When looking into magic, either through this site or elsewhere, you will find that there is a set of working tools that crop up in virtually all systems regardless of origin. Even the rough and ready tools of primitive Shamanism can be matched with these.

They are most commonly found as follows:

1. Sword or Knife. Often the two are interchangeable, in the majority of systems this tool represents the magical element of air (in some systems Fire but this is far less common).
2. Wand or staff. Again interchangeable tools, in the majority of systems they represent the magical element of Fire (in some systems air, a much less common arrangement).
3. Cup. Representing the magical element of water.
4. Pentacle - a flat disc of metal, wood or stone, representing the magical element of earth.

If you think about how this selection of tools came into being, it soon becomes apparent that they represent the basic tools of our survival. Every other tool we have created as a species is a variant on one of these ideas. If civilisation collapsed tomorrow, these are the tools to which we would return.

The pentacle is, at its most basic, our work surface, the element of earth, the material world in which we seek our result.

The cup is our receptacle. We carry water, store liquid, this is the emotional world which is fluid and takes the shape into which it is poured.

The wand is our authority, our drive, our fuel. We use this tool to get our way in the world, to motivate, to drive, hammer etc. The full expression of the fire element.

The knife is our cutting and shaping tool. With this we change things to suit our purpose. We use our intellect (the element of air) to design, change and shape what we need.

The more ritualised tools symbolise all of this and much more (for example, the knife is rarely sharp, especially if you are working with other magicians in a ritual - we want to come out of it without stab wounds caused by waving sharp things round in confined spaces don't we?).