Your Witches' Working Tools

In order to perform any act of successful ritual witchcraft, you must have your set of basic traditional
working tools. Without them, all the most powerful born-witch or warlock is powerless when working
at a distance from his victim. They are the tools of your trade, as much as an easel and brushes are of
the artist.
The magical act is a cumulative one. You start from scratch with newly purchased substances, ritually
purify or demagnetize them with salt water, and incense, and then recharge them with your
concentrated witch power. From these charged substances, you then fashion your implements, and
with these implements, you cast your first spells.
The basic witch tools themselves are five in number; the full complement eight. There are many lesser
ones which merit the designation more of common household implements that you keep specially for
your witchcraft. For instance, needles for sewing, scissors for cutting, a white-hiked knife and so on. I
shall list the important ones at the end of this chapter along with other useful things you will need in
your witches' cupboard.


1. White kilted knife
2. Athame
3. Chalice
4. Thurible
These are your basic working tools, however:
l The Witches' Knife - also known as an Athame or Bolline.
l The Witches' Cord - already mentioned, known variously as a girdle cord, or cingulum.
l The Witches' Censer - the incense burner or chafing dish, also known as the thurible.
l The Witches' Cup - also known as the chalice.
l The Witches' Spellbook - known variously as a witches' Bible, workbook, Liber spirituum, or
Book of Shadows.
With these simple though basic tools you will be able to manufacture all the other magical artifacts that
are mentioned in the following pages; the wand, the speculum, the candlesticks, the pentacle, the
mandragore, and the alraun, and all the talismans, philters, incenses, images, and amulets that will be
your general stock in trade. The ways and means to manufacture such things will be discussed under
the specific headings throughout the book as we come to them.
To make your working tools, the first thing you must do is to learn how to purify and consecrate all
your raw materials (or exorcise them, as we call it) by means of salt, water, and incense.
Theoretically, the salt, water, and incense stand for the four elements of the Wise—earth, water, and
fire, together with air—symbolically constituting the basis for the material universe, in the language of
alchemy and witchcraft. By exorcising anything you are in effect symbolically using these four basic
constituents to "wash" the article of all extraneous vibrations, prior to recharging it with your own will
and concentrated witch power. Before, in fact, transforming it into a servant to accomplish a given
magical task. Throughout the following pages I will refer to this process of purification as either
exorcism or "passing something through fire and water."