Letters to Moonchild

July 10 1998 Brightest of Blessings Moonchild, Casting a circle: A circle is a sacred space that you create in order to perform rituals, spells or prayers unhindered by outside forces or energies. Doing a ritual without one will not hurt you, but it helps immensely on a magickal level to not be at the mercies of whatever happens to be floating around on the astral plane when you do your ritual. A circle is a null, cleansed place that you create to block out other peoples magickal energies (conscious or unconscious), so that you may concentrate and purify your own. It also serves to contain YOUR energies until it is appropriate to release them. (Safety net for all). There are lot's of ways to cast a circle, I generally use the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to set up my circles, this is not a usual Wiccan practice but rather one based on Qabalistic Ritual, but that's OK cause I like it better and I'm an eclectic. hehe. The traditional Wiccan formula is to inscribe a nine foot circle (drawn with Athame or wand, or sometimes outlined with sea salt) in a clockwise direction starting from the East and going around three times. When the last circle is complete the next step is to "Call the Quarters". This can be said any number of ways, but the basic idea is to invoke the Goddess and the spirits of the Elements that guard the four Quarters (North,South, East, and West) to protect your circle. North--Earth, South--Fire, East--Air, West--Water. Sometimes you will see the directions and the elements switched around, but it really doesn't matter too much as long as you have four directions and the four elements. The magickal vision that you should be having while you are drawing the circle and calling the quarters is like a shining impervious three dimensional sphere that surrounds the circle you are making. Then you are free to perform whatever ritual or spell you like without interference. Undoing it: Walk around the circle counterclockwise three times and at the completion of the last circuit say: " The circle is undone but not broken, I release all spirits trapped herein to their proper places, so mote it be." I am going to be putting the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram up on my webpage probably tomorrow, so you can see what that Ritual looks like. Have a really good weekend, Firesilk

This page last modified 9/10/98