The Closing Spell
To stop living with a door that already closed, but that you're still holding open
By Valeria
Sixteen chapters. The fourth in the collection, and in a way the hardest to write of all of them, because letting go is the one thing on this list of rituals that can't be faked. Either it truly happens, or it doesn't.
PART ONE
WHY YOU'RE STILL HOLDING THE DOOR Understanding the attachment before touching it.
- Before we begin, a letter
- I. What letting go is (and what it isn't)
- II. Why letting go is hard without you knowing it
- III. The mistake that confuses letting go with forgetting
PART TWO
THE WHY The mechanism, explained for real.
- IV. The mechanism: Saturn and your Moon
- V. When to do it
PART THREE
THE WORK Everything you need, step by step.
- VI. What you need
- VII. Preparing the space
- VIII. The ritual, step by step
- IX. The exact words
- X. The seal: the box and the ash
PART FOUR
AFTERWARD What decides whether this works or not.
- XI. The following three nights
- XII. The signs that it's working
- XIII. What blocks the ritual
- XIV. Frequently asked questions
- XV. When you finally feel it closed
- XVI. What this book cannot give you
A LETTER BEFORE WE BEGIN
Before we begin
If you've come from another book in this collection, you already know that in one of them I told you something I don't tell just anyone: the worst stretch of my life, at twenty-three. What I didn't tell you there is what it truly took me to get out of that stretch, because that part wasn't about luck. It was about this.
It took me almost two years to let go of that four-year relationship. Not because I was still in love in that way, but because part of me kept going, every night, to check whether the door was fully closed. And every time I checked, I'd leave it slightly ajar again, without even noticing.
So when a woman writes to me asking for help letting go of something, whoever or whatever it is, I don't speak to her from theory. I speak to her as someone who took too long to understand this sentence, which is the entire heart of this book:
It's not that you can't close the door. It's that you've spent months going back to check whether it's still open.
This isn't a book for falling out of love with anyone, or erasing anything you lived. If anything, it's quite the opposite: it's a book for you to stop spending your energy holding up something that already ended, so you can keep it where it truly belongs, in your memory, not in your present.
Read it whole. You're going to find uncomfortable things, because letting go always is. And keep this sentence for chapter IV: closing a door and no longer looking at it are two different jobs, and almost no one does the second one.
With love,
Valeria. I've changed some details of my own story and of the stories I tell you here, to protect the people who lived them alongside me. The heart of each one happened just as told.
CHAPTER I
What letting go is (and what it isn't)
Let's start with what people confuse the most, because if we don't clear it up, you're going to spend the whole ritual waiting for something that isn't going to come.
Letting go isn't forgetting. It isn't that one day you wake up and that person, that job, that chapter, no longer means anything. That doesn't exist, and anyone who promises it is lying to you. What you lived, you lived. It's still yours.
Letting go isn't feeling nothing if you run into them, if you hear their name, if you pass by the place it happened. You're going to feel something. You're always going to feel something, even if it's small. The difference isn't in whether you feel it or not. It's in how long you stay there after feeling it.
Letting go is this: that memory losing the keys to your present. Being able to think about it without it dragging your whole day down with it. Being able to name it without your voice shaking for half an hour afterward.
A REAL STORY
Sara had been divorced for three years when she came to see me. "I'm over it already," she told me the moment she sat down, almost before I asked. And yet, she still knew by heart the birthday of her ex's new partner, still checked their profile twice a week "just out of curiosity." She wasn't lying on purpose. She'd convinced herself that letting go meant not crying, and she'd spent three years not crying while still, without knowing it, keeping her hand on the door.
And here's the sentence I want you to underline:
This spell isn't going to erase anything. It's going to take your hand off the door.
What you lived stays where it should: in what already happened. What this work does is take away the exhausting job of holding up, day after day, something time has already closed. You don't close the door. You finally stop holding it.
CHAPTER II
Why letting go is hard without you knowing it
No one consciously decides to cling to something that hurts them. And yet, in eleven years, I've seen the same five reasons repeat over and over, with different names each time. Read these calmly. You'll recognize yours, and that changes how you do the ritual.
1. Fear of the emptiness it leaves Sometimes it isn't the person or the chapter itself that's hard to let go of. It's the gap left afterward. As long as you keep holding the door, at least you know what's behind it. Letting it go completely means facing an emptiness you don't yet know how you'll fill.
2. The hope that never fully goes out A loose message, a glance, a "maybe someday." It only takes one very small spark to keep hope lit for years, even when reason already knows there's nothing to wait for.
3. An identity built around that pain When something defines you for a long time ("the one who gave it all up for him," "the one who never got over the layoff"), letting it go can feel, without you noticing, like losing a part of who you are. Clinging to the pain, at times, is easier than asking yourself who you are without it.
4. Guilt about moving on Especially in grief, but also in breakups and losses of all kinds: feeling that letting go is a betrayal of what you lived, or of the person who's no longer there. As if your pain were the proof of how much you loved.
5. Simply, habit After months or years thinking about the same thing, the mind turns it into routine. Not because it hurts less with time, but because it no longer knows how to do anything else with that mental space. And a habit, even a painful one, is harder to let go of than it was to start.
Think for a moment which of the five is yours. You don't need to tell anyone.
The ritual works better when you know exactly which hand is still on the door.
CHAPTER III
The mistake that confuses letting go with forgetting
Of all the chapters in this collection, this is the one I've had to explain in person the most times, so read it slowly.
Almost everyone comes to this ritual asking for the same thing, in these exact words or something very close: "I want to forget him," "I want it to stop hurting," "I want it to be as if it never happened." And almost everyone, without knowing it, is asking for what they don't need, and that's why the "forgetting" rituals floating around almost never truly work:
they ask for the impossible, and the impossible can't be granted.
Forgetting isn't healthy, even if it sounds good in theory. A person who truly forgot everything that hurt them would also forget the lesson that pain left them, and would be doomed to trip over the same stone again, in the next relationship, the next job, the next loss.
What is healthy, and what this ritual can truly give you, is integration: that memory moving from living in the center of your chest to living on a shelf, ordered, accessible if you want to look at it, but no longer in the middle of your path.
Ask yourself this, honestly: if you could press a button and completely erase that memory, would you? A lot of women, when they really ask themselves this, discover they wouldn't. What they want isn't to erase it. It's for it to stop hurting every time they touch it by accident. That's the exact difference this book works on.
CHAPTER IV
The mechanism: Saturn and your Moon
If you already know another book in this collection, you know each Valeria ritual has its own bridge. In The Confession Spell it was Mercury crossing toward Venus. In The Money Spell, Jupiter crossing toward your own worth. In The Good Luck Spell, the Sun uncovering itself from what was hiding it. Here the bridge works with two forces you may not have expected.
The planet that closes
In the tradition of correspondences, endings, limits, everything that takes shape and closes, belongs to Saturn. He rules Saturday, rules gray and lead, rules everything with a defined form and a clear edge. Saturn isn't a comfortable planet, and in old astrology he was feared more than any other. But he's the only one who truly knows how to close something completely.
Here's the important part: Saturn already did his part. That relationship ended. That job is over. That chapter, like it or not, is already closed in the realm of facts. The calendar doesn't lie, and neither does Saturn. The problem is almost never out there.
What's still open
The problem lives somewhere else, much more intimate, belonging to a completely different body: the Moon. The Moon rules emotional memory, attachment, everything that lives in the part of you that doesn't reason, the part that relives a memory with the same intensity even if three years have passed.
Saturn closed the door from outside. But your Moon, if it isn't worked on, stays inside the room, not knowing the door is already closed, waiting for someone to open it again.
The Bridge of Closing
This work asks nothing of Saturn. Saturn already did his job. This work speaks directly to your Moon, so that she finally learns what the calendar already knows.
Saturn closes from outside. He always does, sooner or later. But there's a part of me living inside the room that still hasn't found out the door is closed.
This work closes nothing that wasn't already closed. It only, at last, lets the part of me that was still waiting inside know.
A REAL STORY
To Sara, the woman who kept saying for three years that she was already over it, I asked something very simple before this ritual: "if tomorrow they told you he'd moved to another country and you'd never hear from him again, what would you feel?" She stayed silent for almost a full minute. Then she said, very quietly: "relief, and then, a lot of fear." That fear was her Moon, still not knowing.
CHAPTER V
When to do it
This is the only ritual in the collection done with the moon in the opposite phase to the others, so pay attention even if you already know the system.
The day: Saturday
Saturday is Saturn's day. It's the day of closure, of limits, of what gets ordered and filed away. Doing it on a Friday, Venus's day, would be asking the energy of desire to do a job that isn't hers.
The moon: waning, not waxing
Here's the key difference. All the other rituals in this collection work with the waxing or full moon, because they're made to bring something toward you. This one is different: it's made for something to leave. The waning moon, from full to new, is the phase of letting go, closing, shedding what's excess. It's, literally, the moon that teaches us every month how this is done.
The ideal night: the Saturday closest to a waning moon, anywhere between the full moon and the new moon. The closer to the new moon, the stronger the closing effect, so if you can choose, lean toward the end of the waning cycle.
The hour: after 10:00 PM
The later into the night, the better this specific work functions. The Moon governs the night, and this is a ritual that speaks directly to her. Avoid doing it in daylight if you can wait.
If you can't wait for Saturday
Any night during a waning moon works as an exception, even if it's not Saturday. But only once. The combination of both things, the day and the phase, is what gives this ritual its full strength.
CHAPTER VI
What you need
1. A gray, black, or white candle Gray and black are Saturn's colors in his function of closing, not of bad omen. If they make you uneasy, a white candle works just as well: it represents what's left clean after closing.
2. A small silver or white candle This represents the Moon, the part of you that still hasn't learned of the closing. If you can't find silver, white works perfectly.
3. A small box with a lid Cardboard, wood, whatever you have. It's going to hold something important during the ritual, and afterward.
4. Paper and a black or gray pen Unlined if possible.
5. Something small representing what you're letting go of A photo you no longer need to look at daily, a movie ticket, any small object tied to what you're closing. If you don't have a physical object, a paper with the name or date written on it works exactly the same.
6. A fire-safe plate You're going to burn something carefully, so you need a safe surface.
7. Thread or string To tie the box at the end of the ritual. Any thread works, it doesn't need to be anything special.
If you're missing the physical object of what you're letting go of, a paper with its name does exactly the same work. What you can't skip is the box: it's what holds the closing after you blow out the candles.
CHAPTER VII
Preparing the space
STEP 1 — Tidy only the corner where you'll be working You don't need a full clean. Just the immediate space, so your mind understands this moment is different from the rest of the day.
STEP 2 — Turn off your phone completely Especially if what you're letting go of involves a specific person. Tonight isn't for checking anything about them, not before, during, or after the ritual.
STEP 3 — Lower the light as much as you can This ritual works with the night and with the Moon. The less artificial light, the better. If you have neighbors close to the window, a simple drawn curtain is enough.
STEP 4 — Arrange your materials The gray or black candle on the left, the silver or white candle on the right. The box in the center, open, with the object or paper of what you're letting go of inside, still without closing the lid. The fire plate near the hand you write with.
CHAPTER VIII
The ritual, step by step
Read it all before starting. Of the four rituals in this collection, this is the one that calls for the most stillness. Don't rush any step.
STEP 1 — Light Saturn Light the gray or black candle first. While lighting it, say out loud: "This is already closed." You're naming a fact, not a wish. That already truly happened, and you both know it's true.
STEP 2 — Write what's still holding your hand on the door On the paper, write honestly what exactly you're still checking, waiting for, or reliving. Not what you should feel. What you truly feel when no one is looking.
STEP 3 — Light the Moon Now light the silver or white candle. While you do it, look at the object or paper representing what you're letting go of, inside the box. You're naming the part of you that still hasn't found out.
STEP 4 — Burn the paper from step 2 Carefully, over the plate. As it burns, say: "I let you go, not because you didn't matter. Because your moment in my story is already over." You're not erasing what you felt. You're only releasing the hand that was still on the door.
STEP 5 — Close the box Place the object or paper inside the box (if it wasn't already) and close the lid slowly, unhurried. Tie the thread around it, in a simple knot, not a decorative one. This box is now the place where that memory is going to live. Ordered. Accessible if you ever want to look at it. Out of the center of your chest.
STEP 6 — Say the words With one hand on the closed box, read the invocation on the next page out loud.
STEP 7 — Close Let the two candles burn as long as you can leave them tonight. Before sleep, put the box somewhere that isn't your nightstand or anywhere you see every day.
CHAPTER IX
The exact words
Read them out loud, slowly, in Step 6, with your hand on the box.
What I was holding up is already closed. I didn't close it tonight. It closed a while ago. Tonight, I simply stop holding the door.
What I lived stays mine. I keep it, I don't erase it.
Let my Moon finally learn what Saturn already knows. Let the hand that's held the door for so long finally rest.
There's no betrayal in letting go. There's rest.
It is said.
Why these words and no others
Notice something important: at no point is forgetting asked for, nor that it stops having mattered. "I keep it, I don't erase it" is the line holding up the whole ritual. And "there's no betrayal in letting go, there's rest" exists because the guilt from chapter II is, by far, the most common brake I've seen in eleven years. Naming it out loud is usually what unties it fastest.
CHAPTER X
The seal: the box and the ash
The box
Keep it somewhere high and closed, not part of your daily routine. A high cabinet, the back of a shelf. It's not a hiding spot out of shame. It's a memory shelf, and shelves are for that: keeping things with care, not having them always in front of you.
The ash
Collect it from the plate the next day and throw it outside your home, ideally onto earth or into the wind, never inside your own space. It's the one part of the whole ritual that truly leaves completely, and that's why it goes outside your home with you, it doesn't stay.
The candles
If there's leftover wax, don't reuse it for another ritual. Throw them out along with the ash. They've already done their job, and a closing candle shouldn't light anything new afterward.
CHAPTER XI
The following three nights
Over the following three nights, before sleep, you're going to do a very simple gesture.
STEP 1 — Night one Put a hand on your chest, not on the box this time, and say: "I can let go of the door." Nothing more.
STEP 2 — Night two Repeat the gesture. And if during the day you catch yourself checking, remembering, or reliving something you let go of, don't scold yourself. Just notice it happened, and let it go again.
STEP 3 — Night three Repeat the gesture one last time, and add: "And tonight, I truly let her go."
Avoid, if you can, any direct contact with what you let go of during these three nights. It isn't a punishment. It's just that your Moon, in these first few days, is still learning the closing, and any new contact confuses her again.
CHAPTER XII
The signs that it's working
1. One day you forget to check The profile, the date, the detail you'd spent months watching without realizing. One day, it simply slips your mind. That's the first and most reliable of all the signs.
2. You think about it without it taking over your whole day The memory appears, you notice it, and you go on with your life. It no longer takes the afternoon with it.
3. You dream about it differently A lot of women tell me about dreams where they finally close a door, put away an object, say something they never said. The Moon, quite literally, processes the closing while you sleep.
4. It doesn't matter to you anymore, in a good way, if you hear something about them You don't feel malicious joy or pain. It simply no longer affects you the way it did. That calm indifference is one of the most sought-after signs and one of the hardest to fake.
5. Mental space comes back You start thinking about new things, about plans that have nothing to do with what you let go of. The space it used to take up opens, and something new starts filling it on its own.
A REAL STORY
A month after her ritual, Sara wrote to me something that sums up better than any explanation of mine what truly letting go looks like. "I saw his name in a WhatsApp group from a friend's work, Valeria. And all I thought was: oh, look, that name. Nothing else. I'd spent three years waiting to feel that, thinking I already did."
The timeline: this usually shows up between day 5 and day 30, almost always in waves, not steadily. You'll have better days and days when it all seems to come back. That's normal, and doesn't mean the work failed. If by day 30 you still feel the door weighs the same as the first day, it means there's something underneath this book alone can only name, and that's exactly where a personalized reading comes in.
CHAPTER XIII
What blocks the ritual
1. Doing it with a secret hope they'll come back This is a closing ritual, not a disguised binding one. If deep down you're doing it hoping letting go will "bring them back," you're asking for two opposite things at once, and neither one happens well that way.
2. Opening the box too soon Out of curiosity, nostalgia, checking if "it still hurts." Every time you open it before at least a few weeks have passed, you hand back work to your Moon that was already done.
3. Telling someone who's still stuck in the same place A friend still reliving her own story without closing it can, without meaning to, drag you back into yours every time you talk about it.
4. Seeking direct contact in the first few days Writing, passing by the place, checking the profile. Give this work at least the three nights from chapter XI before exposing yourself again to what you're letting go of.
CHAPTER XIV
Frequently asked questions
Does it work for grieving someone who has died, not just a breakup? Yes, and it's actually one of the cases where chapter III, letting go without forgetting, comforts the most. Just adjust the object in the box to something that truly represents that person, with all the love it deserves.
Can I do it for something that isn't a person, like a job or a stage of my life? Yes. The mechanism is exactly the same. Only what you write on the paper in step 2 changes.
What if I feel it all again weeks later? That's normal, especially around significant dates. It doesn't mean the ritual failed. You can repeat it on the next waning moon if you feel it's needed, something I don't recommend with the other rituals in the collection, but that makes sense here.
Can I keep the box forever, or at some point do I have to get rid of it? You can keep it as long as you want. There's no expiration date on a well-kept memory. Some women, years later, open it once to check it no longer weighs on them, and close it again in peace.
Does it combine with the other rituals in the collection? Often it's the first one needed, before any other. It's hard to open up to a confession, to money, or to your own luck, while one hand is still on an old door. If you don't know which to start with in the whole collection, this is usually a good starting point.
CHAPTER XV
When you finally feel it closed
I want to warn you about something very few women expect, and that surprised me too the first time.
The day you truly let go, you're not going to feel a burst of joy. You're going to feel, above all, silence. A strange silence, almost uncomfortable at first, in the place where there used to be constant noise. Some women even mistake it for sadness, and it isn't. It's simply the first time in a long while that part of your mind is truly quiet.
1. Let the silence be, without rushing to fill it Don't rush into something new just to avoid feeling the emptiness. Give yourself a few days of silence before deciding what's going to fill that space.
2. Don't apologize for feeling relief Feeling relief doesn't mean it didn't matter. It means you've completed your grieving, your process, your time.
3. Keep this date Many women in this collection write down the exact day they felt the real closing. Not to celebrate it each year like a wound. To remember, if they ever need to let go of something again, that they already know how it's done.
Valeria, I don't know if this is normal, but I've gone two days without thinking about it and I feel almost guilty. That sentence reaches me more than you'd imagine after this specific ritual. And my answer is always the same: it's not guilt. It's the door, finally, with no one holding it anymore.
CHAPTER XVI
What this book cannot give you
This is the last book I've written so far for this collection, and I want to close it with the same honesty I opened the first one.
This ritual teaches you to let go of a door that's already closed. Any woman who reads it calmly can do that, without needing me for anything else. But there's something neither this book nor any other can know without looking at your case: exactly how long that door has been closed from outside while you kept holding it from inside, and what's waiting on the other side, once you finally let it go completely.
And I want to close with something I've kept repeating, in different forms, in every book of this collection, because every time it's clearer to me: the problem is almost never the one it seems to be. A woman who doesn't know how to let go of an old relationship also tends not to easily let in money, nor a sincere confession, nor her own luck. All of that lives closer together than it seems.
If you finish this book and feel that letting go of this door has made room for something bigger (a pending confession, a financial opportunity you've been rejecting, your own luck waiting for you to uncover it), you don't have to solve it alone. That's exactly what the rest of this collection exists for, and what a reading made only for you exists for.
Thank you for letting me into your waning-moon Saturday. Of the four books I've written so far, this one was the hardest for me to finish, and that's exactly why it's the one I hold most dear.
ONE LAST WORD FROM VALERIA
What comes next
If you've made it this far, you already know how to take your hand off a door that closed a while ago.
What this book can't tell you is exactly what's waiting on the other side, now that you're letting go. Because that isn't general: it's yours. I can teach you to let go. I can't know from here what's waiting for you afterward without looking at your cards.
That's why, when a woman finishes this ritual, I usually tell her the same thing: closing is never the end of the reading, it's the beginning. Now it's time to see what opens, for you, in the space you've just left free.
I see that in a personalized reading. Yours, about your situation, not a general reading for a thousand women at once. It reaches your inbox in under twenty-four hours.
I didn't let go to forget. I let go to have my hands free again.
I hope that door weighs a little less every day. And I hope, very soon, you stop needing to check whether it's still closed.
With all my love,
Valeria
