inhabiting rivers and small men with gnarled features inhabiting the Earth. Elementals were endowed with forms appropriate to their nature. These images are not formed in an arbitrary way. Human consciousness works in a similar way in all times and cultures and the forms in which the Elementals have been depicted over the ages are very similar. These symbols can be very helpful. Contact with Elementals causes an appropriate symbol to be stimulated in the psyche. We then perceive the force as the symbol. This is an act of passive clairvoyance. Stimulating the symbol by deliberately visualizing it will cause the process to happen in the opposite direction and will bring us into contact with the force behind it. This is an act of active magic and it is in this way that in ritual we invoke the Elements at the quarters. It is important, however, to make a distinction between the entity and the image with which the human mind clothes it. Elementals are not really lovely ladies with fishes’ tails. However, these are useful symbols that express to our minds the essence of the Elementals’ nature.
Preparing the circle
Humans have always believed in the Otherworld, the Land of Faery, a spiritual realm that is neither of Heaven nor Earth, but lies somewhere between. This is the world of the traveller who falls asleep and find himself lured by a beautiful maiden to a land where the years pass like days and no one ever grows old; a land beyond the bounds of time. This is the realm of the Wiccan circle; a sacred space not ruled by clock time or by linear thought, but by the timeless truths of the myths and dreams of the human psyche. No watch or clock may be brought into the circle and a distinctive feature of Wiccan rites is a strange acceleration of time: what seems like one hour is really three or four or five.
When people first enter Wicca, they may find it difficult to create this sacred space. There is no border crossing through which we can pass and find ourselves automatically in the Land of Faery. To enter, we must make an inner journey via the actions of casting the circle. How can we make this journey?
If we are performing ritual outside, this is relatively easy. The process of journeying to the working site; of preparing it; gathering wood for the fire; watching the sunset disappear behind the trees; listening to the evening song of the birds; all these turn our minds away from the concerns of the mundane world to remind us of more important things – the world of Nature, the ever-burgeoning life force of which we are a part.
Indoors, this switching off can be more difficult, but one of the skills Wicca teaches us is concentration. It is the ability to focus on one idea and to exclude all others that enables us to prepare ourselves for the circle. As the symbols of the circle become integrated into our psyche, they precipitate a change of consciousness without any conscious intervention on our part. As one priestess said to me, ‘As soon as I hear the swishing of the broom, stillness ripples through my mind. The outside world just fades away.’
Preparing ourselves – the chakras
The simple preparation of sweeping the circle is traditionally our only preparation for entering the rite. However, for working our own rites indoors, we have adopted a technique that originated far away from the misty hills of Herne’s Britain. This is the Eastern technique of opening the chakras. To some, the idea of using the chakra system may seem alien, but to borrow from the East is not a new development in Wicca. Wicca owes much to the ancient Mystery schools of the Mediterranean and Near East, which themselves were cross-fertilized by ideas from the East. Nor is the idea of energy centres in the body an exclusively Eastern concept. The Celtic God Cernunnos is depicted on the Gundestrup Cauldron sitting in a meditative position reminiscent of the Buddha while holding a snake, an image often used to depict energy rising up the spinal column from the base of the spine chakra. Witches have always worked with these energy centres or chakras, but it was in the East that the terminology and mapping of the energy systems was most developed. It is to the East, therefore, that we turn when we want to explain what Witches are doing with their bodily energies. We readily use the chakra system to help people understand and gain the control over these energies that is necessary in Wicca.
There are seven major chakras in the body which are known by their traditional Sanskrit names and also by more mundane names. The first, the muladhara (root support) chakra, is at the base of the spine; the second is the sacral or svadisthana (sweetness) chakra which rules the belly area below the navel; the third is the manipura (lustrous jewel) chakra at the solar plexus below the breast bone; the fourth is the chakra at the centre of the breast bone which is known as the heart chakra, the anahata (unstruck); the fifth is the throat chakra, the visuddi (purify); the sixth is the third eye, the ajna (knowing) chakra at the centre of the forehead; and the seventh is the crown chakra, the sahasrara (thousandfold), at the top of the head.
Clairvoyantly the chakras are seen as pulsating or spinning circles of light that follow the colours of the spectrum. The base of the spine chakra is seen as a pulsating circle of red light; the sacral chakra is orange; the solar plexus is yellow; the heart chakra is emerald green; the throat chakra is bright blue; the third eye is violet; and the crown chakra is seen as a pulsating circle of brilliant white light.2
The chakras
Opening the chakras
In a group, the technique of opening the chakras can be carried out by each person individually, or one person can talk the rest of the group through the process. In the beginning, it is best if someone whose clairvoyance is developed acts as group leader. She or he can then talk the group through the exercise while checking that everyone has opened each chakra before moving on. Chakras can be opened either from the crown chakra down or from the base of the spine chakra up. Initially, most people find it easier to work from the base up and it is this upward-flowing energy that is needed for circle casting and spells.
1. To open the chakras, first visualize a round circle of pulsating red light at the base of the spine. Visualize this getting larger and larger until it covers the whole of the lower spine. Now imagine that you are drawing a current of energy into the chakra so that it grows warm and begins to glow and pulsate with red energy and light.
2. Draw more and more energy into your base of spine chakra as though it is a tank being filled with red light. Then, as the flow of energy comes into your body, allow it to coil round and round inside you like a snake. Allow the snake of energy to rise, still spiralling until it reaches the level of your belly.
3. Visualize the snake spiralling round and round at the level of your belly. As it does so, visualize your sacral chakra in the centre of your belly beginning to glow with spinning orange light. Allow the orange circle to grow larger and larger, spinning with energy.
4. Draw more energy in from the base of the spine. Bring it up, past your sacral to the level of the solar plexus chakra. Concentrate now on the base of the spine again. Renew the energy in your base of spine chakra by drawing in more energy from outside, until the red glow at the base of the spine begins to spin faster and faster and to grow wider and wider.
5. Draw more energy up the spine and into the sacral chakra so that this too spins faster and grows wider, glowing with a bright orange light. Then allow the snake of energy to rise up through the centre of your body to the level of the solar plexus. Here it begins to activate the solar plexus chakra that starts to glow with a golden yellow light.
6. Go back down to the base of the spine and draw more energy up the centre of the body and into the solar plexus chakra. Allow it to open wider and wider. Allow the chakra to spin faster and faster until there is a golden spinning sun at the solar plexus.
7. Go back to the base of the spine again. Draw more energy in and up the spine, past the sacral chakra, past the solar plexus, up to the centre of the breast
