Meredith - Circle of eight: creating magic for your place on earth

All land is sacred land.

The Circle of Eight described in this book took place on Bundjalung land. It is a landscape filled with natural beauty: rich soil, gorgeous forests and beaches, and amazing flora and fauna. Wollumbin, or Mount Warning, is in many ways the heart and source of this area. I am very grateful to have been able to live on this land, to hold circles there and to relate with its intrinsic magic.

I respectfully acknowledge the past and present traditional owners and custodians of this land.

Contents

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Appendix
Casting a Circle, Turning the Wheel, Releasing the Circle

Introduction

Local magic is powerful magic. It rises up through the earth under our feet. It whispers and sings to us in the winds and the air we breathe. It can be found in the waters nearby and the ways fire touches the land. As soon as you step outside the door you have access to local magic, and even indoors you can see and feel its influence in a hundred ways. The Circle of Eight is a magical system that bases itself on your location. You will create a unique version of the Circle of Eight directly related to where you live: the weather and seasons, flora and fauna, and the special conditions that exist around you. When you celebrate the seasons as you experience them, when you work with the elements as they manifest locally, and when you relate magically to the landscape, plants, and animals that live where you live, you become an active part of local magicnot as an abstract concept but as real, lived, and immediate experience.

The Circle of Eight begins as a structure for magic and ritual. It is ideal for eight people but can be worked solo, with just a few others, or with a larger number. It is made up of eight positions that are the cardinal and intermediate compass directions; that is, North, East, South, West and North-East, South-East, South-West, and North-West. Each person in the circle holds one of these positions. When the Circle of Eight meets, you literally sit or stand in the direction you are holding, so if you are holding East, your place is in the East point of the circle. The person holding that direction is responsible for bringing its magic and flavor into the circles workings.

The Circle of Eight relates fundamentally to your local surrounds and conditions, creating an in-depth local magic. This is discovered by turning to face outwards from each of the eight positions into the directions themselves, and exploring magically, energetically, and literally what that direction contains and what it represents in your location. This takes place during circle work but also between circle meetings as you continue holding and working with your direction. Coming together again, each person offers what they have learned. These explorations help create the overall composition of your Circle of Eight and change your magic and ritual from generalized to particularfrom generic to local. Usually people move one place further around the circle at the end of each meeting, so everyone cycles through all eight directions.

The Circle of Eights positions are also aligned with the festivals of the Wheel of the Year. When these two things are layered together, a local relationship is created with each festival. The festivals are revealed as belonging to and arising from the land they are celebrated on, taking on the flavor, references, and energies of local magic. Books become a secondary reference as the land all around offers us direct learning, letting us know not just the character of that direction in our location, but also guiding us in the lead-up to each festival. In turn, your experience of the festival will feed back into your Circle of Eight, continuing to inform you about that direction.

This local magic can be expanded onto the land around you to create a vast three-dimensional ritual landscape. To do this, you find eight locations in the appropriate directions that you already have or can form a magical relationship with. These places might all be on one rural property, for example, or spread out over a much larger distance in a cityscape or local area. Each place then further informs the character of the direction it represents. Combined together, these layersthe circle with its directions, the festivals, and the geographic Circle of Eightform a complex and truly local model for your magic and ritual. The structure of the Circle of Eight remains the same wherever it is worked, but the character of each circle and of each direction within that circle is dependent on where you are creating magic, on your place on earth. The Circle of Eight arises from, reflects, and is embedded in local magic.