The athame& The Sword

The Athame
An athame is, quite simply, a ceremonial knife. It is one of the ritual tools that entered the tradition
through the influence of magicians and witches who set out the wisdom, mainly at the beginning of the
twentieth century and in the upsurge of covens during the 1950s.

Gerald Gardener, one of the founding
fathers of Wicca, considered ritual knives and swords of prime importance in modern formal
witchcraft.
You can obtain an athame from a specialist magical shop, but as I said before, any knife - even a letteropener
- will do, although it should preferably have a silver-coloured blade. Athames are traditionally
double-edged and black-handled, but a single-edged blade is better if you are new to magick, to avoid
unintentional cuts.
There is a vast array of scouting and craft knives available, with black wooden handles on which you
can engrave magical symbols such as your zodiacal and planetary glyphs with a pyrographic set
obtained from an art shop. You can also paint moons, stars, spirals, suns.

The athame is set in the East of the altar and represents the element of Air. Like the sword, it is
traditionally used for drawing magical circles on the ground and directing magical Air energies into a
symbol. When you are casting a circle, you can point your athame diagonally towards the ground, so
that you do not need to stoop to draw (which is not very elegant and bad for the back). With practice,
the movement becomes as graceful as with a sword.
The athame can also be used as a conductor of energy, especially in solitary rituals, being held above
the head with both hands to draw down light and energy into the body. One method
of releasing the power is then to bring the athame down with a swift, cutting movement, horizontally at
waist level, then thrust it away from the body and upwards once more to release this power. If others
are present, direct the athame towards the centre of the circle. After the ritual you can drain excess
energies by pointing the athame to the ground.
An athame may be used to invoke the elemental Guardian Spirits by drawing a pentagram in the air and for closing down the elemental energies after the ritual. With its cutting steel of
Mars, it is effective in power, matters of the mind, change, action, justice, banishing magick, protection
and for cutting through inertia and stagnation. The athame is sometimes also associated with the Fire
element.
If you don't like the idea of a full-sized athame, there are some lovely paper knives in the shape of
swords or with animal or birds' heads.
Some covens give each of their members a tiny athame, to be used for drawing down energies during
ceremonies. The main athame is used by the person leading the ritual who may draw the circle, open
all four quarters and close them after the ritual.
An athame with a white handle is used for cutting wands, harvesting herbs for magick or healing,
carving the traditional Samhain jack-o'-lantern, and etching runes and other magical or astrological
symbols on candles and talismans. Some practitioners believe that you should never use metal for
cutting herbs but instead pull them up, shred them and pound them in a mortar and pestle, kept for the
purpose. Pearl-handled athames are considered to be especially magical.



The Sword
Like the athame, the sword stands in the East of the circle as a tool of the Air element. Swords are the
suit symbol of Air in the Tarot and are also one of the Christian as well as the Celtic Grail treasures.
Each of the Tarot suits and the main elemental ritual items in magick, represented by these four suits,
is associated with one of the treasures of the Celts. The treasures belonged to the Celtic Father God,
Dagda, and are said to be guarded in the Otherworld by Merlin. There were 13 treasures in total, but
four have come into pre-eminence in magick and Tarot reading.
These four main sacred artefacts - swords, pentacles, wands and cups, or chalices - have parallels in
Christianity and were associated with the legendary quest of the knights of King Arthur, who
attempted to find them. The Grail Cup was the most famous of these. The Christian sword of King
David, identified in legend with Arthur's sword Excalibur, appears in Celtic tradition as the sword of
Nuada whose hand was cut off in battle.
With a new hand fashioned from silver, he went on to lead his people to victory. According to one
account, the Christian treasures were brought in AD 64 to Glastonbury in England by Joseph of
Arimathea, the rich merchant who caught Christ's blood in the chalice as He was on the cross and took
care of His burial after the crucifixion.
Some present-day, peace-loving witches do not really like the concept of using
swords, even though they are pretty spectacular for drawing out a circle on a forest floor, and swords
are rarely used in home ritual magick. If you do want to use one, however, you can obtain reproduction
ceremonial swords.
The sword is the male symbol to the female symbol of the cauldron, and plunging the swords into the
waters of the cauldron can be used in love rituals and for the union of male and female, god and
goddess energies as the culmination of any rite. However, the chalice and the athame, or wand, tend to
be used for the same purpose, unless it is a very grand ceremony.

A Practical Guide to Witchcraft and Magic Spells
By
Cassandra Eason

very nice deus ,i have just buought a sword for when im affirmed and can do rituals