well jim this week let's cast on a brand new episode with casting circles and casting on yay that sounds awesome light from lantern presents knit a spell i'm magical maker katie rempe and i'm the maker of magic james divine join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and the craft i loved this idea of casting casting a circle casting on because obviously knitters crocheters other crafters cast on projects you were casting them quite literally as a spell so i feel like this is a great code topic and obviously we should start with what the heck is circle casting right and i think for the people who are not like knitters who are just listening yeah 1000 is casting on but we can get a great point i remember when i was like what's casting on but it turns out that's the easiest thing to do in knitting which thank goodness well sometimes circle casting i'll give you my definition of it and then check me with the one that you found online cool when we cast a circle in our coven our tradition our witchcraft we are creating sacred space we're delineating using the power of our mind and our imagination to imagine that the space that we're creating which was our living room is now our living room but altered slightly into magical or sacred space it's a magical part of the house now yeah what did i miss out of the definition that you found it's temporary oh yeah it's temporary but i think it leaves a little bit of a signature behind we might cast a circle in a natural setting in a grove of trees or on a beach we might choose to cast a circle that encompasses the entire property which is always an odd thing because the property lines in a city are normally squares or right have angles on them that are not circular but then we imagine that it's sort of like a lens big old fish eyes yeah it makes it fisheye it makes it a circle one thing i hear a lot about magic circles or circle casting is then releasing it at the end or at some point but are all circles released at some point yeah not always so it depends on the magic that you're doing well and we'll talk about this later not all rituals or magic needs a circle and not all circles need to be released now of course them fighting words that's right if you ask three witches for their opinion you'll get six opinions seven nine seven nine and eleven opinions so you know your mileage may vary and what is really in alignment with your knowing and with your like feeling and with your tradition or with how you're trained i highly recommend having training and learning from nature learning from your body learning from what's around you from your experience learning from your gnosis which is your experience with the divine and learning from other elders that are trustworthy trusted and experienced so that you have some coaching and that you don't always believe everything you think and that you feel so that you have some critical feedback that you can grow against not everyone who's your lesson is your teacher you should know that however it's really good to have people that can give you some loving feedback when needed so anyway with that said there are times when we do not take down our circle in celebratory rituals we sometimes allow the circle to dissipate naturally and there's reasons we might do that rather than take the circle down when you take the circle down it can sometimes be like popping a bubble or like it can leave everyone sort of exhausted rather than ramp down the energy slowly and sometimes that's for first thing the circle will slowly fade over time mm-hmm uh because no one's paying attention to it or they're because it no longer yeah that's right yep okay well it's cyclical like everything else imagine that being a circle that's rather appropriate like a leaf slowly you know decaying in the field yeah why would someone want to cast a circle i mean other than the witch who thinks that every instance of magic must have circle um why won't you cast a circle the number one reason why people think that they need to cast a circle to do their magic like if we played witch jeopardy we asked a hundred witches why cast a circle no survey says protection so people mostly are afraid of the bugaboos and the scary psychic you know vampires and whatever are gonna come and suck the lifeblood out of you because you know you're in a magical vulnerable state that i think is very very common and so i don't want to discount that because i think that there are many traditions that don't teach energy work the way that our tradition teaches energy work and so they probably need that type of protection so continue doing what you're taught and what you know there are other ways to do magic and there are other ways to do energy work that don't require a level of steel plated protection that you would have in those type of circles where you have like the protection of the broom and then the protection of salt and then the protection of the sword in a multi-ringed you know protective magical circle that fear-based approach i find very common and in our tradition we don't do that what we do is we think about the circle as being a lens that focuses our magic so here's the story that i tell this story actually comes from my father who is not a witch he is a macgyver i don't know if people know that he's a rocket scientist oh that's right yes legitimately legitimately yeah he um is the guy who is on the rocket launch like with a wrench fixing the rocket before it launches mad scientist who can invent anything for the kids he's like rick of rick and morty but without being like crazy he's the same and nerdy rick rick of rick and morty yeah very calm very like hmm let's just think about this so i was talking to him one day and i'm like i don't know if i believe in evil and i don't know what to do with that and he says yeah you know we ship this optical guidance system in a pressurized box with liquid nitrogen when we ship from manufacturing to the launch pad and i was like uh dad wasn't even listening because i was talking about you know good and evil and how i'm struggling with this epistemological question right he's talking about packaging materials and he says and you know jim i think that's a lot like your life if you pressurize your life with good evil can't get in oh damn dad out of the mouths of mechanical engineers such a great analogy for so many things my dad's pretty amazing i gotta meet him one day the idea of a magical circle of being pressurized with the four elements with the deity with your intent with what you want if there's a little break in it a little hole in it it's pressurized such that what you don't want can't get in yes when we think about it that way that's a very empowered way to think about the magical space we've created rather than a disempowered way of thinking that oh my magic or what i'm creating here is so weak that anything can come in and if we imagine the magical circle containing our desires and con and pressurized with our intent and everything our creativity and our magic such that when we release it it's like popping that balloon and putting it out into the universe wow that is a really cool image to have i agree and the fact that you can really imagine it in any sort of way you know doesn't have to be a bubble it doesn't have to have physical objects even outlining the circle like you said it can be completely visualized which is really the point anyway i think probably the physical tools are just helping you visualize right for people who maybe never thought about casting a circle but are now curious after we've been talking about it for a little bit how do you go about teaching newbies to cast circles or how do you perhaps advise that they begin to learn so casting a circle is a very specific one tiny little specific thing it is not the thing to do or to start with so the analogy would be i'm going to teach you how to purl like you've never knit before i'm going right into pearl i'm going to teach you how to purl perfect okay yeah like you notice that it's not called purling right yeah called knitting yeah right so maybe the first thing you would teach someone i don't know what are these sticks in this bag and why are they connected with this wire oh yeah and the second thing you might teach them is like what is this long fibrous thing that's wrapped in paper and the third thing you try to teach them is how to put it onto one of those sticks that oh it's called a needle okay thanks then you should probably teach them how to knit you know what i mean so and maybe that's not the perfect analogy like you don't have to ever purl how do we teach people to cast circles we only teach people to cast circles who are learning from us as students and we just expose them to our tradition over and over again so as part of being in the class that we teach them we're teaching them everything about our tradition and about witchcraft in general and then they attend all the rituals and they see it happen so they're immersed i love a good practical learning situation yeah and they don't learn how to actually do it for a couple years because they only really learn how to cast a circle themselves when they first volunteer to want to lead a ritual but by that time they've heard the traditional circle casting at least 34 times you could cast a circle with your eyes closed the same way that now after so many years of knitting i too could cast onto a needle and probably start knitting it without looking can you really yes so that's how we teach people to count circles well you don't need to cast circles to do magic i was curious about this because i've heard a lot about circle casting lately and much like you said it always seems to be around like protecting from the outside forces and very much like kind of the negative connotation of that and i also don't really prescribe to a lot of that kind of stuff so i was curious like what are the magical practices out there that don't involve this sort of a thing and i found out that norse and comedic or in egyptian practices even some uh shamanic and magical practitioner folk they don't use that either and they're just fine so if you're doing american folk magic a lot of times there's not a circle casting i have been to voodoo ceremonies i've been to other ceremonies that don't do circle casting i've been to celtic and reconstructionist i've been to roman reconstruction ceremonies that don't do a circle casting and it's a little bit like oh my gosh we're doing this formal ritual but there wasn't a circle casting that doesn't mean they didn't create sacred space it doesn't mean that they didn't anoint everyone as they came in or prepare the space beforehand in other ways circle casting is something that is ceremonial it comes from the hermetic and esoteric traditions within the western magical tradition and brought its way into modern wiccan ish modern witchcraft neopaganism it is not necessarily traditional if you need to make the crops grow you might do a little magic something and you just do that so there you go uh cast your circle don't cast a circle there's no wrong way to do it as long as you're comfortable with it so yeah that's like the biggest takeaway well i want to talk about how can we find meaning in the craft aspect of casting on and casting circles and there's all kinds of knitting stuff i don't even know about i'm going to pepper you with questions at the second half all right we'll be right back have you ever wanted to be a professional palm reader or add palm reading to your existing practice coming this summer i will be taking applications for my six-month online group apprenticeship program the divine hand mastership program i will have a limited number of individuals that will have the opportunity to study the divine hand method of palmistry with me you can sign up to learn more about this exclusive opportunity at 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this is a whole topic that we didn't even talk about that should be a sub head under circle casting where do you start your circle and which direction do you go do you start going to the right or you start going to the left oh this is a whole conversation with witches so if you're going to take your thame or your broom or your wand or your sword or whatever and you have a whole group of people and you're going to walk around the perimeter of the circle and you're going to say some incantation which way do you go and where do you begin depends on what you're trying to do and depends on your tradition it depends is the right answer some people start in the east a lot of people go dios hill or clockwise which means they get to the point where they begin either they start in the north or they start in the east they have reasons to start if they're directional if they're starting in a direction and a lot of people associate directions with an element so they'll associate east with the air or some people have other associations and they will start potentially in the east or the north starts with earth or wherever and then they will go clockwise because clockwise is invoking or is uh seen as potentially positive or good and they will go clockwise around the circle and end in the east and each one of the circle casts is done this way and creates the sphere of magical space and if they go counterclockwise then it's a malevolent casting for like manipulative or malevolent purposes in some traditions that would be appropriate if you're gonna do that type of magic i see it more as like a making releasing in my tradition our first circle we freak all the witches out our first circle cast is counterclockwise and when we go to and when we do a demonstration ritual at a public thing we do our first circle counter clockwise and everyone's like because we're acknowledging the chaos of the universe and we're cutting our circle out of time and space at the end of the ritual some people will close the circle so they'll open up the circle they'll release the circle and they do it counterclockwise so after the ritual and they'll undo the circle that they just did that's how many traditions do it and if you were taught that way do it that way in our tradition we go clockwise at the end to release the circle because we want to ground our magic in reality because we're creating we think of going counterclockwise as releasing or undoing the magic total in our tradition when we see people go clockwise at the end where like they're undoing their magic yeah but for us we're like grounding it into tangible reality when we go but that's just our method so there's all kinds of conversation and arguments and philosophical conversations to be had over many cups of coffee or wine or whiskey both hopefully not fist fights but cool conversations about why you cast in the way you cast and the directions you cast and what how they work gosh i know you never thought about it did you no no all you're thinking about is your yarn well but it's funny because i am thinking about let's move to yarn do you cast on the right needle or the left needle it doesn't matter if you're knitting in the in the round is just whether you're left or right-handed does it make a difference can i tell if my sweater is a dsl or witterson sweater so kind of maybe i was thinking if you are knitting in a circle you're making the project if you're undoing the project that is going the opposite direction literally undoing it so i feel like that really resonates for me it's interesting that because more people are traditionally right-handed it's more popular for even lefties to be taught to knit right-handed i know all the lefties in the world know that it's a right-handed world are you a lefty i am not but i have known several knitters who were lefties uh one of which who knit as a righty and just got used to it over time and one of which who was not having that and decided to knit true lefty which yeah girl until you realize that the patterns are written only to go one direction which doesn't matter with some things except for if you're doing like cables that twist in certain directions or a pattern stitch pattern that goes in a certain direction color work etc so yeah you're either going to have to spend a lot of time flipping the directions and knowing to flip the directions um or you're gonna have to just deal with it being backwards yeah that lefty doesn't know why her number 12 sweater is reversed that's right exactly and i never thought about like oh well if you cast it on tradition you'd usually cast on to the right hand needle and then oh no left hand needle and then knit using the right hand needle off of that so again it's kind of like oh the left is like the passive hand and then the right hand is the one doing all the work which kind of yeah and i love how in the instruction videos it's your active needle yeah like girl you know that's your right hand needle you're just being pc but there is no one who's teaching or on earth who is actually using their left as their active needle very very rare yeah that's a great market for someone nothing's written that way yes exactly in regards to knitting i think it's interesting to reflect on circle casting there right because you literally can cast on a circle whether it's to circular needles which is just the two needles with a cord in the middle that lets you knit in a circle or which i find even more interesting knitting with double pointed needles also to knit in the round in a circle but you use well four needles to house the stitches and then a fifth as the working needle um to be holding your right hand just kidding yeah not really but then i thought oh well if you were a magical person wouldn't this be a great opportunity to think like okay what's the intent behind this project is this an opportunity for me to call the elements like is each one of these going to represent one or a direction or you know just the intent behind that when you cast on when when you knit in the round with needles how many needles do you see people typically use it depends on the size of the tube you're trying to make correct so if people are using double pointed needles typically they're going to be making a smaller project otherwise three of them to make a sock it's usually four it's interesting to think about your casting on could be an actual circle cast magically definitely how cool could that be would that be to say i cast the circle with fiber and wood that this knitting shall contain my intent whether i remember it or not whether my intent is here and i'm conscious of it or not you could create a chant for yourself all while you're casting on then like if you anoint or somehow bring in the four elements and deity perhaps the ancestors perhaps your you know knitting ancestors or your actual ancestors or perhaps the person that you're giving it to and their ancestors to guide you what a cool way to begin a project and to have that intent at the casting on phase yeah to sort of mirror how you might do that in a magical circle and just as powerfully is the binding off or quote releasing of the project you know your work with it is done now it is going to serve its magical purpose which is to keep somebody warm and comfortable or fashionable or whatever when we release a circle this is where we give honor and thanks to the elements we thank the earth the air the fire the water the deity the ancestors we thank the wood and the fiber the labor everything that went into it and as we're binding off and releasing the circle so in magic circles i don't mean to speak for the craft part and what i mean to say is in magical circles what we say is we acknowledge the element the four elements earth air fire water perhaps we do that directionally perhaps not we acknowledge acknowledge and thank deity however we see that perhaps it's goddess god in our tradition they're non-gendered or they don't have to be gendered with us we thank the ancestors and the spirits of place and the fae we honor and thank and and give appreciation for all those that are present and then we release the circle with a traditional saying enchant and so you see that as the binding off yes exactly it's interesting that um typically four needles would be used with a fifth working needle it's very like like you said the four elements but then also spirit right because we're the ones manipulating the needles we are the working needle so we often cast a circle magically with a wand exactly or a knife or a sword or a broom or something although you could use your finger it's fine you can knit with your fingers too well this has been fun what if we do a card pull to wrap us up i'm obsessed with this tarot disassembled can we please use this in july we are going to be reviewing all sorts of decks so it's going to be a deck month because it's the summer you need to be out on a deck and one of which is the author of tarot disassembled as you're seeing here who is jennifer lee all right so for this week the question is what will help us gain further insight into circle casting this week
for that one the moon so just take a moment and look at this card you see the lobster emerging from the water there at the bottom it's much more clear than on the riderweight smith deck that it's a wolf and a dog there's the moon up in the far upper left what looks like a snake is actually a path and then down in the lower right of the moon are two towers and then in the upper right is that hebrew letter shin what is your interpretation of the moon i mean it's a big circle i mean i hate to be so literal about it but it's the moon is intuition the moon is unseen things and i think the moon also offers a lot of uh energetic protections that you can use when circle casting what do you think what will help us gain further insight into circle testing this week the lobster is on a path you being that lobster that crayfish that potentially vulnerable creature but you have claws and armor you must travel a path between two predators a wolf and a dog and the path is a path of initiation when we see the two towers and it is the path of your of believing your intuition following that path to the things unknown exactly what katie is saying and trusting yourself and of the water that you're emerging from to the insights that you're going to into the light remember the moon is reflected light and so it's the reflections within love and this blue color of the card i feel like it's the moon card is sometimes seen as like a little bit you know because of the uncertain qualities but i feel like the blue color of it allows you to be like just trust it and go with the flow like it's tranquil it's okay yesterday was the first quarter of the moon on june 7th and next tuesday is the full moon just over halfway you should look up in the moon tonight and start to see the barely waxing gibbous moon and know that next wednesday we're just past the full moon so you just have a few more days before the moon is full and so that's something to also think about i love keeping track of what is the moon phase now and what are we doing so it's a good reminder we clearly could have talked about like many little offshoots we'll probably have to come back around it again at some point well until next week jim i appreciate your time as always and i look forward to it awesome see you then all right goodbye everybody thanks for thanks for listening if you enjoyed the show consider sharing it with a friend leaving a review on itunes and spotify or following knit a spell on instagram you can also subscribe to the like from lantern youtube channel to enjoy full episodes of knit a spell and see our happy faces you can also learn more about ratings classes and events going on with your favorite maker of magic james devine by visiting thedivinehand.com and subscribing to his newsletter then follow jim's fun and interactive instagram account at divine hand gym keep up with katie the magical maker by subscribing to her newsletter at lightfromlantern.com you'll even receive a free knitting pattern as a thank you gift then follow katie on instagram at lightfromlantern for even more magical making tips see you next week
