The full moon draws water the way it draws the tide, and any bowl left in its light comes back changed. This is the night to shed the year’s clinging misfortune.
To bathe is not merely to wash but to choose which luck you rise wearing. Rue for the bitterness that clears the way, moss for the green patience that holds fast, and moonwater to carry both into the skin. What you pour away, you do not call back.
The Working
- At moonrise, set a bowl of clean water where the full moon can look into it, and let it stand an hour.
- Bruise rue and a handful of river moss between your fingers and let them fall into the water.
- Add three pinches of salt, stirring each in with a word for what you wish gone.
- Ring the bell above the bowl until its sound fades to nothing, sealing the herbs’ intent.
- Standing where the water can run free, pour the bath slowly down shoulder and spine, from crown toward heel.
- Speak the incantation as the last of it falls, and do not towel dry; let the moonwater set upon you.
- Cast the spent herbs out beneath the open sky before you sleep.
The Incantation
Bitter rue and holding green,
wash me of the year unclean.
What I shed, let moonlight take,
what I keep, let fortune make.
Down my shoulders, down my spine,
luck run bright and call me thine.
By morning the water has dried to nothing and the ill it carried is gone with it. You wake lighter, and the fortune that clung stays clinging.