The one on the far right there…that’s the one I found.

Let me take you through all of this really quickly. The Selenite wand is for cleansing the space, the thinner Ash wand is for raising energies and invocations, tracing runes and even flaming pentagrams into the air, the Athame has my bindrune on it (a mix of Tiwaz, Dagaz, Mannaz and Laguz called Until Dawn Breaks) and that is used for banishing or cutting energies away cleanly.

I don’t care what anyone tells you, the Athame is absolutely fucking not going to be used to harm anyone.

What you call “human sacrifice” everyone else calls just plain, jane murder, there, McCarthy. Calm the paranoia.

Okay so what is that one on the far right? Okay well, the first two wands (The Selenite and the thinner Ash wand) I got from Etsy and the final Pagan Pride festival (also the first) that I ever attended before political factioning proved We Just Can’t Have Nice Damn Things.

The one on the far right, unstained, sanded, a little more straight, is the one I found, carved and sanded from a stick that I cut while I was cutting these for my upcoming rune creation project. See below.

In short, I’m going into three or four lessons in one applied action: Create A Set of Havamal-Accurate Runes and use them for casting, divination, etc. First, I had to head out to the park and take a little hike.

I walked out on my path. I knew it like the back of my hand. I packed up a backpack, hit Ace Hardware for sandpaper, rags and boiled linseed oil, a small bag, my Swiss Army Knife. This one before you ask…The Ranger Grip 79.

The reason I took this one above all other of the models of SAKs that I have? The saw blade. Yeeeeaaaah, baby! The saw blade on this bad boy is robust and that’s why it came along. Better than lugging around a camping saw.

So I walked the path with the knife in my pocket, ready to begin work.

This is the arrival point at the park.

For those of you who love the whole “enchanted forest” vibe, I’d love to take you with me. This place is fantastic. Check this out.

Yeah, it was kinda hot. I mean I have to stay covered up, that’s gonna be a given. I packed a Klean Kanteen with water in it packed in a case that kept it cool throughout the trip.

I began by asking Gemini what the woods were that I was running into. I was picking up dead and fallen branches, cutting them, taking photos and feeding them. It didn’t take long for me to find actual Ash Wood.

Link that sucker back to Yggdrasil, itself, we scored!

I began sawing four to six inch sections off of the branches I found that were similar in diameter. All of the bark was going to be stripped and the wood sanded and finally, while performing galðr, carve the runes into each piece, make sure it’s etched, burned in, colored and sealed. After that, it’s getting a bag and a cloth for the things and then I have, not just any rune set, but MY set of runes.

There was a long section I’d carved off and couldn’t explain in the moment why I didn’t cut it into smaller sections. I stuffed it into the bag as one big stick.

Thing I didn’t know…you have to leave harvested wood out to dry. You can’t just go to work on it. The wood can split if you don’t let it dry properly.

Not that that stopped me.

This was my first real attempt at stripping the bark off with the blade (I got most of it) and then sanding the hell out of it. I did sand it more before deciding to take it home.

That’s when I learned about wood having to dry before being processed. Outstanding…

So far, it’s been a couple of weeks and the wand hasn’t cracked yet, it’s been pretty steady. The rest of it…it’s sitting like this right now.

All of that wood is still sitting there. Not doing anything but drying.

It has a tone now which means the drying is going according to plan. May take a couple more weeks and then…party time.

That means I simply will not be here. On at least one of my days off, all of this is going outside with me. I’ll sit right outside under a tree and strip, sand, etch, then burn with a woodburner and then color and then seal.

This is all gonna take time. You’re probably not going to see a whole lot of the process behind this but that’s fine. You will see the result and that’s what matters most.

Most people find a stick in the woods and think “I found a crutch!” “I found a walking stick!” “I have a stick that I can pretend is a sword!”

Me…I’m out here trying to find The Runes and making my own wand. Hey, if you’re gonna LARP as a D&D Fighting Man for a bit, I’m just gonna go ahead and enter my wizard arc and you can get in front of me and keep the goblins and orcs at bay, Operation: Human Shield.

I told you all of that to tell you this.

Experience. It’s the one thing I can’t teach you. I can’t instruct you on it. I can’t make sense of it for you or help you prove it to anyone else. I’m also not interested in that. That’s for you. You need that and, if things aren’t working, switch feet and try something different.

Even if you don’t believe in magick itself, do yourself a favor…whittle a wand out of a piece of wood, any wood, make it to your liking and then use it. Walk around with it sticking out of your back pocket. I did. I walked home with the thing in my hand, twirling it through my fingers, tapping my leg in a drumbeat because of the music I was listening to.

Why? It’s simple. You need to experience the act of creating something. If you find a stick that serves well as your pretend sword, then whittle, carve and sand that sucker down until it resembles one.

Here’s what you’re actually doing. This is the real magick.

You're taking something that nature had finished with and beginning a new chapter for it. Not by wishing. Not by buying. By working.

Unlike my last article entitled Wednesday, resurrecting dead branches is something I can do.

Let me be perfectly clear. While “the resurrection of dead wood” sounds wonderful, even magickal, the fact of the matter is, I took something nature discarded. Something that was broken, no longer of the function of which it was created and gave it a new purpose. The wood is still dead. It’s no longer part of a living organism, it has reached it’s winter.

So, I’m merely taking something discarded by nature and giving it a new purpose.

The act of creating something, that is real and true magick.

It’s not consumption because I’m not buying another set. I’m creating one. I have rune sets made of Green Aventurine, Elk Skull, Amethyst and even Tiger Eye and I love every one of these sets for various reasons. My Elk Skull runes are the ones that go with me everywhere as well as my Rune Dice.

I’ve never made my own and now, I’m gonna remedy that.

The best part? You can do the same. It doesn’t have to be a set of runes. J

So go make something.

I don’t care if it’s a wand, a walking staff, a wooden spoon, a bookshelf, or the best loaf of bread you’ve ever baked.

Find something ordinary. Invest your time in it. Give it a purpose it didn’t have before.

Whether you call that craftsmanship, art, or magick is up to you.

The act itself is where the lesson begins.

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