B is for Bolline

When we first though about the letter B, we thought that in the Gardnerian blog it might stand for something like blindfold or binding or boobs. But since if Gardnerian praxis actually involved any of those three awesome things, they would likely be oathbound, and so we’d only be able to talk about them for the 30 minutes it would take our High Priestess to get to our house and stab us to death. Really, we’d rather spend our last 30 minutes doing something epic, like initiating anyone who walks slowly enough across our lawn.

So instead, B stands for bolline. Let us tell you about the bolline in the Gardnerian tradition. Gardnerians use a lot of tools. We like tools. They are fun. They look kewl. They are used for many things and we spend many, many barrels of extremely fine scotch debating the merits of different kinds of wood. (There’s a double entendre in there somwehere.) Most importantly, we like to make our tools, because that increases our link with them and their efficacy. We chant and we focus and we sweat and bleed on them. We drink and we smoke and we craft objects d’spirit and arte into some truly amazing and powerful shit.  And once we’re done making all of the tools we need, when our splintered hands are cramped by the heinous, heinous vocabulary that we never use, we start looking for other things to make. We make candle sconces and wrought iron stands, peytons and staves and a myriad of other cool things we’ll actually put to use. Once we make the ancillary crap that comes in handy every now and then, we *might* decide to make a bolline.

A bolline, from what little we remember learning about it reading Wiccan books in Catholic high school, is a crescent-shaped knife used to wildcraft herbs.  What does wildcrafting herbs mean?  Well, it mostly means that we order them from LuckyMojo.com like the rest of you. But if we want to eventually pass cat yronwode’s class, we’ll likely have to go outside and actually rob some poor plant, so maybe we’ll get a bolline to do so.  But really, we probably won’t.

Check out our High Priest’s herb collecting tool.