Handfasting

The Wiccan wedding ceremony, in which the hands are bound together.

Handfasting is in wicca and other pagan traditions a commitment ceremony: a marriage or a promise between partners. The best-known part is binding the partners' hands together with a cord or ribbon, as a visible sign of the bond they enter into.

The word goes back to old European customs, especially in Scotland and northern England, where handfasting referred to an engagement or a marriage sealed by taking each other's hand, sometimes without a priest. In the twentieth century the modern pagan movement took up the word and the ceremony, and gave it its own form.

A handfasting is often held in a circle, outdoors, with the four elements and directions called upon. The partners speak vows they often write themselves. Sometimes the union is for a year and a day, after which the couple can choose to continue, sometimes for this life, and sometimes for this life and beyond. The colours of the cords often carry meaning. Beltane, on 1 May, is a favourite time for handfasting, because the festival revolves around fertility and union. Jumping over a broom is also sometimes done, a custom known at weddings in other cultures too.

For dreams handfasting is an image of union. A dream in which your hands are bound together, in which you speak vows in a circle or in nature, or in which you jump over a threshold can be read in wicca readings in this way: a bond you enter into, or a promise you make to yourself.

Wicca has no central doctrine; what a handfasting looks like differs per tradition, coven and couple.