Spring's Herbal Magick: Making Traditional & Modern Folk Charms

The tying of knots, the hanging of bundles of herbs, the collecting of charms into some sort of jar are all old forms of traditional magick used by common folk for millennia - likely including some of your ancestors. 

Simple, accessible, and known by a variety of names, charms like witch's ladders, spell jars, and herbal bundles, remain popular forms of magick to this day because they are easy to create and fulfill that need to feel like you are doing something when making your magick. 

I'm fond of folk magick not only because it is the form of magick I feel most at home with but because it so often involves plants - of which I am quite fond of, too. Folk magick has its own language and rhythm, full of ideas like the doctrine of signatures (which supposes that what an object looks like - its signature - tells you what it is useful for), ancestral myths transformed into easily digestible fables, family folktales, and a belief that we have power in our interconnectedness to create change.

I want to spend some time drawing on these folk magick inspirations to explore a pathway of herbal magick flowing through the seasons of the year. We'll work with three common forms of physical folk magick each season, exploring the same arts of magick through the lens of the changing year, beginning with spring. With each charm I'll focus on one plant ally to incorporate into your magickal working, helping to inspire your magickal herbalism practice. Finally, what I love about these crafts of the Craft is the way they can be shaped and formed to reflect our personal styles and desires, creating ways of reflecting the beauty of our inner world to the world around us.

What is wonderful about most types of folks magick is that they have a foundational form (a bottle filled with stuff) that can be used for a variety of purposes (a bottle full of stuff to help us get our dream job). The folk magick items we'll be exploring can be used in a variety of ways, including as:

• Gifts and offerings

• Acts of devotion, creating an item for a particular deity or spirit of place

• Connections to ancestors by integrating cultural relevant plants and items

• Decorations for sabbats and esbats

• Containers for a specific sort of energy

So let's explore how we can create Witch's Ladders, Bundles, and Bottles as one of the ways to connect with the seasonal rhythms of the year and our beloved plant allies.

The Witch's Ladder

Traditionally made of woolen cord, rope, woven thread or hair and knotted with items like feathers, holed stones, sticks and bits of metal, witch's ladders are a beautiful form of magick that combine charm-making with knot magick and weaving spells. The witch's ladder has remained popular among modern practitioners, supported in part by the Priestess Doreen Valiente's Spell of the Cord, an inspired modern variation of older forms of spoken knot magick. Energetically, they can act like a net, gathering up energy to hold in place and to either be drawn upon (in the case of beneficial energy) or released elsewhere (in the case of baneful energy).

I think my own exposure to the witch's ladder was through the work of Scott Cunningham in one of his books on folk magick - it's remained one of my favorite forms of charm-making ever since.¹ Witch's ladders can be made with all sorts of things, so long as you are able to tie them with your cord. You can focus on fully biodegradable components (essential if you're making a ladder that is going to be hung and left outside to naturally fall apart) or small plastic figurines alongside wooden coins carved with sigils, crystals, and feathers. They are a wonderful way to create a visual reminder of your craft and intentions while the skill of co-current charm speaking and working. 

I love simple cords for my witch's ladders, but the re-vitalization of crafts like macrame has meant that the practice of making witch's ladders is as much an art form as it is a practical bit of magick. I think starting simple is best - frustration can be cumbersome to magickal ritual - but I recommend seeking out the ladder-making practice that will allow you to slip into as much of a flow state as possible as you make it. 

A Witch’s Ladder To Stir Up Energy

Spring is a season of growing energy and as magickal folk we can connect to the rising tide of possibility with a simple witch's ladder that helps to stir up and collect energy. Spring's ladder acts like a simple net to gather energy so that you can draw upon it for your spells and rituals. I think all witch's ladders benefit from bells, but I especially like bells on one for spring to connect with the noise of the season of increasing light and life. 

Dandelion Leaves (Taraxacum officinale) are the plant ally we'll be working with for spring because they not only resemble feathers traditionally used for a witch's ladder, but carry a strong energy of air and the gifts of movement, communication, and stirring up energy. Dandelion is a plant that is both expansive and grounding - a great combination for working with spring's mercurial nature. As part of your ladder-making ritual, you could name each leaf for the type of energy you want to bring into your life as you braid them into your ladder, such as energy for a certain project, energy to clear out stagnation, energy for love, energy for boundaries, and so on. When working with Dandelion as a magickal plant ally it helps to approach them with the energy of wishfulness, whispering to them what it is you desire as you craft your spell.

A Dandelion Charm

By root so deep
And wishes so sweet
By leaf and flower so bright
Gather up spring
Gather up dreams
As day outgrows the night

Other plants like sticky Cleavers (Galium aparine) and bright shining Calendula (Calendula officinalis) can be added, but consider what you have available, the plants that are growing around you (or one's saved up from last spring's harvest that need using), and enjoy the process of using what you have at hand. Flowering plants as well as flower shaped objects (including beads and paper flowers), orange and yellow colored stones or items, and bells are all great items to consider for your spring witch's ladder. 

Creating Your Ladder

To create a witch's ladder use cord, thread or yarn to braid or not your chosen objects into a long hanging cord. How long you make your witch's ladder is up to you, but I find that they work better when shorter when being hung outside and can be a bit longer when keeping it inside. I like to start by laying out all objects I'll be tying into my witch's ladder before me on my altar, blessing them with the four elements of fire (candle light), air (incense), water (water infused with flower essences or salt), and earth (sprinkling herbs over the items or laying the items on a stone surface). I like to use some variation of a cord charm when knotting my items, like Valiente's or the one written above, changing the language for my needs. 

Once all items are added, the witch's ladder can be hung up by an altar, window or door. For a spring witch's ladder I like to make ones that'll either hang just outside my door or beside a window, so that the ladder is able to dance in spring's winds.

The Witch's Bundle

The simplest of our three traditional folk magick charms, a witch's bundle is a collection of exclusively or mostly plants with other items (such as old skeleton keys, a nice stick, a hunk of rock) tied up together and hung up above a door (or bed or other auspicious place). I make bundles throughout the year and they double as offerings once they've dried and I can burn them as incense or toss them in a sabbat fire. Some of the oldest types of witch's bundles that I've come across were meant for protection, from protecting a house from lightning and fire to hanging above the crib of a newborn to protect them from malevolent energies (but please be wise about anything you put above or around a crib if you're interested in this folk practice). In general, bundles help to hold energy, sticking it to a specific place or intention. 

Nowadays witch's bundles are used for all sorts of magickal desires from drawing in good fortune to cleansing energy. I love the ways that these bundles of herbs and other charms help to dress up our homes and bring a bit of the outside in. I have magickal bundles hanging throughout my own space, but I also have practical ones of herbs that I use frequently and can draw from daily when making teas or burning as incense. Bundles can also be taken down from where they are hanging and used to "brush" and cleanse the energetic body in place of or alongside incense. 

Witch's bundles, like all of the magickal crafts listed here, can be endlessly personalized to match your need, your aesthetic preferences, and reflect your relationships. If you're studying a particular plant ally you might include them in your witch's bundle (if the herb has already been dried and processed, you can add some into a little pouch and tie it to your bundle). If you are working with a deity that is fond of one particular color, choose that color of cloth or string to tie up your bundle. If you're a cool goth witch, add the skulls and gothic crosses to your bundle of dried Rose (Rosa spp.). Let yourself enjoy the process of finding your creative magickal expression - it helps you understand better what it you're using magick for in the first place.

A Witch's Bundle for Balance

Spring is one of two seasons that carries the energy of the equinox, helping us to connect with the spirit of balance within and around us. As long nights retreat with the passing of winter and longer days arrive with the start of spring, making sure to invite in energy that helps us feel grounded, centered, and steady will help us to thrive during this season of expansiveness. For spring I like to create witch’s bundles that help me to stay connected to my sense of equilibrium so I can enjoy the increase of the season’s energy without feeling overwhelmed. 

Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) is one of my favorite herbs for finding balance between our inner world and the world around us. Lemon Balm is a beautiful nervous system tonic or nervine, a key type of plant to work with when you want to find and cultivate balance in your life. Energetically, Lemon Balm helps us to connect with the path of peace within us, understanding our relationship to the collective without becoming overwhelmed by the world. Lemon Balm is a guide through the web of life, helping us to feel secure in our needs and knowings. The herb is also traditionally used in spells to bring about love in all its forms and since finding balance in our lives is an act of love, it's a great plant ally to have around.

A Lemon Balm Charm

To and fro
Ebb and flow
Balance comes
Balance grows
Fro and to
Flow and ebb
Balance holds
Like a web

Other plants like Sage (Salvia spp.), Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus), and Lavender (Lavandula spp.) help us to grow the inner wisdom needed within us to find balance in our lives. Adding symbols of balance such as scales, circles or triskeles, blue and purple items such as stones and ribbons, as well as any visual reminders that help you to remember to pause and connect with your inner wisdom are great additions.

Creating Your Bundle

Bless all your objects as described in the above section "Creating Your Ladder." Once you've collected all of your items (such as a bunch of Lemon Balm), use a colored thread or ribbon of choice to tie up your bundle. I like to tie the top part and leave the rest loose, but you can tie up everything from top to bottom. The advantage of the latter technique is that you can tie larger objects inside the bundle, even hiding them from view if that's your preference. Once tied up, hang the bundle above an altar, door, or window. 

The Witch's Bottle

A fair amount of my professional life involves putting plants in bottles, storing them for when they're needed, handing out jars full of tea to friends and family, toting bottles full of tinctures and flower essences back and forth to classes. It's no surprise then that witch's bottles have a soft spot in my heart. Witch's bottles of old were often protective or vindictive in nature, containing all sorts of interesting ingredients from rusty nails to hair to urine. I remember reading about them as a kid and connecting with just how visceral witchcraft could be - how this art of connecting with the intangible relied so much on the deeply tangible body of the practitioner.

Traditionally, witch's bottles or jars were buried or hidden away from view in the back of cupboards, sometimes even between walls, beneath floors, or high up in the attics. They embody the magickal practice of doing the work and then letting it be, allowing the magick to continue to unfold in its own time. Sometimes jars are made for a short period of need (such as a honey jar for attracting a job) and then the contents are offered back to the earth, while others are more permanent and meant to be mostly forgotten. Other times, jars and their contents can be renewed on a regular basis (such as at the Full Moons or the sabbats). Energetically, witch's bottles tend to act like generators, helping to generate an outcome or a specific type of energy.

I know many a witch who made magickal bottles full of plants and stones in their younger witchling days, often reusing food jars and sealing them up with bits of wax or thread. It's practically a magickal rite of passage to come across an old witch's jar many years later - perhaps when moving or cleaning out a back corner of a closet - and to have completely forgotten its purpose (which I consider a good sign). Whether or not you prefer the "make it and forget it" method or like displaying your witch's bottles in a spot where you can appreciate them daily, they are a wonderful living relic of our magickal pasts carried with ease into our magickal futures.

A Witch's Bottle For Luck

Spring’s energy carries with it a wild quality of luck, where it feels like the wind might nudge you in the right direction at just the right moment for something magickal to occur. A witch’s bottle can help us keep a little luck generator going so that we can increase our possibility of an encounter with Lady Luck. A luck bottle should be full of luck-drawing and energizing components, whether cultural symbols or symbols that you find to be personally lucky. If small enough, the bottle can be carried on the person, but larger bottles can be tucked behind the altar or in a similarly hidden place so that it can do its work unhindered.

I love Lavender (Lavandula spp.) for luck magick. Carrying the energy of Mercury, brightly scented Lavender is a little luck magnet, not least of which because it strengthens our intuitive gifts, essential for moments of luck. The herb helps us to keep calm and focused while naming our needs with intention so that when luck does come our way, we are able to see it for what it is. Lavender is one of those magickal panacea herbs and helps with most any ritual or spell you might be performing, again helping us to cast a wide net for luck and possibility.

A Lavender Luck Charm

Luck is found
in this home
where I visit
where I roam
between the sky
the sea and me
through the land
luck flows free

Other herbs to consider for your luck-making are Peppermint (Mentha piperita), Basil (Ocimum spp.), and Thyme (Thymus vulgaris). Any and all lucky symbols that you connect with can be added to a jar, including lucky pennies that you found while out and about and all sorts of spring flowers. Green stones, ribbons, buttons, and charms as well as magnets all do well in a luck bottle.

Creating Your Bottle

Bless all your objects as described in the above section "Creating Your Ladder." Make sure you have a tight sealing bottle or jar so to prevent items from leaking out if you are using any fluids or from pests getting in. Add your herbs and charms in one-by-one, naming their purpose as you go, and then you can seal your jar with wax or tie it up with ribbon to seal in or bind up the magick. Once completed choose where your bottle is going to live, whether in the house, mode of transportation, place of school or work or buried (especially good for banishing magick, though make sure all items are biodegradable).

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For more magickal inspiration for your folk charms, how about creating charms for the three primary points in your birth chart, starting with your Sun sign? Or a might-do list for the Spring Equinox? I also explore more of spring's plant allies, healing paths, and magickal ways over here.

If you've found yourself wanting to learn more about traditional forms of folk magick, I highly recommend checking out museum archives like the Museum of Witchcraft. While The Museum of Witchcraft has a focus on British and European witchcraft, there is a growing library of online and printed resources of many of the magickal folk traditions out there.

I hope you find inspiration from tradition while trying new things and bringing in modern and future-dreaming sensibilities into the practice of the Old Craft. 

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

📚

Footnotes

1. Blessed be the living memory of big witch brother Scott for laying a solid foundation of folk magick for so many of my generation. Scott Cunningham wrote a number of great books based on his folk magick research and lived experience as a practitioner - Earth Power: Techniques of Natural Magic is a great place to start!

A Might-Do List for the Full Moon

Having written a might-do series for the sabbats, I thought it time to make one for the esbats. A "might-do list" is a no-pressure, full of inspiration guide to magickal practice where you are encouraged to do or not do whatever speaks to you for a particular celebration. An esbat is a (typically, though not exclusively) lunar-focused celebration practiced by some magickal folk in some contemporary traditions of Paganism (most notably Wicca) and witchcraft. Sometimes esbat refers to all celebrations of a coven or an individual outside of sabbat rituals. The term "esbat" was adopted into Wicca by the spiritual magpie Gerald Gardner via the work of Margaret Murray who described the esbat as a time for celebration, rites to aid coven members, and times of music, dancing, and "sheer enjoyment."¹ While modern Pagan traditions like Wicca have their own formalized and beautiful rituals and practices for the esbats, I'll be making suggestions for Full Moon celebrations that aren't tied to any specific tradition. 

The Full Moon is a time of gathered energy, ripe and ready for magick. During the Full Moon there can be a feeling of abundance and openness in the air, of expansion and possibility. Under the light of the Full Moon we can feel untethered from what is "normal" and expected as the night becomes brightly illuminated - not quite day, but not quite the feeling of night either, marking a space between the known and unknown.

How we mark time - by fixed calendar, lunar calendar, seasonal changes, personal rhythms, and so on - can create or contract space for the type of healing work and magickal practice we hope to experience, which is why time is such an interesting thing to explore in our lives. When I talk about magickal practice to my students, I always encourage them to begin observing lunar cycles as a way to not only connect back to ancestral rhythms of measuring time, but to begin to connect with time in a way that feels supportive of magickal practice - something cyclical, open to change, and able to hold space for all of our complexities.

So if you're curious about developing a Full Moon practice, here's a list of nine things you might-do for your esbat celebrations.

image via @whileimout

Reorient Your Compass

The Full Moon creates an opportunity for us to pause and reorient. Our lives are busy and filled with all sorts of decisions that need to be made, things that need to be done, and tasks to be tackled. It is easy to forget where we are and where we want to be living our life from. With Her bright light illuminating hidden spaces, the Full Moon is a wonderful time to reconnect to our inner compass of values and visions, of healing and lineage, of purpose and dreaming, so we can feel more connected to our centered self as another lunar cycle unfolds before us. This can be done in all sorts of ways through ritual and actions of care, but one simple ritual is to write down your values and guiding principles in a way that feels simple enough to recite and empowering to say. An example might be:

I am, {Name},
I call in beauty and mirth,
compassion and patience,
kindness and wonder,
that I may be in right relationship
with my beloved community
the land I live with
and the vision of a vibrant, joyful planet

I also think singing simple chants are a beautiful way to realign energy and help us to center ourselves in our values. Let's say you're a peace activist and abolitionist - maybe you sing the Circle Chant by Linda Hirschhorn, which was originally written in support of the 1982 janitor's strike of UA movie theaters, and sings of circling for freedom and peace.² A song like the Circle Chant, or anything from the song collective Beautiful Chorus, or the vast archive of old and modern Pagan chants, can be an easy, joyful way to feel strengthened in our purpose and calling.

Gather Energy

Under the Full Moon, energy is pulled up from deep in the earth, gathering in swirling pools and rushing lines across the land. It is a time when we can walk the land and call that energy into ourselves or summon the light of the Moon wherever we might be on a Full Moon night. It is also traditional to leave items that we want to be charged up under the light of the Full Moon, including tools of divination, stones, and jewelry, being sure to bring them back inside before the Sun rises. 

Connect With the Cosmic Coven

While I'm using the word "coven" I am really referring to the form of community that you are most called to connect with. As a young witch who had limited access to the greater Pagan community, the idea that at every Full Moon there were other witch folk and Pagans creating magick under Her light was completely enchanting and filled me with a sense of belonging as I sat at my bedroom altar. Working with the cycles of the Moon is not just a personal preference for me and an act of liberation from static solar, patriarchal measurements of time, but a way to connect to ancestral traditions, living communities of the present, and helping to make a path of Moon magick for generations to come. If you have a working magickal group, but are practicing solo for the Full Moon, it can be lovely to coordinate rituals or keep an item on an altar that connects you to the rest of your circle. But if you're still seeking a group or don't have an interest in group practice but want to feel connected to the wider magickal community, you might take a moment to visualize and breathe into the web of community that runs through us all. If you're looking for further inspiration, a few years ago I wrote about how every Full Moon you have a coven.

You may have noticed that I've been emphasizing connecting with people, as opposed to land or spirits or divinities, because I think that making time to call in and be called to community that feels good and nourishing to you is an important regular practice. We live in times where the spell of fracturedness is run amok and we feel more separated and lonely than ever. Creating a monthly practice focused on cultivating community with other people is one that I think we need more than ever and calling in community under the light of the Full Moon is an especially magickal way of helping to do that.

image via @joannakosinska

Develop Your Psychic Gifts

With the energy stirred up under the Full Moon, why not channel that into the development of your psychic gifts? I think a playful approach to getting in touch with our intuition is particularly appropriate for Full Moon celebrations and even better with friends. There are all sorts of ways to develop your psychic gifts, but I wrote about how you can use a tarot deck to help you out. You can also work with plant allies like Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), and Sage (Salvia officinalis) to help support your psychic energy.

Dream Magick

Speaking of developing psychic gifts, performing dream magick at the time of the Full Moon is particularly auspicious. Here is where you can have fun seeking out traditional and modern dream rituals and spellwork, but a very simple ritual is to call in a dream for a situation you're seeking insight on. Using a stone or plant bundle as a point to anchor your magick, hold it under the Full Moon light while chanting:

Full Moon, O Full Moon
Send me a dream
Illuminate for me 
What remains unseen

Visualize the situation you are seeking insight on as you draw the light of the Full Moon down into your magickal item. Keep your item beside or under your bed to help pull the dream towards you sometime over the next few nights. While you might not remember the dream, you may wake up with a sudden knowing or experience a flash of insight over the next few days to help you with your quandary.

A general tip for all kinds of dreamwork: while there are culturally specific traditions for calling in dreams, I find that performing a dream spell in a dreamlike way can be helpful. So wear that piece of dreamy clothing while dancing around a circle of chalk marked onto the earth, your stone held aloft in the Full Moon light, candles burning, familiars purring…

Connect with the Elements

Within western esoteric tradition, each Full Moon is charged by the energy of one of the four elements of earth, air, fire or water. If you do any sort of elemental-based work in your practice, the Full Moon can be a time to immerse yourself in the elemental energy. A Water Full Moon might be a time to do a lunar bath, dream work, and water-based remedies for the cycle ahead while a Fire Full Moon might be spent before an altar full of candles, working fire magick, and dancing up energy. The element of each Full Moon is determined by the sign it is in:

• Earth Moons happen when the Moon is in Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn.

• Air Moons happen when the Moon is in Gemini, Libra, or Aquarius.

• Fire Moons happen when the Moon is in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius.

• Water Moons happen when the Moon is in Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces.

The four elements are central to the traditional western herbalism philosophy of healing and if you're curious you can learn more about that here.

image via @joeehu

Make Moon Water

I've found that making Moon water is an activity that many a new-to-magick practitioner performs early on in their practice - which makes a lot of sense! It's an accessible, inexpensive, and powerfully simple way of connecting with lunar energy that leaves you with a tangible object that you can use after a night of Full Moon festivities. Setting out a bowl of water under the Full Moon light, maybe with herbs and stones added or a silver coin, feels like an old sort of magick. Moon water is versatile - you can use it in lunar baths and in spellwork, for watering plants, cleaning and blessing your home, and on and on. Some witchfolk even make their flower essences under the light of the Full Moon, carrying the magick of Moon and herb with them in tiny bottles of enchantment to use whenever they need extra emotional support.

Learn or Create Your Own Full Moon Chant

One aspect of modern Pagan culture that I love is the preservation and sharing of knowledge through simple chants, sung or spoken. There are circle-casting chants, chants for healing, chants to raise and banish energy, chants to celebrate rites of passage, and chants to pass on wisdom teachings. There are plenty of Full Moon chants and songs out there - Libana's Full Moonlight Dance is a classic, sung by Full Moon circles around the world, but there are plenty more. You can also draw from your own cultural traditions for lunar chants or create your own. When sung or spoken under a Full Moon month after month, a chant has the power to help us move into a state of reverence and flow, of creativity and magick, with little effort. 

Zone Out

While this post is about things you might-do to celebrate a Full Moon esbat, you also don't need to do anything. It is an act of rebellious magick within the overculture of over-productivity and burnout to choose a nonproductive state of being and to bathe in the waters of un-busyness. If you are able to lie down under the light of the Full Moon with no plan in place, just presence in mind, that is a ritual of zoning out of the normal modes of consciousness and tuning into something else. What that something else is is for you to discover. 

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If you're looking for more inspiration, how about a Full Moon tarot spread and healing ritual for your esbat celebrating? You can also find the rest of my might-do lists for the lunar esbats below:

• A Might-do List for the Dark Moon

• A Might-do List for the New Moon

• A Might-do List for the Quarter Moons

I also have a collection of over 120 lunar-centered rituals and recipes - The Moonfolk Book of Shadows - that you can access for free as a member of my newsletter community. 

Friends, I hope that wherever and however you gather 'neath the Full Moon's light that you are held by the dreams of a thousand generations of magick-makers holding fast the circle of love and possibility.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

📚

Footnotes

1. Margaret Murray, Witch Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford Press 1921), 113.

2. Organizations like Rise Up & Sing are excellent resources for finding inspirational chants and songs.

Healing Rituals of the Tarot Court: Pages & Knights

The Tarot Court cards (also known as face or coat cards) play an interesting role in any tarot deck. Traditionally, the Court cards depict people (whether archetypal or relational) in your life, unlike the rest of the Minor Arcana (aka as the pip cards) which explore events, activities, and situations one might come across. In some ways they represent a subdued energy of the archetypal characters you might meet in the Major Arcana - but more on that in a bit.

Many tarot readers of all experience levels find Court cards challenging to interpret, not least of which because the traditional names of the cards - Page, Knight, Queen, and King - can feel unrelatable and limiting. The hierarchical naming of the cards can seem archaic, unnecessarily gendered, and difficult to interpret in a reading when you're trying to figure out why the Page of Swords is showing up for you and who the heck the King of Wands is supposed to be in your life. Also, these cards often have less "action" in them when compared to most of the other cards in the deck (of course, this varies from deck to deck) making them more challenging to interpret when compared to the rest of the Minor Arcana.

And yet, through their both too specific or too vague energy, I love the Court cards. I think this love comes from the way that I was first introduced to reading them - which was less about actual people showing up in your life and more about the arrival of archetypes and the opportunity for embodying energy that would benefit one's development. When the Court cards are approached from the perspective of archetype and embodiment, there is greater opportunity to interact with tarot as a tool of directed development of consciousness. For me the Court cards embody the tarot's ability to greatly reduce "haphazard movement and spiritual chaos" in one's spiritual journey, as tarot scholar Pamela Eakins writes.¹ In other words, the Court cards help us to connect with purpose, untangle spiritual knots in our energetic flow, and learn how to embody the consciousness needed to develop as individuals within the collective.

So how do we connect with the Court cards through archetype and embodiment? Let's start by meeting the Court cards and exploring their structure within tarot. Then I'll share with you a series of healing rituals for the four archetypes of the Court to help you embody the wisdom they represent beginning with the Pages and Knights in this post and following with the Queens and Kings in the next post. 

Playing Cards by Master PW (c. 1500)

The Structure of the Court

One of the oldest forms of representation of people in tarot decks, proto-tarot decks, and the playing card games that influenced tarot is that of royalty or at least upper class individuals. The reason for this is varied but includes the fact that early tarot cards were luxury items produced for royal Courts and wealthy individuals, so the Court cards reflected the lives of those they were being produced for.² The images in early tarot were based on images and archetypes that would have been familiar and recognizable to players from books, plays, pageants, and frescoes.³ That said, the images of the tarot cards may have followed a familiar format, but the details of the Court cards and other cards with people in them, changed with Courtly fashion, cultural differences, and artistic license. This practice of evolving the image of tarot cards continues on today, with the expansion of Court card culture and naming, but the basic structure of the Court cards that inform most modern decks are listed below. I've also included some simple and traditional interpretations of each card.

• Page - Youth, curiosity, naivety

• Knight - Young adulthood, exuberance, brashness

• Queen - Middle age, confidence, vision

• King - Old age, authority, legacy

The traditional structure of the Court cards roughly follows a path from youth and inexperience to age and experience. If you were to only work with the Court cards from this perspective, there's a lot of use and wisdom to be found. We start with the student, whether a child or young adult, in the form of the Page as they are just starting or in the midst of their studies about life. The Knights move into the combination of awkwardness, idealism, and sometimes hubris of teenage years and young adulthood, where there is more freedom of movement to explore the world and begin to formulate and test out one's ideas about what they find. The Queens represent adulthood moving into middle age and help to understand better our vision of a life and a world that we want to be in both understanding our limitations and potential better. Finally, the Kings represent middle to old age and are as much about looking back as they are looking forward, having tested out and determined what foundations are needed to leave behind a legacy while supporting generations to come. Take out the unnecessary gendering of these cards allowing each Court card to be any gender or agendered and you have a system of interpretation and engagement with the Court cards that can be of use to most any querent.

In modern decks there has been expansion around the names, presentations, and ideas around the Court cards in tarot decks, a practice that was primarily born from the (often lesbian and queer) feminist tradition of re-imaging and reclaiming tarot that began in the 1970s.⁴ I love the ways that the language around the Court cards has continued to expand and as I share some of the alternative names below, I encourage you to work with the ones that you resonate with the most, applying them to any deck you work with. Tarot is meant to help us find our story, and our choice of language for each of the cards is one of the ways that we can do that. 

With that in mind let's explore the archetypes of the Court cards.

The Archetypes of the Court Cards

What are the archetypes of the Court cards that we are being invited to embody when they come up in a reading or when we use the cards in ritual? A great place to start to understand the archetypes of the Court cards is to explore the many ways each card has been named. As mentioned before, modern tarot culture has expanded on the traditional language of the Court cards, relying less on a hierarchical and royal Court structure, and more on trying to connect with the spiritual path and life stages of a querent (i.e. the person being read for) that is more broad and inclusive. I've gone ahead and included interpretations of the Court cards by six modern decks to help show you the many archetypal energies that the Court cards can represent. I've listed each alternative name in order of Page, Knight, Queen, and King (i.e. Child is the Page card in The Amazon Tarot and so on). 

The Amazon Tarot ~ collaboratively made by Billie Potts, et al

• Child

• Amazon

• Companion

• Queen

The Collective Tarot ~ collaboratively made in Portland, OR

• Seeker

• Apprentice

• Artist

• Mentor

Future Ancestor Tarot by Alexa Villanueva

• Student

• Explorer

• Listener

• Maker

Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi Prince

• Beast

• Witch

• Grandmother

• Shadow

The Shining Tribe Tarot by Rachel Pollack

• Place

• Knower

• Gift

• Speaker

The Slow Holler Tarot ~ collaboratively made predominantly by queer and/or BIPOC southern US Americans 

• Student

• Traveler

• Visionary

• Architect

World Spirit Tarot by Lauren O'Leary and Jessica Godino

• Seer

• Seeker

• Sybil

• Sage

The Herbcrafter's Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert and Latisha Guthrie

• Hijas

• Adelitas

• Madres

• Curanderas

I work with all of the decks I've listed above and all influence my practice to some degree. I would add the following names for each Court card:

• Page: Student, Scholar, Philosopher

• Knight: Messenger, Rebel (with or without a cause)

• Queen: Oracle, Mediator, Organizer

• King: Archivist, Teacher

In addition to renaming the individual cards in the Court, we can choose an alternative to the word and concept of Court itself, whether choosing traditional terms like Face or Coat Cards, or alternatives such as:

• Circle

• Family

• Witches

• Coven

• Collective

• Community

Having these alternative names for the Court cards means that when I pull a Queen card during a reading I can choose to work with the particular interpretation of Queen energy with the deck, but I also know that I have a library of Queen-type archetypes to work with. In some readings it makes more sense for me to connect with the Mediator energy of the Queen where in other readings, it is the energy of Queen as Visionary that I can connect with. As a reader and student of tarot I encourage you to focus on the archetypes of the Court cards that make the most sense for you at this time and expand on those concepts as you feel called and ready. There are no "correct" archetypes for any of the Court cards and knowing which archetypal energy is calling to you is part of the intuitive process of reading tarot from a healing perspective.

I also want to mention that I've focused on the empowering aspects of the Court cards and less on the challenging energies of these cards - there's a whole other shadow work aspect to the Court cards that is beyond the scope of this post. Shadow work and the Court cards is a post for another day, but is another useful aspect of healing work with the Court cards. If you're looking for more general recommendations about shadow work and the tarot, come this way.

Another way to help understand the Court cards is to compare them to each other and specifically the Pages and the Knights to one another and the Queens and the Kings to one another.  

Yearning & Seeking: The Pages & The Knights

For me, the Pages and the Knights are closer to each other energetically than they are to the Queens and Kings and I think that this helps to interpret the meanings of these cards. You'll find that the Knights and the Pages share a name "Seeker" in some decks and I think this is a helpful way to understand the similarities and differences between these two cards. The Pages are seeking knowledge, but are also seeking to be embraced within a (often learning-based) community. The Knights are seekers, too, but are often seeking to break out of the confines of the community spaces they've grown up in (family cultures, school systems, work spaces) and are more interested in the outward expression of what they've learned as opposed to the desire for an inward drawing of knowledge as expressed by the Pages.

Another way to understand the Pages and the Knights is to think of the Pages as trying to find their place by being in a place (they are trying to learn new things but familiarity is still comforting and being part of a community is a focus), while the Knights are trying to find their place by exploring what they perceive to be "other" spaces.

The Rituals

These rituals were written with the solitary practitioner in mind but can be easily adapted to group needs. Add to, adjust, and leave out whatever you need from the rituals as you are called. I try to create rituals that are simple enough for most folks to show up to but can also act as a foundation for folks to build upon. I hope you always feel inspired to make them your own.

Deck names listed below

The Pages: A Ritual of Stability

Student · Child · Seeker · Beast · Seer · Philosopher · Place
Primary Element: Earth
Plant Ally: Milky Oat (Avena sativa)

Working with the Pages is an opportunity to embody stability in your life. It is hard to move forward with an idea, take on a new project, connect with others, or understand our wholeness without a supportive foundation from which to work from. Imagine the life of a young child and student - the emphasis on learning is less about independent study and more about providing foundational knowledge and supporting the curiosities of a young mind. In ideal child-centered and compassionate learning environments, certain boundaries and systems are put in place to protect and nourish the world of young learners. Swimming lessons, for example, shouldn't start with throwing a child into the deep end, but by introducing children to water safety, the feel of water, the difference between shallow and deep, and lots of play with experienced swimmers around. The Pages help us to imagine and embody these feelings of stability and safety so that we can proceed with the work and play of learning and exploration.

For your ritual, you'll need all four Page cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal Page cards to use in ritual. We will be placing each of these cards in one of the four cardinal directions and if you like you can built an altar for each card in each direction that helps to call in the energy of each Page and/or simply light a candle next to each card. Again, do what you feel called, able, and inspired to do - this is your ritual to support your unique embodiment needs.

Begin by creating sacred space and perhaps a breathwork practice (such as the Tree of Life technique) to help you settle into your body. Set the Page of Swords in the East, the Page of Wands in the South (if you're in the northern hemisphere) or North (if you're in the southern hemisphere), the Page of Cups in the West, and the Page of Pentacles in the North (if you're in the northern hemisphere) or in the South (if you're in the southern hemisphere). Of course, these are the directional correspondences of the tradition I work in, so adjust them to fit the tradition you work with if needed.

Next, spend a few moments setting your intention:

• I embody stability in order to…

Examples of calling in stability might be:

• I embody stability in order to show up more deeply to my intuition.

• I embody stability in order to be more present in my relationships.

• I embody stability in order to support my creative flow.

Once your intention is set, speak it aloud or express it nine times, paying attention to the sensations that arise in your body as you recite your intention like a charm. You're not trying to analyze these feelings or connect them to anything in particular, just let them arise and flow through you as you practice awareness of them.

Turn to the East where the Page of Swords is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Swords:

Blessings to the Page of Swords
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the sword of clarity

Spend some time visualizing and feeling the sword of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the sword feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the sword flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the South where the Page of Wands is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Wands:

Blessings to the Page of Wands
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the wand of creativity

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the wand of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the wand feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the wand flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the West where the Page of Cups is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Cups:

Blessings to the Page of Cups
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the cup of sensitivity

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the cup of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the cup feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the cup flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the West where the Page of Pentacles is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Pentacles:

Blessings to the Page of Pentacles
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the star of tranquility

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the pentacle or star of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the pentacle feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the pentacle flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Finally, pick up each card and place them in a stack over your heart, while saying:

Protected by the sword
Warmed by the flame
Held by the waters
Nourished by the land

Take a few moments to feel these words and energies within you. When you are ready, seal the ritual by saying:

All this and more I embody
All this and more I call to me
By love and will, so mote it be

After the ritual you can either return your Page cards to the deck or set them up on an altar or some place where you will see them regularly. In the days and weeks ahead pay attention to when similar sensations arise for you as you experienced within this ritual and know that you can call upon any or all of the tools of the Pages when you need extra grounding and stability.

Deck names listed below

The Knights: A Ritual of Discernment

Messenger · Amazon · Apprentice · Witch · Traveler · Seeker · Rebel · Knower · Explorer
Primary Element: Air
Plant Ally: Peppermint (Mentha piperita)

Working with the Knights is an opportunity to embody discernment in your life. The Knights are the messengers and seekers of the tarot Court, ready to spring beyond the classroom of the Pages and into the unknown. When the Knights show up for us in readings again and again, they are often indicating that there is an important message being delivered to us or information that we need to seek out. The key to successfully connecting with that message is the power of discernment. There is so much to see and do and experience in the world that it can be all too easy to get caught up in the movement and consumption of information, without learning how to discern and distill knowledge into wisdom. The Knights help us to trust our own inner knowing and find the resources to better develop our abilities for embodying discernment. 

For your ritual, you'll need all four Knight cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal Knight cards to use in ritual. You'll also need four coins - any type of coin is just fine and that can be all the same, all different or a mix. Coins have been used in folk magick for generations as symbols of luck and protection and they'll act as conduits for both of those energies as well as tokens to "pay the messengers" within the ritual.

Begin by creating sacred space and perhaps a breathwork practice (such as the Tree of Life technique) to help you settle into your body. Place all four Knight cards before you (on your altar or otherwise) and hold the coins in your hand. 

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No fear removes
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No pressure blocks
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No river drowns
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No words confuse
My ability to know

You can keep these coins on your altar, your wallet, or in a charm bag that you carry on your person. I like to keep mine in a jar that I shake when I need to dispel unwanted energy and call in some good fortune.

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You’ll notice that I listed some correspondences for the Pages and Knights, including the elements. If you’re interested in learning more about the elements from a traditional western herbalism perspective, come this way. If you’re looking for tarot spreads, I have a few.

I hope that these thoughts and rituals about the tarot Court inspire your own practice and I’ll be back next month with the Queens and Kings.

In the meantime, may your travels through the tarot arcanas be full of illumination and inspiration so that your life may be filled with more clarity and peace.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

---

Decks Shown

A Deck of Cards by PW (c. 1500)
Tazama African Tarot
Amazon Tarot (1979)
The Weiser Tarot
The Herbcrafter’s Tarot
Tarot of the Spirit

📚

Footnotes

1. Pamela Eakins, Ph.D., Tarot of the Spirit (Boston: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1992), 4. The full quote reads: “As such, when the divine tool of tarot is correctly employed, the potential for haphazard movement and spiritual chaos is reduced.”

2. Tim Husband, 'Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards,' The Met, April 8, 2016, https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/in-season/2016/tarot (accessed June 2022).

3. Sherryl E. Smith, 'Italian Tarot in the 15th Century,' Tarot Heritage, July 24 2014, https://tarot-heritage.com/history-4/italian-tarot-in-the-15th-century/ (accessed June 2022).

4. Decks like The Amazon Tarot, published in 1979, followed by a number of decks in the 1980s including the New Amazon Tarot, Daughters of the Moon and The Book of Aradia Tarot (the latter two inspired in some part by Shekinah Mountainwater's Matriarchal Tarot), Thea's Tarot (inspired by A New Women's Tarot by Billie Potts who was one of the primary editors of the Amazon Tarot and New Amazon Tarot), and The Motherpeace Tarot. Some of these decks were collectively made, others by individuals or in partnerships, but all were part of the growing intersections of lesbian organizing, Goddess spirituality, and feminist rebellion.

Into the Arms of the Wild: The Wisdom of the Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year is an annual spell. Every Sabbat a knot in the cord and when we arrive at the ritual feast we can tend to the threads of the year, the places that need repair, where new weavings are needed, and old ones can be returned to the earth again.

The structure and seasonal holidays of the modern Wheel of the Year is largely based on both real and mythical Pre-British, British, Anglo-Saxon, and Celtic agrarian cultures (I explore more of this over in Spiraling Into the Center: The Wheel of the Year and the Lunar Sabbats). I feel relatively safe in assuming that most of the folks reading this post and practicing in some way as modern Pagans do not live with the lands that birthed these cultures. Even if you do, the Wheel of the Year, like most everything in modern Paganism was never meant to be an unchanging dictum from whoever is claiming to be the King of Witchcraft at any given time.¹ One of the great delights of modern Paganism is that it is a religion by and for the people, meant to grow and change as we grow and change, to reflect the many places and cultures we live in, and a practice that is as much a part of the diasporic experience as it is the lands it was first dreamed.

So let's explore how the Wheel of the Year can be engaged as a more open framework to make it intimately relevant to your personal practice. In another post I'll explore how you dream into being your own Wheel of the Year, but for now we'll continue to reference the eight Sabbats while expanding beyond their original cultural references. Much of modern Paganism is about the return of the old ways and the re-membering of traditions disrupted and hidden away - so adapting the Wheel of the Year to meet your needs as a Pagan living in the cultural diaspora of the Wheel's land-based origins is one of the ways we thrive as a Pagan people. We are coming home again to our practices wherever home might be for us.

image via @matthiasoberholzer

The Sacredness of Every Season

The Wheel of the Year reflects seasonal changes on a practical level that help us to connect to the land, sea, and sky, pay attention to important rhythms for growing crops and animal husbandry, and, especially in this day and age, measure time beyond the confines of capitalism's dangerous obsession with work and productivity. 

But the Wheel of the Year also reflects the transition of life that we all go through, from birth and death, to transitioning identities, new responsibilities, periods of learning and teaching, and all the spiritual and emotional experiences that come along with these things. The Wheel of the Year is a way, around every six weeks, to pause, recalibrate, and reconnect with that which you find most sacred in your life.

Pagans are by and large not a faith-based but an earth-based and relationship-based people. When compared to other liturgical calendars the goal of the Wheel of the Year is less about worship and more about re-weaving ourselves back into the world and honoring the holiness of all things no matter where they are in the process of being.² All is holy, for example, at the time of darkest night at Midwinter and all is holy at the time of the long day of Midsummer. How we recognize, engage with, and remind ourselves of that holiness changes from Sabbat to Sabbat but is reflected in ritual choices, spellwork, community work, and more. The holiness of a harvest festival may be recognized by honoring all that has been worked for and achieved in the past year, while the holiness of Imbolc might be centered around the sacredness of vow-making and choosing a path ahead. In other words, for many modern Pagans, we aren't as concerned about growing our faith in our God/dess/es but growing our awareness of and honoring our deeply interconnected relationship with all that is.

Most importantly, as you explore the Wheel of the Year it's important to ask yourself  Why? Why observe the Wheel of the Year (or similar variation)? What purpose does it serve in your life? How does it make you feel? What's the point? How do you need to be held throughout the year?

image via @matthiasoberholzer

For me, the Wheel of the Year serves as points of stabilization, where I can ground and center, and reconnect to what is most meaningful and valuable to me and my life. In the overculture I live in, the Wheel is a radical way of measuring time and feels like an easy and joyful rebellion to choose, that enriches my life and my practice. I have found solace in the Sabbats when my life has felt full of contentment as well as when things are tumultuous - the Sabbats are expansive points of space and time that can hold space for whoever I am and whatever I'm experiencing when I show up. I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on what the Wheel of the Year means to you and why you want to participate in its turning.

When you're ready, let's look at the broad underlying spiritual framework of each Sabbat. I've touched upon the mythology of the Wheel of the Year from a (mostly) Wiccan perspective to give you some mythological inspiration, but remember that this is only one tradition within Paganism that follows the Wheel, and there are as many myths as Pagans for each of the Sabbats.

Samhain: The New Year, a time for endings and beginnings, the third harvest when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. Connecting with ancestors and ancestral traditions. An auspicious time to divine backwards and forwards in time. Honoring those who have departed in the previous year. Making space for the holiness of grieving, especially being able to grieve as and within a community. A time of reconciliation. Making space for quiet and reflection. The death of the Old God, the Goddess as Crone and Midwife of the Dead. The Maiden begins her training in the mysteries of the underworld.

Winter Solstice: Celebrating moments of "a light in the dark" and the birth process whether connecting to birthing offspring, birthing a new idea or concept or birthing a new cultural movement. Recognizing the interconnectedness of life and death, honoring our fragility and vulnerability, as well as the people, places, and systems which help us feel safe. A time of honoring parents, especially those who identify as mothers. The Crone Goddess as Midwife, the Goddess as Mother, the God as the Child either in the womb or being born (the Oak King). The height of the Holly King's power.

Imbolc: Celebrating the spread of an idea, concept, movement, breakthrough. Honoring potential. Honoring the waking land as winter slowly recedes. Celebrating transitions of moving from one stage of learning and understanding to another (i.e. graduating high school and entering college or starting a new degree study as a Priest/ess). The Child God, the Crone Goddess returning to the lands of winter and/or is reborn as the Maiden Goddess bringing the promise of spring.

Spring Equinox: Honoring the lively and greening land. A time for cleaning and cleansing. An auspicious time for celebrating what is re-emerging and re-turning home as well as newly claimed identities. A time for celebrating youth and blessing young ones (i.e. baby blessings, namings, etc). A time of the Young God and Goddess. The death of the Holly King and the beginning of the reign of the Oak King.

image via @jleeems

Beltane: Honoring the Good Folk. Relationships of all sorts, including romantic ones. Celebrating the diversity of sexual identities and the way that our sexual identities change and grow. Fertility of all kinds, including of people, and the land. The holiness of physical form. Connecting with descendants and what traditions we are passing on and creating for our descendants. The God/dess/es as Lovers. 

Summer Solstice: Honoring the abundance of life. Celebrating a time for (re)energizing movements and movement building activities. Celebrating community groups and mutual aid projects. A time of honoring parents, especially those who identify as fathers. A time for celebrating middle age. The God/ess/es at middle age. The height of the Oak King's power.

Lughnasadh: Celebrating the first harvest and the coming end of summer. (Re)commiting to supporting groups which work hard to make sure our communities feel secure. Recognizing what it is we have to share and what it is we need more of in order to thrive. Honoring those who have struggled for the betterment of the community and performed extraordinary feats of self-sacrifice and compassion. The God/dess/es of the Harvest are celebrated. The death of the Earth Goddess of Summer or Tailtu and emergence of the Crone. 

Autumn Equinox: Celebrating the end of the harvest and what will sustain us in the year ahead. A time of feasting and gathering together. Affirmations and further development of personal and community resiliency. Cutting cords with things, thoughts, people, that no longer support your ability to thrive. Balancing what needs to be balanced in your life. A time for celebrating old age. The Old God is dying and the Crone begins to guide them to the Summerlands. The Maiden journeys to the underworld. The Holly King rises to power. 

image via @heftiba

With these broad spiritual themes you can start to adapt these Sabbats to your own life, cultural myths, and seasonal changes. You can explore how you already celebrate the different themes and ideas of each Sabbat in your life and ways that you might want to incorporate others (i.e. developing an ancestor-honoring practice and anchoring it to the season of Samhain). Transform any of the key concepts in the descriptions of the Sabbats above into sacred questions such as "How am I honoring the abundance in my life?" to better understand the Summer solstice. Another comforting aspect about the Wheel of the Year is the way that I feel connected to followers of the old ways all around the world during particular points of the lunar month and solar year - it is a grand spell against loneliness and one that brings me a lot of peace. 

The Wheel is an external reflection of our own internal circumnavigation of our soul's temple. How do you tend the Wheel of the Year and how does it tend you?

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The title for this post, like the first in the series exploring the Wheel of the Year, was inspired by a Beverly Frederick song:

Humble yourself in the arms of the wild
You've gotta lay down low and
Humble yourself in the arms of the wild
You've gotta ask her what she knows and
We will lift each other up
Higher and higher
We will lift each other up
Higher and higher

I hope that you're feeling inspired for your own practice and how you travel the Wheel of the Year. May the ever-turning of the wheel bring you peace and reunion with all that you know you love and all that love you’ve yet to know.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

᠅

Footnotes

1. According to my calculations the current King of Witchcraft is the mildly feral community cat who lives on my street and goes by the name Hyssop (or Hap for short). Feel free to honor him at the beginning of any of your rituals as you see fit until a new King is elected by the mysterious gentleforces that be.

2. The big caveat here is that modern Paganism is very diverse and for some traditions the wheel of the year is very much about faith and the worship of the God/dess/es.

3 Simple Rituals for Your Lunar Return

After the sun finally gives up
the sky to the moon
and my children are dreaming

I sit in an empty, unlit room
soaking in the silky sounds
of silence. My body breathes again.

In this darkness, I am found.

~ Erin Kundrie ~

🌙

While I cannot always tell you what day it is - either the name of the day or its date - I am often able to say how full or dark the Moon is.¹ This hasn't always been so. Connecting with a lunar-focused way of experiencing time while being raised within a solar-focused culture took time and effort, a reclamation of ancestral wisdom, and new understanding of time and space beyond strident, unending linear progress. My initial inspiration to reconnect to the Moon as an important and ancient way of knowing time and space came from the books I was reading as a young witch that spoke of the magick that could be done by moonlight and the lost Goddesses that could be found there. Sign me up, my little witch heart sang! Decades later I've come to know lunar time as an essential part of my ability to feel whole and holy - measuring my life by the Moon allows me to ebb and flow, to know that all things are changing and reforming, that growth requires the renewal of decay, that tides must come and go from the shore

Lunar time asks us to critically examine the impossible goal of eternal stasis and immortality set out by capitalism and kyriarchy, while instead connecting with the liberatory experience of ever-change, of inhale and exhalation, of deep relaxation after deep tension.

Celebrating my monthly lunar returns has been a more recent addition to my practice, but one that I've come to treasure. As I continue to write about lunar returns, I wanted to write about some of the very simple rituals you might choose to do to connect with the energetic ebb and flow of your lunar return (and if you haven't yet, read my introduction to lunar returns to understand what they're all about and why you might pay attention to them). I want to focus on rituals that aren't about too much self-analysis, focus on self-improvement or anything that moves us too far into our thinking mind and out of our feeling body.

image via @boothryan_

Our Moon sign represents a lot of interesting aspects of our life, but one of the most important ways our inner Moon helps us to understand ourselves is by illuminating the ways that we feel most comfortable and nourished in our lives. Of course, there is a usefulness to journal prompts and deep self-reflection to help you get to a place of knowing your needs around comfort and feeling emotionally supported, and these are tools I love, but sometimes we just need to tap into something more instinctual and intuitive rather than over-relying on the intellectual. Getting to a place of feeling intuitive and trusting your instincts is not an instantaneous process - not everyone, for example, was supported in their intuitive truths or had to develop instincts that may or may no longer serve us (i.e. an instinct driven by hypervigilance). So it can be really helpful to commit to a regular monthly practice where you engage in some simple ritual to help support your growth of healthy instincts and trust in your intuition, especially when timed to the empowering energy of your lunar return.

For me, a lunar return is not about manifesting the ability to be more productive. It's learning how to recognize your own needs versus the expectations of productivity culture. In a capitalist society like the United States, the expectations of productivity are limitless which conflicts with the finite resources of individuals, communities, and the planet we share. I think it's important to be cognizant and wary of the ways that we might slip productivity culture into our magickal, spiritual, and healing work. Endless striving for self-improvement can lead to self-care that feels increasingly laborious, joyless, performative, and isolating. This can ultimately muddy our intuition and make it difficult to develop instincts which support real resilience (i.e. resilience that sees rest as powerful and essential).²

Here's my encouragement for developing a lunar return ritual practice: strive for something which feels pleasurable, easy to do, and which feels like a benefit in your life. I know, those are broad descriptors of a practice and could mean many things to many people, but that's the point - what works for you is going to be unique to you. Make your practice enticing to you. Sometimes where the benefit of a practice shows up in your life isn't always the present moment, but the practice is benefitting future or past you. Present me doesn't always want to do my daily meditation practice but I never regret having shown up for my meditation practice once it's over. That's what I seek in any regular practice of mine - a practice that cultivates pleasure that surpasses time and space. Yes, showing up for my meditation or lunar return practice is beneficial to my present self, even if it might take effort in the moment, but it's also a gift to my future self that I'm grateful to receive.

Before any of these rituals you have all sorts of ways that you can prepare for them, but only if you feel like you have the time, energy, and inspiration to do so. Don't let the fear of not doing something "right" or "all the way" - whatever either of those things might mean - prevent you from showing up to the rituals that you want to practice. Can it be beautiful to set up an altar for your lunar return and take a shower or bath before a ritual? Yes! But if you don't have the extra energy or time to do those things, the path to your ritual is still one of beauty, and you don't need to do anything else before a ritual but show up. I rely a lot on breathwork before rituals to help me ground and center and begin to shift my consciousness from the busyness of everyday life to the time and space between where rituals take place. There will be time for elaborate rituals and preparations but do what you have the capacity to do now - it's all practice, all sacred. With that in mind here is a might-do list for before a ritual.

A Might-Do List to Prepare for a Ritual

Cleanse & bless your body

Cleanse & bless your space

Dress (or undress) in a way that inspires you

Build or re-energize your altar

Drink some tea

Practice some simple breathwork

image via @_k_arrin

The Lunar Return Rituals

In a previous post on the magick of your lunar return, I shared three tea recipes that I find useful for connecting with different aspects of your lunar return. They focused on the three themes of reflection, rebalancing, and reconnecting which I've used as a guide to create simple rituals to help you connect with whatever energy you're most curious about in your life at the time of your lunar return. If you feel called to, you can incorporate the corresponding teas with the rituals below and/or work with one or more of the plants throughout your lunar return cycle, but that's only if it feels like a pleasure to do.

Reflection: Sound Healing

Humans are noisy creatures, using sound and the felt vibration of that sound to communicate ideas, evoke different emotions, and create spaces of healing. I incorporate sound and sound therapy techniques into my own personal and community healing practice, and while I enjoy using the tools of sound therapy, one of our most powerful and uniquely attuned sound therapy tools is our own voice. Singing about and beneath the Moonlight is an ancient way of being human which is one of the reasons I think its a beautiful practice to incorporate into your lunar return rituals.

The healing qualities of sound are manifold, but when it comes to the lunar magick of reflection, sound acts like dropping a pebble into a still pound: the energy ripples out, new things come to the surface, and the shape of your current life is felt through the small waves coming to shore. I like to use a simple technique like humming or toning sacred words or syllables (i.e. such as galdr, ogham, bijas, and so on) but sometimes there is a simple song or chant from my spiritual tradition that I'm drawn to. It's not about being pitch perfect or sounding "good" but using sound as a way to explore your current energetic state and needs. I am guided by my own sense of what feels good to me and I encourage you to be guided by your own sense of feel good noise.

What is powerful about an audible or vibration based sound practice in reflection work is that often we feel a need to reflect because something doesn't feel seen, heard, and/or held in our lives. Through sound we begin to hear and/or feel our way home. 

I like to incorporate tea into this sound ritual, placing a bowl or teapot full of brewing herbs on my altar as I sing, drinking this sound infused tea as the ritual comes to an end. After any sort of ritual I try to pay special attention to dreams and sudden insights that come my way and this is especially true with sound work and the way it can stir up hidden depths.

Rebalancing: Breathwork

One of the simplest ways I find energetic balance in my life is through breathwork. Breathwork is a free and accessible form of healing, helping to address the underlying stress that can cause so much suffering in our lives. While I've created a short course on breathwork geared towards magickal folk, I've made sure that one of my favorite breathwork practices known as the tree of life is available for free.

While I practice some form of breathwork everyday, I like to set aside extra time and space to let myself sink into my breathwork practices on days like my lunar return. Sometimes I practice a slow tree of life meditation and other times I just begin to breathe deeply and let myself be guided by my breath to where I need to go.

I love incorporating tea into my breathwork practice, especially when I'm feeling distracted and discombobulated. I'll begin by holding my cup full of tea under my nose, letting the steam help to open my airways and carry precious volatile oils into my airways, and giving my mind something easy to focus on with the scent of the brew. 

A breathwork session can lead into other practices, such as divination, guided meditation, art, writing, and more, or it can just be a breathwork session. Being present to simple practices instead of always being in preparation for the next thing is a powerful way of grounding, centering, and rebalancing. 

image via @shisilya

Reconnecting: Movement

Using movement as a practice of reconnecting to what it is you have hidden away or lost sight of can help us find a sense of self as holy, as Land, and as beyond worthy.

How you move as an act of reconnection and calling yourself home is going to be dependent on you, your physical needs, and your own unique desires. The guideline I follow is that I can move in whatever way I want as long as it causes no harm to me or those around me - other than that I allow myself to move however I want. I try to be led by how my body wants to move instead of trying to move it and more often than not I don't incorporate any music - but that's just my preference, you figure out what works for you.

I think movement rituals are especially important when you've tried to think yourself back home and now you just need to feel it. We're not seeking wisdom through movement or specific guidance or answers (though sometimes one or more of those things become known through movement work), but we're seeking to move as an act of saying "I'm here, come home, I love you, let's take up space together."

Is ending a movement ritual with tea a very sweet and lovely thing to do? Yes, yes it is. I actually enjoy using movement as a practice of reconnecting to myself and my needs before situations where I know that I'll be outside of my comfort zone, and when I'm able to bring tea from the ritual along with me it feels like I'm carrying own confidence and comfort elixir.

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Reclaiming time during your lunar return for gentle intuitive magick remains a rebellious act. 

Through these simple ritual ideas I hope you're feeling inspired to explore how it is you might show up to your own lunar return if that is something you're called to do. And if you're feeling like you can't possibly add another thing to your life, don't worry, the Moon is already showing up for you.

If you're looking for more lunar-inspired wisdom, you've come to the right corner of the internet. Find my original post on finding your lunar return or you can explore my series on the healing rituals of the lunar phases. I can even help you discover your Moon sign and Lunar Mansion and understand your birth chart better. For those looking for a deeper dive, The Lunar Apothecary is my space for helping folks discover who they are as healers through Moon-centered herbalism and magick.

Blessings on your lunar journey and may you have many a magickal lunar return!

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤ Thanks, friends. ❤

Footnotes

(1) Though, before any of you think that this is some sort of holy moon priestess humblebrag, I can't always tell you what's happening with the Moon either, as sometimes the measuring of time and space in any terms is beyond my grasp and I'm just trying to make myself a cup of tea which does not require me to know much of anything beyond where the herbs are and successfully turning on the kettle.

(2) It's also not very fun, all this endless striving, and the Moon has long been a symbol of rebellion against conformity to any oppressive norms including social media driven "wellness" culture.