The kitchen goes quiet a little after dusk, when the window has turned black and the jars along the shelf are shapes rather than labels.
A correspondence is a shortcut the old craft never let go of.
Green for money. Red for desire. Thursday for the slow increase that nobody catches in the act.
Almost nothing in the table below needs to be bought. Most of it is already sitting behind glass in that kitchen, dry and grey-green and waiting with the lid screwed down.
Candle Color Meanings
Color is the correspondence you meet first, because the candle is usually on the shelf already, half spent from some winter evening you no longer remember.
- White — purity, truth and protection, and the stand-in for any color the drawer does not hold.
- Black — banishing, absorbing, and the clearing of ground before anything new is set into it.
- Red — desire, courage, vitality and the plain warm strength of the body.
- Pink — affection, friendship, gentleness and the mending of a small quarrel.
- Orange — ambition, attraction, sudden change and matters of law.
- Yellow — the mind, study, persuasion and speech that comes out clear.
- Green — money, employment, fertility and everything that grows slowly enough to be missed.
- Blue — healing, patience, sleep and the telling of truth.
- Purple — power, divination and contact with what is not seen.
- Brown — home, animals, stability and the return of lost objects.
- Silver — the Moon, intuition and all work done in dreams.
- Gold — the Sun, success, confidence and standing among other people.
Where no candle of the right color waits in the drawer, white stands in for every one of them.
That single line is the most useful in the whole table.
Size matters far less than color. A short taper burned down to a warm puddle of wax serves better than a tall candle abandoned halfway, its wick still cold.
This flame stands in for the color that is missing. Take it as the one that was named.
Two colors may burn side by side when a working has two distinct halves, and the pair of flames will lean toward one another in the draught all evening.
The flame itself, and what it does while you watch it, is kept in candle magic.
What a Correspondence Actually Is
A correspondence is a thread tied between an ordinary object and an intention.
The thread is not chemical. It is symbolic, and it pulls at the mind of the one holding the match.
Rosemary does not carry memory inside its oil.
Rosemary has carried memory in human speech for so long that the association arrives before the lid is off the jar.
Every table of this kind is inherited. None of it was invented last week.
How to Use the Table
Choose one line from each list, and not all of them.
One color, one day, one herb. That spare arrangement beats a working crowded with twelve symbols all speaking at once.
Crowding divides the attention, and attention is the engine of the whole business.
Write the choice down in ink before anything is lit, so that the aim cannot drift quietly sideways while your back is turned.
The Seven Days and Their Planets
Each day of the week is given to a planet, and through that planet it takes a class of affairs.
- Sunday, the Sun — success, health, confidence and clean beginnings.
- Monday, the Moon — dreams, intuition, family and the tides of feeling.
- Tuesday, Mars — courage, conflict, defense and hard physical energy.
- Wednesday, Mercury — messages, study, travel, trade and negotiation.
- Thursday, Jupiter — money, expansion, luck and matters of judgment.
- Friday, Venus — love, beauty, friendship and every kind of art.
- Saturday, Saturn — endings, banishing, boundaries and long patience.
Several languages still carry those planets openly in the names of the days.
The day sets the tone of a working rather than its outcome, the way weather sets the tone of a long walk.
A request for new employment may sit on Thursday for increase. Sunday answers just as well when confidence is the thing that has gone thin.
Both are defensible, so choose the one that names what is actually missing.
Planetary hours refine this further, though the day alone is enough for most work.
Where urgency is already pressing at the door, the first free evening outranks the correct planet.
This day is given to the work. Let the work take its color from the day.
The Four Elements
The elements sort a working by its nature rather than by its subject.
- Air — east, dawn, thought and speech; incense and the feather.
- Fire — south, noon, will and courage; the candle and the blade.
- Water — west, dusk, feeling and healing; the cup and the shell.
- Earth — north, midnight, body and money; salt and the standing stone.
Directions vary between traditions and between hemispheres. The arrangement above is common rather than fixed.
The fuller account is set out in the four elements.
A cup of water, a pinch of salt, a grey coil of incense smoke and one small flame. All four stand on the table at once, and the table becomes a world.
Many workings open by greeting them in turn, the way guests are greeted who have come in without knocking.
Air to think, fire to dare, water to feel, earth to hold. Be present at this work.
Spoken once at the beginning, that line folds the whole table into a single sentence.
Working With the Element That Is Missing
A plan that never becomes action is short of fire. A feeling that never takes shape is short of earth.
Study without rest is short of water. Stubbornness without thought is short of air.
Read the four as a diagnosis. Then set upon the cloth whichever of them the week has worn thin.
Herbs and What They Are Given To
Herbs are the most crowded part of any correspondence table, and the loudest to the nose when the jars come down from the shelf.
- Rosemary — memory, protection and cleansing; the substitute for most other herbs.
- Lavender — peace, sleep and the calm that settles after an argument.
- Basil — money, protection and harmony within a shared household.
- Bay — wishes, victory and clear sight; often written upon and burned.
- Chamomile — rest, gentleness and quiet luck in small matters.
- Cinnamon — speed, warmth and prosperity; useful when a matter drags.
- Rose — love, beauty and the slow opening of the heart.
- Thyme — courage, health and steadiness of nerve before a hard day.
- Mugwort — dreams, divination and the dark surface of the scrying bowl.
A longer green list is kept in the field guide to Wiccan herbs.
Kitchen jars are perfectly sufficient. Nothing here needs to be gathered at midnight in a wet field.
Never place an unfamiliar herb in food or on skin on the strength of a magical list alone.
Little leaf, you have carried this meaning far longer than I have. Carry it once more.
Substituting One Herb for Another
Rosemary substitutes for almost any herb in a protective or cleansing role.
Where the fresh plant is not to be had, the dried kitchen form is entirely acceptable.
Sage, mint and thyme are easily found, and all three cover ordinary cleansing work.
Where nothing at all can be found, write the name of the herb on paper. Burn the paper in its place and let the name leave the room as smoke.
Stones, Metals and Small Objects
A leaf gives up its meaning within a season. Stone keeps the same meaning for a lifetime, cold in the pocket and heavier than the hand expects.
- Clear quartz — the general stone, standing in as white stands in for color.
- Amethyst — calm, sobriety and the steadying of restless dreams.
- Rose quartz — affection, and kindness turned toward yourself.
- Dark stones — absorbing, guarding and holding a boundary in place.
- Copper — Venus, warmth and the drawing of things closer.
- Iron — Mars, defense and the hard edge of a boundary.
Silver belongs to the Moon, and to every kind of reflective or dreaming work.
A stone may be carried afterward, which a burned candle cannot. Clean it in salt or under running water before it is given a task.
A found object may outrank a bought one, if the finding felt like an answer.
The Moon Above the Table
Every correspondence sits beneath the moon, whether or not the window shows her, and she sets direction rather than subject.
A waxing moon draws toward. A waning moon draws away.
Green candle and Thursday together become an increase under a waxing moon.
The same pair reverses under a waning moon. It becomes the careful shrinking of a debt.
The phases are treated at length in moon phases.
Numbers in Plain Use
Number governs how often a thing is said, tied, knotted or lit.
- One — a beginning, and a single aim held without division.
- Three — the usual count for a charm spoken aloud.
- Seven — a working carried across a full week of days.
- Nine — three times three, kept for matters of real weight.
Thirteen appears often, and is usually explained by the moons counted in a year.
Keep the count small enough to hold in the head without a written tally.
Repetition is the simplest correspondence of all, and the easiest to feel taking hold.
Scent and Incense
Scent reaches memory faster than anything else on the table. It arrives before the eye has finished looking.
- Frankincense — solar, cleansing and suited to formal occasions.
- Sandalwood — stilling, and long used to steady meditation.
- Pine — clearing, health and the sharp work of winter.
- Lavender — peace, and the slow approach of sleep.
Rose belongs here as well, for love in all its gentler forms.
Choose one scent and keep it for one kind of working.
The association strengthens with each repetition. In time the smell alone begins the ritual, before a hand has moved.
Where smoke is unwelcome, a scented oil rubbed along the cold side of the candle serves as well.
Building One Combined Working
Take one evening as an example: a quiet request for steady employment.
Green candle for the work, Thursday for increase. Earth for the material world, basil for money.
The charm is spoken three times, and nothing further is added to it.
Green for the work, Thursday for the growing, earth for the ground beneath it. Let it stand.
The pattern holds for any subject. Name it, color it, time it, and speak.
Speaking the Table Aloud
A correspondence becomes real at the moment it is named. Say what each object is for as it is set down on the cloth.
This candle is the color of what is wanted. This herb is the memory of it. This day is the season of its growing.
The naming is the work. The objects are only the reminder.
Holding the Attention
The table cannot supply the one thing that must come from you.
Correspondences narrow the mind onto a single subject and hold it there while the candle burns down through the long quiet of the evening.
That narrowing is trained rather than inherited, and it is described in concentration.
When Two Tables Disagree
Two books will assign blue to healing and to sorrow on the same grey afternoon.
Neither is wrong, because correspondence is a language, and languages differ by region.
Choose one arrangement and keep it for a year. Changing with every new book weakens all of them.
Consistency is what gives a symbol its weight over time.
Keeping Your Own Table
The table that works best is the one written in your own hand.
Record what was used, and on what day. Record what followed in the weeks afterward.
Over time, private associations appear that no printed list contains: a certain hour, a certain smell, a stone the sea gave back.
Those belong in your book of shadows, beside the borrowed ones.
What the Table Does Not Do
A correspondence does not compel an outcome.
It arranges attention and gives the hands honest work. It marks an intention as deliberate rather than idle.
This practice is used when you wish to give a private intention a visible shape.
Nothing here is aimed at another person, and nothing here bends another will.
The rest belongs to time, and to whatever else moves beneath it.
By color, by day, by leaf and by flame, the wish is set in order.