Of Will and Wands

I lay my life before you, faun

consort of life, the fleeting dawn

you who are everything, one and whole

flow through me and rekindle my soul

I pray that you will lend your might,

that I become one with the eternal light

I read somewhere that what we fear most is not the darkness within ourselves but the light. In the darkness, there is nothing to lose, no one who can let us down or betray us, and we have no expectations on ourselves that we need to live up to. We can’t fail. We’re just inhabitants of a lawless jungle, fighting for survival. So many people spend their entire lives in the comforting agony of darkness. Never getting out of the black hole in their hearts long enough to truly experience a sunny spring day, a squirrel’s dance through the trees, or the first warming sip of coffee in the morning.

I fear the light too. I fear the joy and happiness that might be taken away from me once I attain it, the feeling of accomplishment that can be diminished in the blink of an eye, love that can turn away and leave at any moment. The thing about being in the dark is that there you’re free to dream about the light without having to risk anything. It’s safe to be dead. But I made a promise this year to stay in the light and keep the flame lit, to operate from a place of love and follow through on my creative projects.

At Imbolc, I leaned into Brigid’s protective hearth fire through infusing everyday objects such as jewelry and soap with the energies of light and fire, to constantly replenish my spirit with these qualities and stay focused on the theme of the year. You’d be surprised at the results of such simple acts and to me, this is the center of a spiritual practice: to align mind, body and spirit so they work together in harmony focusing one goal. In February I was still a sleepy, exhausted animal in hibernation but through regular energy practice and the advent of spring, I’m now so filled with will and energy that it’s hard to contain it, let alone be still for any longer than five minutes. It is time to gather all of this solar energy and re-focus it to help align and direct my will. To do this, I decided to indulge in a powerful symbolic act: dedicating a wand.

What is a Wand?

The ultimate wizard tool, wands (or staffs) are wielded by the Harry Potters and Gandalfs of our fictional world, as well as by the modern druids, ceremonial magicians, wiccans and witches in our actual world. Wands, and other types of carved and/or decorated pieces of wood (stang, staff, rod) have been around as tools of spiritual and magical power for thousands of years.

A possible origin of the magic wand is the herder’s staff, a symbol of authority and power in ancient nomadic communities, like the staff that the shepherd Moses wielded to divide the ocean so the Israelites could escape from their captors during the Exodus. The Tarot suit of wands, and more generally the minor arcana, herald from Italian and French medieval card game for nobles, where the four suits represented the different classes in medieval European society, and the wands or staffs represented peasants, showing us again that this tool is deeply engraved in our historical mind as a symbol of rural societies.

The ancient Egyptians, Celts, Romans and Scandinavians all used wands in their religious-magical ceremonies. Even though we generally think of wands as tools of wood, other materials are not uncommon. In Egypt, ancient ivory wands have been located and iron age burial sites in Scandinavia contain examples of staffs forged in iron. The iron wand makes serval appearances in Viking mythology and is often wielded by elves, giants and dwarves rather than humans.

In modern paganism the wand is often regarded as a symbol of male or god energy, the projective force of creation, of spreading one’s seeds into the ground. My favorite definition is from modern Druidry, where the wand symbolizes individual spiritual inspiration and the creative force of the wielder, synonym with awen (Welsh), the poetic inspiration of the bard. A wand or staff made of wood is also a physical representation of the world tree, and a such, a mirror of the universe, a thought which really affirms the incredible amount of spiritual power working with a wand can bring to your practice.

Associated element: Air or Fire.

What to use it for: To focus, channel and direct personal energy/will as well as collect and infuse your energy with the power of the particular wood and of the spiritual universe.

Make or find/buy? I have two birch wands, both which I have made myself. The first one I made from a branch I bought as Christmas decor. It has a very naturalistic look and was basically just lightly sanded, topped with a clear quartz crystal and wired with copper thread. The second birch wand I made at a woodworking workshop with my husband, using a laith and traditional sculpting tools. My third wand, a very ornate piece of carved walnut, I bought from a professional wandmaker at a gaming convention.

The Spirit of Birch

Birch is one of the first trees to bloom in spring, with delicate light-green leaves unfurling on woody branches while dangling catkins adorn the tree like jewelry. Birch is one of the pioneer species of trees – engines of ecological succession in the forest that quickly grow and colonize barren ground. Some believe that Birch was the first tree to emerge and multiple when the ice receded from the Northern hemisphere during the last ice age some 10 000 years ago. It is a short-lived but immensely tough three deeply immersed in magic and spirituality throughout human history.

In many ancient shamanistic communities across the Northern hemisphere, Birch was thought to be the world tree. In Celtic ogham lore, Birch is the tree of beginnings, and the ogham symbol for Birch constitutes the first “letter” in this “tree alphabet” – an Irish sign system for inscription that likely developed around the same time as the runes. The “B” rune in the Norse Futhark also contains this dual meaning of the letter B and a sign for the tree Birch.

Being an early bloomer and prolific spreader, it is no wonder that Birch symbolizes beginnings. Naked branches with the distinctive white and black bark of the Silver Birch adorn houses around Christmas in the North, welcoming the new year. Later in spring, the uprooted trunk acts as the maypole for Beltane or midsummer, symbolizing the beginning of summer.

For me, Birch is one of the essential Nordic trees along with Fir, Pine, Ash, Maple and Beech. Slender, graceful dual colored trunks lined the roads and forest edges of my Scandinavian childhood landscape, and they still do here in Canada, reminding me of the beauty and vastness of the North. During spring in Scandinavia, sap can be tapped from Birch trees and the sweet drink was traditionally consumed for its bone strengthening properties. Chastising oneself with birch switches in the sauna to stimulate blood flow is an old cleansing rite (the birch switch was also used in public schools as a tool of punishment), and young shoots of birch are used to decorate homes at easter.

Dedicating your Wand

This wand dedication is a spring ritual, and I spent some time meditating on the meaning and symbolism of spring to craft a narrative and correspondences that align with the purpose of this ceremony: The Spiritual and Magical Meaning of Spring – Everyday Magic. The actual ritual was not very elaborate as I am a big fan of keep it simple. I don’t cast circles, because I don’t want to keep things out, but rather commune with all the energies around me and invite all manner of spirits to join in the magical work. I use my altar as a work space because a lot of spells are messy and it’s convenient, but in my view, the best place to perform magic is anywhere outside – near a tree, in the grass, by a river, in the forest or next to a potted tomato plant on your balcony. Whatever flavor of paganism you’re drawn to, nature is the heart and soul of heathen spirituality, and any place outside that calls to you is a temple.

To infuse my wand with the power of the growing light, I dressed it with a “sun oil” that I mixed from the following ingredients:

Almond oil (prosperity)
A few drops each of Cinnamon essential oil (success, power, healing), Sweet Orange essential oil (love, luck) and Frankinsence essential oil (spirituality, protection)
A few crushed petals of Calendula officinalis, dried from my garden, as these yellow flowers correspond to the sun, and help to enhance the magnetism and power of the self

After applying the sun oil with a cloth, much like a regular wood finish (and you could easily make a “sun wood finish” instead by combining mineral oil and beeswax) I took my birch wand outside under my big maple tree, filling it with intention by raising energy and concentrating on it’s magic purpose, after which I dedicated it to Pan through a few words I have now forgotten. The poem at the beginning of this post came later, and hopefully adds a second layer of enchantment. Magic, or energy work, is not a “one and done” deal, it’s a habit that needs constant reinforcement to lead to real change.