Esbat

A working at the full or new moon, as distinct from the eight sabbats of the year.

An esbat is a working done at the full moon. Many witches use the word for the new moon as well. A year has twelve or thirteen full moons, so the esbats give a practice its monthly rhythm, while the eight sabbats mark the seasons. A sabbat is a festival; an esbat is the evening on which the actual work is done: an intention is set, looked at again, completed or let go.

The word is not old in this sense. The Egyptologist Margaret Murray used it in 1921 for the smaller meetings of the witch cult she believed she had found in the trial records. She had taken it from a French account of the seventeenth century, where it goes back to an Old French word for amusing oneself. Murray's theory has been refuted, but Wicca adopted her word in the 1950s, and from there it passed into general use.

An esbat needs no coven and no fixed form. Looking at the moon and reading your intention again is one.

Related: the moon in witchcraft, moon phases.