So Davo and I were having this completely unhinged, ADHD-fueled conversation the other night, and in the midst of ventilating on something wildly unrelated, the subject of stangs came up. I mentioned that a stang is usually either shod in iron or has an iron nail driven into its tip, and he pointed out that the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic sells an iron stang top and shoe set (also available with a candle holder between the horns, which is just about the most awesome thing ever).
This factoid got us contemplating why a stang would need an iron tip in the first place, and we concluded that symbolism aside, it serves a grounding purpose — during a working, excess power would flow through the stang and into the earth. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. And I was glad that we were able to toss some ideas around on the topic, since ritual tools don’t get discussed a whole lot in chaos magic spaces, and I really like talking about them.
An old friend of mine — one of my first teachers, in fact — had a wooden wand wrapped with copper wire, the conductive nature of which he claimed helped direct and amplify energy. He was also adamant that ritual tools be called ritual weapons, which heavily influenced my perception of how occult paraphernalia should look and feel. Like, my athame came from an army surplus store, and my own wand looks like something a Victorian school marm might use to ruthlessly stifle precociousness.
I’m certainly not saying that every tool has to be a weapon. But anything with both mundane and magical functions is inherently geared towards the liminal. So that’s always something to consider.
I was still sort of stuck on the mixing of alloys and organics the following morning as I puttered about the store, although my thoughts were disrupted when a nondescript hatchback bucked to a stop out front. The vehicle had apparently stalled without warning, and I watched as the driver made a couple of attempts to restart it before hanging his head in defeat and resignedly switching his hazard lights on.
I felt badly for the guy, and I was about to trot over and ask if he’d like me to help him push the car into one of our parking spots, when I had a Very Chaotic Idea [patent pending].
A couple of months ago, a customer developed an unhealthy fixation on one of my employees, which resulted in some borderline stalking behavior. The situation has been resolved, and the customer is permanently banned, but at the time, my employee was feeling understandably shaken and asked if he could keep a baseball bat behind the counter, just in case.
“I’ll do you one better,” I said. And I got him what’s colloquially called a “tire thumper” — a thick, hickory truncheon with a rubber grip on one end and a sturdy metal bolt screwed into the other, which now lives comfortably within reach of the register. Should one of us ever need to, y’know. Check pressure. In a tire.
Anyway, I grabbed the thumper, and, crouching where the the driver couldn’t see me, I pointed it at the car.
“Start,” I growled in a commanding voice.
I honestly didn’t expect anything to happen: I think I was just going for, like, the chaos magic version of thoughts and prayers. In any event, the driver was only slightly less surprised than I was when the car suddenly snorted back to life.
And y’all, I fully own that it could’ve just been a coincidence, and I wouldn’t be sad if it was. But the timing was a little too perfect to disregard.
Did the bolt in the end of the thumper channel a surge of etheric energy into the car? Was a Thumper wielding a thumper so ludicrously redundant that reality warped? Was the car already about to start, regardless of whether or not I was aiming anything at it? Your guess is frankly as good as mine, although the whole thing definitely calls for experimentation.
And while I’m not sold on anything, Davo swears that it was not a coincidence, and that I am far more powerful than I realize. Mainly because — the unprovability of the incident notwithstanding — he takes his role as my familiar very seriously and views morale boosting as a requisite of the job.
I’m going to keep playing around with the thumper (now officially renamed the Chaos Stang), and I’m looking forward to interesting and/or entertaining results. I’m also going to stay on the lookout for other unassuming items with secret caches of witchcraft inside of them, waiting patiently to be discovered.
And when I find these things, I will chaos magic the house down with them.
And when it works, I will freak out a little, and then I will try it again.
Here’s hoping that you do the same.
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