Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!
Does anyone have any direct experience with using wands in their rituals or in general in their form of magic/magick? I have one myself and have done only cursory research on best practices.
I'm not finding a lot at the moment to explain the best way their used in practice. Book recommendations are always welcome, but so are any how-to videos or, what would be great, is if people could share their direct experience using one or the other or both - positives and negatives if there are any?
To fair effect, I'd been combining a Seven Section & Double Wand into a Staff to correspond with the Middle Pillar of the Tree of Life as I mapped it at the time. In the last year with developing a new philosophy to go with a modern understanding of nature, and the following cascade of changes to metaphysics and cabalistic models, a new Staff with a wand of Twelve Sections & Double Wand is currently in the works. I might use the same style of vine strangled wood for the spiral sections.
I find a Sectioned Wand can tap wells of power through grip and orientation with the Double Wand as a brush.
The physical Wand can also be visualized in different forms, but the physical gesticulation is helpful when working in groups or psychically holding several concepts and need an autonomic through referenced posture with the Wands.
I always found wands a bit corny. But because I am corny myself, I have made some. For the Grand Grimoire I repurposed one I had made earlier and attached an big iron U at the end. That's not really how it is described in the book but it seemed a good solution for me. The prongs are (I believe) meant to represent the crescent of the moon which, just like the similar attachment on a ritual dagger, are there to repel evil spirits (think of the horned hand as popularized by Dio)
In Grand Grimoire there's a spirit linked with this “Blasting Rod” who is called Zariatnatmick. He is only mentioned in the conjurations.
“I beseech you, O great ADONAY, ELOHIM, ARIEL and YEHOVA to be favorable and to give this rod that I am cutting the strength of the rod of Jacob and the virtue of Moses and that of the mighty Joshua; and I beseech you, O great ADONAY, ELOHIM, ARIEL and YEHOVA to enclose in this rod all the power of Samson, the righteous rage of Emmanuel and the thunderbolt of ZARIATNATMICK who will avenge man's affronts on the day of Judgement.”
Playing with words I think the name could be a compound of three Hebrew words:
ZRTh = a span, the distance from the thumb to the little finger when the hand is extended
NTH = to stretch out, to extend
MQL = a rod, a staff
ZaReThNuTHMeQL then is “the rod that extends the (reach of the) hand”
I'm sure the ChatGPTers will disagree.
A span is said to be 9 inches. That is just slightly less than half of the length of the Blasting Rod. So, one span “extended” or rather doubled, is the Rod. Could this name then be (part of) the instructions rather than a name, or is it / has it become the personification / the name of the rod – the spirit attached to it?
I think it can't hurt to treat the rod as a housing for a spirit by the name of Zariatnatmik.
My rewritten consecration for the Rod included
three verses from Psalm 110, because these mention a rod and the word “luciferum” which, even though it's not really Lucifer that is intended but rather the dawn, felt appropriate. I condensed these verses into:
A dextris meis.
Virgam virtutis tuae et splendoribus sanctorum: ante luciferum, genui te.
(on my right hand, the rod of your power and the splendour of the saints: before Lucifer, I have begotten you)
I only used this Rod in Grand Grimoire callings and not outside of it because I still think wands are kinda silly.
There is a deep mystery there for folks. Now, speaking only to those who work in animist magical contexts; in making the tools, you are taking a deeply personal mythic journey, demonstrating sincerity to the daimons, and showing you are a good investment of their time and attention.
When working more grim trad it helps to enter the mindset of an 'unsophisticated' medievalist or early modern magician. They didn't have the the same concept of Levy to Crowley 'Will' and a subjective inner temple. The "Above" was just the Neoplatonic One or God (depending on which school of Catholicism they were in) and which was conceived as a separate world, and not just as a higher aspect of your mind. You went there for magical authority to call the spirits who then did the work.
I don't work other systems aside from New Thought / Chaos Magic, and have not done any in 25 years, so i have no idea how that translates into other systems these days. The older operative worldview for magic was very externalized, so helps to do a big leap of Chaos Magic paradigm shifting to enter it.
Once there, you can see the making the two wands of Grimpoirium Verum as a kind of spirit pact.
The Elder wand is a "finger" of Frimost, a heavy-hitting masculine spirit who might just be a lower manifestation of Belzebuth. Elder is hollow and mythical patterned after Mercury. It carries connotation of fire, or rather blowing on fire to heat things up. Elder grows in liminal spaces, graveyards, and boundaries between cultivated and wild lands.
If suspect if you have no Elder then bamboo might be a good substitute. In some New World Sorcery the souls of the dead are said to rest on bamboo. Worth investigating.
The Hazel wand is consecrated to Klepoth and carries connotations of the Sun, and being of sunny disposition. She's a feminine spirit. (I think, I do not work with her directly. I just call her to lend her authority.) I sometimes get these sense she is being entreating on behalf, seducing, and making sweet sweet introductions. Hazel the wand helps you navigate between worlds and discover what's concealed. Think of it as a tool for opening doors and making first contact with the spirits when you're working in the Grimorium Verum system.
Again, this animist magic . There is "soul" dimension to the work, one can discover, but is not talked about much, where more psychological modern magic can sort of laterally connect to. But it helps to see with all this corny magical kit you are sort of making in interdimensional diplomatic agency, and opening a Star Trek hailing frequency on the channels they recognize. You can skimp on some of the ritual furniture and kit, as long as you stock up the concession stand
Post automatically merged:
edit: Pardon. Rushing to get done writing to water some plants.
In the G.V, system, the hazel wand carried connotation of the Sun and Mercury. Hazel is attributed Mercury, with all the mythic importance suggested there, but is consecrated on the day of the Sun. That this etheric matrix is then 'used' by Klepoth is very interesting.
