Also called spell to reveal the truth, honesty spell, truth revealing spell, sieve and shears
A candle and mirror ritual for seeing a confusing situation honestly, with the history of the old truth tests behind it: the bread and cheese ordeal, cheese divination and the sieve and shears. It is for your own clarity, never for forcing a confession from someone.
TraditionModern clarity ritual; history from medieval European ordeals and divination
RegionEngland and continental Europe
EraOrdeals 10th to 13th century; ritual modern
Moon○ Full moon
DayMonday · Moon
ElementWater
Difficulty●○○ Simple
Time20 minutes, plus a night's sleep
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
Write the question you are stuck on as a plain sentence, for example: Is this job offer as good as it sounds?
Under it, list what you actually know, what you only suspect, and what you are afraid of. Keep the three apart.
Light the candle and set the bowl of water and the mirror in front of it so the flame shows in both.
Look into your own eyes in the mirror and read the question aloud. Ask yourself which answer you have been avoiding.
Write down the first honest answer that comes, even if it is uncomfortable, then snuff the candle.
Sleep on it. In the morning reread the page and decide one real step to check the facts, such as asking a direct question or reading the contract.
Take care: Never try any form of ordeal on a person, and never use a spell to pressure someone into confessing. If you fear you are being deceived about money, health or safety, get outside advice.
Versions across time and place
i
The corsned, or ordeal of bread and cheese
Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian law · c. 10th to early 13th century
An accused person had to swallow about an ounce of consecrated barley bread and hard cheese, sometimes inscribed with the Lord's Prayer. A guilty person was expected to choke or turn pale. The ordeal was laid on the altar at Mass, tying it to the Eucharist. It is history, not something to imitate.
Uses: barley bread, hard cheese
Recorded in: Corsned (Wikipedia); Medievalists.net, 'The Ordeal of Bread and Cheese' (2023)
ii
Sieve and shears (coscinomancy)
Ancient Greek, then early modern English · 3rd century BCE to 19th century
A sieve was balanced on the points of open shears held by two people, and names were spoken. The sieve turning or trembling at a name marked the thief or the answer. Theocritus mentions a woman skilled in sieve divination in his third Idyll, and English writers of the 1600s describe using it to find who stole something.
Recorded in: Coscinomancy (Wikipedia); Encyclopaedia Britannica, early editions
iii
Tyromancy (cheese divination)
Graeco-Roman, later European · 2nd century CE onward
Readers looked for signs in the holes, mould and patterns of a cheese. Artemidorus mentions cheese diviners in the second century and ranks them among the unreliable ones. It survives today mostly as a curiosity.
Recorded in: Tyromancy (Wikipedia)
History
For centuries European courts let God reveal the truth. The corsned, or ordeal of bread and cheese, appears in Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian sources and was widespread from about the tenth to the early thirteenth century. A suspect swallowed a blessed morsel and was judged by whether they choked. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 barred clergy from blessing ordeals, and they faded quickly after that.
Village truth-finding used gentler tools. The sieve and shears appears as early as Theocritus in the third century BCE and was still used in England in the seventeenth century to name a thief, and cheese divination goes back at least to Artemidorus. All of these targeted other people. A modern truth spell is better aimed at your own blind spots, and that is how this version is built.
