On the night the moon shows no face at all, when the sky is a dark and open field, draw a warm bath and let the room fall quiet around you.
The dark moon is an empty vessel, and so, for one night, are you: swept clean of the old and ready to be filled. This bath makes of your body a waiting shore, that the tide of a love not yet met may rise and find its way to you.
The Working
- Draw a warm bath and cast in a good handful of salt, stirring it widdershins until it dissolves and the old attachments loosen from you.
- Into a bowl of hot water, steep jasmine flowers, a stick of cinnamon, and a curl of dried orange peel until the water runs gold and fragrant.
- Strain this infusion into the bath, and step in as the steam rises around you.
- Sink to your shoulders and picture the empty dark above the roof, then picture that emptiness beginning, slowly, to fill.
- With cupped hands, pour the water over your heart thrice, speaking the incantation into the rising steam.
- When the water has cooled, rise and let yourself drip dry rather than toweling, wearing the blessing upon your skin.
- Anoint your pulse-points with a warm, sweet oil, and pour a cup of the bathwater at your door before you sleep, an offering to the tide you have called.
The Incantation
Dark of the moon, an empty sky,
salt-swept and open, so am I.
Jasmine and cinnamon, orange and gold,
rise like a tide toward the shore I hold.
Come, love not met and love not known,
find here a coast to call your own.
Sleep with your hair still damp and your door anointed, and let the waxing days that follow carry the tide steadily in.