Hello and welcome to the podcast. I hope everyone enjoyed Lammas and the full moon, and the turning of the calendar to August, it’s been just a lot going on and it’s been nice. I’ve been creeping on everyone’s sabbat celebrations and the pictures that folks have posted of their altars and their rituals and it’s all been a balm to my soul. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself and it looks as though you all have, too. Well done, everyone.
Um what else? Oh! I did want to mention something that I have kind of forgotten to talk about for like, two or three months. I have a YouTube channel and I have been posting videos of these for several weeks, maybe ten weeks. So not all of the episodes are on the channel, but some are, and I’ll continue to post them going forward.
Now, please, temper any expectations you may have, this is not a flashy channel. I’m not editing these episodes, or adding music or doing anything interesting at all except creating a video file of the recording process. With very few exceptions, I record all of these episodes in one take, so these videos are literally me, sitting in one place and talking to the camera. One thing I will say that I have realized about myself during this process is that I talk with my hands way too much.
I have become so aware of how much I use my hands in conversation now, and like… It’s a lot. It’s too much. But anyway, that’s that. So if you really want to see how the sausage is made here on the Middle-Aged Witch podcast, I will post a link to the YouTube channel in the episode description.
And thanks so much to everyone who has booked a tarot reading or some spell work, I am meeting so many cool people and we are making some really powerful magick together. It’s so much fun and it’s been really rewarding to get to know you. So that’s it and that’s all for now. On to today’s subject which is wand magick.
This topic was a suggestion from a witch called Tina, and I think it’s a good idea to talk about wands. I know wands are a very big deal among the more organized witchcraft sects, such as Wicca, but they seem almost optional for the vast majority of us. And you know, that’s fine. There is no one, correct way to practice the craft and something that seems indispensable to one witch may never even cross the mind of another, and both of those positions are valid and correct.
But there are some very good reasons that a witch might want to avail themselves of a wand, and we are going to talk about that today. We will talk about when we might find them useful, where to find a wand, what makes a wand a wand, and we will also just barely on the history of wand usage. And to start, I want to read a short section from the most gorgeous book ever. It’s called Witchcraft, and it’s from the Library of Esoterica. It’s basically a compendium of writings on all different aspects of Witchcraft and it’s got some really gorgeous artwork in it too. A little spendy, but if you’re looking for something to splurge on, you could definitely do worse.
In one of its many essays, called Wands: Implements of Manifestation, Mya Spalter says this:
…the wand is an extension of the magician’s will and their ability to manifest through action. Phallic in shape and symbolism, the wand is considered a tool of vigorous manifestation. The use of the magic wand goes back to the ancient Greek myths of Homer, who wrote of rods or wands being used by the goddesses Circe and Athena. He wand was later referenced as essential among the magician’s tools in Eliphas Levi’s widely influential grimoire of early-20th-century European magick, The Key of Solomon the King.
The practice of using wands in ritual was subsequently embraced by the 19th century occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (which we have referenced here on this podcast)…
Wands were considered an important element of many of the Golden Dawn’s elaborate, prescribed rituals. In the 20th century, wands were embraced by Wiccan practitioners as well. In Wicca, the wand is most often associated with the element of Air.
I do want to go a little deeper into the significance of wands inasmuch as they are correlated with fire. Like, I acknowledge that Wiccans frequently associate them with air, but I am not a Wiccan, so I don’t have anything useful or informed to really add there. However, wands are definitely of the element of fire. Especially in Tarot, and this is something to keep in mind. Fire is the element of willpower and change and challenge and passion and sexuality (hello, phallic symbol). Fire can be the element of creation, but it can also be the element of destruction. It depends only on the intention and the skill of the person who is wielding it.
And this is where we kind of dovetail into the discussion about why in god’s name we would ever need or want to bother to use a wand. I am going to make a blanket statement with no qualifiers right now. And, I’m a Libra, so this is a really big deal for me, so here goes: Nobody ever needs to use a wand to perform magick. It is not necessary. Ever. At any time. You can perform excellent magick all of the time without ever using a wand.
But! Sometimes it’s a really nice tool. I think of a wand like a lightning rod. Because the magick you’re going to do comes from you. It does not come out of a wand. The wand is only used to concentrate it, to focus it, to draw it in, and to direct it somewhere specific. And that is why you might decide to use a wand. It can be really helpful. If we feel like we struggle sometimes to focus that energy or to feel it or to direct it, it can be really beneficial to use a wand to assist us.
So that’s all there is to know about that aspect of it. So if you’re a witch who feels like you could use some focus, some accuracy, definitely consider a wand. I do have one, I do use it. I do love it. It’s just not a tool that I pull out all that often. But when I do, I do feel as though it elevates the degree of focus that I’m able to conjure.
So where do people get their wands? Well, any-goddamn-where, actually. Fallen trees are a great source for wand wood, especially if the tree is known to have correspondences that would suit your desired manifestations. Apple wood is excellent for challenges and beginnings and divination.
Oak trees will serve you in magick related to abundance, success, money, and power. Birch trees for defensive magick, for growth and for healing. Willow for death magick, for moon magick, or for communication.
And really every tree has some kind of magick associated with it, so if you find a nice fallen tree with a lovely branch that wants to come home with you, do a quick Google search at least and find out what correspondences it has. So frequently, these tools kind of fall into our laps, so if we keep our eyes open, we can avail ourselves of these gifts.
Beyond wood, there are crystal wands. And you can certainly decorate your wands with crystals, too. Crystals are powerful generators of energy, so combining that with our own magick and creating this alchemical reaction in support of our intentions is such a great way to use these materials. And let’s be honest, we all have at least one crystal that we keep around because we just know it’s going to be really useful someday.
You know, I was with the fam at a renaissance faire a couple weekends ago in San Luis Obispo, and there were two wandmakers who had booths there and they had some of the coolest wands, and yall, I really almost folded. I was determined not to spend a bunch of money at the RenFaire this year and I did get a few things, but some of those wands had me weak. They can truly be works of art.
Another thing to consider when choosing a wand is that it may become an heirloom. My daughters’ wands were handed down, my mother gave them to them and they’re actually older than she is. These are like, 65 year old wands, maybe older than that, and they have animal carvings and runes, and they’re really really powerful and they’re connected to a lineage of witches and I love that these tools are now passing through their hands, and will continue to be passed down through posterity.
This might make it sting a little less if that price tag is a little more spendy than you’d planned, you know, consider that it may continue to live on through witches who come after you. I have said it before and I’ll keep saying it: if we do not come from a long, proud line of witches, if we do not have ancestors to look back to who paved this path ahead of us, that just means it’s our responsibility to be the ancestors for those witches who will come after us. And a wand is a lovely bequest to leave for your loved ones.
So let’s now talk about when we might use it, what kind of magick is this tool going to help us perform? So, this is where I will not make any blanket statements. You can use your wand for any kind of magick you want. But this is how I use mine. When I use mine. If I’m doing work where I want to charge an object with magickal intent, I might get the old wand out. If I’ve created a sigil, and I got an email from a witch just a day or two ago who had done some powerful sigil work.
But part of creating a sigil is assigning intent to the symbol that we have created. This is where we tell the sigil what it’s meant to do and essentially program it. This is a great use for a wand. We are pulling magick into ourselves before focusing it on the sigil and then projecting that power into it. A wand is a great way to harness and focus that energy.
We can do the same with an amulet or a charm. We once again are going to assign magickal properties to an otherwise mundane object, and a wand is really helpful for that. We pull all that power in, we raise all that energy, we compress it and condense it and allow it to follow a path through our bodies down our arm, through our hand, and into this wand which we can easily direct at a very small target. Like a sigil or a pendant or whatever the case may be.
This is also why wands can be very helpful in healing magick. Especially if we are working with the actual person who we’re trying to heal, or even if we’re using a poppet of the intended recipient of the healing. The laying on of hands is certainly some real shit, but we can also use that wand to act as a laser pointer, just driving those healing forces into the body where that relief is needed.
Additional Resources:
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCokbNKoYrmbLUjNTKBIjaFw
Private Tarot Readings/ Custom Spell Work: https://middleagedwitch.com/liveservices/
Witchcraft: Hundley, Jessica: https://a.co/d/5eJAqXH
