Is there a need for specific tools?
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93,
I have recently decided that I would like to begin practicing the Golden Dawn watchtower ritual, however in every instrucion I've read it states that you need the fire wand or an air dagger. My question is, are these necessary? Why did they feel the need to have two daggers or two wands?
Why couldn't you just use your normal dagger for the Eastern watchtower and your normal wand for the southern watchtower? Is there really going to be a difference?
I neither have the creative ability nor the funds to acquire the golden dawn set of tools. I have a wand, a dagger, a pentacle and a chalice. This has always been fine for me and now this ritual has got me thinking I should have a set of elemental tools.
Surely if a wand is symbolic of fire and a dagger of air, then no matter what type of dagger or wand you are using they are always going to be representative of their elements. Did Crowley ever say anything on the matter of the Golden Dawn tools? (I've read Liber aba part 2 and I haven't seen any mention of different tool sets.)
Any help or guidance would be appreciated.
93, 93/93.
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mark0987
as I understand it, the weapon you use in the ritual is a symbolic expression of a formula, been itself part of the ritual.
During the performace what weapon you hold and what you do with it is establishes the relationship with the other elements, in this case the Watchtowers.
For example, if you point a sword, made as a symbol of aggression, towards the watchtower, what you are probably doing is threatening. A sword consecrated as a symbol of “struggle towards” light would have another meaning and different magical impact.
So what tool would establish the relationship you are looking for? -
@mark0987 said
"I have recently decided that I would like to begin practicing the Golden Dawn watchtower ritual, however in every instrucion I've read it states that you need the fire wand or an air dagger. My question is, are these necessary? Why did they feel the need to have two daggers or two wands?
Why couldn't you just use your normal dagger for the Eastern watchtower and your normal wand for the southern watchtower? Is there really going to be a difference?"
You probably can. The key distinction magically is: To what have you dedicated these? Is your dagger specifically consecrated to air, or is it, to you (for example) a martial weapon? Etc. - And there are many kinds of wands. Is the one you have in mind a Fire implement?
If the elemental associations are right, then you're on track. As Regardie once remarked, if you don't have a wand... use a book of matches! In general, if you are following the Western mystery tradition, "your normal wand" will be a fire wand, and "your normal dagger" will be an Air dagger.
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93,
Thank you for your replies. The tools I would need to create would be the the fire wand and air dagger, but me and crafts just don't mix.
My normal dagger is from my wiccan days and was used both as a martial implement and as a symbolic representation of air (I was never aware of any difference). My wand was for invocation and also served as a symbolic representation of fire. I have never seen the need to have to banish with one dagger and have a separate air tool.
I haven't dedicated them to anything in particular, I use my dagger for the LBRP and also have it on the altar for air. I use my wand for invoking rituals and it also rests on my altar as fire. I was worried that mixing up these to uses could create mixed up associations which could have been a bad thing.
But I'd prefer to use a wand than a box of matches
So if I associate my wand and dagger with fire and air, but still use them for other things all will be well. I can't wait to perform this ritual, there's something about the sound of enochian I love.
93, 93/93.
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@mark0987 said
"My normal dagger is from my wiccan days and was used both as a martial implement and as a symbolic representation of air (I was never aware of any difference)."
Personally, I'd reconsecrate it - but that may not be your choice. You say it's an Air implement. Good enuf.
"My wand was for invocation and also served as a symbolic representation of fire."
So that probably answers your question.
"I haven't dedicated them to anything in particular"
From what you've said above, I think you have. Nonetheless, if you haven't, then using them in this ritual will do. The whole point is to make everything involved in the Air quarter a symbol of Air (repeat for the other three). Either you will be working at odds with yourself - using something for Air (etc.) that you insist is NOT of the nature of Air - or you are aligning Air with Air - or you are doing your best not to make the symbol be a symbol of anything in particular, and THAT will then be the effect of your magick.
It doesn't matter that it's a dagger. It doesn't have to be a dagger at all. What it has to be is an implement of Air.
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93,
"Personally, I'd reconsecrate it - but that may not be your choice. "
I've been looking at various consecration rituals for a while, it was only yesterday I found one that was short, simple and to the point. So I'll be conducting this ritual next week.
"It doesn't matter that it's a dagger. It doesn't have to be a dagger at all. What it has to be is an implement of Air."
Thanks for this, it answer my question. My dagger is used for banishing, but to me is also an implement of air. A box of matches lights cigarettes but can be used as an implement for fire.
93, 93.93.
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@mark0987 said
"are these necessary?"
No. As you've probably grasped from the other responses here, it matters more what the weapons you have mean to you and to what purposes you've consecrated them.
Of course, it's by no means necessary at all to have physical weapons of any kind in the first place. The weapons represent the various powers associated with the elements (will, love, the mind, the body/manifestation), and what we really mean by "constructing the weapons" is that the magician "builds up" those powers in himself.
If you're good with your hands (and/or find it fun to build stuff) and you want to construct literal tools, then cool, but if you're not, then don't sweat it. If you're not simultaneously developing the abilities that those tools signify -- which is what the work of the early grades is -- then all the physical tools in the world will be worthless.
See Crowley, Magick Without Tears XXIII ("Improvising a Temple") for suggestions on how any old stuff you have on hand can serve as magical weapons in a pinch.
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93,
Thanks for your addition. I do understand that they are merely symbols for internal forces, my brain just had a moment of meltdown when it came to this ritual.
I had completely forgotten that letter even existed, I've MWT many times, thanks for pointing that out.
93, 93/93,
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In Ritual Magic you use paraphernalia/props in the theatre of Magic as Ray Sherwin once wrote, so in my personal opinion the more the better. Also the thing about the watchtower which I feel some people miss is that it doesn't just bring in the watchtower elemental energies it contains them so the operator can utilise them. Regardie wrote that Deity work is a good use of the watchtower ritual.
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My belly button is just fine thank you very much,
I would ask what You are getting on about,
But truly I don't care to attempt to decode you secret wisdoms anymore. If you can't take the time to engage in conversation, then indeed I won't take the time with you either.
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@kasper81 said
"Attributes like common sense occur naturally when the navel chakra is fully functional."
That seems like a bizarre assertion to me. That chakra is related primarily to energies that are far removed from anything rational, so "common sense" seems quite displaced.
The root chakra is more common sensical because it is fundamentally practical.
"When we unconsciously repress our own emotions and they have no proper release then our life force diminishes and our natural attributes, such as the aforementioned common sense becomes impinged upon"
Or, of course, the more passionate and creative continue to live in the flow of that energy, which is not necessarily rational.
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@kasper81 said
"Jim,
Why do you think the Buddhists chose bright orange as the colour of their robes?"Their robes are the color of saffron (and a dye made from it). Saffron itself is considered sacred and valuable. (These are culturally similar to purple arising in Medieval Europe.)
Qabalistically, we'd give a different interpretation, but that's the one for them. (I've always loved that the color is really yellow-orange, the color of Cheyth.)
Buddhist monks in other traditions wear robes colored from other spices. (They have this thing for spices. I have a sneaking suspicion that the robes were originally infused with the spices to deflect the obviousness of body odors when bathing was a rarity.) This is even more unlikely since early Buddhist teachings advised that the robes be made from unwanted cloth, including cloth that had been used to wrap corpses. In southeast Asia, robes colored from paprika (more intense red), cumin (fairly flat light brown), turmeric (neon yellow), etc. are worn.
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"Clear" to you may be wrong, however.
The chakra primarily deals with creative energies, especially the most primal, the sexual. It raises the energy from the Muladhara simple "survival of self" to survival of proxy-selves, those close identified with one such as mate and children. In more civilized times, the energy has application in broader creative endeavors, although it's primal nature of procreation and reapplication of the same energies.
That part of the body holds a concentration of nerves that branch into the the three Fs: fighting, fleeing, and, uh, copulating
It's no surprise, then, that the chakra corresponds to Mars among the planets and Water among the elements.