Llewellyn's 2018 Magical Almanac: Practical Magic for Everyday Living - Team of authors 2017
Metalsmith Magic by Suzanne Ress
Fire Magic
Like many people, I’ve long been attracted to gleaming metal jewelry. It’s difficult for me to walk by a jeweler’s display window without stopping for a closer look. I love the smooth and permanent shininess of gold, silver, and copper earrings, rings, and other “trinkets,” but not only because they are pretty. I believe that carefully chosen pieces of jewelry become much more than just body decoration. They are usually worn as expressions of one’s deeper identity, often hold important sentimental value, and are frequently employed as magical amulets for luck, protection, love, strength, or some other purpose.
Some years ago I picked up a small pamphlet in an art jewelry shop. There I read about an introductory metal smithing course offered by a master jewelry artist in Milan, Italy, about forty-five minutes by train from where I live. I called the phone number and found that the course was held weekday mornings, that I could afford it, and that I could fit it into my schedule, so I signed up and started the following week.
Everything was new to me—the saw blades as fine as hairs, the files finer and smaller than fingernail files, the drill bits like pins, the tiny ball-peen hammer. The tools were fascinating, but when the master demonstrated how to make a simple band ring using nothing but a short length of silver half-round wire and a tiny speck of solder under the blue flame of a gas torch, I was mesmerized! That a substance hard enough to hold a precious carved stone in place for millennia with only a few miniscule prongs could turn malleable and then liquid under the heat of a flame seemed magic.
Metalsmith Myth and History
In most spellcasting and magic work a knife or athame is used to cast the circle, to open it, and to close it again. The athame is also often used for drawing down the power of the elements, gods, or energy in general. It is a important tool in magic work, usually handmade and often very beautiful. Its blade is forged of metal—steel or sometimes brass, copper, or silver.
Metal, a great conductor of heat and hence of fire and Sun energy, was found by our long-ago ancestors in rocks and stones. From these stones skilled metalsmiths were able to extract the metal and harden it for use in making weapons and tools that were far more effective and precise than the previous tools and weapons made of stone or wood.
From the start, metalsmiths were regarded with awe, and the tools, weapons, implements, jewelry, and chain mail they produced were considered to be imbued with natural magic and power. In ancient times they were considered to be akin to magicians. Their powers were believed to be godlike.
Many ancient pagan societies had a metalsmith god. One of the most well known to English-speaking people was Wayland the Smith. He was an Anglo-Saxon god, and his workshop was believed to be located at the huge Neolithic barrow in the mysterious Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire County, England, long known as Wayland’s Smithy. Iron Age metal money bars were found there at its excavation about a hundred years ago.
Preceding Wayland was the Nordic smith god, Volund. Wayland’s (or Volund’s) father had a magic boat, and Wayland’s grandmother was a sea witch. One day, when they were young men, Wayland and his two brothers were walking by a lake when three swans landed there. They transformed into three lovely young ladies, and everyone fell in love. Wayland married Allwise, and all three couples lived happily for nine years. Then the women grew homesick and disappeared. Wayland’s brothers went in search of their wives, but Wayland stayed home, working in his smithy.
The king of the Niars sent thieves to steal Wayland’s sword and a golden ring he’d made, and then they bound Wayland and brought him to the king. The king had Wayland lamed and imprisoned him on an island, where he was only allowed to work for the king. After some years, the king’s sons came to see Wayland, and Wayland took revenge by cutting off their heads. He then flew away on gold wings he had made.
Other metalsmith gods were the Greek Haphaestus, his sons, and the Dactyls, female goddesses who invented smithcraft; the Irish bronze weapons makers, Credne and Gavida, and the celestial smith, Luno; the Roman smith god Vulcan; the Finnish magical smith Ilmarinen; the Lithuanian and Latvian smith god Kalvelis; and the Slavic smith god Svarog.
Amulets have been an important part of every human culture forever. People have always believed that the magic act of transforming an object from a stone to a sword or body ornament imbued that object with magic. Because body ornaments or jewelry were powerfully magical, they could protect the wearer, guide her, and heal her. As ritual tools, these magic-imbued items were able to draw down the powers of nature and the gods from which they came.
By the beginning of the Iron Age (about 1200 BCE), the skills of the metalsmith in bronze and gold were already long established. Casting, sheet-working, hammer work, chasing, inscribing, repoussé—these techniques were done in the same way 5,000 years ago as they are today. These early metalsmiths made bridle buttons, breast plates, mouth bits, and harness mounts for their horses; swords, chain mail tunics, helmets, shields, and scabbards for their warriors; brooches, necklaces and torcs, and rings to decorate themselves; and firedogs, cauldrons, knives, and tools for everyday living.
Hephaestus, son of Zeus and Hera, was the ancient Greeks’ smith god. He was born lame and ugly. Ashamed, Hera threw him into the sea. He was adopted by two sea goddesses, who raised him for nine years, to young manhood. During his time with the sea goddesses, he forged for them many beautiful and ingenious tools and jewels. Although Hera had treated him unkindly, Hephaestus had not lost his love for his mother. He made for her a lovely coral and golden belt. Hera was so delighted with this gift that she asked Zeus to give Hephaestus anything he wanted. Hephaestus asked to marry the gorgeous goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite, and this desire was granted. From then on, Hephaestus was known as the smith of the gods, and he made many wonderful things for them, including Zeus’s throne, scepter, and thunderbolts. Although Aphrodite bore him two sons, who also became metalsmiths to the gods, she was often unfaithful to Hephaestus. When he learned that she was having an affair with Ares, the god of war, Hephaestus made an unbreakable net and trapped the lovers in it for the other gods to mock.
Metals and Their Uses
More than seventy pure metals are known to exist, but, of these, only about twenty are used in jewelry and implement making. These twenty can be divided into ferrous and nonferrous; the second group is further divided into base metals and noble metals. Base metals are abundant and are not considered precious. Some of these are copper, tin, nickel, and zinc. Noble metals, less abundant and most sought after, are gold, silver, and the platinum group. The noble metals are more chemically stable than base metals, and gold and silver are also the easiest to work with because they become quite malleable when heated. Ferrous metals are iron and any alloy containing iron, such as steel.
Alloys are two or more metals joined together to make a compound that suits its purpose better than a single metal. Gold, in its pure state, is too soft to be used alone in jewelry; it would get nicked and bent out of shape with normal wear. Eighteen-karat gold is the alloy with the highest percentage of gold normally used in jewelry. This contains about one-quarter fine silver and copper, in different proportions according the shade of gold desired, such as light yellow, deep yellow, rose, greenish, or white. Silver used for jewelry, coins, and in implements must also be alloyed with small amounts of copper to render it reasonably hard enough to be useful.
To extract metals from their naturally found places, in rocks or mines, high heat is applied. This is called smelting and causes the metal to liquefy and leave the other minerals behind. After the original smelting, the metal is heated and refined several more times until it is nearly pure. It is then cast into rectangular chunks, or ingots. The ingots can then be reheated, alloyed with other metals, and formed into any desired shape. If metal is properly heated and cooled it can be reworked indefinitely without suffering fractures.
We think of the Bronze Age following the Stone Age and may not realize that gold was probably the first metal noticed and used as body ornament and talisman by humans. Gold, with its bright yellow color, was easy to notice, and 10,000 years ago as now, it could be found in waterways and in rocks much more easily than other metal ores, as it required no digging, mining or smelting.
Because gold retains its shine and does not oxidize due to its chemical inactivity and because of its unique color, it was thought of as being symbolic of the Sun, God, and immortality. Alchemists, whose early work eventually led to modern pharmaceutical chemistry, were searching for a way to transform base metal, such as tin, into gold. Gold was god, the Holy Grail, the ultimate measure of things.
Wearing gold ornaments against one’s skin mystically charges the body with the object’s power. Because gold is immutable, heavy, and a symbol of immortality, it also came to be the base of trade or money. Even now, many people all over the world invest in gold, considering its worth to be untouchable.
By transforming ore from rock, with the use of fire, into metal weapons or body ornaments, the smith reveals to us the magical truth that all manifestations are one—an element can change from rock to liquid to hardened immortal metal, but it is always the same energy. The smith frees the metal imprisoned in rock just as a sculptor frees the figure within a block of marble.
It is likely that early humans discovered the magical properties of metal by accident—perhaps a hammered copper knife fell into the fire, and, when taken out, had melted and changed form. Perhaps meteoric stone beads fell into the fire and the metal ore contained in them melted out. We cannot know exactly what happened, but we do know that, by perhaps as long ago as 8700 BCE, metal had become such an important part of our lives that humans began to systematically mine for copper. Smelting was carried out in large clay or stone crucibles.
The alloying of two metals was probably another accidental discovery—perhaps, along with the copper ore, some tin was mixed in. Melting these two together made bronze, which is much more durable for weapons and household implements than copper alone. This was the start of the Bronze Age, around 2800 BCE.
About a thousand years after this, the Hittites began working extensively in iron, and, four hundred years later, iron was annealed in very hot charcoal-fired ovens to form steel. The much harder steel quickly replaced bronze in weaponry.
A metalsmith’s techniques include hammering and rolling ingots to make metal sheet, which can then be sawed, pierced, cold bent, filed, hammered into domes, and stamped. Metal can be drawn through ever-smaller holes in a plate to form any shape of wire, which can then be hammered with a mallet around a mandrel to form rings. Wire can be bent with pliers into filigree designs or made into chain links for chains or chain mail. Metal pieces can be heated and soldered together or pierced and riveted together.
Metal ingots can also be melted down to liquid state and cast into cuttlebone. Stones can be set and secured into metal, and metal can be treated with acids to form patinas, fused for multilayered effects, reticulated to change its texture, or granulated for ornamentation.
Smithing in Personal Practice
All of these ancient techniques are still taught today in much the same way they were thousands of years ago.
After that first introductory jewelry making course, I set up a small laboratory in our basement, and, little by little, purchased the necessary tools. At first not much was needed: a packet of saw blades, a hand saw, some squares of copper sheet metal, a handheld gas torch, sandpaper, needle-nose pliers. I subscribed to a couple of jewelry makers’ magazines and bought several books. As I discovered new techniques, I bought more tools. I met other jewelers, and one of these allowed me to assist in his shop for a few months, where I learned new techniques hands on. Another jeweler I met was moving and no longer needed his bench or his stone and prong setter, and he sold these to me at a very reasonable price. These jewelers told me where to go to buy precious and semiprecious stones and where there was a foundry for having rubber molds made and pieces cast. I invested in a polishing wheel and a wire draw plate; I bought gold and silver maker’s marks and had another one made with my initials. I made many pieces of jewelry, some more successfully than others. Among these were some pieces of magic jewelry, pentagrams, and athames for myself and for like-minded friends. I was invited to show my jewelry in galleries and small art jewelry shops, and people bought my work.
I still cannot resist stopping and looking at jewelry shop showcases when I come to them, and I love frequenting arts and crafts fairs, where many jewelers start out selling their work, and museum displays of ancient jewelry really turn me on. Like all knowledge, the knowledge of how jewelry is made has turned me into a connoisseur, easily able to distinguish what is handmade from what is machine made or called handmade but really made up of machine-made components.
If your magical tools and jewelry are handmade by yourself they will be especially powerful, but if you have neither the time nor inclination to learn at least basic metal smithing, it is well worthwhile to seek out someone who can hand make what you require. Perhaps you have a friend or an acquaintance with metal smithing skills. If not, arts and crafts fairs and small gallery-type shops are good places to start looking. Most metalsmiths are delighted to fulfill special orders. You can design what you want, describe what you have in mind, and let her design it, or you can ask the metalsmith for suggestions. In any case, what you will end up with will have been uniquely created for you and your magic work, and you will surely notice the difference in effectiveness!