Get your cauldron out, my witch, it’s time for Imbolc.
Though the promise of light returning has been freshly made by our annual passing of the shortest day during December’s winter solstice, we are still left with the feeling of winter in our bones.
For many people, January and February are the dreary, dark and cold months of the year. Light-sensitive folk might even be prone to winter blues.
But don’t let these winter vibes get the best of you love! This sweet yet simple Imbolc ritual will uplift you so you can get back on your broom in no time : )
IMBOLC SELF-LOVE RITUAL TO JUMP BACK INTO YOUR MANIFESTATION MAGIC
What you’ll need is the following:
a journal, pen and your heart’s desire
a cauldron, aka a pan to boil water in (don’t use an electric water boiler or cooker)
rosemary (dried or fresh)
your favourite heart-warming treat (I love to use dark chocolate with chilli and orange)
about 45min to one hour of sacred time
The Celtic festival of Imbolc is celebrated halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Starting on Feb. 1st and lasting through sundown Febr. 2nd, invoking a moment of purification of home and hearth, the coming of light and the increasing fertility found in nature.
Why rosemary?
Rosemary has a long history of being a multifaceted healing herb (read more about that here). For this ritual you’re tapping into its brain stimulating properties improving memory, its assistance in psychic protection and boosting qualities stimulating your intuition. Besides that, it inspires the love of self and others, strengthening your heart and nervous system.
This Imbolc ritual will bring you home to your heart, helping you realign your visions for the year ahead.
Carve out some sacred self-love time in your agenda, during which you’ll be undisturbed. Ask yourself: What am I longing for?
Meditate with the rosemary whilst focusing on your heart’s desire.
Magic means nothing without focused desire, so it’s essential to get clarity of mind before you sit with your herb. I always like to start with a grounding meditation before I move on to the ritualistic parts, and when I need some extra support, I love to use the Crystal Clarity Aura Spray.
Once you have your mind and desire clear, put cold water in the pan and let it slowly boil. In the meantime, journal on your desire and what it feels like to have that desire as if it were fulfilled in the present time.
When the water is boiling, add your rosemary whilst chanting:
Quickening light and winter breeze
Let my desire be fulfilled with ease.
Like the light just let it flow
As first spring flowers, let it grow.
My mind clear, gaze upon goal
Let its potential flow through, whole.
As I stir my potion, sweet
I know I’m in for quite the treat.
Let your brew steep for 10 minutes, then pour your rosemary tea into your favourite cup.
Accompanied by your brew and treats, envision yourself living your desire. Look around. What do you see and feel? Who is there with you? Where are you?
Take a few minutes to write down as many details that come to you, and from this inspiring vision, ask yourself the following:
‘What spiritually inspired actions can I take in the following six weeks to ignite this momentum?’
Write about five to eight actions down. Let them come from your vision and feeling within that vision instead of your calculating, anticipating, gorgeous brain. Then make a plan for when to execute what – remember, it’s still wintertime. Small yet consistent steps take you a very long way!
Can you sense our human desire for warmth, light, companionship and safety when the days get darker? It’s a very natural thing to experience. During the winter days, we flock together, celebrate, eat, drink, reminisce and chant. Our joy brings light to these dark annual moments.
Then again, we’re often tempted to fill our days with too many social obligations.
You could’ve started your December month freshly rolling out of Thanksgiving. Here in The Netherlands, we start the last month of the year with Sinterklaas. This festivity is similar to Santa climbing through the chimney and surprising all the “good children” with presents. After which, we quickly move on to Christmas.
These days are generally spent amongst family and friends, accompanied by rituals that either focus on the birth of baby Jesus, Santa and his fairy friends, a visit by the Krampus, or non of the above.
When I hear people refer to festival stress, I wonder how we’ve warped the Yule invitation of turning our energy inward and tending to our inner flame to something so external and, sometimes, beyond what we personally desire.
So how can we do both? Spend these moments more balanced and with awareness while still being part of all the fun?
The end of the year demands us to level our inner light and tend to our life force.
This will prevent us from giving all our attention and energy away, so we don’t have to suffer from festival fatigue and can actually accomplish our New Year’s resolutions. 🙂
Here’s why …
The folkloric allegory of the Holly King and the Oak King, who personify winter and summer, depicts it perfectly.
Both Kings are in a constant battle over the seasonal cycles, light and dark, renewal and growth.
In spring, the Oak King reigns over nature, bringing fertility, light and growth. At his peak on Midsummer, he’s overpowered by the Holly King, who in turn gains his full power by the autumn equinox and reigns over nature by Midwinter. The days are short, the ground is cold, and all potential has retracted into the Earth.
But it’s on Midwinter the Oak King is born again. Now it’s he who takes over the throne, and come spring, we witness the promise of his fortitude. At the peak of the Oak King’s reign, the perpetual battle between the Kings starts again.
By creating your own Yule ritual of course! The winter solstice, Yule, introduces Yuletide. Yuletide starts on the shortest day of the year and lasts until the 1st of January. During this time, the birth of the Oak King is celebrated.
This doesn’t mean that Yuletide is celebrated in silence. By any means, Yule traditionally is a lavish, very celebratory and social festivity.
It’s a beautiful way of celebrating transformation and the new Light Year ahead.
Ask yourself: What do I leave behind? As if you’ve been shedding skin in the ever-prevailing darkness that entered life after the summer solstice.
But even more so, what do I want to focus upon? It is as if the promise of light returning can enlarge that energy and focal point. See how your New Year’s resolution ties into this preparatory period?
I love to celebrate this time of awareness by burning a Yule Log.
Since I don’t have a fireplace to light my oak log, I anoint a candle that can burn for at least 288 hours (12 days) as my Yule Log substitute.
Oak is traditionally used during this festivity, representing longevity, strength, fertility, wisdom and, of course, the Oak King. So I make sure to add some oak leaves and acorns to my altar.
This whole ritual is about creating moments of gratitude for what has already come to pass. When doing this, visualise that your feelings of gratitude emit an energy of light which you send out into the new year.
It’s like creating a spell of attraction, drawing in all the things that make you feel even more appreciative. And who doesn’t want to experience more of the things they love?
What you need:
oak log or a candle (or multiple if you want to weave this spell for 12 days)
fireplace or altar with representations of the Oak King
Sit with your log (be it wood or wax), pen and paper, and find feeling moments of gratitude. I like to divide these in no particular order:
home
wealth
spirituality
health
nature
work
leisure
mindset
peak accomplishments
love
forgiveness received & given
opportunities seized
Know that you can tweak or add this list however you desire.
Write down at least one memory you genuinely feel residing in the body for each area. Afterwards, find corresponding oils and/or herbs. One for each life area. Use your intuition. When in doubt, you’ll easily find information about the qualities of herbs and oils online.
Rub the oils on the wax or log whilst feeling gratitude. If you’re working with herbs only, use a bit of base oil (such as olive or almond) to anoint your candle, so the spices stick to your candle’s surface.
Don’t use cinnamon or any other inflammatory ingredients. If you insist on applying them, place them on your altar or use them with caution when burning your log.
If you want to decorate the wax or wood with a knife, go ahead – be creative, but please take good care of your fingers 🙂
This year I am using two candles, which are needed to cover the whole Yuletide. Therefore it’s easy to prepare one candle first, and as the moment of switching candles comes close, I’ll address the second one. But feel free to decorate all your wood or wax in one go.
Be careful if you decide to keep fire or flame burning. Safety first! My candles or placed very safely and in a layer of water. If in doubt, never leave a fire unattended. Snuff your candle (instead of blowing it out).
Gorgeous Being! I hope this message finds you well in these extra-ordinary times. We are all going through significant changes on multi-dimensional levels, and I want you to know you are not alone.
Listen to the 10m59s recording of the blog here or just keep on reading 5min20s.
Many of you have been reaching out in various ways. We talked about emotions and thoughts during this pandemic, family and work, anxiety and stress.
Questions that I’ve been getting the last couple of weeks haven’t gone unnoticed. So let me share with you my “witch tips” on how to stay healthy and strong whilst being locked up in your home.
MORNING ROUTINE
Through the years, I’ve noticed the beneficial effects of having a morning routine. When I stick to this habit, my day flows with much more ease.
Now don’t think this routine is taking me hours. I’m someone who doesn’t take nor have all day to meticulously go through detailed routines. I love techniques that are is easy, accessible and applicable, and if those things help me get the results that I want, I’m going to stick to them – no matter what.
Also, my routines aren’t static. No repetitive behaviour whole year-round. I have a witchy mindset which flows with the seasons. So as I change with the seasons, so do my habits.
But it is times like these (the moments when humankind adds so much energy to a specific type of being and believing) that I feel the need to amp up my game.
So let me share with you three routines that I’ve been practising the last couple of weeks. Just to keep my body and energy-field healthy and strong.
A) Every morning I make myself a fresh celery juice. Sometimes pure celery, other times, I add different greens such as spinach, kale, green pepper or wheatgrass. And a zest a lemon always gets me going.
First time I drank it, which was years ago, I didn’t like the taste at all. Still, I stuck to regularly slow juicing celery because I noticed my skin getting clearer, my energy levels going up, and in the morning I didn’t need two cups of coffee anymore to get me going. This juice works wonders for my metabolism and is amongst other things, high in vitamins C and K and potassium.
B) Move. I used to have exercise-induced asthma in my teens and got used to not moving because I wasn’t fond of using my inhalator for two reasons.
The first one had everything to do with having gone through a couple of intense asthma attacks. Imagine your breath suddenly taken and the feeling of not getting enough oxygen while you start to make this awful squeaking sound while breathing. A sudden asthma attack can be a scary experience that leaves its mark. I did everything in my power not to go through such episodes again.
The second reason was because of the medicine itself. It made me tired AF. So the best thing I could come up with to cope with this situation was not to exercise at all.
Can you imagine I’m a yoga teacher now? I never want to go back to these days of not feeling connected to my own body. I need to move, every day. Be it through a Vinyasa sequence or walking 10.000+ steps (I live at the edge of the forest, so that’s quite easy – though I walk way more when I’m in New York City hahaha).
Days when I don’t get to move as much as I’d like to take their toll on me – mentally and physically.
Movement is a celebration for my body and an appreciation to my body.
C) Since I’ve always been interested in ways to beat fear, I was naturally drawn to breathing techniques. And as a singer, I learned to breathe quite effectively. But breathing was taken to a whole other level when I started experiencing and researching different breathing techniques that were connected to my yoga practice.
Every morning I tune into my body and breath. My breath is my thermometer showing me where I am on the scale of being versus doing. There’re different techniques, and I’ll gladly share more about that, but let me get to the sharing in a minute …
A PRACTICE I PREACH – FOR OVER 22 YEARS
I cleanse my auric field – daily – multiple times. This sounds like a hassle, but over these 22 years of practising, I sure did crack a code.
Let me share with you which tools always worked for me without getting into all the details of how this practice changed the life of this very intuitive and high sensitive person.
Crystals, herbs, incense and oils are my go-to’s. I used to burn a lot of incense when I was younger (which luckily didn’t trigger my asthma, for this was only exercise-induced). But once I went to university and moved out of my parental home, I noticed – with the travelling, staying over at other peoples houses etc. – that the burning of herbs and incense wasn’t always welcomed. Nor was it something that I found practical and accessible.
So I started experimenting with creating my own potions and elixirs. No more smoke, no extra luggage, just some potent witchcraft in a bottle to spray.
I started experimenting with boiling herbs, infusing water with different types of crystals and more. It turned into a practice that now is imprinted in my bones – or maybe it had been all long.
Nowadays, I share my potions in the form of crystal aura sprays with clients, spray them during yoga classes and design special editions for events, workshops and rituals.
Today I’m extra happy for I may announce that this new moon in Aries brings the launch of my very own webshop! And in the webshop, you’ll find amongst other products the special edition aura spray ‘Healing Waters’.
HEALING WATERS
Healing Waters is that aura spray for extra-ordinary times! The mix of essential oils dates all the way back to 1413 CE and holds purifying, refreshing and revitalising ingredients. The healing properties of this spray are supported by water out of the Chalice Well in Glastonbury – known for its healing qualities. And I’ve amplified the vibrations of this spray with clear quartz crystal, moon magic and positive affirmations.
This is a perfect spray to accompany you at the (home)office to keep you energetically fresh and clean, and during the challenging winter months when your immune system can use an extra boost.
If you want to know more, I’ve recorded this video for you in which I share more about: -the Healing Waters crystal aura spray, – the ingredients I used, – and a limited edition Healing Waters Boxset, which comes with the aura spray, a Healing Waters Candle and Clear Quartz Crystal including a gift from me to you. An online 30-minute coaching call to program your crystal. So you can stay on top of your game no matter what!
THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO THIS
I have so much more to share on the topic of routines, consciously creating your energy and tuning in with your body, your mind and intuition.
I would love to share this with you in a free 7-day mini-course.
But before I go and spend hours behind a computer to create this course, I need to know from you if this is something you might be interested in and what it is that you want to learn.
Is it how to weave your own magic? Tap into your intuition. Create a helpful mindset and a healthy body. Or maybe something I haven’t mentioned so far …
Please reach out to me. Just give me a shout. E-mail me or send a message via Instagram or Facebook, and I’ll be in touch.
Let’s get in touch soon, so we can make this homebound time even more fruitful. Because it is when we get to grow and use our inner power on this beautiful planet, we all grow and evolve together.
For now – be healthy, wise and safe. Take good care of yourself and your loved ones.
