Also called ritual cup, goblet, the cup
A chalice is a stemmed cup used in religious ritual. In Christianity it holds the communion wine; in Wicca and modern witchcraft it stands for water, the Goddess and the womb, and is used to share wine or juice and to join with the athame in the symbolic Great Rite.
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Take care: Drink only from food-safe vessels; old pewter, lead crystal and some glazed pottery can leach lead into wine or juice. Offer a non-alcoholic option and individual cups in group rites.
The church chalice holds the wine consecrated at Mass or communion. Early medieval examples were masterpieces of metalwork, like the 8th-century Ardagh Chalice found by two boys at Ardagh, County Limerick, in 1868 and now in the National Museum of Ireland.
Chrétien's unfinished romance introduces a mysterious graal, a serving dish carried in a procession, not yet a cup. A few years later Robert de Boron made it the vessel of the Last Supper used to catch Christ's blood, and the Grail became the most famous sacred cup in Western story.
At the end of a Wiccan circle the cup is filled with wine or ale and blessed by lowering the athame into it, then passed around with small cakes. The act thanks the gods and grounds participants before the circle is opened.
Cups for offerings and shared drinks are as old as ritual itself, but the chalice as a special stemmed vessel grew with the Christian Eucharist. By the early Middle Ages monasteries commissioned elaborate silver and gilt chalices; the Ardagh Chalice, made in Ireland in the 8th century and found in 1868, is one of the finest. Around 1190 Chrétien de Troyes wrote of a mysterious graal, and later writers turned it into the cup of the Last Supper, giving the chalice its aura of quest and holiness.
Modern witchcraft took the cup from ceremonial magic, where the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn paired four tools with four elements and the cup stood for water. Gerald Gardner's Wicca in the 1950s made the chalice the feminine partner of the athame, and the symbolic Great Rite, in which the blade is lowered into the cup, became a central image of union between Goddess and God. Most practitioners today use it simply to bless and share a drink at the close of a ritual.
Cakes and Ale is the part of a Wiccan ritual where food and drink are blessed, shared and partly offered back to the gods, usually near the end of an esbat or sabbat. It gives thanks and helps participants ground after magical work.
A full-moon rite in which a priestess calls the Goddess of the moon into herself and speaks with her voice. Central to Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, named after the old Thessalian witches' boast.
A Wiccan working gathering held on the full moon, separate from the eight seasonal sabbats, for magic, healing work and honoring the Goddess.
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