The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the many magicians who follow in that tradition, used wands for many purposes. The most common wand is used to control the Element of Fire. You can see this mentioned briefly in Regardie's book on the subject, and more fully described, including methods of construction, in the Cicero's book.
The wand is the archetypal tool of the magician. Certainly, wands are used by Pagans in forms of simple tree branches (perhaps from different types of trees for different purposes) and by new agers made with complex crystal compositions. But to my knowledge, only the Golden Dawn required the use of a wire (or thin rod) of metal through the length of the
