Any kitchen knife will do (I recommend buying a new one). You can also find daggers in the sporting goods department/stores. Also some letter openers work well too.
My best Athame is actually a butter knife :) To bless and consecrate one, I just run it through some incense smoke (anything will do) and ask for the blessing of the God and Goddess.
It seems, from what has been posted on this thread, that most members have no idea what an Athame is really for. So let me make it clear.
It has to do with the old witchcraft being all about the natural order of things. How the world works. What Life is all about.
Life is the bringing together of the male and female of nature. Every Flora and Fauna comes into existence by a male coming together with a female. (There are a few exceptions.)
Now we come to The Great Rite of old witchcraft. A ceremony of actual sexual intercourse by a man and a woman; to re-enact the process of Life.
When Gardner, Doreen Valiente,et al, were formulating Wicca, they decided that the "actual" Great Rite might well be offensive to some people. So it was agreed that The Great Rite would only be performed by a couple "in secret"; not in view of the coven.
It was further decided that if a couple were unwilling, then the Great Rite would be "symbolic".
A Chalice containing wine would represent the female vagina. A sacred "knife", pointed dagger (Athame), would represent the
male phallus.
When the Athame was plunged into the Chalice it would be a symbolic ceremony of The Great Rite.
The Athame is NOT a "pointer" for drawing circles. It is a sacred object; and should be treated with respect and reverence!
It is not for cutting herbs, or marking candles!
I might be in trouble with Lark for posting this. But I thought members should know the truth.
Hmm Okay but i Saw a girl did that she did a death ritual on someone. She Was one of the darkest witches and most powerful . I know you shall not cut herbs with it
I don't believe anything you have posted is secret, I am not initiated into Wicca and I'm well aware of the great rite, I believe the Farrar's published this information.
A lot of people confuse ritual daggers for athames, and I believe this is where the issue comes in. What most people forget is that this trend in occultism which Wicca adopted largely stems from the Golden Dawn.
In this order there would be a dagger to banish with/draw a circle, a dagger symbolising air, and if they taught or performed the great rite they would most likely have a separate dagger for that too: each dagger is consecrated to a specific purpose, and as Brysing said, the Athame is consrecrated/dedicated to the performance of the great rite.
If you work with different systems you will most likely have a multitude of daggers all with specific symbols and words of power on them pertinent to their traditional use.
Of course, I am talking from a traditional standpoint, many practitioners today do just use their athame for everything and believe and find this is perfectly okay. Each to their own I suppose, however, if they researched their roots they would soon realise this is not the way it was done.
Yes, I know that The Great Rite has been published. I thought that a High Priestess of Wicca, such as Lark, might not like the children on this site being told about it's sexual nature.
Water, if you saw a so-called powerful witch use the ritual I described as a death ritual then that person was role playing. Did the person die, by the way? If they did it was pure coincidence.
