“The power isn’t in the tool, the tool is the focus, the power is in you.”
We’ve all heard people say this. Don’t get dependant on your tools, they’re not the source of your power. You don’t need the tools to do the work. Tools are crutches of undeveloped sorcerers. Blah blah blah. It’s a very common concept in Western magicks, and while I can agree with a large chunk of the sentiment, I can’t help think it’s missing the target more than it is hitting it. I think it’s a great concept to teach when people are new to magick, but like a lot of beginner concepts, it is something that lacks nuance and needs to be evaluated as you develop.
Now before going forward, I’ll be clear I do have several magickal tools that are purely foci, and any power in them is just incidental from use at the moment. I won’t say a tool can’t only be a focus, but to say tools are only a focus loses something.
While not the major issue with the concept, I think the issue of storage is the easiest one to address. How many of us have a consecrated tool of somesort, our swords or wands or talismans? Now how many of us have energy stored within them? It’s not just that the sword directs energy, but it’s been programmed with a specific energy and used as a battery for energy. A talisman isn’t just a focus, a lot of talismans require reconsecration because over time the energy stored in them is used up. If it was just a focus it wouldn’t need to be reconsecrated, because every use would be a reconsecration.
When the tool is seen as a focus, we lose that. This begins to limit us within this belief, because now all the power of the ritual is dependant on what you can generate, which might be fine for many rituals, but for others it will drain us, or even not have enough.
Another take on the tool as focus concept is empty-handed magick; performing magick without tools because your mind can create the tools as you go. For some people it’s as literal as creating mental/energetic constructs of the tool as you go along. In fact some of my initial training dealt with that. Performing a ritual and need to set up a boundary? Take a moment to visualize a sword, make it real in your mind, and use that. It works in some cases, but again it has limitations. This style of empty-handed magick encounters issues when dealing with more complex or long rituals, and misses some of the reality of magickal encounters.
Most sorcerers can probably visualize a sword or wand well enough to cast their space. What about something more than that though? What about Solomonic magick for instance? You have to visualize the circle with the appropriate names and symbols around it, you have to visualize the triangle and the seal of the spirit, you have to visualize the candles, you have to visualize the incense, you have to visualize your sword, you have to visualize the wand, you have to visualize the lamen, you have to visualize the ring, and even more depending on what you’re doing. Sure most of us can visualize a sword well enough to use it, but how many of us can visualize all the required tools* well enough to use them, let alone do all that and perform the ritual.
*You can argue how many of the tools are required in this case, but that’s not really the point.
Now take that a step farther, even if you can hold all of those in your mind, what happens when the spirit acts up? All your will and focus is on the tools, and now you have to constrain a spirit? You have to increase your focus/energy on the boundary, and the triangle, and whatever tool you’re using to compel. If you couldn’t do it before they acted up, why do you think you can now? What if the spirit overpowers you? What if the spirit startles you and you lose focus? What if the spirit affects your thoughts? If all the power in the tools is your focus, then any difficult spirit encounter purely becomes a battle of will and energy, and a lot of spirits have far more experience and resources in that realm than we do, that is why we call them after all.
A focus can be helpful, but it also has a limitation. Now compare tools to people in group rituals, sometimes group rituals you have tasks split up, these people hold the quarters, this person is the herald, this person directs the energy, etc. Now obviously no one would look at this ritual setting and say “You see Gregg who is holding the West? He’s just a focus for Geetika, she’s the real power.” Now obviously people aren’t tools (well…maybe some…) but I think the analogy loosely stands. These people have roles in ritual so the person(s) leading the ritual don’t have to concern themselves with the other parts of the ritual. Tools do the same, sure you can do things empty-handed with mental constructs, but that’s energy and processing power you’re putting towards it rather than the rest of the ritual, but if you’ve outsourced the basic tasks to tools you’re free of that distraction.
There is another important aspect lost when we think of tools as focus, and that’s spirit allies. While Western magick doesn’t address it as much when you look at magick globally and look at the tools people use they’re rarely “just tools.” In a lot of cultures your tools are houses for spirit allies. Your blade has a spirit in it, your talisman has a spirit in it, your mirror has a spirit in it, etc. If tools are just physical objects to focus us we lose that. I can tell you personally there are several ritual tasks that I would not want to perform without the spirits I have residing in the related tools. You can argue about how “powerful” a spirit that lives in a tool is, but the point isn’t necessarily brute power, but skills and aid.
The sadder part is sometimes people’s tools do have spirits in them, but the person isn’t aware or doesn’t acknowledge them. These can be gifted/inherited tools, even purchased, or it could be a spirit took up residence on their own (one of my ritual knives was suddenly “full” one day when I went to use it) or a ritual called the spirit in but the practitioner didn’t realize or assumed it was all just energy. It hasn’t happened much, but there have been a few times when I’m playing “show and tell” with a sorcerer, and they hand me an item with someone in it. “Oh who is it?” “What? It’s just a chalice for skrying.”
Tools can be a focus, but they can be so much more. Honestly if people want to work with “haunted items” or not is no concern of mine, but I think we people continue to think and repeat the idea that “Tools are tools, you are the power” it limits them, it disenchants the world and practice, and something is lost.
