Wicca by Scott Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page A

used to invoke the Goddess in ritual. It is also rung to ward off evil spells and spirits, to halt storms, or to evoke good energies. Placed in cupboards or hung on the door, it guards the home. Bells are sometimes rung in ritual to mark various sections and to signal a spell’s beginning or end.
    Any type of bell can be used.
    These are some of the tools used in Wiccan ritual. Working with them, familiarizing yourself with their powers, and pouring your own energy into them, you may find their use becoming second nature. Gathering them is a problem, but this can be seen as a magical test of the seriousness of your Wiccan interest.
    As you collect each tool, you can prepare it for ritual. If old, it should be stripped of all associations and energies; you don’t know who owned the tool, nor to what purposes it may have been used.
    To begin this process, clean the tool physically using the appropriate method. When the object is clean and dry, bury it (in the earth or a bowlful of sand or salt) for a few days, allowing the energies to disperse. An alternate method consists of plunging the tool into the sea, river, or lake, or even your own bathtub after purifying the water by adding a few pinches of salt.
    Don’t ruin a good piece of wood by wetting it; similarly, don’t mar the finish of some other object by allowing it to contact salt. Use the most appropriate method for each tool.
    After a few days, dig up the tool, wipe it clean, and it is ready for magic. If you use the water method, leave the object submerged for a few hours, then dry it. If desired, repeat until the tool is clean, refreshed, new.
    There are consecration ceremonies for the Wiccan tools in section III, as well as preparation rites in the Herbal Grimoire section there. Both are optional; use as your intuition dictates.
    * Some Wiccans claim that brooms were “ridden” while hopping along the ground, much as are hobby-horses, to promote fertility of the fields. Then, too, it is believed that tales of Witches riding brooms through the air were unsophisticated explanations of astral projection.
    * More broom lore can be found in chapter 13 of The Magical Household (Llewellyn, 1987).

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Music, Dance, and Gesture
    WICCA UNDERSTANDS THAT what we perceive to be the difference between the physical and the nonphysical is due to our limitations as materially based beings. Some of the tools used in the practice of religion are indeed nonphysical. Three of the most effective of these are music, dance, and gesture. *
    These techniques are used to raise power, alter consciousness, and to unite with the Goddess and God—to achieve ecstasy. These tools are often part and parcel of ritual, and indeed the most effective, powerful rites can be those exclusively utilizing such tools. (A ritual comprised entirely of gestures can be found in section III: The Standing Stones Book of Shadows.)
    Music and dance were among the earliest magical and religious acts. Our ancestors probably utilized the magic of hand signals and bodily postures before speech was fully developed. The simple gesture of pointing still has powerful emotional effects, from a witness singling out the defendant as the person involved in the crime, to a hopeful at an audition being selected among a sea of her or his peers.
    The first music was probably rhythmic. Humans soon discovered that pleasing rhythms and sounds could be produced by slapping various parts of the body, especially the thighs and chest.
    Clapping creates a distinctive, clean sound that is still used by some Wiccans to release personal power during magical ritual. †
    Rhythmic instruments such as log drums were later used to produce fuller sounds. Some rocks ring when struck, and so another type of instrument was born. Reeds, bones, and some shells produce whistling sounds when correctly blown. Shamanic systems still in existence use these tools.
    Less intellectual rituals can be more effective precisely because they bypass the