Long before circles were adopted by ceremonial magicians, they have appeased in folk tradition as people for thousands of years have danced in circles around a festival fire. They offer power as well as protection.

In essence you can cast a circle anywhere for any kind of spell or ritual (a visualized one using your index finger takes seconds). If someone is being spiteful at work, you can swirl round in a circle in your chair casting a circle close to your aura (about an  extended arm span all round) so that nasty words bounce off or are diverted back to the speaker.

Any circle you create should enclose yourself; your altar and tools, if you are using them and anyone working with you to create an enclosed protected place of concentrated power. Even if you are carrying out a whole spell with words or in your mind you can cast a visualized circle of light.

• Use smudge and proceed clockwise round the square from the top north-west corner (as you face north) until you end at the same place. If possible empower at sunset, and as close to the three days after the full moon as you can.

• Make a swirl at each corner with the smudge and ask for blessings and protection from the benign lesser earth spirits who will, if you are fortunate, take up position there (especially if you have taller rocks on which for them to make a home).

• Greet each of the loftier mid-point guardians, however you picture them, by raising your smudge to the sky and then downwards to the earth. Greet each of the guardians on the first occasion with a small rounded black stone offering (you can use jet or tourmaline if you want to use a crystal but not the fiery obsidian).

• Unlike archangels, a land wight may not reveal his specific name so greet him as “sacred or noble land wight of the northern land” and so on round the four directions.

• You can if you wish refer to the northern directions guardian as Tiwaz the Viking spirit warrior who represents the Pole Star, the east as Odin the Viking father god, the south as Thor the mighty thunder and blacksmith god and the west as Ingvi or Ingwaz, the ancient fertility go who, according to the old sagas or legends, went anticlockwise,  against the sun, that is westwards.

• You can empower a temporary or large visualized square by standing in the  center and pointing your smudge in the same order as you walked: north-west corner, north center, north-east corner, et., and repeating the words as you turn the smudge clockwise and anticlockwise.

• If you are making a protective square of light around yourself in a dangerous place, picture staves of light rising vertically at all eight points.

• Magick squares don’t need to be uncast as their energies will flow back and forth from the soil.

• Re-empower a permanent magick square monthly as sunset, on any day during the three days after the full moon.

The square is a very powerful symbol of protection. Even if you work within a circle you can still designate an outer square as an additional protective enclosure. If you can’t have a permanent altar outdoors, your magick square can designate the smaller space where you regularly set up your magickal tools.

It is also very protective of the home, even more so than a circle, and is an easier shape to cast in many gardens than the circle. You can draw a square around anything outdoors with small stone markers if the site is very quiet or if you have to leave the item, building or whatever you are trying to protect alone or unoccupied for a while.

It is effective also for keeping children or animals temporarily off lawns or flower beds you are trying to grow.

You can visualize a protective square of any size, from a small one around a precious artifact to one around a sacred site where you have organized a seasonal ritual.

They are very protective around natural circles such as groves where you would not draw a circle.

Indeed, you can create a temporary square if you are working in a public spot and don’t want your magick area invaded by dogs and curious individuals. In modern times where working in isolated places may be less safe, you can visualize one around the beach or forest while you are working or around yourself (as well as your protective circle) on a deserted station platform or taxi rank.

• Stand in the center of your designated square, which may also be the center of your projected magick circle.
• Hold out your arm as far as you can with your palm upright and outwards and say:

“Enough and no more, I draw my square of protection. Preserve this space as sacred.”

• Picture a line of light forming the top horizontal (west to east). Keep turning, making next the vertical north-south line along the right east side as you face north. Speak and visualize till you have all four lines in place and can see a shimmering outline to your square of light.
• You can also walk your square from the furthest away top left-hand corner, moving clockwise and ending at the nearest, bottom left corner. Use your wand in front of you and put a small dark stone at each corner and one halfway along each line. You can align with a compass or estimate north in the middle of the top line furthest from you as you face north.
• You can assign your midpoint, the main directions, to archangels or to the lofty Landvaetir, the tall brown guardians who in Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway; Germany and eastern parts of the UK are recognized as protecting land and all who live on it. You can further protect the corners with the traditional taller dark stones if you are setting up a permanent magickal square. Bless your square as you would a circle the first time you create it.

Squares have a strong folk magick tradition; a magickal square would be marked in a field with hoes, rakes or other agricultural implements. In times of persecution squares could be consecrated as a magickal space, but were much easier to disguise as magickal working than circles. Some were undoubtedly used to mark as sacred land where a former sacred Roman temple stood, just as a circle of stones or tree stumps beneath a church or cathedral might mark a former sacred Druidic grove.

In Scandinavia, the magickal square formed the outline for a grid of nine squares, three by three. These were made by the seior, the witch seers of the Norse world who channelled wisdom from the spirit world, specifically from Helheim where the Crone Goddess Hel cared for the deceased. The seior sat on raised thrones  within the grids and travelled astrally to Helheim to talk to the ancestors and receive advice for the living. Only later did the Goddess Hel become demonized and in recent years there has been a revival of seior craft.

The water witches of the West Midlands also used a magickal square, or mill as they called it, for magick. They were people who came from the Netherlands to live and work on the Midland canals in the 1800s. They practiced an ancient form of folk magick that did not die out till the mid-1900s and there are still a few practitioners remaining. Rituals were practiced by these canal people on a square of land adjacent to the canal bank with a triple magickal square. Each square was joined by four lines and constructed from wood and was known as the Mil. Only women entered the sacred area under the leadership of a senior female water witch, through the chief male, known as the master, standing at the edge, summoned a spirit entity to assist in the ritual.

In modern Iceland, the Landvaetir or Land guardians often have particularly sacred square fields that cannot be built on, where offerings are left in order to bring protection to the homes and farms around.

Magickal squares and circles date back to prehistory. Megalithic stone circles were created from around 3,500 BCE and set out according to precise geometric and astronomical measurements. They were used for rituals of all kinds by the Neolithic tribes especially on the seasonal change points to invoke the ancestors for fertility of crops, animals and people and continued to provide the setting for magickal gatherings through the millennia.

In Sweden and Norway the sacred square grid has formed a magickal device for more than three thousand years. It was used originally on the great seasonal fire festivals, at midwinter, midsummer and harvest. Nine turf squares were etched in the earth and eight removed, leaving the middle one to form the center of the ritual fire.

The magick circle and square also have their place in modern magick. Both shapes occur naturally in forest clearings and can be drawn in sand, earth or snow, or formed out of twigs, branches, shells, flowers, or even crystals.

Both act as markers for the main directions, the circle as though on a clock face and the square halfway along each side, both giving equal segment for the elements.

Ground and Center before all magickal work to avoid depleting personal energy levels. Begin by being still, gathering within and releasing through the fee (and palms if need be) into the ground all static, chaotic internal energies. Now feel the inner calmness, centered around the heart, and draw up through the feet strong Earth  energy (through the floor if indoor), feeling the power and energy rising up and intertwining with your own energies up through the legs, body, arms, neck, and head, out the top, circled around and up again until all portions of the body are in balance. Once this power is felt and is in balance, then Circle Casting, Ritual, Divination, and Spell Work may begin.

Grounding after all magickal work to avoid overload of personal energy levels; touch the Earth/floor with palms of the hands after magickal work and feel the excess energy drain out, leaving a balance of personal energy, augmented only by that amount of Earth necessary for healthy functioning of the body. Too much retained energy will result in headache, depression, or irritability. Too Little will result in fatigue, depression or faintness. You must find the inner balance and adjust according to how you feel.