Treading The Mill Tuesdays
Being a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Nigel Pearsonās āTreading The Millā
Introduction | Hallowing The Compass
I make ritual tools, including wands and staffs, so this section is of rather more specialized interest to me. There arenāt a lot of books out there that focus on making ritual tools, so I was excited to see Pearsonās take on it as well as a traditional witchcraft view on how wands should be made. He tells us about materials, choice of woods, manufacture, and consecration. Fortunately this is a less lengthy chapter with less objectionable content so I doubt it will take nearly as long as Hallowing the Compass.
He opens with a bit of what I would describe as normal wand lore, uses, measurements, that sort of thing. Pearson seems to have an āanything goesā mentality to materials, while suggesting that wood is the best material ā although there are repeated references to ānatural crystalā which raises the question of what un-natural crystal is (leaded glass?). He goes on to talk a little bit about natural history of the trees of the UK (again we see a very localized focus here) and then launches into a bizarre discussion of what trees meant to the original human inhabitants of England which I feel requires a gigantic [citation needed]. He assumes magical and religious items would have been made out of wood, suggests that the witchās wand is a descendant of the staff of ancient tribal leaders, and implies that it was once believed that dead souls turned into trees instead of going on to some form of afterlife. No sources are given for any of this information.
Pearson does mention something one rarely sees in pagan or witchcraft books, which is that the English landscape hasnāt been a natural thing but has been carefully cultivated, deforested, heavily planted and managed environment since antiquity and really is not some pristine and untouched place. He goes on with a little more weirdness about tree spirits and hidden beings. Again, thereās more [citation needed] here where he says āin the early days, we are told, these spirits were called the Hooded Onesā. Who called them this? When? Where did he get this information?
Speaking of tree-spirits, Pearson calls the spirit of the tree a dryad. I donāt know what to do with this information. You have to call it something, I suppose.
On to types of wood. Pearson theorizes that there are three types of wood, these being green (fresh from the tree before it dries out), dead (dead, dry wood, either cut from the tree or dead while still connected to it) and live wood (wood that has been separated from the tree but retains some of the tree spirit). His belief is that the tree-spirit can separate bits of itself which have the same powers as the tree does in of itself. As for which sort of wood youād like to use, weāre given a short list of trees with some folklore and suggested uses. Again, thereās more of the [citation needed] going on here, where he says of lime (not the citrus) āIt is a āmarkerā tree, once planted at the centre of villages to represent the world axis, on boundaries and along geomantically important āearth linesāā. More hilariously, in his section on service tree he states āAs one of our indigenous trees, but left out of later magical tree lists, it is likely that it was venerated as part of Faerie lore and later suppressed or replaced to hide its value.ā
If it was suppressed than how do you know, Nigel? HOW DO YOU FUCKING KNOW?
The section on gathering wood is fairly conventional, clean cuts, one stroke if you can but a pruning saw may be useful, that sort of thing. He stresses getting to know the tree beforehand but just canāt help himself:
āThe tree will tell you. Donāt talk to it and donāt hug itā
Oh, those crazy non-traditional witches, always hugging trees! You damn kids!
āOnce you have chosen (or been chosen by!) your wandā
Carve and debark and things, if youāve ever made a wand you know this and Pearson gives a decent overview but maybe not enough detail if youāre new to it. He talks about wand anatomy, how you might want to add a space to insert blood or what-have you, but then rather confusingly talks about adding copper rod as a core if desired which is a very New Agey sort of way to approach wand-making. Furthermore, he seems to think you can draw a magnet along said copper rod to magnetize it, which, uh, which wonāt work because copper isnāt magnetic? He talks about final sanding and polish, rather grossly suggests that your own sweat can work as a polish (ew!), and all I can say here is that I wish heād given a recipe for the beeswax polish he describes.
Finally we get to consecrating the wand, a straightforward process that involves cleansing and blessing it with the four Elements and then dedicating it to the Gods (who, again, we donāt worship, of course).
And there we have it! This was less painful than the Hallowing the Compass chapter, although sadly painfully stupid in places. For all that adherents of traditional witchcraft crap on Wicca for poor scholarship I canāt say that Iām impressed with what Iāve read so far, this book included.
In our next update weāll see what Pearson has to say about spellcrafting. See you next Tuesday!
