Iron and Fiber in My Diet

Earlier this month, I did a working where I expected I’d need the benefits of a good active ward but the traditional ‘casting a circle’ or ‘holding out my shields’ wouldn’t have been appropriate to do; they have several disadvantages that would have made it an unsuitable method of ward laying for this application:

It is costly. It costs attention and energy from me to keep that kind of thing operating, and I needed every available erg for the hard work stuff that was supposed to be going on inside the ward and I knew I wouldn’t have the concentration or energy to keep the ward up during the working.
Invisible means invisible to my co-workers. If it doesn’t have a physical marker, my compatriots can’t see it. And if they have no spirit sense, they can’t be sure they’re on the right side (inside) of the barrier. That’s dangerous.
The space I was working in was decidedly non-circular. Sometimes the space you’re in is a narrow strip of hallway or just a free-form shape and not a anything-gon. Casting a circle in both Wiccan and Golden Dawn styles generates a regular geometrical sphere, so you have two choices: make a small sphere that doesn’t encompass the whole space but that you can see all of with your mind’s eye, or make a large sphere much larger than the space you can see so that it definitely encompasses even the largest single dimension of the area but that you can’t see all of. If one of those works for you, great, but I find that the small version is too small, and the large version is too weak. The bits that lie outside the room’s dimensions – the bits I don’t see – are harder to maintain in my intention. If they don’t fit my mental spatial map of the place, I get sloppy about their borders.

In this particular case I was working inside someone’s back yard which was a narrow rectangle of a space. Plus there was the added issue that I did not want what I was doing to cross over into the neighbors’ properties. That’s just rude, Karen.

So I made a tool for concretizing that ward that addresses those problems. TL;DR: I tacked a rope into the ground using iron spikes and I told it to behave like a wall. It worked exceedingly well. Which is why this post.

Iron being great as an anti-magic barrier is well attested in multiple traditions – Hoodoo, Celtic folklore, and Catholic traditions (such as making a cross necklace out of nails) to name just a few.

And rope as a magic anchor is also not news, as any sailor anywhere will tell you. Community eruv lines also use this principle.

Using iron and rope together makes for an effective, lightweight, and flexible wall portable to wherever you want to work. I highly recommend this tool. Here’s my recipe for how I did it:

Set-it-and-forget-it Ward

This works best for a ward you’re setting outside in squishy earth. I suspect it would work under other circumstances but I haven’t tested it. In such cases, you thread the iron spike through the loop and lay it flat rather than banging it into the ground.

Material Components

Rope of natural fibers – Having the rope be made of natural fibers like jute, hemp, or cotton, is important. There’s a directionality to the component fibers’ orientations that doesn’t exist in nylon or other synthetics; it enhances the rope’s ability to hold on to intention and transfer it down itself continuously. Choose a length long enough to enclose the area you’ll be working in with at least a few feet left over. I used 100 feet of quarter inch jute rope which cost me under $13 online. That was enough to surround an area of one backyard fire ringed by four lawn chairs, with room to move around.
Iron spikes – Railroad spikes would have been great, but I couldn’t scavenge any. Instead, I bought eight used foot-long rusty iron nails for under $1 from the local scrap recycling joint. In theory, tent stake staples should work too.
Sledgehammer – or other thing to bang giant spikes into the ground with. I used a crowbar, for lo, it was handy.
Whatever stuff you use to consecrate other stuff – I used self-made chrism and holy water.

RUBRIC

PREP

Learn how to make an alpine butterfly knot. I know how to work with rope and how to tie a few useful knots because reasons. And I do a good bit with knotcraft in my magic. Outside of Ian’s Secure Shoelace knot, the alpine butterfly is the next most useful knot I’ve ever found. I use it all the freaking time for many tasks. But it’s especially suitable for this application because it can be tied in-the-bight (i.e. you don’t need to have one of the working ends of the rope free to tie it), and when it’s properly formed it leaves the rest of the rope running all in one direction without twisting, kinking, or buckling. In short, it lets me take 100 ft of rope and turn it into a continuous rope line that lies totally flat, with loops that stick out from it, which is exactly what this application wants.
Tie alpine butterfly knots into the rope. One at each working end of the line, and the rest between those ends. Pick a number of total loops that is one more than you need. You can space them evenly between the end-loops – like if you want four spikes to go in, one toward each cardinal direction, you’ll want five loops – one close to each end, and three more evenly spaced between them. Or you can mock lay the rope in the area you’ll be working in and mark out the exact places the loops should go for when the rope makes turns or winds around an obstacle. I used eight loops, leaving me seven points in the line to secure with spikes.
Consecrate the rope to the purpose of warding in whatever manner you like. At minimum, this should involve telling the rope what it’s for. I used a modified Roman Catholic rite of blessing that called for rubbing the rope with chrism and sprinkling it with holy water. Don’t attempt to consecrate the iron spikes. That’s not how any of this works.

AT THE TIME OF USE

Check the enloopenated rope for breakages or damage, and if you find none, bring it, the hammer, and spikes with you to the area you’ll be working in.
Lay the rope on the ground, orienting it such that the line of the rope lies straight and the loops point outwards. Let the rope mark the border of where you want protection. Importantly, the location of the rope’s ends matters: overlap the two lead-end loops with one another – this area, the place the two ends of the rope meet, will be the area folks enter and exit the space through before the ward is sealed shut and after the working is over.
Starting at the overlapping ends and moving clockwise, trace the rope with your hand and your intent, banging in spikes at each of non end-loops. By “intent”, I mean “intent to turn it into a wall” or barrier or whatever. I forced that intention through the rope while singing a hymn setting of Psalm 23.
Leave the ends loops empty but overlap them. Set the last spike and the hammer near them.
Cleanse the space – I did the LBRP but whatever your normal minor banishing is goes here. Be sure to do this BEFORE you seal the final spike through.
At the end of the cleansing, bang the final spike in as shown in the top photo here. One spike goes through the final two overlapping loops. If you have help during your working, you can even set someone else to do the final spike, as I did, so that you can time it to just after the banishing.
Do your working.
When it’s time to break the ward down, pull up the final spike and let folks out. Wind the rope up in the opposite direction you laid it down, pulling up the spikes as you go.

And that’s it.

I have to say that laying this thing was one of the more satisfying feelings I’ve encountered. When the last spike went through the two overlapping loops and into the ground it made an inaudible –click- like the way the air in the elevator seems muffled and too-close once the doors shut.

Being that it was a magical barrier, it was flexible – wall-like when I needed it to be a barrier, fence-like when I wanted to see beyond it, and with a gate that I could open and close with minimal effort.

And it was exceedingly effective. I was able to work unencumbered by the energy drain that sometimes goes into such things, and it did what it was supposed to do. Nothing came in that I didn’t call to come in.

It kept the cats out.

And the best thing is that it’s reusable. The steps under “PREP” above only have to be done once. You should routinely check the rope for wear and breakages, and remake it with a new rope if any are found. But until then you have a simple, effective, and highly portable wall to carry with you to future workings.

Iron and Fiber in My Diet