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.

Wicca, many authorities confidently state, is the religious aspect of Witchcraft. It’s actually not. It may be a religious aspect of Witchcraft, but as Witchcraft is an umbrella term, encompassing a very wide spectrum of beliefs and metaphysical models, it can’t be said to have anything resembling an homogeneous theology.

It is generally agreed that “Wicca” is properly considered a subcategory of Witchcraft. This allows African tribal Witches, Broom-Hilda, certain Satanists, Hermione Granger and so on to get on with their lives without being accused of being inauthentic Wiccans. Wicca in this usage is taken to have a specific set of qualities which are, much more often than not, believed to derive substantially from Gardnerian Witchcraft.

A decade or two ago, acceptance of “the” Goddess – with an option on “the” God – would most probably have been requisites for inclusion in Wicca. Time changes things. The magical and religious aspects of Wicca but just as there has been a massive growth in religions based on Paganism and Pantheism that don’t involve magic per se, there has also been a resurgence of a sort of eclectic, religiously-neutral, spell-based Witchcraft that many consider to have more in common with pre-20th century Craft than with the Gardnerian version.

The more intriguing question is whether one can be said to be Wiccan without some degree of belief in deities. Is a degree of religiosity necessary for the terms to have meaning or are the Goddess and God of Gardnerian-derived Craft one of the optional extras of the path, to be embraced or rejected as one might skyclad working, strict male-to-female polarity work, or the ban on “being a Witch alone”?

Given this background, one has to was whether one can talk sensibly about the gods and goddess of witchcraft and Wicca at all!

To find more detail about the gods and Goddess in witchcraft and Wicca, read The Inner Circle.

And why do you want free witchcraft spells? Do you want free witchcraft spells to find “true love”, free witchcraft spells to hog-tie that wayward ex and drag them back, free witchcraft spells to make you sexier, smarter, stronger, healthier and, of course, free witchcraft spells to make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams?

The problem with free witchcraft spells is that they are not worth the paper they are printed on.

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 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.

Everybody wants witchcraft spells, but nobody want to go into the bookshops and pay for them. Which is just as well, really, since that would be a pointless waste of money in most cases.

The biggest Witchy complaint against spell books or free witchcraft spells online is that the spells don’t (or possibly can’t) work. The spell in the spell book or the free witchcraft spell on the web page looks comparable to a recipe, 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.

The better authors in the field make it clear that the spell isn’t really the equivalent of the recipe for “Grandma’s Mushroom Meatloaf”. 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.

Free witchcraft spells as no more than electronic bookmark clutter if you haven’t learned how to work magic. The free witchcraft spells you will find online often contain expensive ingredients which, co-incidentally, are supplied BY the writer of the free witchcraft spells. Go figure.

To find out how to work Magick without needing formal spells, 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.

Bookshops and websites today are filled almost to the point of popping with guides to Beginner Witchcraft: Witchcraft 101, some inspiring, some uninspiring and some very close to expiring. You really, really don’t need another explanation of how to pronounce “Samhain” or which end of an athame to hold or how to differentiate Witchcraft and Ceremonial Magic/Druidry/Satanism/Jo Rowling and so on. The truth is out there, along with any number of fascinating lies about beginner witchcraft.

What’s a bit thinner on the ground is literature that leads from the outer to the inner circles of Witchcraft, and books that do purport to do so can make for a pretty rum old read. Many of them work on the assumption that the more privy to secret traditions the author appears to be, the more humbly appreciative the reader ought to feel for such shadows of ghosts of secrets beyond beginner witchcraft are hinted at in the tome.

There’s nothing very novel about this technique – it was used to great effect by many of the most influential people in the magical word, from Helena Blavatsky to Gerald Gardner (who was positively nutty about the notion). Aleister Crowley, no stranger to the technique, was memorably grumpy when on the receiving end, grumbling about an Order that “swore me to secrecy with terrible oaths and threats of death, and then revealed to me the Hebrew alphabet” - which is certainly something at the beginner end of beginner witchcraft, rather than an advanced magical secret!

To find out how more about moving beyond beginner witchcraft, 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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And why do you want free real witchcraft spells? Do you want free real witchcraft spells to find “true love”, free real witchcraft spells to hog-tie that wayward ex and drag them back, free real witchcraft spells to make you sexier, smarter, stronger, healthier and, of course, free real witchcraft spells to make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams?

The problem with free real witchcraft spells is that they are not worth the paper they are printed on.

There is a tradition that witchcraft is free, but that tradition applies more to the casting of spells on behalf of family and friends, not the handing of trade secrets to total strangers. Real witchcraft is so much more than spells. Even if you were to find free real witchcraft spells somewhere, chances are that they would be useless to you.

The biggest Witchy complaint against written spells is that the spells don’t (or possibly can’t) work. The written spells look comparable to a recipe, 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.

Free real witchcraft spells are no more than electronic bookmark clutter if you haven’t learned how to work magic. The free spells you will find online often contain expensive ingredients which, co-incidentally, are supplied BY the writer of the free spells. Go figure.

No amount of expensive ingredients and no free real witchcraft spells can take the place of the study, practice and discipline required to learn how to actually work magic for yourself. Once you understand the principles of real witchcraft, you will understand why a search for free real witchcraft spells is futile. Real witches don’t need written spells.

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

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