The waning moon is the season of letting go, of tides drawing back and taking the loose sand with them. What clings to you loosely can be washed away in such water.
Fear is not only a thing of the mind; it settles into the body as a flinch, a held breath, a shoulder braced against a blow that never comes. This bath dissolves those small cowardices in salt and steam. You do not scrub courage in, you rinse the flinching out, and what remains beneath is already brave.
The Working
- As the moon thins each night, gather coarse salt and a handful of bitter greenery: mugwort, wormwood, or rue if it grows near you.
- Steep the herbs in a bowl of hot water until the steam smells sharp and green, then strain the dark liquor free of leaf.
- Draw a bath as warm as you can bear and pour in the herb-water and three fistfuls of salt, stirring it against the sun to draw things out.
- Step in slowly and sink until the water closes over your shoulders, then feel for every place your body is clenched and braced.
- One by one, unclench them: jaw, fists, belly, throat, and let the salt water carry the tension off your skin.
- When the water begins to cool, pull the plug and stay seated as it drains, feeling the fear leave with the falling tide.
- Rise only when the last of the water has gone, and dry yourself roughly, as one who has nothing left to guard against.
The Incantation
Salt of the sea and the waning tide,
draw out the flinch I have kept inside.
Down through the water and down the drain,
go all my braced-for, unfallen pain.
The moon grows thin and so does my dread;
I rise up washed, and I rise unafraid.
Cast the last of the salt across your threshold as you leave the room. What the tide has taken, the tide does not return.