Power Tools

Tools are one of the coolest parts of the Craft. But you should concern yourself with the well-being of the witch before you worry about your tools

This is a re-edit of a blog entry that first appeared in my Medium blog

I won’t lie — one of the coolest parts about being a witch is the tools.

Check  out an Instagram or TikTok feed that features witchy things and you’ll see all  sorts of pictures of crystals, candles, athames (daggers for you new  folk), tarot cards, cauldrons, and chalices, all inscribed with fancy  symbols that also look really cool and mysterious. One can spend all  kinds of money on things like spell kits or statues of deities or  talismans. The “witchy aesthetic” is so camera-ready and popular these  days, that there is no shortage of people who want the look. And that  also means that there are plenty of vendors out there more than willing  to charge those people lots of money to have it. And of course, those of  us who practice the Craft watch some of this going on and chide those  who would seek the look of the Craft without actually undertaking the work of the Craft.

But  at the same time, it’s worth noting that even the most seasoned,  humble, unprepossessing witch gets a little flash of excitement when  they find a shiny object imbued with just the right kind of energy that  they most need. That object might be a beautiful silver amulet we see in  an Etsy shop, or it could just as easily be a smooth stone we find by a  riverbed on a hike with a friend. Although most witches know that an  object need not be pretty or expensive to be powerful, we do,  nonetheless, have a tendency to accumulate objects that become tools in  our Craft. Most of us never get to a “Hoarders” style state of  accumulation. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have cabinets and  shelves filled with all manner of things — a rather extensive library of  tools and objects that I can bring to bear on any magical working I  have in mind. Most witches I know are like that. The memes you see  online about witches collecting jars are totally legit.

And  at the same time, it is something of an axiom among witches that the  magic the witch wields lies within them, not in the tools they may  carry. Don’t have your athame? Well, this butter knife will have to do.  Don’t have your chalice? We’ve got a chipped coffee mug that says “Best  Mom” on it. Let’s roll. The fact is, a lot of tools and trappings of the  craft are more humble than you might imagine. A wand might be  embellished with crystals and bits of string and carvings, but in the  end, it’s a stick. You can find a stick most anywhere. Water might be  blessed or come from a particular river or was collected from rain on  the night of a full moon, but in the end, it’s water. You can get water  out of a sink in a bathroom most anyplace. Maybe your spell works  better with dirt collected from a particular place at a particular time,  but most of us can get a handful of dirt from someplace not far outside  our door, even if we live in an urban area. And that dirt will still  work.

Don’t  get me wrong, a witch in their prime working with their tools in a  prepared, sacred space is a powerful, incandescent thing. There is  really nothing more thrilling than the feel of that energy coursing  through you and through a circle. But a properly trained witch can find  themselves dropped in the middle of nowhere, with none of their tools  handy, and should be able to use what’s at hand, and even nothing at  all, to summon whatever magic they need. It might not have that same  powerful thrum as when you can take time and care with trusted tools,  but the magic always begins with the intent of the witch, period. In  fact, when necessity becomes the mother of invention is when you often  realize how much magic you actually know, and how much of it really IS  in you.

Mighty tools can make an impressive impact.

Tools  are important. They can provide a valuable assist as you do your work  as a witch. They can help provide focus, assist in directing or  containing energy, magnify certain types of energy, or protect from  other kinds of energy. Witches spend years imbuing their core tools with  the right energy, making them fit for purpose, and you can feel it.  Some witches insist on making all their own tools, and that kind of  intimacy with one’s tools is mighty indeed. Tools may become highly  attuned instruments, which is why when I teach etiquette to those new to  the Craft, the instruction around tools is clear — don’t touch other  people’s tools and talismans without explicit permission. This is of  course about courtesy to the witch whose tool it is, but it is also  about your personal safety. Not every tool is meant to assist positive  workings, not every witch’s energy is going to play well with yours, and  many of us ward our spaces and our tools.

It’s  important, however, to not let your tools become a trap. If a tool or a  space becomes SO IMPORTANT that you simply cannot do a magical working  without it, that’s a problem. That is no longer a tool, but a crutch.  And there is no tool that can, on its own, supply magical abilities that  you do not already possess. If you suck at scrying, the best, most  beautiful, most witched up scrying mirror in the world is not going to  magically transform your scrying ability. Only time and patience and  practice can do that. And if a tool seems to be more than you bargained  for, if it is fancier than you feel comfortable with, or somehow wrong  in some way, even if it didn’t start out that way, then clearly that  isn’t the tool for you. And that’s not your fault, nor is it the fault  of the tool. There is nothing objective about what makes a certain tool  right for a certain witch. And only the witch wielding the tool can say  whether the tool is right for them or not. And just like two people can  be perfectly honorable, wonderful and attractive humans but still not  get along as friends, a perfectly good tool can be ill-suited to a  perfectly good witch. A tool may look all badass and cool, but that  doesn’t mean it’s right for you. And if it’s not, that doesn’t mean  there’s something wrong with you or the tool.

It’s  also important to not take your tools too seriously. Beautiful,  expensive, complicated tools are not necessarily indicative of powerful  magic. I’m a fan of high quality competition reality shows. Top Chef,  Project Runway, Great British Baking Show, you name it, I probably love  it. One of the most telling challenges are the ones where contestants  are required to create something elevated from a pile of junk or using  only a limited range of tools or techniques. It is easy for a trained  chef to create a delicious, gourmet dish when they have a fully stocked  pantry and the best of everything in the kitchen. But when you take away  some of those tools, when you ask them to work with ingredients they  don’t know or at first glance might seem to be “beneath” them, you gain a  valuable insight into their craft. The chefs that win these challenges  perform a kind of alchemy, taking foodstuffs that you might find in a  dark corner of a Seven-Eleven and turning them into dishes that could be  served in a Michelin starred restaurant. They have fun with the food  that’s in front of them, instead of bemoaning what they could have had.  The chefs that fail these challenges are the ones who get thrown off by  the fact that they can’t have the fancy ingredients. They get confused  by having to work with things that are out of their lane, and their  transformative powers over food are, apparently, limited without their  familiar tools.

During the pandemic, a lot of witches discovered what it’s like to practice the  Craft in a state of disruption, without some of the things  they are accustomed to having. Many of us went years without being able to circle with our kin in the same room for a Sabbat.  Some of us have been ill, and now inhabit bodies that have been ravaged  by the coronavirus. Hard economic times meant some of us did not have the time or the energy  to practice their Craft with the same dedication as they did before  they lost their job. Some towns have lost their local new age bookstore  or witch shop, leaving those communities without access to local  suppliers or a place to exchange information. In some instances, they  didn’t appreciate how important some of these resources, these tools,  were to their Craft until they lost access to them.

Disruption,  known by its more familiar name, trauma, is for some of us nothing new.  Separation, illness, homelessness, hunger, joblessness and loss were  not invented by the COVID pandemic. They have always been with us. COVID  merely accelerated their hold in our lives. And the fact that COVID seems to be more endemic and we have better tools for managing the outbreak does not mean that hard times are over. Disruptions will continue to come from other places — war, climate change, there are so many ways our lives can get derailed on a dime. Some of us who have been  through serious trauma have developed a set of coping skills — tools  that help us to stay functional despite the disruptions that are  wracking our lives. Disruption is always going to come, and many of us seasoned in the ways of trauma have tools we  may bring to bear that are born from the devastating experiences we  had already survived.

But sometimes, even if we have those tools,  we don’t have the wherewithal to use them in a particular moment. You can have the  best tools in the world, and the most skill in knowing how to use them,  but if you are exhausted or overwhelmed, you won’t get much done with  them. And that’s okay. In the end the most important tool you have is your own body, your own psyche, your own person. If you are not caring for that, it won’t matter what kind of wand or athame or talisman you might have. Because the magic comes from you, not the tool, caring for yourself is as important as anything you do to care for your tools.

Judging  your Craft by your tools is to sell the witch short. But expecting  tools to compensate for poor Craft is to overestimate the service a tool  provides. In the end, a tool is only ever as good as the witch who uses  it. Caring about and for your tools is important. But caring about and  for the witch that wields them must come first.