The waning moon draws all things downward, and sleep is only the first of many depths. Below it lies water that remembers.
This draught is brewed to loosen the sleeper from the shallows and let them fall, fathom by fathom, into the true-dreaming country where the deep keeps its counsel. What is met there is not invented but remembered; the working’s harder labor is the climb back, so that morning does not rob you of what the dark freely gave.
The Working
- When the house has gone entirely still, draw water cold and let it stand in a bowl until it forgets the tap and grows as quiet as a well.
- Warm it barely, and steep within it valerian root, a single star of anise, and one slow thread of honey, stirring only widdershins.
- Hold the bell above the steam and ring it once for each fathom you mean to sink — three for remembering, seven for the far country — letting each note fade wholly before the next.
- Bend close and speak the incantation into the rising warmth, so that your breath and the steam go up together.
- Drink half the draught down; pour the other half back into the bowl and set it at the bedside as a tithe left open to the dark.
- Lie back, name nothing, want nothing, and let the descent have you.
- On waking, before you speak a single word, ring the bell once more to moor the dream in memory, then tell it over to yourself in full.
The Incantation
Down past the shallow and the shore,
down where the drowsy waters pour,
carry me, current, fathom-deep,
into the country under sleep.
Let me be given, let me be shown,
let me climb back with it my own.
Sleep now with the bowl beside you, and trust the water to bring you up again by morning, your hands full of the deep’s dark gift.