A new initiate is shown the working tools of the Craft one by one and told the use of each. There are eight in the traditional list, and a few more that every altar carries.
The tools of the Craft came to it from the ceremonial magic of earlier centuries, and above all from a handbook called the Key of Solomon, which describes the knives, wand and sword that a magician must make and consecrate before he can work. Gerald Gardner's witches used a simpler set, and held that the tools had no power of their own. The power is in the witch. The tool gives it a direction and a shape.
The eight tools
These are the eight that are shown to a new initiate, as Gardner listed them in print.
The sword
The tool of the coven
The sword belongs to the coven as a whole and is used to cast the circle at its formal rites. It can do everything the athame can do, with greater authority. Many covens own only one, and some small covens manage without.
The athame
The tool of the witch
The black-handled knife is the one tool that every witch possesses. It is used to cast a circle, to direct power and to command. It is never used to cut any material thing, and most are deliberately left blunt.
The white-handled knife
The working knife
This is the practical blade, used inside the circle for whatever needs to be cut, carved or inscribed, since the athame may not be. It is used only within the circle.
The wand
To call and to invite
A plain rod of wood, traditionally cut by its owner. Where the athame commands, the wand invites. It is used to call upon powers that it would be discourteous to summon with a blade.
The pentacle
Earth
A disc of metal, wood or wax, engraved with the pentagram and other signs. It is the centrepiece of the altar. Objects are laid upon it to be consecrated, and the cakes are blessed on it.
The censer
Air
The vessel in which incense is burned on charcoal. The smoke purifies the circle, pleases the gods and, in a small warm room, does a good deal to change the state of mind of everyone present.
The scourge
Discipline
A small whip of soft cords. With the kiss, it stands for the two sides of all teaching, severity and mercy, and for the truth that nothing is learned without cost. Its use in the rites is light and symbolic.
The cords
To bind and to hold
Lengths of coloured cord, usually nine feet long. They are used at initiation and in certain kinds of magic, in which a purpose is fixed by the tying of knots.
The cup, and other things on the altar
The observant will have noticed that the list has no cup in it, although no circle is held without one. The explanation traditionally given is that in the time of the persecutions a chalice among a witch's possessions would have looked like evidence of a mock communion, and so it was left out of the tools that are formally presented. Whether or not that is history, the cup is on every altar.
The cup
Water
The cup holds the wine that is blessed and shared at the end of every circle. It is the emblem of the Goddess, as the blade is of the God, and the two are brought together in the blessing of the wine.
The cauldron
Rebirth
An iron pot on three legs, used at certain Sabbats to hold a fire, water or the flowers of the season. It is the vessel of transformation, in which what goes in comes out changed.
The besom
To sweep clean
The witch's broom is a real tool with a real use: the circle is swept with it before the rite begins. It also figures in the Sabbat dances, and a newly handfasted couple jump over it together.
Candles
Fire
Two on the altar and one at each quarter are usual. Circles are worked by candlelight, partly from tradition and largely because nothing else looks right.
An altar will also carry a bowl of water and a dish of salt for the consecration of the circle, and a plate for the cakes. Many covens add a bell, and figures or symbols of the Goddess and the God.
Getting and making tools
The old books of magic required the magician to forge his own blade at a particular hour. The Craft is more lenient but keeps the spirit of the thing. A witch is encouraged to make whatever they are able to make and to put their own work into the rest: a wand cut and finished by hand, a bought knife fitted with a hilt of one's own carving, a pentacle engraved at the kitchen table.
There is an old rule that one does not haggle over the price of a tool. Another holds that the best tools come as gifts or turn up unlooked for, and most witches have a story about how their athame found them.
Every tool is consecrated in a circle before it is used, and from then on is kept for that use alone. A witch's athame is not lent, and it is good manners not to handle another person's tools without being asked.
A sense of proportion
It is easy to become too interested in equipment. Shops sell a great many things to people who would like to be witches, and none of them is necessary. Doreen Valiente observed that the witches of the villages worked with what was in the kitchen: a knife, a cup, a broom, a cooking pot, a length of string. Almost the whole of the list above is there. A person who has those, and knows what to do with them, lacks nothing.