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Dark Arts
The Name Writ in Lead
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The oldest surviving written curse form in Europe, set down as the archaeology found it: a name and a grievance scratched into soft metal, folded shut, pierced, and put into water or earth where nobody will read it. Written here as a binding of what somebody is doing rather than a harm to who they are - and with the lead left out, because lead is poison.
What You Will Need
A strip of soft metal, about the size of a playing card
Aluminium flashing from a hardware shop, a pewter sheet from a craft supplier, or the aluminium tray from a takeaway, cut flat and washed. The Greeks and Romans used lead sheet and that is where the name comes from, but lead is genuinely poisonous to handle and there is no reason at all to use it. Wear gloves if the cut edges are sharp, and file them if they are.
A nail, awl or compass point
For scratching. The letters are cut into the metal, not written on it. A strong nail and a steady hand is the whole technique.
The name, and what is being done
Not a feeling - a specific act, in as few words as will carry it. “Stops telling my employer what I earn.” “Stops coming to my mother's house.” The precision is the ethics: an act can stop, where a person cannot be undone.
A long nail or pin to pierce it
Iron if you have it. It goes through the folded tablet and stays in it. In the originals the nail is the commonest find of all.
A black candle
For the writing, and for nothing else. Snuffed rather than blown out at the end.
Somewhere to put it
Running water you can reach - a river, a stream, the sea - or ground that is not yours and that you will not come back to. The originals went into wells, springs, graves and the foundations of buildings. A drain is not water and a flowerpot is not ground.
Moon Phase & Timing
This is a working of stopping, and it is made while the light is leaving. Nothing about it belongs to the waxing moon.
Waning Moon: The time for it. Something is being taken out of the world rather than brought into it.
Dark of the Moon: The strongest and the most serious. Choose this only if you have already tried the ordinary remedies and they have failed.
Saturday: Saturn's day: limits, bindings, endings, and the kind of justice that is simply a boundary being enforced. The traditional day for any working that stops something.
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The Ritual
5 steps, with the words to speak at each one.
You have the materials and the timing. The ritual itself — every step, every incantation, and how to shape the spell to your own intention — lives inside the Grimoire, alongside over 200 spells.
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This spell is provided for spiritual and entertainment purposes. Midnight Spellcraft makes no guarantees of specific results. Trust your intuition and practice responsibly.