Casting a druid circle

Every so often I come around The Spiral of Life and find that I am re-joining a path that I have taken before, except that this time the path is at a higher level and offers more challenges and rewards than the previous time. That’s a rather grandiose way of saying that I have recently re-discovered an interest in casting a circle when doing natural magick out in the big wide world. What use are invisible circles, you may ask? I certainly did. I’m not one to pick up on magickal practises and mimic them for the hell of it. They better have a demonstrable purpose and prove themselves in the field before I’ll consider incorporating them into my work.

Traditionally casting a circle has been seen as a method of creating a sacred protected space within which power can be contained. It serves the dual purpose of excluding energies from outside of the circle that the magician may not wish to allow to enter the space in which he or she is working. A magic circle is different in some ways from just putting up protection around oneself in that it has the additional benefit of being “geometrically efficient” – in other words, because it is a circle, any energy released within it is contained and not diminished. I would go further and say that the practitioner should be considering the use of a sphere, rather than a circle, and containing the energy in a three-dimensional (and perhaps more) space. This bubble provides a perfect containment for subtle or magickal energies, thus increasing the efficiency of the work within the ‘circle’ and reducing energy loss or dissipation. Magickal circles offer protection without energetic interruption, they create a “sacred space” within whose bounds you can ‘clear’ the space to be free of undue or unintended influence, and thereafter protect it from re-admittance to those other energies, effectively creating a sealed hermetic space within, sanitised for your work.

Natural magick practitioners in particular should consider the use of such devices as magick circles because there are more unpredictable forces in the wilds of Nature than in the sanitised structures of modern man, and creating a safe space within which to work is more of a necessity than a nicety. Introductions over let’s go on to talk about how casting a circle is actually done.

Some preliminaries

I’m not one to go around telling people what to do, and it’s not often on this blog that I write a “how to” (other than our How To page, of course!). So this must rank up there on the scale of importance, right? What I’m presenting here is a method that I’ve found useful, and some recommendations for other druids concerning how to approach a

site before casting a circle. You can go and do whatever you want to. Ignore or heed my words as you wish. Right – my preliminaries over, how should one approach a sacred site or other space within which one intends to create a circle in Nature?

I begin by asking for permission from the Spirit of the Place. Not all places have such a presiding spirit form, but many do. If you’re working at a sacred site it’s best to assume (unless you’re a dowser or psychic and can test this for yourself) that there is one about. If you start working with Nature’s energies and there wasn’t a spirit around before you started, there soon will be! I would recommend you entreat the Spirit of Place to ask if you might be allowed to create such a workspace is what is effectively its home, or at least a domain over which it feels protective. That’s just sensible. Oh, and by the way, if you get an answer – in your head, as a feeling, or as a sign – heed it. If you’re not welcome, then you go ahead at double the risk, wouldn’t you say?

Asking the Spirit of Place for permission before creating the sacred space for yourself is the only respectful thing to do at a place that you have never worked before. The space may not be yours to own. You may only be borrowing the space, and therefore it is only gracious and respectful to ask permission to create your own space within some other entity’s energy field. Very rarely will you be working outside of such a field, especially if you work at sacred places or ancient sites such as stone circles or barrows. It makes sense to at least build the element of respect into your ritual out of common courtesy, and with the desire to succeed (with as much assistance as you can obtain freely).

Implements and Tools

Some people use tools or implements to demarcate their magick circles. I don’t – I use my imagination and intent. If you wish to make your circle more permanent by marking it, then I would recommend that you choose something that is soluble, such as salt. Choose something that you can easily clear up, or which will naturally get removed by the rain or wind. No hedge druid would sensibly make a mark that could be discovered later by someone, even an animal. The point is to arrive, do your work and the leave as though you were never there (apart from your energetic imprint upon the land). Finding a suitable substance is difficult, so it’s best not to bother with anything at all. You really don’t need any assistance with making a circle.

Occasionally, I have been known to draw a light trace of a circle with my staff’s blunt end. I only do this if I know that I can remove it afterwards, though, and recently I have begun not to make any mark at all. It’s quicker, safer and requires less clean-up.

A Method of Casting a Circle

1. My new method of casting a circle is to draw a ‘male’ (or ‘sun’) line clockwise (sunwise) around me, and then a ‘female’ (or ‘moon’) line anti-clockwise (widdershins) around me. For an idea of what I mean by a sun or moon line, a male or female line, then please refer to the glossary page, or to previous posts. Most of you by now will know what I’m talking about, hopefully.

A note about superstition and magick

If you haven’t read the description of these terms on Wikipedia, then I would encourage you to do so. Reading the definition of these directional terms made me laugh. To see how the “tradition” developed that turning in one particular direction was beneficial but turning in the other was counter-productive, even harmful, is ludicrous. To me, this kind of mentality – an out-of-balance mentality – seems to have arisen in response to occult practise, and we can see how the promotion of such superstitious ideas has in fact negated the effective engagement with magickal practise. If I believed that I was actually un-doing something by engaging with one particular energy form, whether that be male, female or neutral energy, then I would be severely limiting the magickal possibilities by that exclusion. In fact, in many cases, magickal acts would simply not be possible without the interaction of two or more energy forms. In this way, superstition can be seen as a means of destroying magickal potential.

2. Use a finger to trace the line. This brings focus to the edge of the space – a clear and intense definition to it which seems to help with the aspect of protecting the space, if only to clarify the exact dimensions to yourself. I don’t think it is by any means necessary to do this, but it is a helpful action if it does not draw too much unwanted attention to your work.

3. The width of the circle is determined by the space available, or even the space that you have been ‘allowed’, either by Nature of by the Spirit of Place, or simply because of the geography of the space that you are inhabiting. I have cast circles in cramped recesses in caves, in whole fields, in tiny holes only big enough to fit within, and in buildings whose walls have defined the boundaries. Really, you only need to be limited by the space you need to work. Why cast a huge circle if you don’t need one? Wasteful energy, I say.

4. Clear the space within. and then seal the edges to only allow in beneficial or invited influences. It is funny how we can ask for such a complicated entry procedure to be enforced for us and not have to state the many possible rules that we might attribute to such a conditional statement, yet it seems to work. The intention to protect the space and the simple act of asking for only beneficial energies to be allowed admittance is enough for whatever is guarding that space thereafter to be able to do its work on our behalf. Which brings me back again to having a good working relationship with the Spirit of Place. You see how important that becomes at this point? Co-operation, not coercion.

Why I only cast a circle outdoors

The reason that I only cast a circle outdoor is because the vast majority of my magickal work is done outdoors. Indoors, at home, I have protected my space already in many different ways that obviate the need to cast a circle. Outdoors I can employ the forces of Nature directly. Yes, I realise that the forces of Nature operate simultaneously everywhere, but calling the wind with the wind in your face provides me with a stronger bond and requires less imaginative effort, leaving me free to concentrate on the matter at hand. I understand that people use proxy objects to represent such forces -incense for fire, a feather as a symbol of the wind, and such like. I prefer the actual elements themselves because I am dealing directly with the spiritual forces inherent in those elements when I work.

If you can smell, see, touch the things you’re invoking that’s more immediate, and it involves the Spirit of the Place. If you take a token object or a representative object home with you then you’re one step away from the “spirit” of the thing you’re invoking, and literally out of contact with the spirit. For me it’s all about energy fields. If you want to extend your energy field from your home to wherever you want to work then that’s an extension, and therefore (I would argue) a dilution. If your energy field interacts directly with the energy field of a spirit of place then this is much more powerful because it’s a combination, not an extension.

We can connect to anything regardless of time and space, but we have to realise that we are reducing the inputs to the situation if we do that. Now, in some cases this might be desirable (when we have a single known task to perform) but if we are trying to gather information I think it is counter-productive, or limiting at best.

Termination or Dissolution

The final act of the magickal druid circle is its removal. Having created a field of energy, a force field if you will, and of your will, then comes the time to remove such an energetic imprint. Some aspects of your work will have become part of the fabric of the land through your work and by your work – and that is as it should be and you need not attempt to remove the very presence of yourself from it. Instead, the dissolution of a circle is merely the retraction, obliteration, or un-doing of its forces either by contracting the energy to a single point, or by pushing it out so far that it becomes absorbed by all that it passed over and through.

I dissolve a circle by asking Nature to reclaim the energies and neutralise the space. I ask the forces of Nature who may require the energy I have produced to absorb the energy and thus re-balance the energetic fields as they see fit. For those to whom it would be non-beneficial I ask that the energy pass on further until it has all been absorbed and diluted to nothingness.There is a Druid principle that I live by of leaving a space in the same condition as it was found (unless we have improved it, of course!). The concept of balance and non-interference. I always employ this when I can to keep the forces balanced and harmonised if the work was solely for me.

Finally I thank the Spirit of Place for allowing me to do this work in their presence, and I pay my respects in whatever way seems fit at the time. Sometimes this is nothing more than a courteous nod, but sometimes it can be the making of an artifact woven from natural materials that I leave as a crafted gift in a hidden place, usually on a power centre.

That, my friends, is how I have re-discovered the art of using the druid circle to work with Nature and her spirit forces out in the wonderful richness of the fields, mountains and forests in the land where I belong. Take what you need – discard that which has no value for you.

Gwas.