Moon phase
Half lit again and going the other way — the phase for putting things down.
These are associations the community holds, not settled fact — the more a reading is shared, the bolder it sits.
Three quarters of the way through the cycle, the moon stands ninety degrees west of the sun and shows half a disc again — the mirror of the first quarter, lit on the opposite side. It rises around midnight, stands highest around dawn and sets around noon, which makes it the phase most often seen by accident on an early commute rather than deliberately at night.
Older texts sometimes call it the third quarter, and both names are in use. The important part is that the light is going. Where the first quarter asked for commitment, this one asks what can be stopped, and the honest answer is usually more than the practitioner would like. Traditions that split the month at all put the whole waning half under decrease, and this is its clearest point.
Work suited to it is release, cutting off, and forgiveness — including the version of forgiveness that is really just admitting a thing is finished. Practitioners often pair it with something physical: a cord cut, a jar emptied, a name struck through and the paper burnt.
Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.
Carried forward
James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890)
Among the moon rules Frazer collects, the waning half is repeatedly given to removal — warts charmed away, hair cut to keep it short, timber felled so it will not swell. The logic is consistent even where the practices are not: a shrinking moon is expected to take things with it.
Carried forward
Common in contemporary practice
A cord cut at the last quarter, one cut per thing being put down. Practitioners are generally advised to say what each cut is for out loud, since a vague release tends to release nothing.
Credit what you carry. Much of this comes from living traditions, and some of it from traditions that are closed — held by particular peoples and not offered for general use. Where you know whose practice a reading came from, name them; where you don't, say that too.