Spyrit Dancers' Musings On All Things Wiccan

I tried on my first wand for sale putting a round amethyst on the end of it, and “tying” it on with copper wire that was wrapped around it and up the base of the wand about 3″.   I set it down, and was working on something else when I noticed my cat Loki was trying to jam himself under the oven to get something.  I looked back at my wand, and sure enough, he knocked loose the amethyst stone which is now somewhere under my stove.

I really liked the copper wire wrap on the top of the wand, but I’m going to pull of the wire at the base, and wrap it with leather like I did my other wands.  I think the connecting a stone that is not drilled at the bottom was a mistake, and I’m glad I found out about it via Loki, then after someone had bought it.

My husband and I were out in the garage yesterday, getting some Mesquite ready to make more wands I plan on posting up to sell, and I told him that that title would make a good blog post, lol. Anyone not familiar with this tree, it has wicked thorns, and the size of the thorns don’t seem to be determined by the size of the branch. We had skinny branches with 1″ thorns, thick branches with tiny prickers, and vice versa.

So I was in work boots, pants, gloves up to my elbows, three layers of shirts and sweaters, getting the branches out of the pile we let them “age” in. (We cut them on the day of the full moon back in September), trying not to get stabbed. Then we take them in our garage and take really big loppers and lop off the parts we want to use, toss the other parts back in a different pile to be burned. Did I mention mesquite wood is also an incredibly hard wood? According to a site I found, Mesquite wood’s average density of 45 lbs/ft3 is equal to that of hickory and higher than that of most all other woods. Sooo sawing and cutting it, especially dried, is fun too.

Then comes the fun part. I had cutting pliers, diagonals? not sure the technical name, and cut the majority of the thorns off, then I handed it to him and he had a box knife cutting the rest off. It takes awhile, an average wand branch might have 50 thorns. Try doing all of this with really thick gloves on. Feels like you are wearing a baseball mitt trying to thread a needle sometimes, lol. Then he hacksawed off any oddly cut ends, then I took a hand sander and touched up the ends.

They are now all sitting on my kitchen table, waiting for me to decorate them up. Other than using a dremmel to drill a hole to embed the crystal points, they will be entirely made without power tools. We do them all by hand. My first wand I ever made is on my altar and I use it. I love it. We leave the bark on them…I never understood why people peeled the bark off for wands, that to me takes away a lot of the character of the wood. And Mesquite, which has a grey bark when growing, has a beautiful reddish/tan bark when dried.

These will be wands that will be harder than almost any other wood wands you could buy. Most sources say too that Mesquite is a healing wood. I don’t think a lot of magickal properties has been written about it, because most people that make wands have more woods to choose from, and Mesquite only grows in desert areas like we have here. I think most wand makers live where there are actual forests. I miss forests.

For me though, it is my only tree. I have 7 mesquites on my property, one kinda good sized one, the rest smaller. This tree grows VERY Slowly, and my largest tree is at least 50 years old and only 20′ tall max. Below is a pic of my three largest trees in my front yard, with some Texas ranger growing under them, an a Russian sage in bloom off to the side. You can see the size of the trunk on my largest tree compared to the rest.

We had to cut him back so much when we first bought our house…the old owners let it get covered in mistletoe, a parasitic plant that will eventually kill them. This tree is considered by some a pest, but for 2,000 years the Native Americans in arid regions relied on mesquite as food staple. The pods can be ground into flour that is high in fiber and good sugars and is sweet tasting. It can grow without any help of water, fertilizers or pesticides that might be used on other trees. The only thing we’ve done in the 5 years we’ve lived here is give them water.

When I get the wands all decorated up, I’ll post up pics and post about it.