The Widdershins Jar is a banishing jar spell for the turning of dawn: you gather a trouble into a sealed vessel, drown its welcome in salt and water, and wind it away from you against the course of the sun. As the old working has it — at the first grey of dawn the world turns forward into light, and against that turning you set your jar spinning backward, sending a thing the way it came. What goes in must never come out the same door.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colour: black — the shade of endings, sealing, and quiet removal.
- Herbs: sage, rosemary, and garlic (or black pepper) — bitter, cleansing greens that make the jar an unwelcome place.
- Crystal: black obsidian (or black tourmaline) — a stone that absorbs and turns back.
- Day: Saturday — the day of limits, endings, and firmly shut doors.
- Planet: Saturn — ruler of boundaries and banishment.
- Element: Fire — the traditional element of banishing, here tempered by the salt and cold water that do the binding.
- Moon: the waning moon — essential, for its light decreases and carries the trouble away as it goes.
For more on how these align, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A small clean jar with a tight-fitting lid.
- A strip of paper and a pen, for the name or nature of what you banish.
- Salt, to bind and hold.
- Bitter herbs — sage, rosemary, and garlic or black pepper.
- Cold water, to drown the welcome.
- A clean cloth to work over, and — if you keep one — a chip of black obsidian for the lid.
The Best Time to Cast
Cast at dawn, in the uncertain grey before the sun clears the horizon — the hinge of the day, when the world turns from dark to light and a thing can be turned out along with it. Choose a Saturday if you can, the day of Saturn and of firm endings, and work under a waning moon so the tide of light is already ebbing. As the moon decreases, so does the trouble’s hold; the rising sun then carries it out of the door for good.
The Working
- Rise before the sun and set a clean jar on a cloth, working while the light is still uncertain.
- Write the name or nature of what you banish on a strip of paper, then turn the paper over and fold it away from you, three times.
- Lay the folded paper in the jar and cover it with salt to bind it and bitter herbs to make the place unwelcome.
- Pour in cold water until the paper is drowned, whispering that its welcome is drowned along with it.
- Seal the lid tight and turn the jar widdershins — against the sun — nine slow turns, feeling the thing wind away from you.
- As the sun breaks the horizon, carry the jar to the far edge of your ground and set it down with its mouth pointing away from the house.
- Leave it in the cold and the wet to work, and never bring it back across your threshold.
The Incantation
Against the sun the jar goes round,
what rose in me is drowned and bound.
Salt to hold and green to spurn,
water for the no-return.
Widdershins and out you wind,
the door you came by, do not find.
Turned away in the rising grey —
go the way you came, and stay.
Variations & Substitutions
- No garlic to hand? Black pepper is the classic swap — a few pinches make the jar just as unwelcoming.
- Add a splash of vinegar to the cold water to sour the vessel further, a traditional touch for turning an unwanted influence.
- No ground of your own to leave the jar on? Bury it off your property, set it at a crossroads, or — for a working you may wish to lift later — keep it sealed at the back of a freezer: cold, still, and far from the door.
A Word on Intent
Banishing is a defensive art. Keep this working to what it is for — releasing a habit, an intrusion, an atmosphere, or an influence that no longer belongs in your life — and never against the body or free will of another person. Name the trouble, not the human who carries it. In the words of the Wiccan Rede, “an it harm none, do what ye will”: you have every right to close your own door, so long as you are shutting something out rather than sending harm after it. Banish to be free, never to wound.
Related Banishing Spells
Find more workings like this one in the Grimoire, and keep your own notes and results in your Book of Shadows.