At midnight the mirror is not a window but a door standing ajar. The Face I No Longer Keep is a release mirror spell for setting down an old self, an outworn role, or a shape of sorrow you have mistaken for your name. Working before a candlelit glass, you speak what you carry into the silver, veil it, and seal the parting with a single clear bell, so that what you leave at midnight does not follow you back into the morning.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colours: black and white, the twin tones of letting go
- Herbs: lavender, sage, and cypress
- Crystal: smoky quartz and black tourmaline
- Day: Saturday
- Planet: Saturn
- Element: Water
- Moon: the waning moon, to release and diminish
For the reasoning behind each of these pairings, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A mirror large enough to hold your whole face, with a dark cloth to veil it
- A single candle, black or white, set between you and the glass
- A small bell with a clean, carrying tone
- A dish of salt to lay along the mirror’s lower edge
- Optional: a little lavender, sage, or cypress to burn or scatter for release
The Best Time to Cast
Cast at midnight, the hinge of the day when one date has ended and the next has not yet begun — the truest threshold for leaving something behind. Choose a Saturday if you can, the day of Saturn, planet of endings, boundaries, and the quiet discipline of release. A waning moon lends its own current, its light diminishing night by night as the thing you set down grows smaller behind the glass. Midnight on a waning Saturday is the strongest window this working offers.
The Working
- At the stroke of midnight, sit before a mirror with a single candle lit between you and the glass.
- Lay a line of salt along the mirror’s lower edge, the threshold you will not let it cross.
- Look into your own eyes until the face begins to loosen from the name you call it by.
- Speak aloud what you leave behind, the grief, the guilt, the self you have outgrown, as though speaking to the one in the glass.
- Recite the incantation, and on the final line, cover the mirror with a dark cloth.
- Ring the bell once, clear and final, into the covered dark.
- Snuff the candle and leave the mirror veiled until first light.
The Incantation
Face in the silver, face I wore,
stay behind the midnight door.
Salt to hold you, cloth to keep,
go you now to the glass’s deep.
What I was, I leave with you;
what I am walks on anew.
Bell, be rung and part us clean,
I am not the thing I’ve seen.
Variations & Substitutions
- No bell? A single struck note from a wine glass or a small chime will seal the parting just as cleanly; what matters is one clear, final sound into the veiled dark.
- The veil: any opaque fabric works — black is traditional, but a folded scarf or a pillowcase turned inside out will keep the mirror closed until first light.
- The herbs: if cypress is hard to find, a piece of smoky quartz held in the hand carries the same grounding, releasing weight; cooled lavender tea can be dabbed on the mirror’s frame in its place.
A Word on Intent
This is a spell of release, and release turns inward, not outward. An it harm none, do what ye will — the heart of the Wiccan Rede — asks that you set down a self, a grief, or a role without wishing harm on any person, including the one you used to be. You are not banishing another; you are unburdening yourself. Speak to the face in the glass with the same mercy you would offer a friend at a parting, and let it go in peace.
Related Release Spells
Return this veil to your wider practice by way of the Grimoire, and record the face you left behind in your own Book of Shadows, so the parting is remembered even when the mirror is clear again.