The witches in folklore and on old woodcuts did not only rid on the broom, when they flow through the night. But also on the stang.
The stang is a pole of wood with an crotch on top of it. It looks like a pitchfork. Some believe this stangs were distaffs, other thinks they were stove forks.
But the stang is not so strongly connected with our modern archetype of the witch, here the broom is on top. But in the old days, the stang was seen as a witchcraft tool.
What the broom is for me in my home and garden, the stang is for me when i am out and about.
And many traditional witches today, have reclaimed the stang for their witchcraft as a working tool.
You can find much informations about the stang and the symbolism of it online, because many traditions and solitary witches are using it in their workings today again. Here i will write about my own symbolism.
For me the stang is a very similar to the broom, like the broom the stang is a all-round working tool. Everything i wrote about the broom, fits also for the stang.
I have two stangs, one that i use as a walking stick, the other is a kind of ward in my ritual room and stands next to the protective broom on my hearth shrine.
I use the broom in my rites and workings that i make in my home or my garden. When i go out into the fields and forests, i take with me my stang. I use it as as walking stick. When i am walking through the land I do store the life energy in it and i use it for rites and workings in the woods and fields, in the same way I use the broom in my home.
For me it is not only a symbol of the world tree, but a symbol for the crossroads, the meeting place of the witches, the threshold between the worlds and the sacred threeway of the Goddess Hekate (and on the magical table of Pergamom- a Y shaped rune was used as special symbol for Hekate- it looked like the stang). And at the same time the stang is for me a symbol for the Horned Lord of the sabbath, the two ends of the stang are symbols for his horns. And if you put a lantern or a candle between the two ends, it gets a symbol for the fire of the God.
The broom and the stang are for me symols of the axis mundi, the world tree that connects all worlds with each other (material world, etheric world and empyrean world). Hekates sacred oak tree, entwined with her snakes, the twigs in the heaven and the roots deep in the underworld.
Where Three Roads Meet... 