What the Saying Actually Means
A key is not lucky or unlucky on its own. It is directional. Across the old traditions, keys sit with the gatekeepers, the spirits and saints who stand at crossroads and doorways and decide what is allowed to pass. A key in your hand does not carry meaning until you point it somewhere. That is the whole of what my grandmother handed me in one short sentence: the same object, aimed two different ways, does two opposite jobs.
The Old Key
Carries the memory of every lock it has already turned. That history is exactly what lets it recognize a new opening. An old key held with intention does not drag the past behind it — it uses what it already knows to find the way forward.
The New Key
Has never opened anything and never will. It has no history to carry, which is precisely why it can end one. A new key cut clean, with no lock it has ever answered to, is the surest tool there is for sealing a door for good.
Scripture Beneath the Craft
I went looking for a verse that held both halves of this the way my grandmothers saying did, and I found it in the same breath, spoken of the same key.
"These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth."
Revelation 3:7
One key. Two powers held in the same hand. Nothing opened stays shut against it, and nothing shut can be forced back open. That is the authority my grandmother was quietly claiming every time she said her saying out loud.
The Working
You will need two keys for this: one old key that has genuinely opened something before, and one new key that has never turned a lock in its life. A blank from the hardware store works fine for the second. Which working you do decides which key stays in your hand.
To Open — With the Old Key
The Opening
Old key, worn and known to me,
you have opened what was meant to be.
By your teeth and by your turn,
open now what I would learn.
I count it out — one, two, three —
blessed by the Holy Trinity.
As I speak it, so mote it be —
open now this door for me.
Hold the old key and turn it once in the air, clockwise, as if it were already in the lock of the door you want opened. Name that door to yourself before you begin, and let the key do what it already knows how to do.
To Close — With the New Key
The Sealing
New key, untried and clean of hand,
seal this door, so let it stand.
Turn once, turn twice, turn thrice around,
what is loosed is no longer bound.
I count it out — one, two, three —
blessed by the Holy Trinity.
What is done is done, the lock is changed —
the past is sealed, the door rearranged.
Hold the new key and turn it three times counterclockwise in the air, naming what you are closing the door on. When it is finished, the key should not go back on your ring. Bury it away from the house, or drop it into moving water, so the door it sealed has no way of being reopened.
How It's Carried Out
- An old key, one that has genuinely opened something before, held to call a new door open
- Turned clockwise, once, naming what is being opened
- A new key, never yet used on any lock, held to seal a door for good
- Turned counterclockwise, three times, naming what is being closed
- The new key is never kept afterward — buried away from home or given to moving water
- Never both workings for the same door in the same sitting — one key, one direction, one door at a time
Two keys, two directions, and a saying my grandmother never once explained because she never needed to. I understood it with my hands before I understood it with my head.
What is sealed, stays sealed.
A key holds no memory of the hand before yours —
only the turn you give it now.