On the night the moon shows no face, a mirror holds only darkness, and darkness is the cleanest slate a witch can ask for. What is traced backward upon empty silver can be unmade.
This working turns the mirror against its nature — reflecting nothing, unwinding rather than showing. To move widdershins across the glass beneath a dark moon is to run the year in reverse, loosening each thing that has fastened itself to your reflection until the surface, and the self it once held, both come clean.
The Working
- On the night of the new moon, set a mirror upright with a single candle beside it, never before it.
- Breathe upon the glass until it clouds, then wipe it once, clockwise, to empty it.
- Dip a fingertip in water and touch it to the mirror’s rim.
- Trace your finger backward — widdershins — around the glass, naming what you would loose with each slow circle.
- Make nine circles in all, wiping the water away as you go.
- When the glass is dry and dark once more, snuff the candle and cover the mirror with a cloth.
- Leave it shrouded until the moon shows its first thin light again.
The Incantation
Dark the moon and dark the glass,
backward now I bid it pass.
Widdershins my finger goes,
loosing all the old year froze.
Nothing shown and nothing kept,
clean the silver where I wept.
Turn and turn and turn away,
gone before the moon’s first ray.
The working seals beneath the covering cloth and releases when the new moon’s first sliver returns to find the glass, and the witch, wiped clean.