Special Holiday Rituals

[EmpyreanKnight]

Do you have any rituals or ceremonies you perform on special days, like Christmas, your birthday, the equinoxes/solstices, eclipses, and the like?

 

I don't really have any, altho I usually cleanse my working tools with incense around the first or last day of the month. I also include the reveal and consecration of any brand new deck I want to work with during this time.

 

I perform special Tarot readings on some holidays, like a Months of the Year spread on New Year's, and different spreads on Samhain and on my birthday. Let's not forget the excellent Sacred Days of Midsummer Reading Group that RavenOfSummer hosts on the days surrounding the summer solstice.

 

This Halloween, one of the spreads I'm going to use is the Spirit / Spirit Guide Spread posted by Trogon. I'm currently doing some research on potent candle rituals that I might perform too. Here in the Philippines, we usually visit the tombs of our dead relatives and ancestors on Halloween, All Saints' Day (Nov 1), and/or All Souls' Day (Nov 2). We light lots of candles then, and I guess I'm curious as to how I may put them again to good use.

 

So how about you? Do you have any rituals you want to share?

[Onaorkal]

It's not really a ritual, but there is something that started to be important in my life as of late: stop calling the sabbats by their Christian names. It's out of habit and because society is used to it by now, but truthfully, all those celebrations were by early Christians.

 

So I don't celebrate Christmas, I celebrate Yule.

 

I don't celebrate Easter, I celebrate Ostara.

 

Etc, etc, etc.

 

I try to celebrate most sabbats, especially because I try to be more in-tune with Mother Earth. I don't always have the time to prepare something big, but when I do I like to either do a holiday-specific tarot spread, make a seasonal related-meal or do an appropriate activity outdoors.

 

I think I will add to my list of to-do stuff to start a notebook about the sabbats and holidays and add to it along the way. So I won't have to do extensive research and thinking year after year like I'm doing now!

[Page of Ghosts]

I have a plan to do something for the 4 solstices and equinoxes but so far... I kind of haven't been very good at it! So I should probably start preparing something written in advance as the winter solstice is next and it's kind of always a big deal since it's so dark here that time of year.

 

This year I did actually do good and laid out a tarot spread for my birthday since I do year cards. I was very pleased with that and hope to do it next year too.

[EmpyreanKnight]

Maybe I should start a separate ritual and Tarot notebook myself. There's plenty of time before Samhain, anyway.

 

I hope your Calendar Spread went well. Page of Ghosts. :)