There is an older creature in you than the one that frets and flinches, a thing that walked into the dark long before you learned to fear it. It only sleeps. It can be woken.
Dusk is the hour the wolves rise and the tame things go to ground. This incantation reaches past the anxious, reasoning mind to the animal beneath it, the one that meets the night on level footing. You do not need to become brave; you need only remember that some part of you already is.
The Working
- At the greying of the day, light a single candle and set a bell within reach, then stand rather than sit.
- Ring the bell once and let it ring itself out fully, calling the scattered parts of you back into the room.
- Breathe until your breath drops low into your belly and comes slow, the way a resting animal breathes.
- Speak the incantation aloud, low in the chest, feeling for the moment the words stop being said and start being meant.
- As you speak the last line, ring the bell a second time to mark the waking, and hold still as though listening for an answer.
- Snuff the candle with your fingers, not your breath, and step out into the dusk as the woken thing, not the sleeping one.
The Incantation
Old grey walker in my blood,
rise from your sleep in the dark and the mud.
You who met the night unafraid,
lend me the teeth that the years mislaid.
I am no rabbit to freeze and quail,
wake in me now, from nose to tail.
The bell has rung and the dusk has come;
walk out with me, and we walk as one.
Carry the low breath and the level gaze into whatever waits for you. The wolf does not hurry, and the wolf is not afraid.