How to make a Wishing Box

Boxing Day refers to the custom of giving Christmas boxes - presents to the people who have helped us through the old year. Sometimes it falls on a full moon. What better opportunity do you need to make a ‘wishing box’ - a charmed box to make your wishes come true? Here is a present for yourself or a loved one that they will always treasure.

Firstly, find, buy or preferably make a box from wood, especially scented wood if you can find it. Polish the box and treat it to show the wood to best effect. Wax polish gives wood a good finish. Line the inside of the box with silk or velvet in which you conceal the dried leaves of lavender and thyme and freshly plucked Rosemary leaves. New white handkerchiefs will do at a pinch.

Find 3 Rose petals, or if you cannot find any, 3 Bay leaves. Go out into the first full moon of the New Year, when it is well risen. Hold the open box up to the moon and say:

Oh Gracious Queen, Lady Fair
May Moon and Stars Hear my Prayer;
Upon this box let blessings fall
For my true love * its gifts enthrall.

(*insert name if you are making this box for someone else)

Work this magic for three consecutive nights, before midnight, to charm the box. Now whoever ‘owns’ the box needs to write a spell for it, on virgin paper.

Take three tiny slips of paper, smaller than an elf blot, and write on them in the smallest handwriting you can do, as it it were writ by fairies, the three wishes of your heart’s desire (one on each piece of paper). Seal the wishes with wax from a thrice burnt candle. When the wax is set, wrap each of the wishes in the Rose Petals or Bay leaves and place gently inside the box.

(NB. 'Third light' became unlucky in the trenches of World War 1, when it would give time for the enemy to focus their gun sites on the light. In ritual '3' is a blessed number, incorporating God, Jesus and the Holy ghost - a trinity. There are older sources to this also. This is why it is unlucky to walk under a ladder because it is in defiance of Holy Trinity because it is a triangle - of whichever denomination).

Then shut the lid and leave the box alone until your wishes are granted. Later you can write three new ones.

With thanks to Claire Nahmad’s ‘Earth Magic’ and Joanna Bogle’s ‘Feasts and Seasons’.