The Drawing of the Magic Circle

The Circle is a gateway, a door, a psychic opening, a place where one opens up oneself for what is inside the psyche. It is the sacred grove located between the worlds of the visible and the invisible. It is the meeting place for the Gods and the Children of the Gods; for the ancestors; for long lost friends and family who have gone back to where we truly belong.

Creating a Circle is creating a sacred space. We define this sacred space and sacred time whenever we cast a Circle in the Craft to begin a ritual.

The Circle exists outside the boundaries of ordinary space and time. We say it is between the worlds of the seen and the unseen. It is a space in which alternate realities meet, in which the past and future are open to us.


Casting the Circle is an enacted meditation. We create an energy form which serves as a boundary that limits and contains the movement of subtle forces. In group work, it is the High Priest or High Priestess who casts the Circle.

Casting the Circle is the formal beginning of the ritual. It is the complex cue that tells us to switch our awareness into a deeper mode. In ritual, we suspend disbelief just as we do when we are watching a play or reading fiction.


In the permanent stone circles of the Megalithic era, where rituals were enacted for hundreds of years, great reservoirs of power were built up. There was no need to outline the circle as we do today, because the stones defined the sacred space. Casting a temporary circle as we do today began during the time of persecution when tearing down stone circles was a popular sport of Christian mobs. To further the destruction of our circles, the church ordered that Christian churches be erected over the old sacred spots in the countryside. That is why we say that a Circle is part of the magickal temple.

The Circle binds the magical power raised within it, and only the magician himself/herself can release it. The Gateway to the Circle should always be in the North or Northeast to draw forth power from the midnight power source. The circle should be marked visibly on the floor or ground, commonly by stones, chalk, salt or any other natural material. In times of persecution, we are told, magicians used common objects to mark the circle, since these could easily be moved to allay the suspicion of unwelcome visitors.

If stones are used, 13 is an auspicious number, since these mark the 13 full moons of a greater circle, the year itself. The circle is a multiple of three feet in diameter. The most auspicious size for a circle is 9'; after that, multiples of 9' are most auspicious.