Recently a friend invited me to join a ceremony to acknowledge the transition into a new year
The purpose was to draw energy that hadn't been used in the previous cycle and reclaim its potential in the next one.
There were a number of steps to open new beginnings, as well as steps to show gratitude for the abundance in my life.
I
found it useful as a process of reflection, prompted by a series of
rounds in which an offering of seeds were placed into a fire.
We chose to use chia seed, since there was a large bag of it and this gave a dramatic popping sound in the flames.
The
rounds addressed:
- unrealised love,
- clarity that wasn't used,
- energy for manifestation,
- powers that weren't accessed,
- ancestors who passed,
- misused potential,
- wasted medicine, and then,
- calling on energy, and
- evoking mother earth.
It was suggested that
journaling on these themes would help to instill these concepts within a
personal context and I was surprised to arrive at a series of words
that begin with "A" since it is the beginning of the alphabet:
- aloofness,
- ambition,
- attention,
- allowing,
- authority,
- ambivalence,
- art,
- altruism, and
- awe.
After the seeds had been given we were encouraged to sit quietly in the Dreamtime, where past and future meet.
There we were told to invite these two tenses to stop rejecting the other, allowing timelessness to reconcile.
Then
we went to bed, where my friend and I had restless nights and it seemed
fitting that calling on energy would have this result.
My
friend said it was good to hold this ceremony between the calendar new
year and the beginning of the Year of the Snake as a process of
"shedding skin" to begin anew.
While I am
ambivalent about some of the aspects of adopting ritual practices, there
are benefits in prompting reflection and symbolically releasing one's
history to chart a path forward.
