The moon comes up over the roof-line after dusk, white and whole, and lays a cold silver road across the floorboards.
Drawing Down the Moon is the central Wiccan full moon rite.
In it the Goddess is invited to descend into a living body. From that body she then speaks.
A priestess stands inside the cast circle, her shadow thrown long behind her by two small flames. A priest kneels before her and calls the Goddess down into her.
For as long as the rite lasts, she is greeted and answered as the Goddess herself.
The rite asks three things only: a circle, a full moon, and a body willing to be filled.
What Drawing Down the Moon Is
Drawing Down the Moon is an act of invocation rather than an act of spellcraft.
Nothing is petitioned. Nothing is tied into a knot of will and sent out across the dark toward a result.
The purpose is presence. The Goddess is asked here, into this room, into this ring of candlelight, to be met face to face.
The moon in the sky is not moved by the rite. She keeps her place above the chimneys and the wet slate, wholly indifferent to the small flames burning beneath her.
What descends is the power the moon has always carried.
Older writers told of witches who pulled the moon bodily out of the sky, hauling her down like a lamp on a chain until the fields below went black.
Wicca keeps that old name and quietly alters what it is taken to mean.
Why the Rite Belongs to the Full Moon
The full moon is the night on which the Goddess is most plainly visible.
Her light is complete and unhidden, standing at the very top of the cycle with nothing shaved away from either edge.
Wiccan practice treats the full moons of the year as esbats, the working nights of a coven.
Drawing Down the Moon belongs to those nights above all the others.
The rite may also be worked on the night before or the night after.
The tide still stands high then, and the light still looks whole to the eye.
If the cycle is unfamiliar, read the moon phases before a date is fixed.
Who Stands in the Rite
In coven practice the rite is shared between two people who know each other well enough to stand together in silence and not rush to fill it.
The priestess receives the Goddess. The priest speaks the words that call her down.
He kneels on the cold floor, touches the priestess with the wand, and addresses the Goddess directly.
The rest of the coven stands at the edge of the circle, faces half gold and half shadow, and witnesses.
Witnessing is not the lesser task.
The presence is recognized by those who see it, and recognition completes the rite.
A solitary witch carries both roles at once, invoking and receiving inside the same breath.
What the Altar Will Hold
The rite asks for very little, and what it asks for is plain.
- a place where the moon can be seen, or a window facing her light
- an altar with a candle standing at either side
- a chalice of water or of wine
- a wand or an athame for the invocation
- a robe or a cord kept only for ritual use
- an hour that nobody else will interrupt
Silver candles suit the moon particularly well. Plain white will serve just as easily.
Nothing here needs to be new, and nothing here needs to be costly.
The instrument matters far less than the steadiness of the hand that holds it.
The wand is a focus and never an engine of its own.
Set everything out while the sky at the window is still blue, so that no searching in the dark interrupts the working.
The Hours Before the Candles
Preparation begins long before the first wick catches.
Eat lightly through the day. A heavy body invites sleep rather than vision.
Bathe in warm water and leave the whole of the day behind in it, the noise and the errands and the small dry angers.
Some add salt to the bath. Some add rosemary, and some add nothing at all.
Dress in the robe kept for ritual, or stand skyclad if that is the custom followed.
Then sit still until the breath slows and the room begins to listen. The four breaths technique brings the body to that edge quickly.
Casting the Circle
This rite is never worked on open and unguarded ground.
A circle is cast first. The four quarters are then called into their places.
The circle holds the power that gathers, and keeps out whatever was not invited.
Walk the boundary deosil with the blade or the wand held out before you, and let the point draw its bright line through the dark air.
By earth, by air, by fire and by water, this circle is sealed, and nothing ill may cross it.
The whole method is set out in the magic circle, and it repays slow study.
Only when that boundary has closed does the invocation begin. Nothing is hurried up to that point.
The Goddess Position
The priestess takes her place before the altar, between the two flames, and faces whatever window or open sky holds the moon.
Her feet stand apart. Her arms rise and open outward, palms turned upward and empty.
This is the Goddess position, and the body held in it becomes a shallow crescent.
The stance is held without strain. The shoulders drop. The jaw is allowed to loosen.
Nothing at all is gripped, because a closed hand cannot receive.
The Invocation
The priest kneels and rests the cool tip of the wand against her.
He speaks slowly. The words are addressed to the Goddess and not to the woman standing in front of him.
Words of this kind are used:
Lady of the silver light, mother of the tides and of the quiet hours, come down into this body which has been prepared for you.
The invocation is repeated until the air inside the circle changes character, until it thickens and cools and seems to hold itself still between the candles.
It is never read from the page in a hurry.
Each line is allowed to finish, and to fall, before the next one begins.
Descend upon the body of your priestess. Be present here, be seen, and be known.
Repetition is the entire technique, and there is no shorter road than that one.
The Moment of Arrival
Something changes, and the change is almost always a quiet one, no louder than a flame leaning toward a draught.
The breath of the priestess deepens. Her weight settles, and the set of her face alters.
Sometimes there is trembling. Sometimes there is nothing except an enormous stillness that fills the room out to its corners.
Nobody speaks across that moment. The priest waits with the coven, and the two candles go on burning, until she is ready.
Arrival is not measured by spectacle at all.
A rite that felt like very little may still have been true.
The Charge of the Goddess
When the Goddess has come, she is greeted before anything else takes place.
The coven bows or kneels, according to the custom of the tradition being followed.
Then the priestess speaks. What is spoken at this point is called the Charge of the Goddess.
The Charge is given in the first person, as a speech from the Goddess to those who seek her.
I am the moon upon the water and the silence beneath the tide. Seek me within, for whatever is not found there will not be found outside.
Some priestesses keep to the traditional wording, worn smooth as a stone by long use. Others let whatever arrives be spoken instead.
What May Be Asked
Once the Goddess is present, those standing at the edge of the circle may speak with her.
Questions are put one at a time, plainly, and without any decoration.
Lady, what should be known in this circle tonight?
The answers arrive through the mouth of the priestess, and are often shorter than expected.
Some of them make no sense at all until several days have passed and the words come back unbidden across a kitchen table.
Nothing is demanded. The Goddess is not a mechanism, and the rite is not an interrogation.
Blessing may be asked for the sick, for the coven, and for work that lies ahead.
Ask nothing that would bend another living person away from their own will.
Drawing Down the Moon Alone
Most witches who work this rite work it entirely alone, in one small room, with a single window and a single moon standing in it.
The structure does not change. The two roles are simply carried by one person.
Cast the circle, then stand before the altar with the moon somewhere in sight.
Raise the arms into the Goddess position and speak the invocation aloud, in the first person.
Come into me, Lady of the silver light. Let this body be your body and this voice be your voice.
Then stop speaking and wait. Nothing is decided in advance about what ought to happen.
The solitary rite runs slower and quieter, and it often takes months of patient attempts before the dark gives anything back.
The Bowl of Water and the Dark Mirror
A bowl of water set where the moonlight strikes it is an old aid to solitary work.
The moon then appears twice. One moon hangs above the roofs, and one lies below, trembling in the water.
Look into the reflection rather than at the sky itself.
Some prefer a dark mirror, laid on the altar between the two candles, black and patient as a well.
Resting the eye on one point in this way is a form of concentration. It steadies the rite considerably.
Releasing the Goddess
Whatever has been invited must afterward be thanked and released.
The priestess lowers her arms and crosses them over her breast.
A farewell is then spoken clearly, out into the room. It is not muttered, and it is not merely thought.
Lady, go if you must and stay if you will, with thanks for the blessing given here.
This release is never skipped. Forgetting it is the commonest error of the whole rite.
An unclosed working shows itself later as sleeplessness, rawness and a strange floating mood, like a door left standing open onto a cold hallway.
Grounding Afterward
After the release, sit down on the floor with both palms pressed flat against the boards.
Let whatever remains drain out of the body and down into the ground beneath it.
Eat something. Bread, salt and water do this work better than anything elaborate.
Drink from the chalice, and pass it around hand to hand if other people are present.
The whole method is described in the grounding meditation technique.
Only when the body has returned is the circle opened. The quarters are dismissed last of all.
Drawing Down the Sun
The rite has a counterpart, and that counterpart is worked far less often.
Drawing Down the Sun invokes the God into the body of the priest. The priestess speaks the invocation over him.
It belongs to the sabbats rather than the esbats, and is often worked in broad daylight with the heat lying heavy on the back of the neck.
The shape is the same. The stance differs, the arms crossed rather than opened.
Covens keeping both rites hold them as a pair rather than as rivals, one lit by the night and one by the day.
Mistakes That Spoil the Rite
A small number of errors account for most of the disappointments, and nearly all of them are errors of hurry.
- hurrying the invocation instead of repeating it until the air changes
- waiting for a spectacle, then dismissing the quiet arrival as nothing
- working outside a properly cast circle
- forgetting the release, the grounding, or both of them
- attempting the rite while exhausted, unwell or angry
None of these are fatal. Every one of them is easily corrected.
This rite rewards patience a great deal more than it rewards technique.
Keeping the Record
Write the rite down the same night, while the wax is still soft and before sleep takes the detail away.
Record the date, the weather, the words used, and anything spoken through the priestess.
Record also whatever was felt in the body. Slight sensations matter as much as large ones.
Patterns appear across a year of full moons that no single night can show.
Those pages belong in the book of shadows, written by hand rather than typed.
What the Rite Leaves Behind
The moon sets. The candles burn down to a last blue flicker, and ordinary life resumes somewhere around morning.
What tends to remain is an altered relationship with the full moon itself.
The light stops being only light.
Something was invited and something answered. The invitation may be offered again when the moon comes round full once more.