New Year, New Moon

Peach Moonstone pendulum with a sterling silver spiral womb goddess pendant and tiny sterling silver and moonstone rounds. Moonstone is a feminine stone, ideal for awakening one's intuition and deepening one's meditation practices.

Tonight marks the first New Moon of the still very new year, making it a perfect time to work quite a bit of magick, all in one night. New Moon magick is dedicated to new beginnings, new projects, capturing your independence, feeling your personal strength and honoring your instincts. And as we all know, the new year is the time to cast off that which is no longer working for you and bringing in new beliefs and behaviors that hopefully will make you a much better person.

I had planned on just spending a little time in circle tonight meditating on the new year and all the possibilities and hopes she holds, as well as purifying and consecrating within the four elements my new moonstone pendulum, but then a friend gave me a wonderful new year's resolution ritual that just spoke to my heart. I'm generally not one for once-a-year resolutions as I try to be constantly aware of what I'm doing and thinking and how it impacts both myself personally and all I come into contact with in my own little corner of this vast world. I modify myself countless times throughout the year, changing what I am able to, as the year progresses through her seasons. In that vein, much of what this ritual called for has been discarded in favor of a very simplified act: writing down onto pieces of paper those things I wish to leave behind, personal beliefs that I feel no longer work for me, behaviors I wish to eliminate, anything I want banished from my life, and burning them on a bed of dried sage in my cauldron as I make a conscious intention to let these things go. It's a sort of witchy variation on the tradition of making one or more New Year's resolutions. I thought the sage would be a nice spiritual touch and a sweet-smelling way of sending those unwanted things back to the universe, where she can recycle that negative energy and sent it back out to the world as something positive.

After much hemming and hawing over candle colors for the quarters, I've settled on a deep, rich purple, the color of spiritual strength, power, healing, psychic gifts (needed for my work with this new pendulum) and because this color provides a link with the higher planes.

All in all, it should be a wonderfully productive, spiritually deepening and emotionally cleansing circle tonight.

Blessed Be.