The new moon shows no face at all, the sky’s own courage, to go on turning through a darkness so complete. In that black you build a heart that needs no light to know its own strength.
Flint gives nothing until it is struck, and then it gives fire. This jar gathers the hard, unyielding things of the world into one sealed vessel and asks them to lend you their nature. Buried or kept close, it becomes a second heart of stone and iron, one that answers a blow with a spark.
The Working
- On the night of no moon, set out a bowl and into it lay a piece of flint or dark stone, a nail or shard of iron, and a black crystal if you keep one.
- Add a pinch of blackthorn, a few thorns of hawthorn, and coarse salt to bind and guard the whole.
- Speak into the bowl the name of the fear you mean to master, low, as though telling a secret to the dark.
- Transfer everything into a small jar, layering salt between each hard thing so that nothing rattles loose.
- Bind the lid shut with red thread, winding it nine times and knotting it on the ninth, sealing the working in the dark.
- Strike the flint against the iron once through the glass, or knock the jar sharply, and feel the spark you have sealed within.
- Bury the jar at your threshold or keep it in the deepest, darkest corner of your home, where no light finds it.
The Incantation
Flint and iron and blackthorn bound,
sealed in the dark where no moon’s found.
Strike me and see what the striking earns,
a spark held close where the flint-heart burns.
Nine times wound and nine times sworn,
from the blackest night a hard heart born.
Come what may to test my mettle,
I am stone and thorn and I will not settle.
Leave it where you set it and do not open it. The heart you have forged in the dark keeps striking sparks whether or not you can see them.