Marking a Space Between the Worlds

Casting the circle is the rite by which Wiccans and many modern Pagans mark out a consecrated space before ritual or magical work. The practitioner traces a circle, commonly walking its bound sunwise while visualising a sphere of energy, calls upon or acknowledges the powers of the four cardinal directions or elements at its quarters, and so defines an enclosure held to stand apart from ordinary space, a place, in the tradition's phrase, between the worlds, that both contains the energy raised within and guards those inside.

The rite in its familiar form is a twentieth-century composition: Gerald Gardner and his successors drew its elements from the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn and earlier grimoire traditions, adapting the magician's protective circle to a religious and celebratory setting. Historians such as Ronald Hutton have traced this borrowing in detail, and its practice varies widely across the many Wiccan and Pagan currents that have since developed.