[fearn]

Hi All,

I'm not Wiccan, but I have a number of friends who are, and there are a couple of enduring mysteries in Wicca that (perhaps) someone in this forum could solve.

As some of you undoubtedly know, there are two ritual knives in Gardnerian Wicca: the athame (a black handled, generally double-edged knife) and the boline (or bolline) (a white handled, single-edged knife).

Here are the puzzles:
1. No one knows where the terms athame or bolline came from, or even what the "correct" pronounciation is.

For the athame, the theories are:
1. It's from the Arabic for "blood-letter" (adh-dhame?) (from the poet Robert Graves). This has been used, along with other evidence, to suggest that Wicca is some sort of debased Sufi cult.
2. It's the name of some sort of Malaysian blade. The story behind this is that Gerald Gardner (the founder of Gardnerian Wicca) was based in India for some time, and supposedly wrote a book on Malaysian weaponry (does this book exist?). I'd say that someone's pretty obviously thinking of a Keris here.

The athame design suppposedly comes from The Key of Solomon which helpfully calls it a "black-handled knife" (not an athame).

For the Bolline, there are no origin theories that I'm aware of, but there are a lot of questions about what it's supposed to look like. Various groups use the white-handled knife, a small sickle, or even an old-fashioned hoof-pick.

I figure, if there's anyone out there who can figure out where these two blades came from, he's probably subscribed to this list.

Anyone?

Fearn