A Circle in a Studio Apartment
Three paces across, a cat who will not stay outside the circle, and a downstairs neighbour who thinks I am into interpretive dance.
Every book about casting a circle has a diagram. The diagram shows a generous round space with an altar in the north and plenty of room to walk the boundary, a candle at each quarter standing well clear of anything that might catch, and, implicitly, a person who lives in a house with a spare room or at least a living room that does not also contain the bed, the kitchen, the desk, the bicycle and the cat's tray. I have lived in six rented rooms in nine years. I have cast a circle in all of them. Here is what the diagram does not tell you.
The geography
My current apartment is a rectangle, about five metres by four, of which the bed takes one end and the kitchen counter takes one side. If I push the folding table against the wall, I can clear a space on the floor roughly three paces across. It is not round. It is a sort of squashed oval with a corner missing where the fridge is. The east quarter is the window, which is good. The west quarter is the bed, which means Water is represented, most nights, by a pile of laundry. North is the fridge. South is the door, through which the cat comes and goes as he pleases, because he is a cat and the concept of a boundary of protection and power is one he regards as a personal challenge.
The first time I cast here, I did it by the book. Salt water round the edge, which got on the rug. Incense, which set off the smoke alarm, which brought the downstairs neighbour up to check, so that I opened the door, in a shawl, holding a knife, with a candle burning on top of the fridge, and said "everything's fine" in the voice of someone for whom everything is not fine. He has been very polite ever since. I think he has decided I do movement practice.
What I learned about the circle
I learned, first, that the circle is not on the floor. It never was. The books say "visualise a sphere of light" and then spend four pages on where to stand, so you end up thinking the standing is the point. It is not. The sphere is the point. And a sphere does not care about the fridge. When I cast now, I still walk the boundary, three paces across, stepping over the laundry, but the circle I am casting goes through the wall into next door's airing cupboard and down through the floor into the neighbour's ceiling and up through the roof into the rain, and it is exactly as large as it needs to be, and the fridge is simply a thing that happens to be inside it, like the cat.
I learned, second, that the quarters are directions, not furniture. For a long time I thought I needed a thing at each quarter: a candle, a bowl, a stone. In three paces of floor, four candles are a fire hazard and four bowls are something to kick over. Now I have one candle, on the one surface that is not flammable, and I turn to each quarter and call it with my hands and my breath. East is the window and I open it a crack. South is the door and I feel the warmth of the hall. West is the bed and, honestly, Water is also rest and dreams, and I have made my peace with the laundry. North is the fridge, and the fridge hums, and the hum is the deep steady note of Earth, and I did not expect to write that sentence when I started practising but there it is.
I learned, third, about the cat. I used to shut him out. He would yowl at the door for the whole ritual and I would lose the thread, and then I would feel I had failed because the books say the circle is not to be broken and here was a creature determined to break it. Then one night I did not shut him out, and he came in halfway through the quarters, walked once round the boundary clockwise, exactly on the line I had drawn, sat down in the middle, and went to sleep. He has done this every time since. I have stopped thinking of him as an interruption. The old trial records are full of familiars, and I used to think that was a story the inquisitors told; now I think it was a story about cats, who have always known exactly where the circle is and who it belongs to.
What smallness is for
There is a thing that happens in a small circle that does not happen in a large one. In the Hearth's hall, with twenty people and a proper altar and room to dance, the power moves around the circle, person to person, and it is glorious and I love it. In three paces of floor with a cat, there is nowhere for the power to go but up. It builds fast and it builds close and when I release it, it goes like a cork. I have had workings done in this apartment come back faster than anything I ever did in a field. I do not fully understand that. I think it may be about focus: in a small space there is nothing to look at but the work. I think it may also be about humility, because it is very hard to feel grand in a squashed oval with a corner missing, and the gods, in my experience, like it when you do not feel grand.
Advice, for what it is worth
- Salt water goes in a bowl you carry round, not on the floor. The floor is someone's deposit.
- One candle. One. In a jar. On a tile.
- Incense sticks, not charcoal, and open the window first, and tell your neighbour you burn incense so they are not alarmed by the smell. Mine now asks what the smell is, and I tell him, and he says "nice."
- Let the cat in.
- Cast the sphere, not the floor plan. Then cast it bigger. Then stop apologising to the gods for the fridge.
The books are right about everything except the diagram. The diagram is for a house. The circle is for wherever you are.
Ash leads the Hearth's Kitchen Table and keeps the eighth night of the flame. The cat is called Pangur and has his own opinions about Esbats.