The Widdershins Bell is a rung banishing incantation spell that uses sound, smoke, and salt to clear a room of any lingering presence, stale mood, or unwelcome influence that has settled where it was never invited. There is a moment past midnight when a house holds its breath, and whatever has crept in without leave stands most plainly in the dark. This is the hour to take up the bell: the widdershins turn unwinds what was wound too tight, and a bell rung backward tells every unwelcome thing that its lease is spent.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colour: black, for endings and the clean removal of what clings.
- Herbs: sage and rosemary for the incense, with garlic or black pepper to sharpen the drive-out.
- Crystal: black obsidian (or black tourmaline), set by the salt line as a guard.
- Day: Saturday, the day of boundaries and banishment.
- Planet: Saturn, ruler of limits and endings.
- Element: Fire, carried in the smouldering thread of incense.
- Moon: the waning moon, essential here, its ebbing light decreasing what you send away.
For the reasoning behind each of these pairings, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A hand bell with a clear, carrying voice, kept silent until the working begins.
- A stick or cone of banishing incense, sage or rosemary by preference.
- Salt for the threshold line: sea salt, or black salt if you keep it.
- A quiet house and a room you can circle without obstruction.
The Best Time to Cast
Cast at midnight, when the house is stillest and an unwelcome presence stands most plainly against the quiet. Choose a Saturday under a waning moon: Saturn’s day rules boundaries and dismissals, and the shrinking moon lends its own decrease to everything you drive out. The dark, silent hour lets each toll of the bell fall clean.
The Working
- Wait until the house is still and the clocks have passed midnight, then light a single thread of incense in the corner farthest from the door and let its smoke seek the walls.
- Stand at the room’s center with the bell silent in your hand, and name once, low, the thing you would be rid of.
- Cast a thin line of salt across the threshold you mean to drive it toward, breaking the line only at its very middle so that a door remains.
- Begin to walk against the sun, right shoulder to the wall, turning widdershins, and ring the bell once at each corner you pass.
- With every toll feel the air grow thinner behind you, and do not look back at what loosens and follows the smoke.
- Complete three full circuits, quickening as you go, and on the last drive the sound straight at the open place in the salt.
- Close the gap with a pinch from your palm, still the bell against your chest, and let the incense burn down to nothing.
The Incantation
Round and against the turning sun,
I ring the hour your welcome’s done.
By bell, by smoke, by broken line,
this threshold’s kept, this air is mine.
Out past the salt and out past the door,
go where you came and stay no more.
The last toll falls, and the way is sealed.
Variations & Substitutions
- No bell? A singing bowl, a tuning fork, or three sharp claps at each corner will carry the same cutting sound; what matters is a clean tone made deliberately, not its source.
- Incense that troubles the lungs? Swap the smoke for a sprig of fresh rosemary drawn through the air, or a rosemary hydrosol misted into each corner.
- Guarding after? Sweep the used salt outside, then lay a fresh unbroken line across the threshold with a piece of black obsidian upon it to hold the room quiet.
A Word on Intent
This is a spell of clearing, not of striking. Keep it aimed at the air of a place and at what has gathered there uninvited: a mood, a heaviness, a presence that will not settle. Never turn the bell toward a living person as a weapon, for the Wiccan Rede holds that we act so that we harm none. Banishing at its truest simply restores a threshold, sending what does not belong quietly on its way.
Related Banishing Spells
When the smoke is spent and the salt swept past the step at first light, the room will hold that particular clean silence of a place that belongs, once more, only to those who love it. Find more workings like this one in the Grimoire, and keep your own notes in your Book of Shadows.