Ritual Magic: Spells and Rituals for the New Year

Here it is a new year already and while most people are making New Year's Resolutions, magical practitioners make yearly aims as a great way to practice ritual magic all year long. Did you know that 45% of Americans usually make New Year's Resolutions and that only 8% of them actually are successful at achieving their resolutions? A great percentage of those who make resolutions keep them in the first week, 75% in fact. But by the time 6 months have passed that number dwindles down to only 46% still sticking to their resolutions. As you can see the statistics aren't very encouraging for making and keeping a New Year's resolution.

A Yearly Aim
A yearly aim for magical practitioners is a bit different. With the yearly aim the goal is to learn, experience, discover, and bring magic into your life. This yearly aim can change form with each month or with each season, with accompanying daily rituals as exercises. This cuts down on the redundancy and brings new life to the aim. It is important to pause daily or weekly to record results and reflections, noting and appreciating the changes and the magic.

Picking a Yearly Aim
To get started with a magical yearly aim, do some reflection on where you are magically. If you have not taken magic seriously before or are just starting out exploring a magical path, the aim could be answering the question "Is Magic Real" for yourself. You can also ask for guidance from higher powers and beings for some direction on picking an aim. You want to have an aim that is something you can observe progress on, but leave it open enough to explore it in a variety of ways. Give some thought to the wording of your aim as it can make an enormous difference.

One of our students felt she was always tense and stressed and although she had tried numerous practices to reduce the stress, still felt it in her body. She decided to set an aim that would help her find where the tension and stress came from, where it lived in her body and how to deal with it through magical means. Unfortunately, she worded her aim that year as "To observe and explore my tensions and stresses". That year was consequently a very stressful year. The Universe definitely gave her plenty of opportunity to observe and explore stress, which after all is what she asked for. The next year, having learned a valuable lesson, her aim was "I want to observe freedom in my life and practice feeling free". That made a much more enjoyable year for her. The following year was even better as her aim for that year was "To observe and explore the abundances in my life and the ease with which they come." As you can well imagine that year brought about many wonderful things with very little effort. Think carefully about the exact wording of your aim before settling on the final one.

Planning for Successful Aim
After you have picked your yearly aim, it is time to get a plan for specifically what magic spells and rituals or resources you will explore to achieve your aim. Take the example of "Is Magic Real". Here are some examples of the exercises you could pick from each month that would lead you to explore this question.

• Take a different exercise from our blog or article library each month and perform the ritual magic described. 
• Get our free ebook of 10 Magical Quick Fixes and pick one exercise a month from it to do.
• Get the Everyday Magic Email Course.
• Get our Daily Rituals for Attracting What you Want in Life ebook and pick a different daily ritual to incorporate into your life each month.
• Do the Navajo Beauty Way for a month.
• Do a 5 - 10 minute sit or meditation each morning for a month.
• Adopt a moving meditation practice such as the Gurdjieff movements, a walking litany, or walking a labyrinth for a month
• Practice a magical technique that you have wanted to learn and put off. For example, everyday for a month practice dowsing with your pendulum until you have the technique down.

These are just a few examples to get you started. Pick something each month that you can experiment with and explore that will lead you to answer the question "Is Magic Real?" Throughout the process, you want to be sure to take the time to record your observations, reflections and results in your Book of Shadows. This helps you look back over the year, see where you started, what you have achieved and help form an aim for the next year.

Whether you adopt daily rituals into your life, strengthen your use of ritual magic, explore other magical realms, gain a greater understanding of yourself or prove that magic is indeed real to yourself, the main goal with a yearly aim is to invite magic into your life, make it a part of your daily life and to learn to appreciate the process.


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Magical Gifts You Can Give Yourself This Holiday

 While the holidays have become quite commercial and frenzied in recent years, they still present wonderful opportunities to take time off and give yourself some true gifts. For most of the year, we are at the beck and call of others-work, family, and other obligations.

This holiday, in addition to buying toys and goodies you enjoy, take the time to give yourself some real gifts that will keep giving all the coming year. Here are some ideas to get you started:

REST: Most of us rush through the year from one obligation to another, never quite getting enough solid rest. If you've got a few days off, enjoy the luxury of sleeping in. When you fully rest, you give body and mind time to unwind. Physical and mental problems tend to disappear or resolve themselves.

QUIET: In a world of cell phones, TV, and radio, a day of silence or quiet can be a true gift. Turn off the phone and don't invite in other stimuli such as TV. Sit, rest, take walks. Be quiet inside and out. Even half a day of quiet, without talking, can rejuvenate your spirit.

LET GO: Once you've had a chance to unwind, some old issues or problems that have been subconsciously nagging at you may surface. Take the time to let them go in a simple ceremony. Write them down on a sheet paper, appreciate them for the lessons they bring, then burn them. Cleanse yourself by burning some sage or incense afterward.

CREATE SACRED SPACE: Daily life tends to introduce some junky energies into our living space. Take the time to create some sacred space in every room of your house. Do a regular room cleansing or use a sun candle to create sacred space.

GET IN TOUCH: Most of us spend our days in our minds, working out the thorny problems of daily life. Get back in touch with body and spirit. Invigorate your body by moving and stretching, taking brisk walks, or even taking a luxurious bath. Get back in touch with spirit by reading inspirational materials or listening to wonderful, soothing music. Think less and be more.

START DOWN A MAGICAL PATH: Make a resolution that the coming year is the year you will start inviting magic into your life. Or if you already have a magical practice, recommit to it by resolving to perform an act of magic or daily ritual each and every day. We have ebooks, Kindle books, or our Everyday Magic Email Course that can help you keep this resolution easily. Or just pick a different article each day from our blog or past newsletter articles to give you ideas of simple magical acts to do daily.

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