Magical Tools
Wands
The Wand identifies a focal point, a concentration of energy.
It's best to make your own ritual tools. This is a creative act and when you use a ritual tool that you made yourself, there is intentionality in it. It is a novelty. There is magic in the creative act. Wands are often made from a fallen tree branch, and finding such a tree branch should be thought of as a gift from nature. If you are going to cut a branch to use for your magic wand, ask for permission from the tree spirits before cutting the branch.
Wands carves by Kathleen Reeves
Clear focus is the mind’s magic wand. It points your creativity in a particular direction and channels your experience behind it. Wherever you clearly focus, you create. ~Sonia Choquette
Wand designs by Kathleen Reeves
Files for carving and finishing the shapes
Green stained pine wand, oiled ash wand, stained sycamore wand by Kathleen Reeves
The Cauldron of Being and the Womb of the Mother
John William Waterhouse – The Magic Circle
Alfred North Whitehead wrote about the "consequent nature of God" who holds all that ever was and all possibilities. In pagan terms we might say the "cauldron of being" is similar. The cauldron holds all the ingredients of the world.
Painting by Karisma
Cauldron owned by Kathleen Reeves
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash
The Primordial nature of God can be likened to the "Womb of the Mother" who acts as reservoir for potentialities that gestate and birth novelties. The Womb of the Mother is creativity itself. Many pagans have Yoni or cowrie shells to symbolize the divine feminine who births the world.
Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life. — Virginia Woolf
Book of Shadows
"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time--proof that humans can work magic." ― Carl Sagan
Drawings from the Book of Shadows by Kathleen Reeves
The Book of Shadows is like a journal. As you write, you may feel inspired. Feelings may become clear.
A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious text and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Since its conception in the 1970s, it has made its way into many pagan practices and paths. The most famous Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan, Gerald Gardner, sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and which he utilized first in his Bricket Wood coven and then in other covens which he founded in following decades.
Divination Tools
“The cards give you images and symbols to focus your vague intentions and transform them into action. Your will is the magic. In other words, you are the magic. If you can create something in your heart and then act on it to make it happen, that is magic. Very simple, very straightforward—no witches, no spells, and no broomsticks.” ~Theresa Francis-Cheung
Tarot cards are about possibilities and bringing them into your consciousness. They don't predict the future. They are full of archetypes that spark your awareness. Every moment is a drop of experience and as we move forward, we are always transforming (Death Card) and stepping into the unknown (Fool Card). We can choose to retreat from a relationship (Hermit Card), or take a new job (Two of Wands). The cards can be like sign posts, invitations or just reminders of what is possible.
The Crane Bag
A Druid’s crane bag is a special bag, a magical bag, that many druids carry with them. Often the crane bag is full of shells, rocks, magical objects, feathers, stones, Ogham staves, representations of the elements, ritual tools, and much more. The crane bag is wonderfully unique to each druid.
The Crane Bag is a medium size bag made of leather, skin, hide, cotton, linen, wool or other cloth, or any substance capable of holding a collection of things inside it.
This is a bag about relationship with the natural world. The items placed within the crane bag have held some meaning to the Druid. The world is relational and the Druid feels connection with stones, feathers and acorns.
