The quarters and the Elements
The four cardinal directions of the circle – East, South, West and North – are associated with the four Elements of Air, Fire, Water and Earth. In the Northern hemisphere Air is placed to the East, Fire to the South, Water to the West, and Earth to the North. In addition, there is a fifth Element which cannot be perceived by the physical senses. This is called Ether (sometimes spelt Aether or Aethyr), Akasha or Spirit. Ether is associated with the centre of the circle.
The Wiccan circle
The Elements can be thought of as energy in different states which has molecules vibrating at different speeds. In esoteric teaching, the physical universe is seen as being composed of energy in four different forms. Energy at its densest and slowest, where molecules are locked together to form solid shapes, is Earth. Water is less dense. It is fluid and can form solid shapes only when held by a container. Energy that has sufficient form to be seen, but not form enough to be grasped or held in a fixed shape, is Fire. Air is energy that is formless; where the molecules move so quickly that they cannot be seen by the eyes except through Air’s effects on other objects, such as the wind blowing through the trees. In the world around us, Air corresponds to the sky and wind, Fire to the Sun, Water to the sea, and Earth to the land.
The fifth Element, Ether, verges on the physical and forms force fields around physical objects. Although Ether is so fast-moving that it cannot be seen by the physical eye, we begin to perceive these force fields or etheric counterparts of physical objects when we develop etheric sensitivity through Wicca, magic and other forms of psychic development. What people perceive as the aura is part of the force field of the human body that permeates the physical body and extends a little beyond it. This force field as a whole is called the etheric body.
Life can exist on many levels other than the physical. The Elements are not physically alive. They do not have the attributes of physical life – bodies that metabolise and reproduce. Like all things in physical existence, however, the Elements have etheric counterparts. These are Elementals, which are alive and conscious on the etheric plane. The Elementals can be thought of as non-physical beings on a different path of evolution from that of humanity. They are more specialized in their functions and are thus in some ways more limited, but they are also immensely powerful. Elementals will allow us to communicate with them, but they must be treated with respect.
Elementals congregate around their naturally occurring element on the physical plane. Human beings have always been aware of these naturally occurring Elementals. In deep caves, we feel that unseen eyes watch us. When we touch standing stones and certain rocks, we sense that they are tingling with some kind of life force. Sometimes the wind appears to be a living thing with a will of its own. Different languages have given them different names, but pools, wells, rivers and the sea have always been thought of as inhabited by water nymphs, mermaids and undines. The magical tradition names the four groups of Elementals:
| Air | Sylphs |
| Fire | Salamanders |
| Water | Undines |
| Earth | Gnomes |
People tend to think of the Elementals as humanoid. A glance at art will show women with long flowing hair like strands of waterweed inhabiting rivers and small men with gnarled features inhabiting the Earth. Elementals were endowed with forms appropriate to their nature. These images are not formed in an arbitrary way. Human consciousness works in a similar way in all times and cultures and the forms in which the Elementals have been depicted over the ages are very similar. These symbols can be very helpful. Contact with Elementals causes an appropriate symbol to be stimulated in the psyche. We then perceive the force as the symbol. This is an act of passive clairvoyance. Stimulating the symbol by deliberately visualizing it will cause the process to happen in the opposite direction and will bring us into contact with the force behind it. This is an act of active magic and it is in this way that in ritual we invoke the Elements at the quarters. It is important, however, to make a distinction between the entity and the image with which the human mind clothes it. Elementals are not really lovely ladies with fishes’ tails. However, these are useful symbols that express to our minds the essence of the Elementals’ nature.
Preparing the circle
Humans have always believed in the Otherworld, the Land of Faery, a spiritual realm that is neither of Heaven nor Earth, but lies somewhere between. This is the world of the traveller who falls asleep and find himself lured by a beautiful maiden to a land where the years pass like days and no one ever grows old; a land beyond the bounds of time. This is the realm of the Wiccan circle; a sacred space not ruled by clock time or by linear thought, but by the timeless truths of the myths and dreams of the human psyche. No watch or clock may be brought into the circle and a distinctive feature of Wiccan rites is a strange acceleration of time: what seems like one hour is really three or four or five.
When people first enter Wicca, they may find it difficult to create this sacred space. There is no border crossing through which we can pass and find ourselves automatically in the Land of Faery. To enter, we must make an inner journey via the actions of casting the circle. How can we make this journey?
If we are performing ritual outside, this is relatively easy. The process of journeying to the working site; of preparing it; gathering wood for the fire; watching the sunset disappear behind the trees; listening to the evening song of the birds; all these turn our minds away from the concerns of the mundane world to remind us of more important things – the world of Nature, the ever-burgeoning life force of which we are a part.
Indoors, this switching off can be more difficult, but one of the skills Wicca teaches us is concentration. It is the ability to focus on one idea and to exclude all others that enables us to prepare ourselves for the circle. As the symbols of the circle become integrated into our psyche, they precipitate a change of consciousness without any conscious intervention on our part. As one priestess said to me, ‘As soon as I hear the swishing of the broom, stillness ripples through my mind. The outside world just fades away.’
Preparing ourselves – the chakras
The simple preparation of sweeping the circle is traditionally our only preparation for entering the rite. However, for working our own rites indoors, we have adopted a technique that originated far away from the misty hills of Herne’s Britain. This is the Eastern technique of opening the chakras. To some, the idea of using the chakra system may seem alien, but to borrow from the East is not a new development in Wicca. Wicca owes much to the ancient Mystery schools of the Mediterranean and Near East, which themselves were cross-fertilized by ideas from the East. Nor is the idea of energy centres in the body an exclusively Eastern concept. The Celtic God Cernunnos is depicted on the Gundestrup Cauldron sitting in a meditative position reminiscent of the Buddha while holding a snake, an image often used to depict energy rising up the spinal column from the base of the spine chakra. Witches have always worked with these energy centres or chakras, but it was in the East that the terminology and mapping of the energy systems was most developed. It is to the East, therefore, that we turn when we want to explain what Witches are doing with their bodily energies. We readily use the chakra system to help people understand and gain the control over these energies that is necessary in Wicca.
There are seven major chakras in the body which are known by their traditional Sanskrit names and also by more mundane names. The first, the muladhara (root support) chakra, is at the base of the spine; the second is the sacral or svadisthana (sweetness) chakra which rules the belly area below the navel; the third is the manipura (lustrous jewel) chakra at the solar plexus below the breast bone; the fourth is the chakra at the centre of the breast bone which is known as the heart chakra, the anahata (unstruck); the fifth is the throat chakra, the visuddi (purify); the sixth is the third eye, the ajna (knowing) chakra at the centre of the forehead; and the seventh is the crown chakra, the sahasrara (thousandfold), at the top of the head.