The Circle Revisited: the Square & the Elements

My previous posts on the Circle have focussed on the nature & significance of the circle itself in magic; this one will focus on the next bit of circle casting rituals. The Circle in ritual Wicca & Witchcraft is not merely a circle, it's a sort of circle with corners. It will come as no surprise that I don't like 'how-to' witchcraft books that tell you that things *must* be done in a certain way or tie people up in too many knots, since this will inevitably prevent people developing into, & being changed by, a witchcraft of their own.

The immediate source for all this ceremonial stuff is simple: it's the Golden Dawn. Books with diagrams for invoking & banishing pentagrams of this, that & the other could merely lift similar diagrams out of Israel Regardie's book of Golden Dawn rituals.

The other source for this idea of a 'squared circle' is Masonic, referencing a problem of Euclid. This problem is one that has been proved to be insoluble & 'squaring the circle' has become a phrase meaning trying to do the impossible in some languages.

The 'spiritual', moral, or mystical significance of this is found in the Masonic square & compass emblem. The compass draws a circle & the square draws a square, which together, as in the magic circle in Wicca, represents the union of our spiritual & physical natures. A soul manifest in a body, & so on. The union of these two brings the physical into subjection to the spiritual, & this is how one might be/come a god.

'The Vitruvian Man lives in a perfect state of balance, enjoying a well-intentioned life, esoteric, stable, kind, capable and abundant. The circle is his eternal soul. The square is his temporary body. He knows this; he is illuminated into its gnosis. [...]

'This apotheosis [of Washington] is not �man becoming a god� or �Washington becoming a god.� That�s a critical misinterpretation. It�s more like �man realizing he is a god already�, a soul manifesting as a body�or, in symbolic terms, a circle surrounded by a square.'

(Source: http://www.richardcassaro.com/square-compasses-unveiled)

The square representing the physical is why the elements - philosophically the building blocks of everything - are placed at its corners. In magic we invoke the elements as part of the changes we make in reality: we get our building blocks all ready to create something.

Of course this only applies to using the elements - some people call other things to the corners of the circle, but if your tradition is influenced by Wicca they will have some correspondence to the elements. Most recently I have moved to a much simpler 'casting' where I circumambulate with incense to mark the space & light four candles on the altar to invoke the elements. However until I started doing that, when casting the circle I used elemental directions I had decided based on where I live. I did this off my own bat, but discovered afterwards it is exactly the method Fred Lamond proposes in Fifty Years of Wicca. I didn't realise that I had started off with the heaviest element, but assigned Earth to South to reference the woods near my house. I gave Water to West because there is a stream in that direction, & Fire to East for obvious reasons, & Air to North. Frankly because that was the only direction left.

The spur for this post was actually relistening to an episode of Hex Education in which Gavin & Yvonne Frost said that in casting the circle they assign the element of Air to the direction Up. Presumably on that basis you could assign Earth to Down. That would leave the 'corners' of the circle placed vertically rather than horizontally. They said that they assign Time to the corner vacated by Air, but since the circle is usually thought of in three dimensions as a sphere, that would give you two spare corners to put things in.

Because in reality there is nothing - except Western Esoteric Tradition as it comes down to us through the Golden Dawn - to say that there must be four elements. A friend of mine is fond of recounting a ritual in which the Circle had five quarters! I believe in China there are different elements traditionally. In yet another example of the principle of cyclicity & the inescapable nature of that which you have flunked, I have found myself confronted with yet another way of dividing everything. It was when I first thought 'What's the point' about the Periodic Table of the Elements, that I knew chemistry as a subject was never going to do it for me. Nonetheless it may illuminate this subject:

'Hydrogen and helium are by far the most abundant elements in the universe. However, iron is the most abundant element (by mass) making up the Earth, and oxygen is the most common element in Earth's crust.[2] Although all known chemical matter is composed of these elements, chemical matter itself is hypothesized to constitute only about 15% of the matter in the universe. The remainder is believed to be dark matter, a mysterious substance that is not composed of chemical elements, since it lacks protons, neutrons or electrons.'

(Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element)

One could have four quarters for the four most common elements, I.e. As representations of everything in the magic milieu. But what excites me most about this idea is getting away from the one called Spirit - it has such negative connotations as something separate from our embodied lives that I personally feel any reference to anything 'spiritual' isn't terribly helpful. Replace Spirit with Dark Matter, & you're immediately putting 85% of the universe's matter right there at the centre of your working, exactly the basis, height & depth of everything that Spirit is supposed to be. And even better it's hypothetical - just like Spirit. And that's even without considering Dark Energy, which - I can't claim really to understand this - is hypothesised to speed everything up & explains why the universe is expanding at a prodigious rate. Also these things are Dark, & I like dark, dark is good. It's sexy & stylish.

I can see at this rate I'm going to end up with many more candles on my altar!

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