A candle burns brightest as the moon fills, and so can a face that has forgotten its own light. Choose a taper the color of butter or wheat, and set it where the growing moon can find it.
This working does not paint the skin; it teaches the skin to gather light, the way gold gathers the last of the sun. As the moon swells toward full, so does the quiet radiance you carry, until strangers say you look well without knowing why.
The Working
- On the first night after the new moon, warm a golden or beeswax candle between your palms until the wax gives slightly.
- Anoint it from base to wick with a single line of oil in which a thread of saffron has steeped, drawing the light upward as you go.
- Press three grains of dried marigold or a pinch of saffron into the soft wax near where the flame will sit.
- Light it at moonrise and hold your face in its glow, close enough to feel the warmth settle on your cheeks.
- Let the candle burn a finger’s width on each waxing night, speaking the incantation as the flame steadies.
- On the night before the full moon, let it burn wholly down, and keep the last gold bead of wax to touch to your brow.
The Incantation
Gold to the cheek and gold to the brow,
light that the growing moon allows,
gather in me as it gathers in wheat,
warm in the eye and warm in the greet.
What the sun has spent, the moon returns —
fair is the face where the low flame burns.
When the wax is spent you will not be so much changed as revealed; the light was always yours, only banked and waiting for a flame.