NOTE: Keep in mind that these are all opinions from my own personal path and study, they are by no means set in stone. Feel free to apply your own associations instead of mine. If you associate wands with air instead of fire, by all means use wands for air. My correlations are not your correlations, and this is not me bashing your path or telling you that you are wrong. I am just sharing my grimoire page.
Circles can be as much a part of a spell as anything else. They can be physical, visual, or astral. Astral being debatably visual by some definitions.
just a circle of chalk but can be more complex with symbols, runes, and sigils
Needs a lot of crystals, but surrounds the area with energy. Would be very powerful
Evocative, beautiful. Probably very good for blessings and spells having to do with strong emotions like love and happiness
DO NOT DO OUTSIDE!! Salt can hurt the fertility of the earth and kill plants.
Good for protective magic or an affordable option
Add herbs to the salt for extra potential
Good for connection to water or even as an offering to a god of wine or spirits.
Make sure you have enough!
Warps wood floors, best done outside or in a basement especially in an apartment.
Very powerful, the circle formed by joining hands.
So powerful and evocative that it is popular outside of witchcraft. (Prayer circles, football, circling up in schools)
From personal experience this circle works VERY well on its own without anything else. The power of two people sending out an intention is 10x stronger.
Takes even more focus at least for me
Wand: Great connection with fire
Staves: Great connection with fire and/or Earth
Athame/Sword: Connection with air
Hand: Connection with self/ earth
Takes practice in astral travel
Infinite possibilities for symbolism and complexity
often can be intuitively made. Perfect when you aren’t sure what you want.
I am uncertain how easy it is to use for physical plane effects. Perhaps this circle is better suited to spiritual and emotional needs as well as personal.
It is debatable what circles are specifically used for. Some witches use them towards protecting them from entities. Some say they are used to “create sacred space” defined as sanctifying the space, some say it is a container. I will go over all three.
Some believe that when you do magic you become vulnerable, and so a circle for these people is designed to protect you from negative energy and entities while you work. But this depends on if you believe in negative entities.
This concept is often misunderstood. Most pagans believe that everything is sacred, but some do not. For those who do believe this, there is a feeling that this method is wrong. Everything is sacred, so how can we make something sacred? The issue is not in practice but in definition for many of these pagans. What they mean by “sacred space” is rather creating a safe space, a place where you can focus and work freely without fear.
Though many also consider this to be a cleansing thing, creating a circle of neutral energy that will not be tainted by the energies of the world. The problem with this concept is that, yes it may stay clean while it is with you, but eventually you have to let it go out into the world where it will still get tainted. DON’T HELICOPTER PARENT YOUR ENERGY XD. Jokes aside, having clean energy to work with may be easier for some, so this ideology still has it’s uses.
The latter concept is that of a container that can hold the energies you raise. The idea is that it is easier to raise enough energy to fill a small space than it is to raise enough to fill a large space. This too has it’s problems. If you need a shit ton of energy, does this mean you need a huge circle?
I believe that it is all of these things.
A circle, first of all, protects from anything that may try to get in. It creates a safe space for the caster, a place where one can feel comfortable and focus on the task at hand.
A circle creates an energy void. Void in my practice is where we draw energy from. So having a circle where I can step into the raw energies of Void is very useful. I can then shape those energies into ones directed towards my purpose.
It also creates a container to work with and shape those energies. Many will say you cannot step out of circle, but while I do believe you may carry the energies you raised out of the circle, I doubt it would be all of it. This is like opening a door into a room full of gas and letting a little bit out. It may have an effect, but it wont release all of the gas. This is why we have the practice of Doors.
A circle I believe can contain a lot of energy, and to make a huge circle that you are trying to fill yourself would be a very long and arduous task. I managed a circle the size of my living room just barely on the night of the last super moon. I could feel the energies in the space, but there were small areas that felt empty. That was a couple hours of work.
You do not need a large circle to make immeasurable good happen.
A large circle is best for multiple people who can work together to fill it. Make your circle just big enough to move around in.
Doors are created in several different ways, the only one I know currently is to cut a door with your athame. I’m unsure how this functions exactly yet. I have yet to study this in great detail. For now it’s just best to get in the habit of having everything you need with you if at all possible.
I hope that this is helpful to you guys or enlightening towards how other people practice if you don’t do it the same way as me. Feel free to ask me any questions and if I don’t have an answer that gives me a new reason to study!
Please post your own methods as well! I would love to see how others do it. <3
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