The Downward Flame is a banishing candle spell for sending a thing away by burning it small — a name, a habit, a hand that reaches where it should not. 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. As the wax falls, so falls its hold; as the wick drowns, so drowns its welcome, until the room remembers only your own quiet.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colour: black, for endings and removal (grey serves as a softer second choice)
- Herbs: sage, rosemary, and garlic (or a few grains of black pepper)
- Crystal: black obsidian, or black tourmaline
- Day: Saturday
- Planet: Saturn
- Element: Fire
- Moon: waning moon — essential here, to decrease and diminish
For a fuller table of magical associations, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A black or grey candle — the colour of endings and things put away
- A banishing oil for anointing (olive dressed with rosemary or black pepper works well)
- Dried banishing herbs: rue, nettle, or blackthorn (sage, rosemary, or garlic will also serve)
- A shallow dish of salt, to hold the candle and seal the working
- Optional: a piece of black obsidian or black tourmaline set nearby to anchor your intent
The Best Time to Cast
Work this on a waning moon, when the light is already withdrawing night by night. This is sympathetic magic: as the moon decreases, so should the thing you wish to be rid of, and the tide of the sky carries your burden out with it. Saturday, the day of Saturn, lends its weight to endings, firm boundaries, and matters put behind you for good. Cast after dusk when the house is still — you are calling nothing in, so work when the world is turning down toward dark.
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.
Variations & Substitutions
- No rue or blackthorn? Any true banishing herb carries the work — dried sage, rosemary, or a pinch of garlic or black pepper pressed into the oil will do the same.
- No black candle? Grey is the traditional second choice; a plain white candle will serve in a pinch, since white can stand in for any colour.
- Nowhere beyond your gate? If you cannot leave the remains outside your boundary, wrap the wax and salt and place them in a bin away from the house — what matters is that the thing leaves your threshold and does not return indoors.
A Word on Intent
Banishing is a spell of release, not of harm. The Wiccan Rede reminds us: an it harm none, do what ye will. Aim this flame at the hold a thing has on you — the habit, the fear, the reaching hand — and at your own right to a quiet threshold, never at injuring the person behind it. You are closing a door, not throwing a stone. Send the unwelcome pattern out of your life, and let whoever it belonged to go their own way, unharmed.
Related Banishing Spells
Find more workings like this in the Grimoire, and copy what serves you into your Book of Shadows.