tinyurl.com/wiccan-mudras
In memory of Raymond and Melissa
Wiccan ritual in the Circle typically involves a lot of
equipment, for example: an altar, often with altar cloth; a metal pentacle or paten, which lies flat on the altar to represent the element of Earth; a chalice to hold water, wine, or ale, and represent the element of Water; an athame (black-handled straight blade) may represent either Air or Fire, depending on the tradition of Wicca being practiced; while the wand may conversely represent either Fire or Air. Candles are set at the four cardinal directions, each for an element and guardian in itself, but also of course when lit host real Fire. Figurines represent the God and Goddess. Many traditions expect each participant to have a nine-foot-long knotted braided cord or cingulum, for measuring the radius of a ritual circle among other purposes. There are symbols of rank, crowns, for the High Priest (with horns or antlers) and High Priestess (often with lunar symbols like crescents).
It has been said and written, over and over, that these ritual tools are
symbols for manipulating spiritual forces, and consecrated to that purpose. The athame, for instance, is never to be used for the shedding of blood; that would so befoul it as to require its destruction.
However, security guards at prisons and hospitals do not, cannot, see it that way. Wiccans who have been prison inmates and hospital inpatients have — like everyone else in those facilities — not been allowed to bring in knives, no matter how consecrated to nonviolent purposes those might be.
The conjunction of a physical athame with a chalice will not be allowed there... which impedes the practice of Wiccan religion as it does not impede the practice of (say) Christianity.
The loophole Wiccans could take advantage of here is the word "physical" — or to put it another way: if the blade itself is only a
symbol for manipulating spiritual forces,
why not use another symbol?
Eastern religions — Hinduism and Buddhism — have been using handsigns (mudras) to represent both physical objects and states of mind for thousands of years. The Shuto Uchi ("knife hand" gesture) of Shotokan Karate derives from Buddhist mudras that signify the sword of enlightenment cutting through ignorance and delusion. I do not propose that Wiccans adopt Eastern mudras whole — unless they also practice Yoga, and find Yoga mudras helpful. However, I am recommending the concept, the technique, of being able to use handsigns when the physical tools are not available.
I also suggest this more broadly to Wiccans holding group ritual where shouting for tools you want makes distracting noise — and being able to handsign for them silently would be more discreet.
As distinct from the existing ASL handsigns used by the deaf community, I wanted as much as possible to use one-handed signs (for either hand), not involving the face or body, so that "tools" could be "used together" — ale or wine poured into the chalice, athame conjoined with chalice, wand (or other tool) laid upon pentacle/paten for consecration, spears crossed in the protective symbol, etc. — or a physical tool silently requested across group ritual when one hand is already occupied by another (e.g. a stang or staff).
Otherwise some handsigns may look familiar to ASL users, e.g.: "Chalice" is a one-handed version of the two-handed ASL sign for "Cup", except movement is not required to sign it. Here, "Candle" is signed with one hand (even an optional "flickering" for clarity) instead of two.
The "crown" handsigns are deliberately context-dependent:
- By themselves they mean "(bring me) the crown";
- Preceded by, say, "telephone" or pointing to a person, they mean the respective coven leader;
- Preceded by, say, "draw down" or "pray to", then the respective deity.
(Cf. the spoken/written word "crown" when referring to the headgear worn by a king, vs. the king himself, vs. the king's legal personification in court cases he himself may never attend or even know about — "The Crown against [Defendant]".)
The HP/HPS crown can be signed with the back of one's hand against one's forehead, and thereafter visualized through the rest of ritual... which brings me to another point.
Some of you may have encountered the very old (dating back to classical times) memorization technique of the "Interior Castle", in which one practices visualizing an interior over and over until it is as familiar as one's home, linking sections of a speech or any other text one must memorize to the areas of the "Castle" one systematically wanders through. Clearly this is a visualization mode one can also use to practice ritual — again, where the now purely visualized tools are
symbols for manipulating spiritual forces, no less than the physical tools were.
Verbum sapienti sat est.
License
For public benefit, I am releasing these handsign and mudra designs under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, meaning Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike): I intend to make no commercial profit from them, and anyone else is welcome to use them with proper attribution if also making no profit, and likewise sharing the designs.
Font
Text in these cards uses the "Ale and Wenches BB Bold" font by Nate Piekos of Blambot.com — and please note, anyone who DOES print these cards (or anything else using this or any other Blambot font) for a profit owes Blambot a $40 license fee.
Other resources
You can print the cards on cardstock yourself, if you like. However, I have taken care to see that these files fit the required sizes at www.makeplayingcards.com in case you prefer to have professional "playing cards" made. (I get no kickback if you do.)
If your intention is (as I hope) to get one or more such card packs into the hands of imprisoned Wiccans for their study... and perhaps, once memorized, relay through the prison library... then let me offer one time-saving caution. Prisons don't let prisoners accept publications from friends and family, due to risk of smuggling — but only directly from publishers. Just have the card printer mail the cards to the prisoner rather than to you.
Groups needing further organizing handsigns might well gain from the U.S. Army's field experience, which offers handsigns ranging from "stop", "silence", "ready?", "come forward", "depart", "disregard last", and "I don't understand", to how to show all ten digits (0-9) on one hand. (The Army stresses one-handed signs because the other hand may be holding a weapon in the field.)
www.wikihow.com/Army-Hand-Signals
For Wiccans traveling, who don't want to lug along all the altar gear, but DO want to be able to worship while on the road: search on internet shopping sites (Etsy, eBay, Amazon, etc.) for "portable" or "pocket" or "travel" altar kits. These may be small enough to fit in Altoids-size tin cans with hinged lids, and have small candles, small pentacles, small athames, small chalices, etc. Not prison or hospital safe, maybe not TSA safe for airports.
Another option: Wiccan
printed symbols for every tool needed, on small tiles (possibly wood or ceramic), which can fit in a box or pouch. (One useful font toward this:
Symbats, by Feòrag, with
handy reference manual.) If worst comes to worst, you could hand-print all those symbols yourself on a piece of paper, and cut or tear them apart — remember, all you need are the
symbols. Again, you could print them on playing cards if you chose, using the link above.
