Make a Wishing Box: 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 lovely 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 for a lining at a pinch.

Charm a Wishing Box: 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:

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

Work this magic for three consecutive nights, before midnight, to charm the box.

Wishing spell for a Wishing 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. 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 - 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'.