Set a mirror where one candle can reach it, and let the rest of the room stay dark. In the glass you will meet the one who carries everything, and the one who can set it down.
This is not a mirror turned to send a thing back to its sender, but a mirror used to clear your own reflection of what clings to it. Breath fogs the silver, and in the fogging the weight becomes visible; the wipe of a hand takes it away. What you clear from the glass, you clear from the self that stood before it.
The Working
- At dusk, place a mirror upright and light a single candle beside it, so your face floats in a small pool of light.
- Look into your own eyes in the glass until the room around them goes quiet.
- Name the weight you carry as though telling it to your reflection, plainly and without pleading.
- Lean close and breathe upon the glass until your face clouds over and vanishes into fog.
- With one slow stroke of a clean cloth, wipe the mirror clear, and watch yourself return without the weight.
- Cover the mirror with a dark cloth and let it rest until morning, and do not look into it again tonight.
- At dawn, uncover it, sprinkle a little water on the cloth, and wash the glass once more to seal the clearing.
The Incantation
Candle, hold me in your little light;
silver, show me what I carry.
Breath, go out and cloud the glass;
hand, come clean and wipe it bare.
What clouded here I do not keep,
and what returns comes lighter.
The covered mirror keeps its silence through the night, and the face it gives back at dawn is one weight freer. The glass remembers nothing; neither, now, need you.