Yarrow Under Seal is a homecoming jar spell — a quiet piece of jar-craft that names the one who has wandered and gently winds them back toward your threshold. In the dark of the moon, when the sky keeps no lamp of its own, a sealed jar can hold a small tide and turn it however you please. Give it a name, and it will pull. Working with yarrow, salt, and clean water, you anchor a person’s name in a corked vessel and turn it homeward night after night until the road remembers the way.
Correspondences for This Spell
- Colours: blue and warm brown, for the hearth and a safe return
- Herbs: yarrow at the heart of the jar, with rosemary (remembrance), comfrey (safe travel), and sage to clear the way
- Crystal: amber or hematite, for a grounded, steady return
- Day: Monday, the day of the Moon
- Planet: the Moon
- Element: Earth
- Moon phase: the waxing moon, to draw the far one home
For more on how these pairings work together, see the correspondences guide.
What You Will Need
- A bowl in which to steep your herbs
- Dried yarrow, and if you wish a pinch of rosemary or comfrey
- A slip of paper and a pen
- Salt — three pinches, for the three roads
- Clean well-water or spring water
- A clear glass jar with a tight-fitting lid
The Best Time to Cast
Seal this jar on the New Moon, the dark and lampless night when the tide turns inward and intentions are set. Work it on a Monday if you can, the Moon’s own day, when spells of return and homecoming run with the current rather than against it. As the moon then swells from dark toward full, its waxing light lends the working its pull, drawing the wanderer along the long arc back to your door.
The Working
- On the new moon, write the wanderer’s full name on a slip of paper, and beneath it write your own doorway, so the paper knows where to lead.
- In a bowl, steep yarrow in clean well-water until the water goes faintly bitter and green.
- Fold the named paper small and settle it at the bottom of a clean glass jar.
- Pour in the yarrow water, add three pinches of salt for the roads of earth, sky, and heart, and cap the jar tight.
- Speak the verse over the sealed glass, then set it on a sill where it can see the way home.
- Each night, turn the jar a hand’s width toward your own door, so the name winds slowly inward.
- When they return, pour the water out at the threshold and dry the paper by your hearth-flame.
The Incantation
Name in water, name in brine,
turn now toward this door of mine.
Yarrow, hold what salt has caught,
draw the wanderer home in thought.
By the dark and moonless night,
wind the far one into sight.
Slow as tides and sure as stone,
come, and be no more alone.
Variations & Substitutions
- No yarrow to hand? Rosemary steeped the same way carries remembrance, while comfrey lends safe travel to one who is far from home.
- Swap well-water for rainwater caught at your own doorstep, or for water you have carried home from a place you once shared — it deepens the tie of belonging.
- Drop a small piece of amber or hematite into the sealed jar to ground the return, or tie a length of warm-brown thread around the glass to mark the road home.
A Word on Intent
The Wiccan Rede counsels, “an it harm none, do what ye will,” and a homecoming spell must honour that. Cast it to open a door and light a window, not to bind or compel. The aim is to make return easy for one who already longs for it, never to override another’s free will. Work it for the loved one who has simply lost the way back, and leave them free to answer or not — what is drawn by consent stays, while what is forced only strains.
Related Homecoming Spells
Find more seasonal workings and hearth-craft in the Grimoire, and keep a record of your own results in your Book of Shadows.