Every doorway is a small death and a small birth: the one who steps through is never quite the one who stepped up to it. This ritual makes that crossing on purpose.
The frightened self is not your enemy; it is only a self that has stayed too long on the near side of the door. Here you draw the threshold in salt, meet your own eyes in the glass, and walk from one self into the other. What you leave in the mirror, you do not have to carry across.
The Working
- At any hour you can be undisturbed, draw a line of salt across an open doorway, the threshold you will cross.
- On the near side, set a mirror at eye height and a lit candle beside it, so that you can see your own face clearly.
- On the far side, place a bell where your hand can reach it once you have crossed.
- Stand before the glass and look into your own eyes without flinching, naming aloud everything the frightened self still fears.
- When you have named it all, tell the reflection plainly that it may stay, but that you are going on without it.
- Step over the salt line in a single stride, cross to the far side, and do not look back into the glass.
- Ring the bell once on the far side to seal the crossing, then sweep the salt away and turn the mirror to the wall.
The Incantation
Salt on the sill and glass on the wall,
I see the frightened self and I see it all.
Stay if you must in the silvered light,
I am crossing over into the night.
One step taken and the line is passed;
the door is a death, and the fear breathes last.
Ring the bell and let it be told:
the one who crossed came over bold.
Leave the mirror turned until morning. The self you left in it will fade, as all reflections do, and the one who crossed is the one that remains.