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Casting a Circle

The circle is a place between the worlds: a bubble of time and space that is not quite here and not quite there, in which magic is worked and the gods are met. Casting it is the first ritual act most witches learn, and the one we go on doing for the rest of our lives.

Why a circle

Three reasons, and different witches weight them differently. The circle contains: power raised inside it builds like heat in an oven instead of dissipating. The circle protects: what is inside is held safe and what is outside is kept out. And the circle marks: it tells your mind, your body and whatever else is listening that ordinary time has stopped and sacred time has begun. You step into a circle differently than you step into a room, and that difference is itself the beginning of the work.

Before you begin

• Know what you are casting the circle for. A Sabbat, an Esbat, a working, a meditation. Write it down if it helps.
• Prepare the space. Sweep it, physically and with the besom. Put out everything you will need; you cannot leave once the circle is up without cutting a door.
• Bathe if you can, or at least wash your hands and face with intention.
• Ground and centre. Never skip this.

The casting

This is the shape most Wiccan circles take. The words are ours; use them, or write your own, or say nothing and let your hands do it.

1. Cleanse the space

Add three pinches of salt to the water, stir with the athame or a finger, and say: Salt and water, earth and sea, cleanse this place and make it free of all that is not of the work. Walk the boundary deosil, sunwise, clockwise, sprinkling. Then carry the incense round the same way for Air and Fire.

2. Cast the circle

Beginning in the north, or the east, point your athame, wand or finger at the ground and walk deosil once around, seeing a line of blue or white light flow from the point and rise into a sphere around and beneath you. Say: I cast this circle as a place between the worlds, a time outside of time, a boundary of protection and of power. As I will it, so it is. Some traditions walk three times. Once is enough to begin.

3. Call the quarters

Face each direction in turn, beginning where you began, and call the element with its qualities. Draw an invoking pentagram in the air if you know it; light the quarter candle. East: Guardians of the East, powers of Air, of dawn and the clear mind, I call you: be here with me. South for Fire, noon and will; West for Water, dusk and feeling; North for Earth, midnight and the body. At each, pause until you feel something arrive. It may be slight. It is real.

4. Invoke the Goddess and the God

Light their candles. Speak to them in your own words or theirs. Great Goddess, Lady of the moon and the deep earth; Great God, Lord of the sun and the wild wood: I ask you to be present in this circle. Witness my work. Bless my hands. Then be quiet for a while. This is the part of the ritual that is most often rushed and most worth lingering over.

5. State your purpose and do the work

Say out loud what you have come for. Then do it: the Sabbat observance, the spell, the divination, the meditation. If you are raising power, by chanting, drumming, dancing or breath, let it build and then release it toward your intention with a clear gesture and a clear mind.

6. Cakes and ale

Bless the food and drink, however simple, by touching the athame to the cup: As the blade is to the cup, so the God is to the Goddess, and in their joining is all life. Eat and drink. This grounds you after the working and shares the feast with the gods, for whom a little is set aside and later poured on the earth.

7. Thank and release

Thank the Goddess and God and bid them farewell: Stay if you will; go if you must. Hail and farewell. Extinguish their candles. Thank the quarters in reverse order, widdershins, anticlockwise, from north back round to east, drawing the banishing pentagram and putting out each candle.

8. Open the circle

Walk the boundary widdershins with your blade, drawing the light back into it and into the earth. Say: The circle is open but unbroken. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again. Then ground again, eat something, and write it all down.

Cutting a door

If you must leave the circle before it is opened, for the phone, the cat or the smoke alarm, draw an archway in the boundary with your blade, step through, and close it behind you with a reversing stroke. Reopen the same way on return. It is not ideal but it is far better than simply walking out.