Beneath the full moon’s flood of silver, when every hidden thing is laid bare, the sweetening jar is sealed with names as old as longing itself. “Honey and the Old Names” is a love jar spell — a slow, sealed working in which the beloved’s name and your own are folded together into honeyed herbs, then kept beneath the moon so that a heart once bitter or distant may turn tender toward you. It is patient magic, meant to ripen across many moons rather than overnight.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colours: pink and rose for romantic love, green for lasting affection
- Herbs: rose, lavender, and jasmine
- Crystal: rose quartz (or emerald)
- Day: Friday
- Planet: Venus
- Element: Water
- Moon: the waxing moon, to draw love toward you
For a fuller table of magical associations, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A clean glass jar with a tight-fitting lid
- A spoonful or two of honey
- Sweet love herbs — rose, lavender, and jasmine
- A mixing bowl
- A slip of paper and a pen
- Salt, for cleansing the jar and for the sealing ring
- Water, for rinsing the jar clean
The Best Time to Cast
Seal this jar under the full moon, when the waxing tide of the lunar month reaches its brightest fullness and every drawing-spell is at its most potent. If you can, choose a full moon that falls on a Friday, the day of Venus, whose gentle rule over love and affection matches the sweetness you are steeping. Thereafter, return to the jar on each following full moon to warm it and renew your intention.
The Working
- Under the full moon, cleanse a jar by rinsing it with salted water and letting the moonlight dry it.
- In a bowl, fold sweet herbs into a spoonful of honey while murmuring both names, the old and the true.
- Write the beloved’s name upon paper, then write yours across it so the two cross like clasped hands.
- Fold the paper toward your own body and press it down into the honeyed blend, then spoon it all into the jar.
- Trace a ring of salt around the sealed jar and speak the incantation over it three times.
- Set the jar in the moonlight; on each following full moon, hold it to your heart and warm it with your want.
The Incantation
Sweet upon sweet and name upon name,
soften the heart I would call by flame.
As honey holds what the moon has blessed,
so turn your longing toward my breast.
Slow as the tide and sure as the vow,
sweeten to me, beloved, now.
Variations & Substitutions
- No honey to hand? A jar of sugar or maple syrup will sweeten just as faithfully — the magic lies in the drawing-in of sweetness, not the single ingredient.
- If jasmine is hard to find, dried rose petals alone carry this working well; add a pinch of lavender for calm and steadfast affection.
- Tuck a small rose quartz — or a chip of emerald — into the sealed jar to anchor the intention in stone, or bind the lid with pink thread for romance and green for lasting devotion.
A Word on Intent
“An it harm none, do what ye will” — the heart of the Wiccan Rede. A love jar is best cast not to bend a particular person to your will, but to open the way for willing, freely given love to find you. Rather than commanding one named heart, you may sweeten the words to invite “the love that is right for me, gladly and freely given.” Let the spell warm what is already possible between you; never compel where love is not offered, and the working returns only sweetness.
Related Love Spells
Explore more workings like this one in the Grimoire, and keep a record of your own results in your Book of Shadows.