The Circle

Witches have no churches. Wherever a coven meets, it makes its own temple for the night by casting a circle, and unmakes it again before the dawn.

The circle is the one indispensable thing. A coven can do without robes, without incense, without most of its tools if it has to. It cannot do without the circle, because the circle is where everything else takes place.

What the circle is

It is a space set apart. By long tradition it is nine feet across, which is about as much floor as a small group can dance in and a private room can spare. It is marked on the ground in some way, and then it is cast: drawn in the air with the sword or the athame, and consecrated with the four elements.

Once cast, the circle is understood to be a place between the worlds: outside ordinary time, belonging neither wholly to the world of human beings nor wholly to that of the gods, where the two may meet.

Gerald Gardner drew a distinction here that is worth repeating. The ceremonial magician of the old books stands in a circle to protect himself from the spirits he has summoned outside it. The witches' circle works the other way. Its purpose is to hold in the power that the coven raises, so that it can be gathered and directed and not simply leak away. It is a container, not a fortress.

How a circle is made

The details are in the Book, but the outline is public and runs as follows.

1. The room is cleared, and the floor is swept with the besom, as much to clear the mind as the carpet.
2. The altar is laid with the working tools, and a candle is placed at each of the four quarters.
3. Water and salt are blessed and mixed.
4. The High Priestess or High Priest draws the circle, walking deosil, which is to say sunwise, once round its boundary.
5. The circle is sprinkled with the salted water and censed with incense, and a flame is carried round it, so that all four elements have gone into its making.
6. The members of the coven are brought in.
7. The guardians of the quarters are called, beginning in the east.

The circle is then ready for whatever is to be done in it. At the end of the rite the guardians are thanked and dismissed, and the circle is closed. Nothing is left standing. In the morning the room is a sitting room again.

Conduct within the circle

A few customs are observed by everyone. Movement inside the circle is deosil unless there is a particular reason for it to be otherwise. Nobody walks out through the boundary: if someone has to leave, a doorway is cut for them with the athame and sealed behind them. And what is said and done in the circle is not repeated outside it.

Beyond that, the atmosphere varies with the occasion. A circle can be still enough to hear the candles burn. It can also be noisy, breathless and full of laughter. The Craft sees no contradiction.

Skyclad

Gardnerian initiates traditionally work naked, or skyclad. This is the feature of the tradition that attracts most curiosity and most misunderstanding, so we shall be direct about it.

Why it is done

Several reasons are given, and they are not exclusive.

• The words of the Charge. The passage from Leland's Aradia that opens the Charge of the Goddess tells the witches that as a sign that they are truly free they shall be naked in their rites.
• Equality. Without clothes there is no telling the company director from the cleaner. Everyone in the circle stands on the same footing.
• Honesty. To stand before the gods and one's fellows with nothing to hide behind is a discipline, and a statement of trust.
• Power. Gardner taught that the power raised in the circle comes from the body and that clothing hinders it. Witches today differ on whether that is literally so.
• History. Gardner was a committed naturist, as were several of his first initiates, and to them it was the most natural thing in the world.

What it is like

It is much less remarkable than people expect. Bodies of every age and shape, seen by candlelight among friends, very quickly cease to be an object of attention. Nearly every initiate reports the same thing: a few minutes of self-consciousness at the first circle, and after that a sense of ease that they would be sorry to lose. It is not erotic, and a person who hoped it would be has come to the wrong place.

Where the lines are drawn

• It applies only among adult initiates in a closed circle. No one under eighteen is ever present.
• The outer court, and any gathering that includes non-initiates, is clothed.
• A candidate is told about the custom long before initiation, and nobody is surprised by it.
• Outdoors, or in a cold room, common sense prevails, and a cloak is no disgrace.
• Many covens, particularly of the Alexandrian line, work robed as a matter of course, and are no less witches for it.

Indoors and out

Most circles in Britain are cast indoors, for reasons of privacy and climate. A coven that has access to private land will work outside when it can, and there is nothing to compare with a circle cast on grass under the moon it is honouring. But the tradition has always held that the circle makes the place holy, and not the other way about. A back bedroom will do.