Ritual journaling from the New Moon in Capricorn on December 26, 2019

For this new moon ritual, I finally got myself outdoors. Hubby laid out a tarp and a blanket for me to sit on. My original plan was to take a full ritual bath for the first cleansing portion of the night, but I scrapped that idea at the last minute.

I started by laying out a candle, my crystals, and the moon water that I charged during the last new moon. I turned on some music to set the mood and then used the moon water to cleanse myself and my tools before lighting the candle.

The first couple of minutes I just tried to breathe and focus on what intentions I wanted to set. And of course it was difficult to really focus. That is something to work on in the future. But once I got my mind settled down a little, I wanted to work out what sort of commitment I wanted to make to my spiritual practice.

Once I had a commitment of sorts figured out, I wrote it down, lit my incense stick and turned up the music so I could dance. That felt super awkward but also kind of freeing at the same time. More dance in my rituals is definitely going to be a thing.

The commitment I made, which I will likely build on during the next moon cycle is, as I wrote it down:

Until the next new moon, I commit to lighting a candle, drawing a tarot card, and meditating/journaling for 5 minutes every day (preferably morning).

The New Moon in Sagittarius on November 26, 2019.

All of the major holidays – Thanksgiving, Winter Solstice, and Christmas – fall within this lunar cycle so it seemed like a natural choice to make intentions based around those special days.

I did not write down specific intentions, but I am attempting to manifest a sort of childlike wonder about this season and really focus on the little moments with family.

Since I had just received several new crystals, I wanted to cleanse and charge them. I cleansed my little set of rose quartz crystals and my larger clear quartz crystal with sage and then set them out under the new moon to charge. I also received several sticks of selenite and although I did cleanse them with sage as well, I decided to wait to charge them until the full moon comes around.

I’ve been wanting some moon water to use for some things around the house, so I went ahead and found a pretty glass jar, filled it up with water (after cleansing the jar with sage as well) and set that out under the new moon.

All in all, nothing too elaborate this time around, but still a nice little ritual to just reset myself a little bit before the holidays. Now I’m just waiting for my period to come back around. That will be fun.

Ritual journaling from the full moon on November 12th, 2019.

For this full moon ritual, I took a meditative bath. I turned out the lights and used tea light candles and incense to create my space. I also made sure the full moon was shining through the window into the bathroom I chose to use. After my meditation, I cleansed myself with the sage incense before closing up the ritual space.

While setting up this ritual, I did realize just how underprepared I was. It made me feel kind of haphazard going into the meditating, but that ended up being something good – just learning how to focus.

After I settled into the bath and started working on just clearing my mind, I started to have a bit of a panicky feeling. It was like that little voice in the back of my head saying that I shouldn’t be doing this. So I tried to focus on just enjoying the empty space and acknowledging the thoughts that came through my mind. I did make a conscious decision somewhere through the process that I would be more prepared next time. It’s easy to forget to prepare for a ritual, but if I don’t prepare in advance that just makes it so much harder for me to want to get into it when the time comes.

I think what I’ll need to do is get myself a routine going for the moon phases and keep all the same supplies in a basket or something like that. That way, it is easy for me to set up a ritual and the only prep work would be to gather up whatever items I wanted to charge or find a mantra or spell that I might want to do in place of a meditation.

Meditations in general are hard for me because it is difficult to clear my mind well enough. I have so much going on in my head all the dang time! Guided meditations do help and mantras are great as well.

So, as the moon wanes and the new moon gets closer, I intend to gather together my candles, incense, and whatever other things I want to be a constant in my rituals, and plan ahead a little bit more: choose my music, pick a mantra or spell, and decide which day/time I’m going to do my thing.