Witchcraft symbols are many and varied, and just as there is no agreement about the definition of witchcraft, there is no agreed lexicon of witchcraft symbols. This is a listing of some of the more common witchcraft symbols, and their more generally-accepted meanings.

The Pentagram

The Pentagram has a long and complex history. Found scrawled in caves near ancient Babylon, the five pointed star was copied from the star shaped pattern formed by the travels of the planet Venus in the sky. The emblem remained popular through many cultures and time periods - for example, it was called the pentalpha by the Greeks, who believed it had magical properties.

Among witchcraft symbols, the pentagram symbolizes the five elements - earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. The Wiccan emblematic pentagram faces point upward to symbolize the triumph of spirit over matter.

The Zodiac

The Zodiac plays an important role in the timing of rituals, and the witchcraft symbols for the signs of the Zodiac are often used to refer to related properties of person or spirit.

The Elements

The elements represented by the Pentagram each have their own witchcraft symbols. The witchcraft symbols for air, fire, and earth are based on triangles, while the symbol for water is, unsurprisingly, the Zodiac symbol for Aquarius.

For more about witchcraft symbols, read the full Witchcraft Symbols article.

Were there self-professed Witches in the Western world prior to the Gardnerian coming out party in the middle of the century? Absolutely. Folklore was enjoying a boom, Frazer’s The Golden Bough (three editions of various sizes from 1890 to 1915) was being widely devoured, and Theosophy, Spiritualism, the Society for Psychical Research, and dozens of esoteric societies and orders were thriving.

It’s hard to imagine that in such a climate no one was embracing a form of Witchcraft. On top of that, the tradition of cunning men and women (often old-school Witches by any other name) was still hanging in there. There may well have been numerous examples of what would today be called Family Traditions (or Famtrads, if you go to far too many SF conventions), though there’s regrettably little evidence for these.

What has not been established, though, is whether there was a Witchcraft movement, a network of Witches bound by a reasonably uniform collection of traditional practices and beliefs. Some authors, Gardner among them, have been deeply attached to the idea of such a network, but proportionately ineffectual at establishing its reality.

Advocates of this Murray-ish take on the Craft (such as those who credit the rather ill-reputed cunning man George Pickingill with everything from the rulership of nine Covens to being where Crowley nicked his best magical moves) still fly the flag, but since all attempts to substantiate such claims invariably lead to (a) impenetrable oaths of secrecy and (b) severe migraines, they have trouble getting anyone much to salute. Of course, a lack of proof is often accompanied by a lack of refutation, but all we have then are matters of faith.

The good news for the status of Witchcraft and Wicca, however, is that this couldn’t really matter less. Darwin might have called the Biblical account of our origins into question, but he certainly didn’t make a little girl’s Bat Mitzvah any less meaningful or Salisbury Cathedral any less inspiring. Magic is not reliant on history but on the state of the spirit.

To find out more of the little-known truths about modern witchcraft, read The Inner Circle.

Possibly it’s their lists of witchcraft supplies – herbs, incenses, metals, crystals and so on – that make people think of cookbooks when they peruse compendia of spells. If so, it’s worth recalling that, just as the finest ingredients won’t help us whip up a soufflé if we don’t have an oven, spellcraft requires the energy of the mental and emotional state of the spell caster. This isn’t to suggest that the ingredients of spells are purely placebos (after all, the soufflé will prove tricky without egg whites). But let’s put them to one side for a while and focus on the psychology behind this will to redesign reality.

The better authors in the field make it clear that a spell book isn’t really the equivalent of 150 Astonishing Meatloaves. It’s more like sheet music: valuable to those who have put the effort into learning how to read music and perhaps play an instrument, but bookshelf clutter to those who haven’t.

The best witchcraft supplies in the world won’t make your spell a success. And spells cst with no witchcraft supplies at all can be much more powerful than elaborate rituals with five types of all the imaginable witchraft supplies, all color-coded and smell-suited to the date, time, mood and gender of the spell caster.

Witchcraft supplies are not a substitute for discipline, practice, clearing, proper preparation, and a good understanding of the internal facets of spellcraft. In fact, witchcraft supplies can get in the way, distracting the beginner witch into fussing over candle colors instead of focusing and centring his or her Magickal energies.

Witchcraft supplies are definitely a two-edged sword. Used well, witchcraft supplies can certainly provide a point of focus, and boost the relevant energies. In the wrong hands, though, witchcraft supplies can become the medium which obscures the message.

To find out how to work Magick without needing witchcraft supplies, read The Inner Circle.

These days, if you were to toddle into your local bookshop, close your eyes and fling a dart, there’s a reasonably good chance you’d hit a witchcraft spell book. There’s an even better chance that you’d be forcibly ejected from the shop shortly thereafter, so I’m not advocating this practice. It does, though, make the point that this literary genre has never been more popular.

Witchcraft spells burst forth from this cornucopia of printed waffle - witchcraft spells to find twoo wuv, witchcraft spells to hog-tie that wayward ex and drag them back, witchcraft spells to make us sexier, smarter, stronger, healthier and, of course witchcraft spells to make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams.

The biggest Witchy complaint against witchcraft spell books is that the spells within in them don’t (or possibly can’t) work. The spell book, it’s argued, looks comparable to a recipe book, but whereas Delia Smith can reliably lead most of us through the creation of an omelette, the compiler of spells is less likely to guide the average punter to health, wealth and insuperable sexual charisma.

There’s some validity to this, but the better authors in the field make it clear that the spell book isn’t really the equivalent of “150 Astonishing Meatloaves”. It’s more like sheet music: valuable to those who have put the effort into learning how to read music and perhaps play an instrument, but bookshelf clutter to those who haven’t.

To find out how to work Magick without needing formal spells, read The Inner Circle.

Frankly, it’s a load of codswallop.

Curses happen an awful lot on telly and films, but you can go very many years doing this stuff without hearing of anybody at all credible reporting that they’ve either sent or received such a thing.

What you have going here is merely your standard Mafia protection racket in magical clothing.

Definitely people can unleash ill-will at each other magically the same way as they can in conversation, but that sort of spell is really no more serious than the verbal dust-up would be.

Basic magical procedures have an awful lot of protective material built into them. The whole idea of casting circles is to be both a place to contain magic that’s being raised so you can direct it, and also to be a boundary against anything from the outside that you may not want coming in.

The flying feathers, fear and foment over witchcraft and the evil eye are simply lingering superstitions from the days before we knew what caused mastitis in cows and Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome in humans.

There is a fundamental law of attracting things in witchcraft, and the evil eye is something you would do to someone you found utterly repulsive. Genuine witchcraft and the evil eye are fundamentally incompatible.

To find out how to protect yourself from curses, including the Evil Eye, using nothing more than common household objects, read The Inner Circle.

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