At the deep midnight, when the day’s noise has drained away and only the true things remain, a matter can be met at last without its mask.
This glass reaches toward honest discernment — the seeing of a choice, or a person, exactly as it stands, stripped of both the hope and the dread we drape upon it. It shows nothing of the future; it shows only the present, and shows it plain.
The Working
- At midnight set a mirror upright, and before it a shallow bowl of clean water, and between them one lit candle.
- Sit so the flame lies between your face and the glass, and breathe until the water goes still and the room goes quiet.
- Name aloud the matter you would see plainly — the choice, the person, the tangled thing.
- Look once, steady and unhurried, into the meeting of flame and water and glass, and do not look away, and do not look twice.
- Let what rises rise: not what you wish, not what you fear, but only what is.
- Speak the incantation, then cover the mirror and pour the water out at the threshold.
The Incantation
Not the hoped-for, not the feared,
show me the matter as it stands.
Strip the mask and still the wish,
let the true shape rise and hold.
One clean look by one clean flame —
plain, and plainer, and plain.
Keep the mirror covered until morning; what you saw by the honest light will hold its shape by day, and upon it you may act.