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"Steal This Book of Shadows"
ver 2.0
by
Azzerac
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Page 44
Spellcasting #11
Objects
(Brought To You By,...)
"It's not about
skill, Peter. It's about confidence. If you have confidence, you Win."
~Rex O'Herlihan the Singing Cowboy, "Rustler's Rhapsody"
This is where you ask "Why are we going in to specifics, when this part is supposed to be about the Generalities?"
"Glad You asked", I reply.
When it comes to symbols, most of what it's about is how it matters to you. The problem comes when we remember that tricky little thing called "The Collective Unconscious", "The Akasha", or "Consensual Reality". Remember them/that/us? Much in the same way that secrecy keeps the world from actively fighting our castings, a certain degree of conformity will assist our spell-works. When the universe agrees with our perspective, we have it's momentum on our side. By digging deeper into this subject, we learn to remember that we aren't the only fish in this magical pond: we're just trying to be the biggest!
If you fight the world with your mind-set, at every turn, I'm sure you will be stronger for it in the long run. The more force you learn to exert, fighting up-hill battles, the more power you will have, when going with the flow. It's best to have an understanding that the battle exists before you try to fight it!
Shall we continue?
Let's!
Wands of Air or Wands of Fire?
Look to your tarot decks, pour through your High-magic books, or skim through your witchcraft guides, and it seems no one cane agree which is what. Every time you go back a century or two, you find it's flipped the other way. "The wand is for X, and the sword/dagger represents Y", and then, it's the other way around. One can look at 'use' or 'source' of the tool, and make an argument for either.
Let's examine the facts:
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Wands are from trees, living things that wave in the air.
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Classic wands are grown, requiring air to nourish the tree that grew the limb,...
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Wands & staffs are interchangeable as tools, depending upon path.
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Wands, staffs, & rods have always been used as symbols of Authority.
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Authority = Power
-
Wooden Wands Burn.
So, which is it?
Is it in the "Forming" of the wand, or the "Idea" of a wand that dictates it's association?
Let's examine the next set, shall we?
Swords of Fire, or Swords of Air?
Again, the question is 'Use' or 'Source'. Do we look at how it's made to determine it's station, or how we associate it to history?
Facts Time:
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Swords are forged with fire
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The very name for sword was "Brand"
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Both fire and swords are destructive, unchecked
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Fire = Power
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Opposed: "The Sword makes a Swishing-Sound, as it cuts the air".
...okay: so I got' nothing, for air & sword association. That IS, however, the very argument a lot of people pose when it comes to their attachment to the "Swords=Air" debate.
This is the crux of things: Attachment.
It's an article of faith, and a large contingent of pagan practitioners adhere to that faith. To destroy a single article of faith begins a downward spiral into self-doubt. It's one of the most debilitating things that can happen to a spell caster. It's hard to build back up your faith, once you've started doubting your sources.
...and there's the other blade on this double-edged sword/wand/what-have-you:
The ones that cling so vehemently to "sword=air" are the ones who read it in some book, and not from a line of teacher/apprentice relationships. Some two-bit, pulp-press, "Insta-Magic" publisher let this little nugget of malfeasance slip by the editor, for the sake of a dead-line, and now we all get to suffer. Before you knew it, others were reading that book, taking it on faith, and spitting this half-chewed gristle into their own 'best seller". This is how things begin. This is how things change.
The thing to know is that there are forces in your corner, which ever way you go with this symbolism. Maybe you can employ this yin-yang shift in the Akasha into your castings, as in the law of Polarity (Another of the "Twenty-Something Laws of Magic")? Perhaps it could mean both at once, and cut down on your ritual tool requirements (that is, until you need two symbols, and THEN what!?!)?
This won't be the case with all symbols, though. Try to use a chalice for fire association, and see how far that gets you. "If I pour gasoline into my chalice, it could...". It's best not to even joke about it, or some fool will see it as the foundation of their "Brand-New Tradition"!
There will be symbols no one has thought of, and these symbols mean nothing but what you think they mean. Those are the ones with the greatest personal power.
Get your tools.
Charge them as they should be associated.
Empower them as an extension of everything that you associate with that
symbolism. (Exercise
TIME!)
They make spell casting much easier, and much more successful, for the momentum of Tradition, within the Akashic Tides.
"So which is which? Are Wands 'Air' or 'Fire?"
My thinking is this: It's a fulcrum, not a pedestal. There isn't a hard & fast law, when it comes to these topics. It more like a rule of thumb. It's not a specific Ideology, as much as it is two battling encampments.
I think it helps to look at it this way:
Two people stand facing
each other.
One has a wand, the other has a sword.
After a demonstration of power through force, one is a corpse.
The other is walking away with a bloody sword, a brand-new wand, and a story to
tell his friends.
Which one had the "Fire-Power"?
Let's show a little
pragmatism, folks!
(When you can shoot bullets from a simple wand, I'll call it "Fire"!)
Next Time: "Triggers"
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