A Month of Witches & Magick- What I Learned About Transmutation Circles Day 1

This year's Month of Witches will be a bit different because the focus will be on my personal magick, namely how I use transmutation circles. I do not claim to be an expert. I do not claim that I am even doing it right. I'm just telling you my personal experience.

There are times in my life when the same thing occurs repeatedly. It may be that I see the name of a Goddess over and over- in books, in movies, all over the Internet, until finally the dreams began and I know my path is taking a new direction. Or it could be repetition on a small scale like seeing rabbits all day. It could be people mention the same subject on a near constant basis. It might be finding an art form I'm never liked before, but for some reason that art moves me and I am driven to learn more.

This is what happened with transmutation circles. On a completely unrelated search, transmutation started appearing. I think I was searching for round quilt designs. I love circles. When I was a newbie Witch doing rites with friends, I always ended up casting the circle. My friends said I was very good at it. I use circles a lot. Anything I which to protect, I put it in a circle. When I was single and living alone, I slept in circles. I got good at dreamwork, but not astral travel. I think I was beginning to travel, because I would lay down for what seemed like only a few seconds, but the entire night had passed. I did not remember any dreams. I began to worry that I might not be resting enough so I stopped doing dreamwork and sleeping in cast circles. Then life started to happen and you can't really cast a full strong circle with a man snoring beside you and what happens when he gets up at 1am to go to the toilet?

Dreamwork aside, I still used circles often and designs with circles really appeal to me. I've noticed that I unconsciously arrange items in either circles or arcs, especially when I am cooking. I will glance at the counter and suddenly see a crescent moon shape of ingredients.

Transmutation circles are beautiful things. I've watched videos of people chalking them out. It takes hours. It really is art. It's also fiction.

As far as I can tell, transmutation circles were invented for a cartoon. BUT they were based on real magick. So they are real, but there is no way to tell a 'real' transmutation circle from the ones designed for the cartoon. Which made me wonder how much the cartoonists copied from other sources and how much they invented for their own purposes.

I started searching for transmutation circles. While I found many beautiful images, I found very little on HOW to use them. There was almost nothing on what the symbols in the circle mean and even less about how the circle is activated. Which I found odd because surely something that takes so long to draw would require special circumstances such as a particular time and place, and what words go with them? Is drawing the circle enough? Should you be in an altered state of mind? What happens if the rain washes your chalk designs away? Where does the magick go?

By this point, I was getting really annoyed. I had more questions than answers. I had lots of pictures, but no practical advice. I had sources which said the transmutation circles weren't real and sources that said they were but couldn't tell me where the use of transmutation circles originated or who used them. I started studying the pictures, trying to make sense of all the symbols. I couldn't understand it. While some things seemed really obvious to me, other symbols seemed to be thrown in for the hell of it.

For a while, I gave up. I wasn't getting anywhere. While I could find the meaning of many symbols, I couldn't find all of them. I wasn't about to cast a spell not knowing what it did. Not of course, that any of the circles came with instructions. I could plainly see the circle was magick. But what kind?

I wasn't actively researching, but the circles weren't about to let me give up. I still saw them everywhere. Finally, on Pinterest, I found 3 pins that explained transmutation circles. Three is barely anything. Three doesn't begin to answer any questions. Three just makes the mystery deeper and darker. Three is just a hint, vagueness that answers without giving anything away. And that's when I decided to do my own thing.