What is the Besom?
The besom is a traditional broom made from a bundle of birch twigs tied to a hazel-wood handle. In Wicca and neopagan practice, it is used as a ritual implement to sweep and purify sacred space before the casting of a magic circle. The besom is one of the consecrated magical tools of the Wiccan altar, alongside the athame, the chalice, and the pentacle. Unlike those four elemental tools, the besom does not carry a fixed correspondence to earth, air, fire, or water in most Wiccan systems. Its function is preparatory: it clears the space in which the real work begins.
Besom vs athame, wand, and cauldron
The athame directs energy through gesture and intent. The wand summons and invites. The chalice holds. The cauldron transforms. The besom does none of these: it purifies. In most Wiccan practice, the besom is walked counterclockwise around the perimeter of the ritual space before the circle is formally cast. This sweeping removes residual or unwanted energies and marks the transition from ordinary space to sacred space. The besom is the threshold, not the rite itself.
How the besom is used in ritual
Wicca was codified publicly by Gerald Gardner (1884–1964) in the 1950s, through his semi-fictional novel High Magic's Aid (1949) and his non-fiction work Witchcraft Today (1954). The Gardnerian Book of Shadows — the foundational ritual text of the tradition — lists the besom among the tools to be consecrated. Before consecration, every tool is passed through representations of the four elements: sprinkled with salt and water, then passed through incense smoke. Once consecrated, the besom belongs to the ritual space and is kept apart from ordinary use.
Beyond circle preparation, the besom has two other prominent roles. The first is handfasting, the Wiccan wedding rite. At the ceremony's close, the couple jumps together over the besom laid on the ground. The act marks the crossing of a threshold into a new life. The second is seasonal ritual. At Beltane (1 May), the besom appears in fertility dances tied to the agricultural calendar, carried or ridden as a prop in rites that enact themes of renewal and growth.
Witches, brooms, and the folklore backstory
The image of the witch riding a broomstick is several centuries older than Wicca. Medieval and early modern European trial records from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries describe the sabbath, a nocturnal gathering to which witches were said to fly, sometimes astride a broom or stave. Where this image came from is debated. Some researchers, including Michael Harner in Hallucinogens and Shamanism (1973), proposed that accounts of night-flying reflect the use of hallucinogenic ointments made from plants in the nightshade family — belladonna, henbane, and mandrake — whose fat-soluble alkaloids can be absorbed through skin. The hypothesis is that ointments applied using a stick produced vivid sensations of flight. This reading remains contested and is not accepted by all historians of early modern witchcraft.
When Gardner and later practitioners incorporated the besom into Wiccan ritual in the twentieth century, they drew on this pre-existing witch-broom symbolism while redirecting it. In Wicca, the broom does not fly and does not carry its user anywhere. It sweeps the ground. The nocturnal sabbath became, at most, a metaphor for the spirit's movement between worlds in trance work. The besom kept its association with witchcraft. Its function changed.
In the index
The besom belongs to the same cluster of Wiccan ritual tools as the Athame. The Altar entry covers the surface on which all these implements rest between uses. Magick traces the ceremonial lineage — from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn through Aleister Crowley to Gerald Gardner — that shaped the modern pagan toolkit. The Goddess entry covers the theology at the centre of Wiccan practice, in whose service the besom purifies. The Priestess entry addresses the practitioner who performs the rites. As items covering Wiccan and neopagan practice enter the index, the besom will anchor content dealing with the practical elements of the Craft alongside the Athame.