Ch.8 The Magick Circle (WMB 8.e)

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr.

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In her book Magic in Ancient Egypt, the prominent modern Egyptologist Geraldine Pinch has postulated that wands were used in Ancient Egyptian practices, to draw magick circles:

“Abrasions on the pointed ends of some wands suggest that they were used to mark out lines, probably a protective circle, in sand or clay.”

We also find a further precursor for the use of a magick circle marked on the ground in ancient Assyria, with a recorded example of an Assyrian sorceror using lime and corn flour found in R. Campbell Thompson’s 1908 work Semitic Magic:

“I have completed the usurtu (magick circle), with a sprinkling of lime I have surrounded them. The flour of Nisaba (the corn god), the ban of the great gods I have set around them.”

The ancient Greeks used the wand as a primary tool in their magick, a theme that was to continue for many centuries, from ancient Egypt all the way through to the grimoires and into the modern magickal traditions.

“Hubert thus describes the ceremonial and apparatus employed by the Greek magician. The most important implement was the wand, without which no magician was completely equipped.”[1]

[1] The Mysteries and Secrets of Magic, Thompson, C.J.S, 1927

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr. Shared here with the intention to inspire and inform the now and future generations interested in Wicca and other Pagan traditions inspired by it.