Nine Waters, Nine Names is a cleansing incantation spell that gathers water from nine separate sources, names a burden over each, and pours them together into a single tide so the whole year’s accumulated weight leaves by one road. It is an advanced Water working, spoken aloud over a bowl beneath the full moon and released into the earth beyond the threshold. As the old lore holds, no single spring can carry every burden, and so the wise gathered water from nine places and made of them one tide.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colours: white with light blue
- Herbs: sage, rosemary, hyssop
- Crystals: selenite, clear quartz, black tourmaline
- Day: Monday
- Planet: Moon
- Element: Water
- Moon: waning moon (to clear away)
For the reasoning behind each of these pairings, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- Nine small vessels — jars, cups, or bottles — one for each water you gather
- Water from nine different sources: rain, river, well, tap, dew, spring, and whatever else offers itself
- A single wide bowl to receive the mingled waters
- A bell to open and close the working
- Optional: a sprig of sage, rosemary, or hyssop to smoke or wipe the empty bowl clean beforehand
- Optional: a piece of selenite or black tourmaline set beside the bowl to steady the cleared weight
The Best Time to Cast
Cast on the night of the Full Moon, and if you can choose the weekday, keep it to a Monday — the Moon’s own day, ruling water, tides, and the quiet business of emotion. Cleansing work often favours the waning moon, whose diminishing light draws things away; this working reaches instead for the full moon on purpose, because it is the full moon’s light that makes the mingled waters “remember every name spoken over them.” You gather at the tide’s height so that what you release is complete before the moon begins to wane and carry it off.
The Working
- Across the days before the full moon, gather water from nine sources — rain, river, well, tap, dew, and whatever else offers itself.
- On the night of the full moon, set the nine vessels in a row before an empty bowl.
- Ring the bell once to open the working.
- Lift each water in turn, speak a name over it — a burden, a grief, a thing you would be rid of — and pour it into the waiting bowl.
- When all nine are mingled, hold the bowl up to the moonlight and speak the incantation over the whole.
- Carry the bowl to the threshold and pour the mingled tide out upon the ground, away from the door.
- Ring the bell once more to close the working, then rinse the bowl clean.
The Incantation
Nine waters gathered, nine names told,
rain and river, well and cold.
Each a burden, each a weight,
poured together, given fate.
Moon above and earth below,
take the nine and let them go.
Mingled tide, run swift and far,
leave me lighter than you are.
Variations & Substitutions
- When nine sources are hard to reach: a smaller working of three waters — rain, tap, and a pinch of sea salt dissolved to make brine — still holds the shape of the rite; name one burden over each and mingle them the same way.
- No bell: a struck singing bowl, a tuning fork, or three clear claps of the hands will open and close the working just as cleanly.
- No threshold to pour upon: tip the mingled tide onto bare garden earth, into a flowing gutter, or at the foot of a tree away from your door; the point is moving water leaving your space, not the doorstep itself.
A Word on Intent
This is a rite of release, and the Wiccan Rede holds the line: an it harm none, do what ye will. Name only your own burdens over the waters — your own grief, your own accumulated silt — never another person, and never a name spoken to bind or to harm. Cleansing is consensual by nature; you clear what is yours to set down. Pour the tide away from your door, not toward anyone else’s.
Related Cleansing Spells
Find more workings like this one in the Grimoire, and keep your own record of what you cast in your Book of Shadows.