The Athame – Consecrations

The next tool up in the list of consecrations – and possibly the most expected – is the Athame, or the “Witches’ Blade”.

For the longest time I have held an aversion to the idea of having an athame but, after exploring some grimoire work and studying the Ian Watts writings on the tool, my opinions have softened somewhat as experience has taken priority.

So I bought myself a nice little plain dagger. I like the plain look, personally, unlike some of my friends who have knives forged out of railway spikes and all sorts of things.

The knife has a bit more of a drawn out consecration process and is the only tool to be dealt with during the waning phase of the moon.

Having learnt from my previous mistakes, I ground up my herbs and set them to infuse the night before I planned to consecrate my blade.

When the night rolled around, I set up my space, got myself cleaned up and into a light trance state. I had everything ready to go… and then I needed to draw blood.

This was something I hadn’t expected to have any issues with – especially since, for almost a month prior to this working, I had been performing a nightly ritual which involved piercing a candle with needles, an action which had (quite accidentally and on more than one occasion) resulted in a bit of spilt blood.

For some reason, on this particular instance, my body simply refused to bleed. I cannot tell you how many time or how deep I put that needle in my finger. Not a god-damned drop!

On the Arte of Bloodletting

After bemoaning my failure to a fellow practitioner, she suggested I tried one of those devices used by diabetics. This is something I had tried with a friend before, but I had been underwhelmed with the results on that occasion. Not having any luck with the old sewing needle however, I visited the pharmacist on my lunch break the next day and picked up a pen.

Now, as I said, I had low expectations with this little device so, when it came to using it, I put it on a higher setting. It was painless, but clearly the setting was quite deep because I ended up with more than a few drops of blood.

With that out of the way, I was free to complete my consecration.

Despite my initial reservations, I have to admit I felt pretty goddamn witchy sitting in the candle light, plunging a hot knife into a blood-and-herb infusion which would hiss at me through the incense smoke. I didn’t even mind the look of the runes once they were painted onto the handle.

Possibly the coolest part was finally “needing” to get myself a lodestone.

After all of this I buried my knife in a wooded area near my home. Since it was in an area where there are no lights or footpaths, I buried it in the dawn the next morning.

My Own Personal Jesus

Three days and three nights later, I entered the space again to exhume my blade. I had to chuckle to myself, as I had my blade rise from the earth on a Sunday at the beginning of Lent.

Overall fairly happy with the results. That said, I still think there are some things which I would do differently were I in a position to do this again. I may have used bigger coals or even a small pot of ignited spirits to heat the blade, I would have been better prepared for the blood drawing, and I would like to have a more permanent method for applying the runes to the tool. All in all, I don’t think it was a bad attempt, and the blade does seem to have a draw about it which was most certainly not there before – a different personality, perhaps.