Recipe for a New Year’s Ritual

This ceremony was enacted for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Alamosa, Colorado and the article appeared on the blog, “Postcards from Shamans”, January 2019.

The word “ceremony” in its original Latin form is “awe”. Repeated behaviors related to reverence and awe, with a sense of connecting to powers greater than us – this is Ritual.

In its true form, ritual is one of the most meaningful channels for our awe and sense of worship. A ritual can be defined as a symbolic behavior consciously performed. It is a physical act that affirms the practitioner’s intention and represents a change in inner attitude.

Robert Johnson, a Jungian therapist, writes about working with Active Imagination in Inner Work. He tells us that to cement our intention, the body, the feelings, and the intellect have to be simultaneously involved. In other words, to manifest, our thoughts must enter into the emotions, muscles, and cells of the body. To bring our thoughts into material form we can start with the metaphor of ritual.

Rituals and ceremonies, in general, are ways of using small symbolic acts to set up a connection between the conscious mind and the unconscious. They provide us a way of taking principles from the unconscious and impressing them vividly on the conscious mind. But rituals also have an effect on the unconscious. A meaningful ritual sends a powerful message back to the unconscious, causing changes to take place at that deeper level where our attitudes and values originate

Here is a step-by-step recipe for a New Year’s ritual:

1. Place candles on the floor in a circle. Colored candles mark the cardinal points and the elements (use a compass if necessary) north/earth/white; east/air/yellow or green; south/fire/red; west/water/ blue or black.

2. Place a black bucket, vase, or cauldron filled with water in the center of the circle.

3. Pass around small stones to everyone in the group. If there is a child or children in the group, give them this role. Each person takes two stones.

4. The facilitator then points out the basic archetypal elements of earth-based ritual: In the group, there may be people who symbolize the dualities of male and female, young and old, so we act as priests and priestesses. We have the cardinal directions. We have a circle of power. We have the elements: water, fire (candles), earth (stones), and air (our breath).

5. One stone is held in the left hand, one in the right. To change the idea of the left always symbolizing negative, dark, and feminine, the right as being right, bright, and male, think of placing the stone of the past in your least dominant hand, the stone of the future in your dominant hand.

6. Think, not in the abstract, but with words you can hear in your head, or pictures you can see, the things of the past year that you want to let go of, realizing that to make space for the new, you are letting some things go. You should focus on one thing, that way your INTENT will be stronger. If you feel comfortable whispering or saying it out loud please do, because the closer we get from a thought to a physical action, the more powerful is the act. When you are ready, blow those things, whether they be a habit, toxic relationships, belongings taking up space, or whatever you want to release from your life…into the stone you hold in your least dominant hand: the stone of the Past. Then toss the stone into the caldron of black water.

7. Say aloud as a group chant: “It is done. It is done. It is done.” Three times is fine. You can make a splash and then watch your stone disappear into the darkness.

8. With the stone of the Future, think of or say what you want to manifest in this new year. It doesn’t have to be logically connected in any way to what you’re leaving behind because all things are intrinsically connected. Psychic space has been made for the new to enter. Blow that thing into the stone.

9. Chant: “It has come. It is come. It is come.” Put the stone in your pocket and handle it often, so you will be reminded that the next step is an actual manifestation through your own small actions toward those goals. Feeling the stone will also remind you to give gratitude for the future manifestation and have faith that it will be accomplished.

Hugs all around and wish each other a “Happy New Year!”

~ Blessed Be ~