The Magick Square
Squares have a strong folk magick traditions; a magickal square would be marked in a field with hoes, takes or other agricultural implements. In times of persecution squares could be consecrated as a magickal space, but were much easier to disguise a magickal workings than circles. Some were undoubtedly use to mark as sacred as magickal workings 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 channeled 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 traveled 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 practices by these canal people on a square of land adjacent to the canal bank within 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.