Everything Under the Moon

If your eager to use your new bell, you can open and/or close your sacred circle with it. You could also use it to invoke spirits or deities to participate in your workings. Bells can also be used to help remove negative or unwanted energies from a home during a cleansing. Personally, I've found that the powers and spirits we wish to invoke or honor don't want their ears assaulted. On a cleansing, I want to make a racket and drive the negative spirits before me. {Don't forget they like to hide in closets if they're really stubborn.} That's just the way I ring them if they are called for. Your mileage may vary.

I use a bell on my altar whenever I speak to my ancestors.
In several practices you take authority over spirit by ringing a bell, or clapping your hands, and this also repels negative spirits and allows you to gain the attention of your target audience.

I ring the bell once to "get their attention" and then ring the bell when I'm done to release them.
My daughters are 3 and 4 and they like being the one to ring the bell to start the veneration and then to end it.

For example, I read that on Samhain, we ring the bell 40 times to call out to the dead we wish to honor.
Is this correct, or does the number of times you ring the bell not matter? And if it does, what numbers represent each meaning? :

I haven’t heard of 40 bells at Samhain as something standard. It may be a regional custom. There is NO one single book of rituals directory adopted in witchcraft or Wicca. Circle casting, 3-levels of membership & initial comes from Masonic ritual. Covens & Solitaries design their own and quite often share them. The meaning of any action in a ritual is whatever the person who wrote it intended. All I can think of is 40 lashes.

I used a pendulum and a map when I was house hunting.

40 could be that whole Noah disaster. They should turn off the tap when they're done taking a drink. Better not use any in the Rain Dance just to be safe.

Yea, the Gematria System meanings found in the Old Testament is one and even another meaning is found in the New Testament. Numerology and astrology have still other meanings of 40. Like I said, guess-work.

Has anyone ever read the Old Kingdom Trilogy, by Garth Nix? It's fiction, but I really like the magic system ... the main character has seven bells, each with a name and a purpose:

Ranna - the Sleeper
Mosrael - the Waker
Kibeth - the Walker
Dyrim - the Speaker
Belgaer - the Thinker
Saraneth - the Binder
Astarael - the Weeper

I have used this system in guided meditations and astral travel before. Saraneth (the Binder) and Ranna (the Sleeper) have made their way into some of my spells, too. There's some pop culture magic for you!