The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

Traditional Kitchen Tools
Magic at the Hearth

The tools used by households a century ago are no longer the only tools at a hearth-based house witch’s disposal! There are dozens of tools available in the kitchen now. This section briefly touches on traditional tools and proposes contemporary equivalents.

Apart from the cauldron, which was discussed in Chapter 4, there are a handful of other traditional tools that are or have been used in magical and spiritual work.

✵ The Knife: The knife is a symbol of air or fire, depending on which Western occult tradition you subscribe to, and in some paths it is commonly used in a symbolic fashion. The partner to this tool is the boline, a knife used for actual physical cutting and slicing in a ritual context for things such as herbs, carving wood, and so forth. The boline sometimes has a white handle or a curved blade, while the knife is generally dark-handled and has a straight blade with two edges. Sometimes it is sharpened, sometimes it is left dull to demonstrate that it is a metaphysical tool. Of course, the last thing you need is a knife in the kitchen that you can’t use. As hearthcraft is practical, it makes more sense to recognize the spiritual associations of the knives you do use. Knives are generally associated with action, decisiveness, resolve, and confidence.

✵ The Wand: Another traditional tool is the wand. The wand is either a symbol of fire or air (depending on what your belief concerning the knife is, the wand is assigned to the other). Fairy tales feature fairies and sorceresses with magical wands that transform and enchant; tales of wizards and druids often feature staves. Both the wand and the staff are symbolic of the same thing. Staves tend to be associated with solidity and grounding as well, reflecting the world tree and the axis mundi found in shamanic societies. The obvious modern tool that parallels the wand is the wooden spoon, a tool of transformation and blending.

✵ The Broom: Another ubiquitous magical symbol is the broom. Like the staff, it symbolizes grounding, but it also symbolizes the spiritual flights taken seeking knowledge from other spirits and worlds. The broom is said to be a union of the female and male symbols of brush and staff, and as such was used in fertility ceremonies, festivals, and rituals, especially to encourage crops to grow. In more modern magical use, it is used to sweep the energy of a place clean of negativity. In this capacity it is sometimes termed a besom and is often kept apart from the everyday broom used to sweep up crumbs and dirt off the floor. In hearthcraft, as every act is a spiritual act, using the everyday broom is a magical act in and of itself. The floor and the energy get swept clean together.