I am always glad to see this question coming up. I did my honours thesis
on exactly this question. The thesis focused on practitioners who
considered themselves to be in the Hermetic tradition, which included
several Wiccans. It was a combined Religion & Theology and Sociology
thesis and the first half was on the history of the Hermetic tradition
while the second half was based on a survey of Southern Hemisphere
practitioners, where in asked them to describe their circle casting
practice and to explain their rationale as to why they did what they did.
As one way of answering this question I looked at what was the practice
of Robert Felkin's Whare Ra lodge of the Stella Matutina in New Zealand.
I asked whether they changed their circles after arriving in NZ from the
UK.
Basically I came to the conclusion that which way one does one's circle
rituals depends on what one's magical conception is. i.e. Most Wiccans
said they did counter clockwise circles as they were most concerned with
nature and thus followed the path of the sun. Whereas most ceremonial
magicians were more concerned with maintaining the order of the elements
as they are arranged in the Qabbalistic tradition.
Interestingly there was a fairly large trend of those who said they
didn't know why they did circles the way they did, but that they did
them the way their coven had taught them or because they had seen it
described in a book and hadn't thought about why the book said to do it
that way.
Also interestingly those who were members of more than one group, e.g. a
Wiccan coven and a Ceremonial Magic group would do the circle one way
with one group and another way with another. I think this is a product
of the phenomena of there being a small number of 'pagans' and of people
associating with groups that fall under this general generic heading
with each person having their own practice, but when attending events
going along with whatever consensus the group has. This has certainly
been my experience. With group rituals there is often a period of
negotiation as to how things will be done on that occasion or otherwise
a falling back to the 'default' position of Wicca.
Regards,
Morgan Leigh
PhD Candidate
School of Sociology and Social Work
University of Tasmania
On 9/05/2012 2:25 PM, D G Mattichak jr wrote:
> Hi All;
>
> I am part of a Facebook group called Witches of Melbourne (http://www.facebook.com/groups/witchesofmelbourne/) which has been a forum for discussing Witchcraft, Paganism and magick and recently a conversation came up that concerned the direction of circumambulation while casting a circle and its connection to the path of the sun through the sky in the Southern Hemisphere. In Australia it is common for witches to swap the elements that are attributed to the southern and northern quarters to reflect the sun's northern declination in the Southern Hemisphere and so they reverse the circumambulation that they make when they cast a circle.. The debate that developed brought up the question of which direction would be correct to circumambulate when casting a circle in the tropics where the declination of the sun doesn't follow the same regular path. One member explained it well:
>
> "The issue with the 'apparent direction' of the Sun about the horizon becomes more prominent the further north of the Tropic of Capricorn you go. By the time the Equator is reached, the Sun spends half the time clockwise and half anticlockwise. Presumably one would need to cast the circle wither this way or that depending on the time of day and year, even though not much is really changing around you. This continues on into the northern hemisphere's tropical zone until you reach the Tropic of Cancer. There aren't a whole lot of Western European populations of the sort likley to be into Wicca, or neopaganism living in the northern tropics, but there may be an exception in Hawaii (just a couple of hundred kilometers south of the Tropic of Cancer), with its population of white Americans. Perhaps there are neopagans operating there. If so, they face the same issue our hypothetical practitioner just north of Rockhampton faces if they choose to celebrate the Summer Solstice at mi
dday (e
xcept they'll have to switch from clockwise to counter-clockwise). If there are any neopagan groups there, perhaps we can ask them."
>
> So I am putting the question to the list here to see what they think (and because I thought that it might also interest you). Should invoking circumambulation follow the sun or should it follow the traditional clockwise direction? What opinions have you got about swapping the elements attributed to the north and the south for the Southern Hemisphere?
>
> David Mattichak
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