Practice · Tools · Golden Dawn
Fire Wand
The Golden Dawn's dedicated Fire implement: a scarlet, magnet-cored wand marked in yellow and emerald green and used for work the order classifies as fiery.
What the source describes
In Manuscript G the four elemental weapons embody the four letters of YHVH and the four Tarot suits. The Fire Wand stands under Yod and the Tarot Wand. During the shared consecration it lies beside the lamp, but it has its own ceremony, performed while the Fire tattwa is current. The manuscript insists that all four weapons remain present even when only one is being used, because each element is understood to contain lesser aspects of the other three.
Historical setting
This implement belongs to the Golden Dawn's initiatory and ceremonial system. That system reorganized earlier ritual objects into a coordinated elemental set; the resulting assignment should be dated to the order rather than projected backward into medieval grimoires.
Common uses
The wand is the working instrument for operations the manuscript calls 'of the Nature of Fire.' It traces the invoking Fire pentagram over an implement, directs the Fire invocations, and participates in consecrating the fiery lesser angle of each of the other weapons. After consecration it is kept wrapped in white silk or in silk of the element's colour and is not to be handled by another person.
Form, materials and reconstruction
The prescribed body is a smooth wooden rod, preferably hollow cane in three natural lengths, no more than about eighteen inches long. A steel magnet runs through it and projects one inch at either end; the plain end receives the magnet's north pole and the other end is conical. The whole shaft is flame scarlet, divided into three sections by yellow bands. Three bright-yellow, flame-shaped Yods mark the cone. Divine and angelic names, their Rose-derived sigils, and the adept's motto are painted in bright emerald green. The colours are part of the manuscript's design, not decoration added by this site.
Element: Fire
The Golden Dawn consecration manuscript names this the Fire implement in its four-weapon set. This assignment belongs to that set; it does not make every firelike object in every grimoire equivalent.
Sources and variations
This is not the Lotus Wand. The Lotus Wand is a general Second Order implement with zodiacal colour bands; the Fire Wand belongs specifically to the four-weapon elemental set. Crowley's later Book 4 wand also has a different construction and symbolic argument.
Primary account used here
Further references
- Crowley, Book 4, Part II ↗A later ceremonial interpretation of the wand, cup, sword, pantacle and temple furniture.
- Book 4, Part II: 1913 first edition ↗Bibliographic record and page scan for checking Crowley's later illustrations and wording.