Write ten wishes by hand within the first hours after a new moon. The rule that it must be ten, and handwritten, comes from one book published in 2001.

Jan Spiller's New Moon Astrology set out the format and it has been copied so widely that people now describe it as ancient. The number, the eight-hour window, the handwriting — all of it is from that book. The underlying instinct is much older: a new moon is a natural place to put a list of intentions, because a month is a length of time a person can actually imagine.