traditional ritual
ritual de lo habitual
Happy almost-new-year.
I know there is a lot of magical “advice” online about how “best” to enter into the new year.
Here’s my two cents…
We will find value in any practices we actually do. We will NOT receive value from practices we just read about, think about or just scroll by.
We will find the MOST value in the practices that we can repeat wholeheartedly, year after year.
This is why you’ll find so many meditations on my site that are synced to the natural rhythmic timing of things that happen throughout each year - equinoxes and solstices, full and new moons, astrological seasons, and so on… This is so we can come back to these experiences in a rhythmic way, which leads to the most magic happening over time.
Also - you are the magic ingredient. These rituals can’t do themselves, they need us for the magic to happen. It is really important to understand (and experience!) that these processes become more resonant (and powerful!) the more times we show up for them.
I have written about time spirals before (see story above) - where instead of seeing ourselves on a purely linear timeline, we see ourselves riding an upwardly expanding time spiral instead. So, when I hit an old trigger in life, instead of feeling like I’m staying in the same spot or even going backwards, I receive the trigger AND THEN DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT about it because I am seeing it from a different, more elevated vantage point.
In the context of the rituals that we repeat at the same time every year, this concept of time spirals comes right to the surface and becomes something fantastically real.
For example, as I’ve been doing the ocean meditation on every NYE for the last 12 years, I’ve gotten to see how much I’ve expanded and grown each year. I also get to see the ways I’ve stayed the same. I’ve also gotten to see the rhythmic nature of life in general and gotten a real good sense what really happened in each year as it passes AND give myself sacred time to let it go, which creates the spaciousness I need to welcome in a new year.
And, as I’ve been doing our ARTxMAGIC Year Ahead SoulCollage® practice every year since 2020, I’ve gotten a very helpful, sneak peek, front-row-view of the energies of each month since then; and that’s how I’ve been able to make the most out of each of them. (If you don’t know what SoulCollage® is, this video lays out the basics…)
These kinds of repeated practices are - as we live in a over-culture that is intent on absolutely bombarding our senses at all times - powerful magic.
There are parts of us that KNOW what’s best for us. But the “voice” of what comes through our rectangular screens is LOUD, and the parts of us that KNOW are mostly drowned out. The signal is not decipherable through the noise.
The good news is, the parts of us that KNOW, never leave us. When we settle down and turn to them, they never leave us hanging.
More good news is that when we show up repeatedly for these kinds of practices, the more they show up for us. As soon as I listen to that ocean meditation or settle in to pull my cards for the year, all levels of my being know what we are doing and flock to my side - because we have done it so many times before. (I also believe that many levels of my being actively enjoy and look forward to these practices in ways that are not always clocked by my rational brain until I’ve actually done the practices.)
Very importantly for modern people like us, when we engage with these ritualized practices over and over again, there is a rich KNOWING that forms within us - a north star that leads us to the best pathways through each era of our lives.
Maybe most importantly on the level of the collective (which I will be writing about a lot in 2025, my cards told me so lol), when we attend to our magical work in tune with the wheel of the year, we put ourselves in tune with so many natural systems (conscious and otherwise) that our magical workings end up being not just for ourselves, but benefit many others (human and more-than-human) as well.
This is THE STUFF! Yes, we make magic for ourselves, but not only for ourselves. This is a big world with lots of things happening - and this world needs us to imagine and create things that benefit all of existence in some way or another.
So, enjoy the NYE Ocean meditation, join us for Year Ahead this Saturday, and/or work with your guides to create your own repeatable rituals.
Until next time,
Jess
“Before you beast mode, perhaps it’s wise to take inventory of the creatures. There is no single beast to mode. Not in this day and age of biohacking and I liked it so I got it in every color. However, this internal zoo within me is forming a cabal intent upon thwarting our collective achievements in favor of all the things each little beasty demands at any given moment. To indulge any one beast’s mode is to lose the forest in the trees (sumn like that). And to try and appease everyone is an exercise in futility. The best I can hope for is an internal system of governance wherein each little guy gets their fair share in due time. I may not wish something so lofty as to tame these beasts, but I can hopefully one day get each of them to respond by name.”
- Sable, Hard Feelings
“My love, it will take a great deal of lying down and resting, doing nothing at all, for you to save the world.”
-Martha Beck
"We will never be the same again. But here's a little secret for you - no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren't that person anymore, and everything changes once again."
- Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty.”
- James Kavanaugh
“A kinder world will return too. We can even make it now if we like! We are not as significant as we think and also so powerful in a way we have forgotten, but which reveals itself to us with even the smallest foray into its mystery. Our instincts want so bad for us to remember them, the missing chunk of ourselves we long for without knowing. We want to reunite with ourselves and our world. That’s what that gnawing feeling is. It’s what’s inside the dark velvet tunnels if we bother to notice. “Come home to me” they whisper. Where that current diet soda hangover feeling of being “online” and social media is inside your body or your slow and saturated heart, gummed up with grim human news and lies could become a garden of light and possibility if you tend it.
Every single plant has as equally interesting and transformative properties as chicory, and we haven’t even found them all yet! Think of that army, silent to our human ears healing and building and feeding us all the time. For the world, for the creatures, for itself, for the air and on and on. We are going to be ok. If you need to break out of a bad cycle, try turning to some ancient friends you may have never even thought about. They have never forgotten you and they are waiting until you need them.”
“The heart of my connection to the Goddess has less to do with what I believe happened five thousand years ago or five hundred years ago, and much more to do with what I notice when I step outside my door: that oak leaves fall to the ground, decay and make fertile soil. Calling that process sacred means that I approach this everyday miracle with a sense of awe and wonder and gratitude, and that in very practical terms, I compost my own garbage.”
- Starhawk
“The great powers of nature have an intelligence, a consciousness, albeit different in magnitude and kind from our own. Everything in nature is alive and speaking: the deep, crystalline intelligence of the rock heart of the planet, the fungal threads that link the roots of trees into the nerve-net of the forests, the chattering birds and the biochemistry of plants and mushrooms are all communicating. Our spiritual practice, the practice of magic, is about opening our eyes, ears and hearts to be able to hear, understand, and communicate back. And those powers want us to communicate with them. The Goddess is not omnipotent—she is co-creative with human beings. She needs human help to create fertility and regeneration. The elements, the ancestors, the spirit beings that surround us want to work with us to protect and heal the earth, but they need our invitation.
Nature is also human nature. Our human intelligence, our particular, sharp-pointed ability to analyze, think, draw conclusions and act, our esthetic/emotional capacity to thrill at a beautiful sunset, our deep bonds with those we love and our empathy and compassion for others, are all aspects of the Goddess Herself. Indeed, she evolved us complicated, contradictory big-brained creatures precisely to experience some of those aspects. Or to put it simply, she gave us brains and she expects us to use them.”
- Starhawk
“We’re all — trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria — pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship.
Because life is network, there is no “nature” or “environment,” separate and apart from humans. We are part of the community of life, composed of relationships with “others,” so the human/nature duality that lives near the heart of many philosophies is, from a biological perspective, illusory. We are not, in the words of the folk hymn, wayfaring strangers traveling through this world. Nor are we the estranged creatures of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads, fallen out of Nature into a “stagnant pool” of artifice where we misshape “the beauteous forms of things.” Our bodies and minds, our “Science and Art,” are as natural and wild as they ever were.
We cannot step outside life’s songs. This music made us; it is our nature.
Our ethic must therefore be one of belonging, an imperative made all the more urgent by the many ways that human actions are fraying, rewiring, and severing biological networks worldwide. To listen to trees, nature’s great connectors, is therefore to learn how to inhabit the relationship.”
- David George Haskell
"I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystems collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy . . . and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we, (Lawyers) and scientists, don't know how to do that."
- Gus Speth
“The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air.
It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.
Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night.
The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again.
When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart.
It is your immortal inspiration.”
- Vera Nazarian