The Quickening Jar is a luck jar spell — a sealed vessel of water, silver, grain, and stone that you plant on the new moon and let mature across the waxing nights, so your fortune breaks ground as the moon returns to fullness. As the old charm holds, the new moon shows no face at all — a coin turned to its blank side, a field before the sowing. This is the hour to plant what you wish to grow.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colours: green and gold, for abundance and the glow of good fortune
- Herbs: basil, clover, and nutmeg — luck-drawing botanicals to tuck beside the jar
- Crystal: green aventurine, citrine, or jade — stones of prosperity and lucky chance
- Day: Thursday, Jupiter’s day of increase
- Planet: Jupiter, the great benefic and ruler of luck and growth
- Element: Air, for opportunity that travels and ideas that take flight
- Moon: the waxing moon, to increase fortune as it grows toward full
For the wider table of colours, herbs, and hours, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A clean glass jar with a tight-fitting lid
- A bowl of fresh water — spring or rain water if you can get it
- A small crystal: green aventurine, citrine, or jade for luck, or a clear quartz to keep as your token
- A slip of paper and a pen
- A pinch of salt to ward the working
- A coin of silver and a few grains of wheat or barley
- Cord or ribbon in green or gold to bind the lid
The Best Time to Cast
Sow this jar on the new moon, when the sky is dark and the field is blank — the traditional hour for planting intentions that need to grow unseen. Begin on a Thursday if you can, the day of Jupiter, whose expansive luck favours increase. From that dark seed the working rides the waxing moon, drawing fortune upward until you open the jar at the full. Casting as the moon swells, rather than wanes, is what lets the luck build instead of ebb.
The Working
- On the night the moon is dark, fill a bowl with clean water and set your empty jar beside it, along with a small clear crystal, a coin of silver, and a few grains of wheat or barley.
- On a slip of paper write the fortune you would grow, in the present tense, as though it already stands.
- Fold the paper toward yourself three times and lay it at the bottom of the jar.
- Add the silver, then the grain, then the crystal, naming each as seed, soil, and sun.
- Pour in the bowl of water until all is covered, and cast a pinch of salt across the surface to ward the working from souring.
- Cap the jar, bind the lid, and set it in a dark cupboard where it will not be moved.
- Leave it sealed until the moon comes full, then open it at midnight, pour the water at your threshold, and keep the crystal as a token of the fortune now quickened.
The Incantation
Dark moon, blind moon, keeper of the seed,
take what I bury against the day of need.
Silver for soil and grain for the green,
water to wake what no eye has seen.
Sleep in the shadow and swell with the light,
grow while I wait through the lengthening night.
When you come round full and silver and whole,
give back my fortune made ripe and made whole.
Variations & Substitutions
- No silver coin? Any coin will serve, or a small piece of pyrite — the point is a bright metal token of value.
- Swap the wheat or barley for oats, rice, or a few sunflower seeds; any viable grain carries the same “seed and soil” symbolism.
- If you cannot leave the jar undisturbed for a full lunar cycle, use a smaller sealed vial kept at the back of a drawer, or bury it in a pot of soil until the full moon.
A Word on Intent
Luck magic works best when it opens doors rather than forces them. “An it harm none, do what ye will” — the heart of the Wiccan Rede — asks that you draw fortune toward yourself without turning it away from anyone else. Wish for opportunity, good timing, and open paths; do not name another person’s loss as the price of your gain. Luck asked for cleanly, and met halfway with your own effort, is luck that lasts.
Related Luck Spells
Open nothing early, for a seed uncovered dies. When the jar has done its slow, sure work, record the fortune you planted in your Book of Shadows, and explore more seasonal workings in the Grimoire.