other psychedelia, gave the rider the idea that he or she was flying.

Although the idea that European folk practitioners pervasively revered a horned nature deity, conducted moon-magic rites, or met for so-called witch’s Sabbaths has been debunked by post-modern historians and ethnographers, commentators on folk paganism and witch lore, such as Doreen Valiente, contend that the bune wand represented the Horned God (eg, Celtic Cernnunos or Grecian Pan) and also the crescent moon. It also may have been a rough version of the distaff: a rod on which spinning material was hung. Very rudimentary distaffs can take the form of a bifurcated tree branch.

Like traditional wands, brooms have sexual connotations but in them, the masculine and feminine become one. The pole and bristles are said to symbolize the phallus in the vagina. Indeed, the part of the handle that was inserted into the broom material supposedly was carved into a phallus. Thus, brooms were not only a kind of wand used in ritual space clearing but also magical objects for fertility luck. Jumping the broom, thus, was—and continues to be—part of the marriage rite within folk culture.

More than Mere Swish and Flick

Although we are traditionally told by ceremonial magicians that the wand is a phallic icon that represents the masculine aspects of thought, command, and will, the wand exists in many guises and disguises. Certainly it can be thought of as an extension, funnel, and concentrator of energy and will. Like the broom, it therefore represents the Whole: the feminine and masculine—the goddess who is the capacity and the god who is intention toward creative acts.

Selected references

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