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Crafting the "Craft."
Sep. 17th, 2010 11:24 amI'm almost embarrassed to say that one of the things that's always drawn me to Wicca (or just general Neo-Paganism) is the opportunity to utilize so many beautiful ritual tools. During my earlier college years when I first started to become seriously aware of what this group of religious paths had to offer, I recall how easy it was to get swept up in all the available witchy goodies offered both for sale online, and in the local metaphysical shops. Candles of every shape and size, beautiful cast-iron cauldrons, incense, chalices... oh ho ho I'm getting giddy just thinking about them. As I've matured, these items are by no means the only thing keeping me involved with Wicca, but I'm not gonna lie - they're one thing that appeals to me.
I'm lucky enough to have talents in the arts and crafts, and one thing that I've realized is that, while there are just certain things that aren't practical for me to do myself - iron smelting in order to make my own cauldron, or distilling my own essential oils, for example - there really are plenty of things that I have the ability to do or could learn to do easily in order to personalize my ritual items and provide more personal power to the practical aspects of what I do (just as a note: I've never really performed a "proper" ritual. Most of what I've done in the past has involved meditation on certain concepts and simple appreciation of nature, but I'm aiming to formalize things a little more now that I've provided my own answers to some of the questions that have nagged me all along. More on that later).
I've already made it my intention to spend the Winter months working on learning more about collecting, planting, growing and drying my own herbs, because herbs can help form a base for all sorts of different things. Incense, bath items, teas, oils, potpourri... there are numerous uses for herbs (including delicious home-made foods, natch) and I think it would be nice to be able to grow and utilize many of my own. Why? I tend to believe that the potency of one's magic/energy use/meditation (whatever you prefer to call it) can be affected by the degree of involvement one has in the entire process of formulating a ritual and its related tools, and that idea really appeals to me. Within the last year or so I've become much more interested in gardening in general (I think if I were to go back to school, it would be for a degree in botany or something similar) and I consider this an offshoot of that desire.
I also really love incense. Not only does it make my office smell great, it also helps to create a sense of sacred space when I don't have a room to really devote to magic by itself. I bought a book yesterday that gives instruction on the creation of incense (mostly stick and cone incense, which the author really seems to have a hard-on for) and the process sounds like it could be very interesting and fun to experiment with. The advantages to hand-making incense are that you can tune the blends to specific purposes and control the quality of the ingredients (for example, many mass-produced commercial incenses use oils that can actually be harmful to you when burned, ick). I'm looking forward to trying my hand at this in the future (especially since I can make incense as gifts for many people I know as well).
One other thing that I've been considering lately is candle making. Once again this springs from a desire to be involved in more aspects of spellcasting/meditation/ritual, so that I can focus on and visualize my intent beyond just dressing a storebought cadle with oil and calling it good (not that this is bad or anything, I want to be clear that this is just me talking). Candle-making kits are readily available at craft stores, so the basics are most likely not particularly difficult to pick up, but what I'm more curious about is whether I could potentially infuse the candles with actual herbs and personalize them in some way specifically. I'm really interested in researching this further.
That's just a small taste of what I think I could do, and I intend to use the darker half of the year to plant the seeds of inspiration and see what grows.
I'm lucky enough to have talents in the arts and crafts, and one thing that I've realized is that, while there are just certain things that aren't practical for me to do myself - iron smelting in order to make my own cauldron, or distilling my own essential oils, for example - there really are plenty of things that I have the ability to do or could learn to do easily in order to personalize my ritual items and provide more personal power to the practical aspects of what I do (just as a note: I've never really performed a "proper" ritual. Most of what I've done in the past has involved meditation on certain concepts and simple appreciation of nature, but I'm aiming to formalize things a little more now that I've provided my own answers to some of the questions that have nagged me all along. More on that later).
I've already made it my intention to spend the Winter months working on learning more about collecting, planting, growing and drying my own herbs, because herbs can help form a base for all sorts of different things. Incense, bath items, teas, oils, potpourri... there are numerous uses for herbs (including delicious home-made foods, natch) and I think it would be nice to be able to grow and utilize many of my own. Why? I tend to believe that the potency of one's magic/energy use/meditation (whatever you prefer to call it) can be affected by the degree of involvement one has in the entire process of formulating a ritual and its related tools, and that idea really appeals to me. Within the last year or so I've become much more interested in gardening in general (I think if I were to go back to school, it would be for a degree in botany or something similar) and I consider this an offshoot of that desire.
I also really love incense. Not only does it make my office smell great, it also helps to create a sense of sacred space when I don't have a room to really devote to magic by itself. I bought a book yesterday that gives instruction on the creation of incense (mostly stick and cone incense, which the author really seems to have a hard-on for) and the process sounds like it could be very interesting and fun to experiment with. The advantages to hand-making incense are that you can tune the blends to specific purposes and control the quality of the ingredients (for example, many mass-produced commercial incenses use oils that can actually be harmful to you when burned, ick). I'm looking forward to trying my hand at this in the future (especially since I can make incense as gifts for many people I know as well).
One other thing that I've been considering lately is candle making. Once again this springs from a desire to be involved in more aspects of spellcasting/meditation/ritual, so that I can focus on and visualize my intent beyond just dressing a storebought cadle with oil and calling it good (not that this is bad or anything, I want to be clear that this is just me talking). Candle-making kits are readily available at craft stores, so the basics are most likely not particularly difficult to pick up, but what I'm more curious about is whether I could potentially infuse the candles with actual herbs and personalize them in some way specifically. I'm really interested in researching this further.
That's just a small taste of what I think I could do, and I intend to use the darker half of the year to plant the seeds of inspiration and see what grows.
