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lailoken · 4 years

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‘The Tools of Cunning’

“The Knife

A blade used by the Pellar is sharp and it will cut, for that is the nature of the tool. It is usually single edged with a hilt of bone, horn or wood, and is traditionally crafted by the witch's own hand as far as their skills will allow, or received as a gift. The Pellar's knife is used for tasks both practical and magical, it can be used to cut and carve new wooden tools, to dig holes and even to open a tin of paint. If you make good practical use of your knife in the mundane world, your faith in its ability to aid you in magical matters will be all the greater. The knife or collel of a Cornish witch is used to send magic over long distances, for weather magic, to conjure and bless the ritual fire or simply the candle's flame. It is used to conjure the red serpent; the 'fire in the land', and to awaken the Cunning flame within. It can subdue troublesome spirits and exorcise, but it is not used to conjure the working circle.

The Cup

Materials that have had life are most favoured to fashion the cups used by Cunning folk, the majority of cups I know of are made from horn. They are used in the Troyl rite for the ritual sharing of drink and food that is so vital to maintain the bonds berween witch, Bucca, the ancestors and the serpent.

The Bowl

This is used also in the Troyl rite to hold the sacramental food, and to leave food offerings overnight to the spirits, traditionally at the back door of the cottage or at the hearth - where the offering may also be made to the witch's familiar spirits and other serving spirits. Newly prepared magical substances or charms are also left in the bowl on the hearth overnight, thus allowing the settling in of the prevalent planetary or lunar virtues for which their making was timed to coincide, along with other raised powers and intent. The bowl is often made from wood, clay or horn. A good bowl or basin of copper is also sought after and kept by most Cornish witches. It has many uses and is most often employed in workings of healing, seeing' and of course love; copper being the metal sacred to Venus.

The Cauldron

Keep a good old cauldron; it is a useful tool for both magic and ritual use. Older ones are best for they are full of character, and usually a better quality casting. I must admit that of all my tools my dear big old cauldron, Old Bet', is perhaps my favourite. Along with a large cauldron, Cornish practitioners have also traditionally kept a small portable' example, handy when the Pellar is making visits to their clients. A cauldron has its most obvious use as the cooking vessel for magical ointments, or the food for a ritual feast, hung over the hood fire'. In ritual or magic, it is a symbolic portal of the Otherworld and a vessel of change; a womb of generation or a tomb of consumption, depending on intent and the phase of the moon, Herbs and magical substances can be cast into a caukdron with smoukdering embers, or a small fire kindled within, and the required virtues stirred up with the Pellar's staff, conjuring that which is required into manifestation within the rising smoke issuing forth from the vessel's depths. Visions and spirits can be conjured in this way, to be born forth from the Otherworld during generative workings of the waxing and full moon. Indoors, during workings at the hearth, a candle may burn within the cauldron, with herbs smouldering on charcoal and other symbolic items arranged also within. Above this are conjurations made with repetitive stirring gestures and muttered chants. During the waning or dark of the moon, those things that are required to be gone can be placed within the cauldron fire, in the form of symbolie items, images, knotted cords or pertinent substances, as the witch stirs or moves quietly about it in a sinistral circle, willing the undesired thing to be gone. In seasonal rites things may be born symbolically forth from the cauldron or sacrificed within, and it may become a vessel for sacred fires of the year.

Sweeping Tools

Sweeping magic was, and is, much used by Coenish practitioners. The most famous sweeping tool, the winch's broom, is symbolic of travel berween the worids, and passage from one phase into another. In ritual, it may sweep the working circle, not only as a tool of esorcism sweeping away influences that might impede or interfere with the work, but as a symbolic gesture to establish that exchange between the worlds is about to take place there. The beoom is used in magic so sweep bad influences out of the house, and fortunate or lucky influences in at certain times of the year. In curse magic, ill-innent and bad or unlucky influences can be swept via the beoom into the doorway of an enemy or wrongdoer. Feather sweepers are traditional West Country working tools, most often fashioned from long goose feathers bound with wax, or goose fat and string, to form a handie. Sometimes a left hand and right hand sweeper will be kepe the left hand one to sweep harmful or unlucky influences away and the right hand one to sweep in fortunane or lucky influences, others have kept a single sweeper for both actions, switching hands acconding to intent. The sweeping gestures may be made over a candle, charm, or symbolic item, or to sweep virtues and influences in, or out of a place such as a client's home. Magical sweeping gestures might also be made over a person or an animal. In this way, sweepers may also be employed within healing work; to sweep away the ailment from the affected part of the body with the left hand, and then to sweep in the healing influence with the right. The witch's whisk is a West Country sweeping tool parely used to exonrcise evil spiries and negative influences from a place. It is made by binding thirteen dried and thorny blackberry twigs together, using the string binding to form a handle. The ends of the twigs are set alight in a blessed fire, and the smoking whisk is waved and danced around the place with vigoeous gestures to ward off all evil and harmful influences. Conversely, a similarly bound bundie of rwigs, such as Pine, may be employed in a similar fashion. In this case however, the West Country witch is drawing helpful spirits to the working place, attracted by the pleasingly scented wood smoke.

Drums

Various kinds of drum may be kept by West Country witches, for they are useful within the circle for drumming up sproul and the presence of helpful spirits. They may also be emploved to drive awan evil spirits and negative influences. Cecil Williamson gives two interesting recommendations for West Country witch drumsticks - ones made of glass, the handles of which must have unfinished ends, being useful for banishing harmful influences, calling upon the aid of helpful spirits and for drumming up changes in the weather. Drumsticks formed from human arm bones however are recommended to drum up the presence of any required spirit.

Wind Roarers

Another noise-making ritual tool wind roarens, or "bullroarers have been employed within tradicional magical ritual and spiritual ceremony in many cultures and in many places across the globe, including here in the West Country They must be specially formed from hand wood, and spun above the witch's head in the air, they produce strange and otherworldly throbbing, moaning sounds. These are employed by the West Country witch to atract helpful spirits and to raise spirit forces at the creation of an outdoor working space, and to aid the achievement of trance states These may more usually be employed to begin simple, solitary workings, although I have heard three wind roarers used sogether during a working gathering of wise- women here in Cornwall, the sound was quite remarkable and the Hidden Company' left no doube that they had drawn close to see what was going on! Stones would also be carried as protective amulets and provide warning of the presence of poison by sweating. Devil’s Finger also known as Thunder Bolts are the belemnite fossil. They have been used in Cormwal by Cunning folk who also named them Sea Stones o make predictions by casting one or more and reading the directions in which they point. Waner in which Devil’s Fingers had been soaked for some time is seen in eradition to have curative powers against worms in hones as wellas rheumatism and eye complaints. They are also used by the Cunning to add potency to workings, sometimes being incorporated into charms or set into the end of curative wands. Tongue Stones are the fossils of sharks' teeth which, to the ancients, appeared to be the petrified tongues of serpents. Kept in the home they would ward off misfortune and prevent snakes from entering. Tongue stones are also worn as protective charms against evil and to protect the wearer from snake bites. Immersed in red wine they would provide a cure from venoms and poisons. Toad Stones were believed by our ancestors to grow inside the heads of toads. Most known examples of Toad Stones have been found to be the fossilised teeth of the extinct fish Lepidotes. Toad stones were most often set into rings to provide protection and to aid healing rites. Stings and bites could be cured by the Charmer's Toad Stone ring being touched to the affected area and worked against all venoms and poisons. The Toad Stone ring will warn the wearer of poison by becoming warm in its presence. Necklaces West Country witches, male and female, will often wear a necklace or pendant of magical virtue. Such things as hag stones and bird's feet are used. Strung beads of serpentine, quartz and obsidian represent the serpent and the generative and introspective virtues. A particularly potent and traditional West Country witch necklace consists of strung snake vertebrae, sometimes with the inclusion of glass beads, conferring upon the wearer serpentine powers and the ability to work with the "spirit force' of the land.

To Hood the Tools

The ways to empower the tools and to charge them with life and virtue are many and are to be determined by the nature of the tool itself, it is also the case that each practitioner may have their own ways. Following the exorcism of the item, with the aid of purging and cleansing substances, it will be charged with the powers and virtues pertinent to its nature and use. They may also be anointed with Witch Oil, and passed through the smoke of a pertinent suffumigation before being bound with the practitioner's working cord, to seal in the virtue, and left over night on the hearth. There are also such traditional actions as the anointing of tools with three crosses of spittle, the breathing of life into tools and even taking them into the bed for three consecutive nights. Tools are also often buried beneath the ground at known places of power for varying periods to be infused with chthonic force, whilst tools for working with the dead are often charged by the virtues of the North Road and coated with "Spirit of Myrrh'.

The Cunning Altar

The altar and focus of operations within the rites and workings of the Pellar, either at the hearth or outside, traditionally includes four basic things which are the staff, stone, flame and bone. For the staff, the Pellar's traditional working stick is of course most often employed, becoming a bridge/vehicle' to join and give access to the Ways', and a representation of Bucca. Pitch forks or hay forks are occasionally used instead. Within Ros An Bucca, we are fortunate to have a six tined threshing fork, which we employ as the altar within our six main seasonal ‘Furry’ rites. The stone is the foundation stone or hearth stone around which the cultus of the Craft operates. In some traditional groups this is a whetstone that keeps the blade of Cunning ever sharp, but for the solitary witch any of the working stones may be used. Quartz is a good choice for it attracts and enhances the serpentine flow and the breath, whereas obsidian would be more fitting specifically to the new moon. The flame is the flame of Cunning, the light betwixt the horns and the light on the heath that illumines the path of the Cunning Way. It may be a lantern or simply a candle. During indoor rites and workings, where a full 'hood-fire' is not possible, a ‘hood-lamp' may instead be employed upon the altar. Known examples are formed from horseshoes fixed to a wooden base, with a candle fixed between the upward pointing arms of the shoe, or a forked section of tree branch fixed also to a wooden base, with the candle stuck between the forks. This bewitched lamp is both a devotional object, being a potent visual representation of the Horned One and the light betwixt the horns, and a practical item for magic. Just as the hood-fire may be employed magically, so may the hood lamp assist workings to attract that which is desired and banish that which is not, often by the aid of pertinently coloured glass headed pins once the candle is identified with the object of the working. The bone is the representation of the Old Ones, the gods, spirits and ancestors of the Craft and the 'First One' of the Cunning Way. In grand rites this may be an actual human skull, although other smaller human bones are more usefully portable and thus more often used. Animal bones and carved skulls have also been employed for this. Alongside human bones, I also sometimes make use of a pre-historic, yet still sharp, flint cutting tool as a potent link to the ancestors. Some will keep about their person a stone, bone and candle within a handkerchief that along with their stick/ staff, a small flask of drink and a little food, may form a good and proper altar when out and about in the land. The Pellar's blade is also usually carried which doubles as a handy carving tool.”

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Traditional Witchcraft:

A Cornish Book of Ways

by Gemma Gary

#magic #witchcraft #traditional withcraft #cunning Craft #cunning #Gemma Gary #a cornish book of ways #ritual instruments

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