There is an hour when the moon lets go its light a little more each night, and what you feed the flame in that hour, the dark keeps.
This working sends a thing away by burning it small — a name, a habit, a hand that reaches where it should not. As the wax falls, so falls its hold; as the wick drowns, so drowns its welcome, until the room remembers only your own quiet.
The Working
- Wait until the moon is waning and the house is still, then set a black or grey candle in a shallow dish of salt.
- Anoint the candle with oil from the top toward the base, drawing your fingers always downward and away, as if sweeping a thing off the doorstep.
- Press a pinch of dried rue, nettle, or blackthorn into the soft oil along the candle’s lower half.
- Speak the name of what you banish once into the flame’s first breath, low, so that only the fire hears it.
- Let the candle burn down through the herbs, watching the smoke bend toward the window and out into the night.
- When it gutters, gather the salt and the last of the wax and carry it beyond your gate, leaving it where you will not walk again.
- Return without looking back, and shut the door on the empty dark.
The Incantation
Down and away, down and out,
what fed on me now goes without.
By falling wax and drowning wick,
I loose the hold, I break the trick.
Salt to seal and smoke to see —
you are not welcome here in me.
Go to the dark that gave you breath,
and stay there, quiet, past my threshold.
By morning the dish is cold and the room is only yours. What is gone was carried out on the falling of the flame.