There are illnesses that scatter a person, leaving the body here and the spirit somewhere out beyond the window, watching. A candle lit under the full moon becomes a lantern in that dark, a light to guide the whole self home.
This working reaches toward reunion, the knitting of a person back into one piece after long sickness has worn them thin. The full moon lends its round and brimming wholeness to the flame, and the flame lends it back to you, whole for whole.
The Working
- Choose a candle the colour of honey or new cream, and warm it between your hands until the wax gives slightly.
- Anoint it from wick to base with an oil pressed for mending, be it St. John’s wort or plain olive steeped with rosemary and thyme.
- Roll the dressed candle in a dust of the same dried herbs so they cling to the oil like earth to a root.
- Set it within a ring of small clear stones on a sill where the full moon can look upon it.
- Light the wick, speak the verse, then call each part of yourself home by name, the hands, the breath, the sleeping and the waking.
- Let the candle burn down of its own accord if you are able; should you leave, pinch it out with wet fingers, never breath, and relight it the following night.
- Keep the spent stub and the stones together in a cloth until the sickness has wholly passed.
The Incantation
Round moon, full moon, brimming bright,
gather what is scattered tonight.
Hand and breath and heart and head,
back to the warm and living bed.
By this flame I light the way;
come you home, and come you stay.
Whole for whole and one for one,
the wandering and the mending done.
By the flame’s last guttering you may feel yourself settle, as a house settles when all its people are indoors at last. Sleep then in the moon’s plain light, and wake gathered.