Monday, November 29, 2010

Free Advice on Magick Wands

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Laughing through Cyber Monday -- got Spare's gift at a deep discount by being up at 5:00 a.m. for a cyber deal. Sure beats standing in line in the cold and dark for an hour, only to find that the bait-and-switch item you wanted is all "sold out."

Time to pass along a little free advice!

I thought of this while I was watching "Harry Potter and the Incessantly Endless and Pointless Plotline." If you're candid with yourself, you'll have to agree. Holes in the logic here, people.

One of the biggest holes in Harry Potter is the whole wand thing. Proof beyond shadow of a doubt that the author is not now, nor ever was, a Pagan.

How does one procure a wand in Harry Potter's world? Oh, gosh! One goes to a store. Buys it. Sure, the wand "speaks" to you. But you still have to buy it. I presume that the more doubloons you have, the better the wand that speaks to you. And in this saga, the most powerful wand is buried with a wizard whose grave is so easy to plunder it just boggles the mind. Wands. Bought and sold. Stolen. Borrowed. Grabbed and used by others.

Baaaaammmmmp! Foul! Pish tosh!

The whole point of a wand is this: You invest your time, energy, and love into it. Not your cash. Don't ever let anyone sell you a wand, no matter how beautiful it is.

Let me amend that. You can buy a beautiful wand for its appeal, but don't expect it to work for you. A working wand starts with a stick you pick up in the forest. Feathers you find here and there. A charm someone gives you. String. That little bead on the floor just at the edge of the fridge.

What does a real wand look like? It looks like you. It's a reflection of your personality, because you made it. If you're showy, it will be snazzy. If you're quiet, it may just be humble. The point is, to have an effective wand, you must make it yourself, from things that really speak to you.

On we go to the whole point of a magick wand. Have you ever tried pointing one at someone and saying, "Drop over dead, you wastrel?" Not that I've done it, but my guess is that this would not work.

My wand is an object to hold when I am meditating or reflecting. Good energy was stored in it when I made it, and I take it with me to places where I know it will absorb more good energy. I don't use it for protection, or for show, or for spell-making. I just hold it in my lap.

This morning I thought about my wand. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, 40 minutes before lunch, and my English Honors class bounded into the room like a pack of Tiggers. Hot on their heels came my Language Arts supervisor, newly hired by our district. He had come in for an informal "walk through." So, clipboard in hand, he watched as I spent about 15 minutes trying to calm a dozen 14-year-olds who must have had Sprite for breakfast.

The charming evaluation forms have a place for a numerical ranking. One (1) is "needs improvement." Two (2) is "barely ok." Three (3) is "decent." I got one-half. Not a 1-slash-2, a .5. Fifty percent. Half. Which isn't even on the sheet.

It's at times like this that one wishes for a Harry Potter wand. Just wave a fancy stick, shower everyone with "quiet dust," and zap the supervisor with the sinking feeling that he's forgotten his wedding anniversary and ought to biff off to the card shop.

Real wands aren't like that. A real wand welcomes you home at the end of a tough Monday and has you laughing into the wind and looking for faeries in the ivy. A real wand sits at your elbow as you make dinner, chat with your daughter, trash-talk the River Tribe on Facebook. Soon enough you might as well have had that quiet dust, because it doesn't really matter anymore. Tomorrow's another day, and maybe the Tiggers will be turtles, and maybe Gatsby will turn away from that green light on the dock and say to himself, "Can't repeat the past. Off to Tibet."

It's Cyber Monday. Get your magick wand today! It's not in a store or even online. Be like Dorothy. Look in your own back yard.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

This is the best advice I've read in a long time. Tomorrow, because its dark outside now and we do not have one working flashlight in the ten million we own, I will find my very first wand. :D

Lavanah said...

"Your wand looks like you," you say? My Beloved Spouse says my wand looks like a cudgel. You can't buy it, but maybe you would like to borrow it for use on teacher evaluators?

A Wild Celtic Rose said...

My wand is driftwood, picked up on the rugged Pacific Northwest coast; I used a wood burning too to add a simple design, oiled it, added an amethyst crystal to the end and wrapped the hand end in soft deer skin.

You won't find that wand in a shop on Diagon Ally ;)

Dancing With Fey said...

I don't have a wand, but I generally go this way with the rest of my magickal/shamanic type stuff. Buying things just isn't the same as making them. And if you do buy something, you need to do something to make it your own!

Vivienne Grainger said...

I have two wands. One, a tree was kind enough to drop at my feet, and at my own height, it's more a staff than a wand. (I keep my pointy hat on it.)

The second, a bit later-come to me, is a five-inch quartz crystal roughly an inch around. I didn't go looking for her; she came looking for me. I accompanied a friend to a store for incense, and as I didn't care much for their incense selection, went snooping. She was in the crystals bin with everybody else; once we'd met, she kept calling me back, until I gave in and surrendered the majority of an entire week's paycheck for her.

I have repeatedly offered to make her charms to wear, but she prefers to remain skyclad. Outside of giving her sunbaths, and keeping the dust off her, there's not much I can do in the way of working with her. But she's made it clear that while I am welcome to my senior wand, and can make a runestick for myself with her permission, she and she alone is to be my wand.

If this leaves you confused as to who's the witch and who's the tool, yeah, me too.

Thomas said...

I agree that a wand should probably never be purchased. Mine, though, was given to me by someone who knew me very well without my asking.

It's everything I've ever wanted or needed in such a tool and I've used it and loved it for years.

I've heard it said that the important part about ritual tools is not that you go out and procure them like you were equipping a kitchen but that they happen upon you like the magical events of real life. You make them. You stumble upon them. They're given to you unasked etc.

The ways to acquire ritual tools are as varied as the people who have and use them and this is as it should be.

Unknown said...

Mine is a double wand made out of a set of knitting needles, with the sheath knitted from those needles, with charms and a feather hanging off the back and secret messages written in gold.

And now I am totally sending this link to the friend who helped make mine :)

This post is so right on.

Intense Guy said...

I think the only wand that would work for me is a baseball bat and the chance to have some "free swings" at some folks...

:)