At the grey hour when day gives itself over to dark, carry a mirror into a quiet room and set it upright. Light one candle at its foot, so that your face rises out of the shadow in its glass.
Of all the workings for love, this is the steepest, for it summons no lover, only yourself. The walls that have long kept love from entering were raised by your own hand in seasons of hurt; only your own gaze, held steady and unflinching, holds the power to speak them down again.
The Working
- With a little oil upon your fingertip, trace a slow circle at each of the mirror’s four corners, sealing it as a threshold rather than a mere glass.
- Crush a few leaves of lemon balm and yarrow between your palms, breathe their scent, then scatter a pinch along the mirror’s foot.
- Meet your own eyes in the glass and hold them, until the small urge to look away has passed.
- Name aloud, one by one, the walls you have built: each fear, each old wound, each vow once made against loving again.
- As you speak each one, breathe a fog upon the glass and wipe a clear circle through it with your thumb, opening a window where a wall once stood.
- Anoint your own brow with the oil and speak the incantation, watching your face soften in the wavering light.
- Pinch the candle out between wetted fingers and cover the mirror with a cloth until morning, letting the work set in the dark.
The Incantation
I know the hands that built these walls;
they were my own, in years of frost.
Eye to eye I speak them down,
and count no stone of them a loss.
Open the heart that slept so long,
unbarred, unguarded, and unafraid.
When you lift the cloth at dawn, meet your reflection once more, and let it find you gentler than the night before.