On the night the moon shows nothing, some troubles are best drowned rather than faced. A jar is a small dark sea, and what you sink to the bottom of it need never surface again.
This working reaches toward the sour magic of the old kitchen-witches, who knew that a grievance steeped long enough turns rancid and loses its teeth. You do not destroy your adversary so much as still their reach, souring their intent until it can no longer travel the distance to your door.
The Working
- On the new moon, gather a small jar with a tight lid, a length of black thread, a fistful of bitter herbs — rue, nettle, blackthorn if you have it — and cold water gone sharp with vinegar.
- Whisper the name of what troubles you onto a scrap and knot the black thread about it nine times, binding its reach with every knot.
- Drop the bound name into the jar and cover it wholly with the soured water until nothing of it shows.
- Add the bitter herbs one by one, naming each as a wall set between you and the trouble, then a pinch of salt so the working cannot turn back on its maker.
- Seal the lid tight and speak the incantation over the cold glass.
- Set the jar mouth-down in the darkest corner of a cupboard, or beneath a heavy stone at the edge of your land, where the dark moon can smother it.
- Leave it undisturbed; as the water sours in the black, so sours the hold it once kept on you.
The Incantation
Dark of the moon and dark of the jar,
I drown the reach of what you are.
Nine knots tied and the lid sealed tight,
steep in the sour and starless night.
Curdle and cool and sink from view,
let no ill will come climbing through.
Stilled in the vinegar, stopped in the brine —
your road runs elsewhere, and never to mine.
Once sealed, the jar is never opened again; leave it to the dark, and what it holds grows only quieter with the passing years.