Much warranted, it is still hard to know where to begin a work on the subject of magickal circles. There is virtually endless literature devoted to this subject to be found in countless magickal books.
Obviously, the vast diversity of actual methods, rituals and practices, occurring in a great many cultures over vast stretches of time, implies that much about these practices are given to personal interpretation and style... while at the same time, it implies there is some fundamental common denominator.
Indeed, the methods of casting or creating magickal circles and the extend to which such effects are tangible is as varied as the possible effects which they can create.
Rather than recount a collection of standard information here, as usual, I would like to point out and to help underscore certain possible aspects and attributes of circles that may be less usually encountered.
There is much in practical terms about using magickal circles for protection (often the person seeking protection is literally physically within the circle of protection) that suggests they are creating a space which is somehow insulated, separated from the rest of reality. Whatever ideas of physics we may use to justify such a notion, we may repeatedly encounter the sense that this far more literal an occurrence than just the figurative notion. In other words, even though some circle castings are admittedly "purely" within the mind, for our own magickal benefit through the way in which the efforts enhance our consciousness and sense of well being, the basic rituals and practices promise to be not far from far more than that.
One method of trying to assess magickal circles is that the insulation or distance from normal reality can happen through the way in which energy may gather, circulate, and even accelerate in the physical traces that comprise the circles. Often, the particular materials that are called for may reinforce this notion, and may constitute such materials as certain kinds of superconductors. Within certain fields that may be associable with this kind of system, such effects as levitation and luminescence are far from unthinkable. Also within this kind of system, reactance effects may play a role. Reactance is an electrical property that describes that the behaviors of circuits or components tends to vary with frequency.
Superconductive effects tend to be associated with high frequencies of electricity, and rightly, we can still wonder if the high-frequency electricity that is static, demonstrated for example by rubbing a balloon on the head to build a charge, and then moving it away. When the hair will leap three or four feet into the air provided it is that long, in order to try to cling to the balloon, it may be literally defying gravity or levitiating. Much research in science seems to confirm such ideas.
Because of reactance, when people say "things like that don't just happen", perhaps they should say that "things like that don't happen at normal frequencies". When we are talking about raising frequencies, we may be talking about changing the laws of physics. To this day, the effects of high-frequency electronics devices such as Tesla coils are considered to remain "weird and unpredictable", most likely due to the principle of reactance.
What should make magick of this sort even less frightening and less unpredictable than these familiar scientific experimenter's devices is that often, magick involves the magickian entering into the circuit and directing the energy, whether sparks seem to be flying or not.
Any element which cause unpredicatability in such a situation may not be the nature of the forces in question, but simply unfamiliarity with the natural tendencies of the energy and the lack of such discipline as bio-feedback training on the part of the magickian.
Another method of trying to assess magickal circles and the insulation or distance from normal reality that they create is holographic. There is a striking resemblance between electrographics researcher Ion Dumitrescu's reported success in creating a Kirlian image of a leaf, not of the usual sort with the tip cut off and producing a phantom image of the missing part, but with a hole in the middle and a smaller phantom double appearing in the center of the hole.
A drawing from a photo by Ion Dumitrescu, from Richard Gerber, "Vibrational Medicine", pg. 55
Interestingly, while electronic auric imaging has not yet clearly been distinguished as something that detects holograph projections opposed to causing or creating holographic projections, auric imaging identifies patterns of energy, just as does clarvoyant percetion of auras, that identify physical problems before they develop, implying a possible aspect of time delay or dilation that may be concurrent with the "warp feild" premise as well as studies which note time dilation or possible relativistic effects in Tesla coils.
Likewise, similar scientific concepts such as George Van Tassel's coil that generates a "hemispherical time feild" do not seem detached from certain styles of creating magick circles where one circle is contained within another of almost equal size, creating a small region of disparity which may create interferometry effects, perhaps on the order of scalar devices. Tesla entusiast Tom Bearden, who has developed and promoted many of Tesla's ideas, notes that strange circular lights often reported in nature may occur due to fractures and stresses in the earth.
Electrical wizard Nikola Tesla used to speak of "blowing bubbles" of energy, just as one would blow soap bubbles. Presumably, the initial structure would be a circle which is highly energized and maintains an electrical field of a certain minimum electrical tension. Not different is the documented and deliberate generation of ball lightning, which is not only repeatable but repeatable reliably if certain parameters are observed-- the same parameters which seem to be consistently involved with the generation of ball lightning which has been frequently observed due to nature interacting with electrical lines.
Tesla on occasion talked of the ability to project entire bubbles of electrical force around continents as a defensive military strategy.
Resonant cavities or receiving resonant cavities are yet another possibility. Michael Faraday's experiments with charges and cavitation, and the charge migration that is affiliated with them, should be widely known. Cavities also present the ability to receive and process signals. The magnetrons which comprise the active part of microwave ovens are but one example of cavities which send or receive energy. Resonant cavities not only have the potential, but the historical documentation, to associate them with being able to receive both the energetic patterns and the energized particles to serve in the materialization of mater, also in accord with the continuously noted ability of magickal circles in "high" or ceremonial magick, to participate in various degrees of manifestations.
Such historical documentation runs from such potential resonant cavities as grails and cauldrons and cornucopiae and the household shrines of ancient Greece and Rome, all of which have the appropriate legends or elements thereof firmly attached to them, to such anomalous and implacable cavities as found cut into the ancient walls of libraries, which stand as if in the places of modern copy machines. That the tubes in which scrolls may have been kept also comprise resonant cavities may also provide a possible clue to how an age when information may have been of even more importance than today, may have fulfilled such a need.
Likewise, that superconductive effects can be derived from mere grooves or tracings is already established. No matter how two-dimensional a configuration may seem to us, it may be able to serve as a resonant cavity or superconductor, or both.
The traditional consecration of circles and other ritual elements to the four cardinal directions often resembles the methods of creating magnets through abrasion, percussion, or possibly other excitation of magnetizable material when aligned parallel to the earth's magnetic field. The difference, of course, may be that some sort of diamagnetic activation may be applied at the east-west axis as well as paramagnetic activation at the north-south axis, and/or some sort of sequence that may comprise some sort of quantum effect, such as a quantum switch.
Counter magnetic amplification is another possibility, that magnetic effects are initiated either by being induced by the electrical effects (or vice versa) which are similar in nature to magnetic devices purported to be the core of such devices as time cameras, and similar aspects in many sources pertaining to the elements and methods of creation of magick mirrors, whose properties are identical. While the application of the concept to more practical purposes may be more less than directly clear, partly due to its' novelty, we can easily surmise that the potential of such devices is no different than the already familiar attributes of magickal circles.
Within this category may belong various other magickal feats. Once again, levitation seems to be particular to some circular gatherings in occult occurrences. Certain ancient rounded boulders in India for example, are known to levitate in the air when they are surrounded by and or touched by a number of people, and a certain chant or invocation is given. What has not been ruled out is whether this levitation is due to such factors as the deliberate selection of the appropriate odd or even number of participants, something that again seems to recall the aspects of countermagnetic amplifiers or unpaired magnetic pole levitation patent types. These also resemble certain famous feats of levitation, such as those done as parlor games, which some researchers have experimentally labeled a "human quadripolar gravity antennae", or the sensitivity that energies that accumulate at certain stone circles seem to show for encroachments of roughly the size and mass of a human being.
Not only may the underlying principle be the same, but may also apply to both the number of persons acting in a circle, as is the case with covens, where 12 or 13 is a preferred number, and need only depend on other factors. Likewise, the familiar "cone of power" that is often raised in such ceremonies strongly suggests a manifestation that can be paralleled by applied vortex technology. In the act of "Drawing down the moon", however figurative or literal, there is a strong implication that a lunar, and likely magnetic, force is being focused. Lunar cycles in humans, for example, are commonly considered to be regulated through the very same biological apparatus that is often considered to be sensitive to magnetism, and the magnetic aspects of magick are exceedingly numerous, as detailed on other pages of this site.
Non-linear structures also bear some resemblance to the possible convergence of energies.
Because of the facet of many rituals involving circles, such as the observance of cardinal points or the "calling of quarters", such energy manifestations as the Newtonian fractal found in James Gleick's book, "Chaos", may be associable with certain circle rituals.
A Newtonian fractal generated using the equation x4-1=0, from Gleick, "Chaos"
Thus, even while the interior of a magickal circle may be apart from the rest of reality in many true ways, and may literally be a world unto itself, not paradoxically, at the same time it may be more interconnected to reality than the reality around it.
Vortex effects which affect the organization or self-organization of various configurations of matter and energy as well as the rates at which they occur, may also be involved. While John Walker's assessment of vortex energies that can be associated with such ceremonial structures as Hopi kivas attributes such "benign" purposes as "sending their prayers through the center of the earth", ethnological literature suggests such functions as acceleration of plant growth, even though it only alludes to it.
Part of what can help substantiate the allusions is that the same "allusions" are maintained in Egyptian culture in ways that more and more speak of remarkable sophistication, equal or greater to our own, that occur in the expected context. The ancient mural of the magickal creation of "Ptolemies" by the god Khemnu through the mechanism and motions of the potters wheel is in no way unlike the modern ink drop experiments which serve as the foundation of the world view of David Bohm, a former pupil of Einstien.
The Egyptologist Budge made reference to such ideas persisting within the cosmology and world view of the ancient Egyptians for as much as ten thousand years.
Another part of what can help substantiate what is alluded to is that Amerindians seem quite aware of both the occurrence and deliberate induction of spontaneous rapid plant growth, or "vegetation miracles", and the possible mechanisms by which they may occur.
The use of pentagrams or star configurations within magickal circles also promises to embody the "Wachpress effect", or unpaired magnetic pole levitation or field rotation/ vortex generation, as do many, many occurrences of magickal names written in the corners of the circle, the number of letters thereof often following the same criteria of odd and even numbers.
Lastly, there remains the possibility that any number, and perhaps even all of them, may be happening simultaneously, even in addition to still more possibilities which are not even yet recognized.
Hence, even in the mildest examples of magickal circles giving "purely" pyschological support and comfort, there is a serious aspect to them which may participate, and that is the ability to quietly convey some knowledge of great importance. In the same way, a modern electrical symbol could subconsciously convey importance, comfort and security if used in a religious symbol in a time when technology had been forgotten. In this way, many ancient artworks provide spiritual refreshment to peoples who enjoy them that go far beyond mere aesthetics, even while they may contain secrets yet waiting to be rediscovered.
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