The Return to Nature

Today most people are disconnected from nature. We live in our cities and inside our walls, safe from the elements but also disconnected from them, safe from predators but disconnected from other animal life. We build lofty towers reaching up towards the sky and send probes out into the depths of space but we forget about the earth below our feet, the sun which gives us life, and the moon who guards over us and provides light in the darkness.

But we’ve started to feel it.

Humanity has been moving away from nature and the natural harmony for too long and it’s time to come back. People are returning to the old ways of celebrating the cycles of nature, the seasons, the lunar phases, and the equinoxes.

We’ve thought of ourselves as separate and above the rest of nature for too long and it’s brought us suffering and crisis. We need to put this silly notion behind us and remember who we truly are. We’ve been struggling to swim upstream when the flow wants to bring us to prosperity and grace. We just need to stop being so stubborn and arrogant and let it carry us.

The spiritual practices that I develop and use are designed to reconnect us with the elements, entities, and cycles of nature. This may make you uncomfortable at first because most people aren’t accustomed to experiencing the elements, celebrating nature, or talking to the planets and the sun and the moon as brothers and sisters.

But St. Francis was. He preached to the birds and the forest animals. He spoke of Brother Wind and Sister Water, Sister Moon and Brother Sun.

It’s a beautiful way to live, but sometimes it seems out of reach in modern society. That’s why I create these rituals and ceremonies. To re-enchant nature and reconnect with nature. To be more like St. Francis.

The Lunar Ceremonies that we’ve created celebrate the New Moon, Waxing Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Moon in a cycle. That’s about once per week for a month. And each one is designed to make full use of the energy of that phase.

Most people have no idea where the moon is in its cycle, they don’t pay attention to it at all, but if you start doing these Lunar Ceremonies you will. You’ll know because you’ll feel it intuitively. You’ll be entrained to the lunar cycle, and you can use the ebb of flow of its energy for your own intentions.

Parts of the Ceremony

Preparation

For any longer ritual or ceremony it is important to prepare thoroughly and there are several recommended steps before the main body of the work, but each and every part is important and should be done with reverence. Even a seemingly small and insignificant act can be profound and transformational if it is done with sufficient presence and intention. So it is important to take it all seriously, but not too seriously. This is serious play. So don’t forget to be playful, but also stay present and keep your intention in mind.

The Temple

It is important to do your work in a space that feels sacred and most people recommend using the same space every time, if possible. Of course, it is always best to be practical and make do with what you have. In my case, I have a limited number of rooms in my home and don’t have a room to set aside solely for meditation and spiritual practice. However, I do always use the same room and I have consecrated it repeatedly with my Rose-Cross Ritual, and that works great for us. That ritual will quickly change the energy in the room and should help to create the sense of contact with the sacred that we are going for.

It is also important to clean your space immediately before the ceremony and gather any materials that you will need. In my posts, I will always provide a list of all materials needed, but if you start designing and performing your own, which I highly recommend, it would be helpful to write yourself a little preparation list in a notebook for reference. It will save you a lot of time.

For example, the element associated with the New Moon is water, so for that ceremony you should decorate your temple with the intention of evoking the element of water, such as items that are blue or green in color, but use whatever works for you. If you need inspiration for elemental colors and symbols check out my post on the Circle of Praise which is a part of this ceremony later on. In that post I’ve created images for each element which contain corresponding imagery and colors, and zodiacal, elemental, planetary, and cherubic symbols. If you aren’t familiar with correspondences and symbols then I highly recommend studying those images and contemplating them while reciting the corresponding prayers.

Ritual Bathing

It is very important to leave all of your worries, concerns, shame, and guilt behind when entering the temple and the sacred space for ceremony, because of this it is usually recommended to take a ritual bath. It helps you enter a more relaxed state in body and mind. It’s also just generally pleasant and will make the whole experience more enjoyable which means you will be more likely to repeat it. For these reasons, I highly suggest doing the baths for at least your full first cycle, even if you do skip them sometimes after that.

I usually bring a candle and/or incense into the bathroom for my ritual baths and often music as well. I like to create a tailored atmosphere to help me relax and release. It’s honestly the only time I ever take a bath so I figure I might as well enjoy it. I also like to add bath salts, essential oils, and/or other bath products to the water. Experiment to see what works for you or use whatever you enjoy for your other baths, if that’s something you do.

Or you can just take a shower. That works too. Just make sure that you keep your intention in mind. Leave everything behind and come out of your bath clean and ready to meet the sacred and divine. Put on clothes that keep you feeling clean and relaxed. You might want to buy or pick out a special outfit that evokes the right emotions and reverence you are going for, or just throw on a bath robe, whatever works for you.

Closing the Circle

This marks the beginning of the body of the ceremony. In most traditions, a circle is drawn in dirt or sand, or with chalk, often marked with candles, and/or holy names, and the intent is protective. It is meant to create a container for the ritual and for contact with the sacred and to keep unwanted spirits or energies out. Mine is a little bit different. Instead of keeping things out, it is a call to action, a call to join in this beautiful act of worship and praise God as all of Nature is meant to do. You are calling to all of the parts of your self and all of the elements of Nature to join you in the work, so that your environments both inner and outer are harmonized and unified. This is an integration circle, a Circle of Praise, instead of a protection circle.

I make use of a large portion of St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun in which his words remind us that the elements: Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, as he knew them, and the entities of nature such as the Sun, Moon, and Earth all serve a purpose, which is to be part of a grand symphony of praise to God. He says, “Praised be You, my Lord,…” through all of the elements, through all of nature. It is a reminder to see the good in everything, even things that may seem destructive or dangerous like fire. It is a reminder to integrate all of the parts of our selves and to harmonize them into a single purpose, praising God.

Since my circle is so unique, I recommend using it for the first full cycle then, if you are interested, write your own or try some other circles out. You can find tons of examples online or in pretty much any book on magic or witchcraft or indigenous religious rituals.

Invocation

An invocation is a prayer, an attunement to a specific way of being, and a call to a deity to join you and empower your work. For the New Moon I invoke an element (Water), a natural entity (Sister Moon/Luna), and a part of the Holy Trinity (The Holy Spirit). Invoking the qualities and powers of each will aid you in your ceremony. The last step started building, harmonizing, and integrating energy for the work, and this step continues that process.

My Lunar Ceremonies also involve ceremonial objects and materials and actions as a part of the invocations. This is because I firmly believe that prayer is more powerful when it involves more senses and actions than simply speaking words. It makes a deeper impression upon your mind. And the whole purpose of prayer is to attune you to a specific way of being. The building of energy, gestures, and words all serve a singular purpose, to transform the individual.

For the New Moon, the ceremonial implement of choice is the cup. It is recommended to only use your ceremonial cup for ritual purposes and nothing else.

Note: Please modify my invocations freely. I don’t recommend praying to/invoking things you don’t believe in.

Divination

Now, I know that a lot of this is going to be very controversial and challenging for a lot of people, especially Christians, like myself, and especially this specific part. Divination has a bad reputation and has certainly been a tool used by plenty of charlatans throughout the ages, but the method that I use is mindful, growth-oriented, and incredibly powerful. In fact, this is probably the most important part of the whole ceremony.

There are many forms of divination but for these ceremonies we use tarot cards. We use a different spread for each lunar phase and the readings correspond with the energy of the phase. They are specifically designed to provide clarity on your goals and how to achieve them. The practice helps us to see what may be holding us back and what we need to focus on to continue to grow. The benefit of using tarot cards for this practice is that it introduces an element of chaos, in other words, an opportunity for divine communication, and that forces us to look at a topic or problem from a different perspective than we normally would. Each card represents a specific mode of consciousness and, when you do this practice, you ask a question, then reveal a card, and examine the question through the mode of consciousness that card represents. So even though you may have asked yourself that same question a hundred times before, this practice will often bring new insight because the tarot cards themselves force you to reframe it.

If you do these ceremonies as a couple, like my partner Heather and I do, then you get even more benefit from this part of the ceremony. This gives you time set aside every week just to think and talk about your goals and your growth together in an atmosphere of reverence. I cannot overstate how powerful and motivating this can be. This is rational manifestation magic. Nothing woo-woo about it. In fact, I recommend learning more about the science of insight and motivation to more fully understand all of the reasons this practice works so well. If you’re interested, check out John Vervaeke and Andrew Huberman.

It is important to choose a tarot deck that works for you and your aesthetic though. My favorite is called White Sage Tarot by Theresa Hutch and it is full of minimalistic but cute animal and natural imagery. It’s perfect for me and my vibe but that won’t be the case for everyone and there are tons of really cool tarot decks out there from some amazing artists. If you want a good place to start, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck is sort of the gold standard deck that almost all others are based on or aspire to be.

Sigil Magic

The culmination of the entire ceremony. The circle and invocation build and harmonize energy, the divination channels and focuses that energy, and this step crystalizes it into physical form. The use of sigils is ubiquitous in modern magical practice for good reason, they’re effective. There are several methods to create sigils and even more ways to use them, and throughout the lunar cycle we make use of several of them. Every New Moon, we create our sigil that we will use throughout the cycle and carve it into a candle.

Opening the Circle

Just as the closing of the circle marked the beginning of the ceremony, the opening of the circle marks the end. We’ve built up a lot of energy during the ceremony and much of it was used during but there are always bits and pieces lingering and fragments that need integrating and releasing. That’s what this step is for. We repeat the same Circle of Praise from the beginning but this time we’ll put out the candles in each quadrant, then pickup and depart.

❤️🙏☀️