3 Simple Rituals for Your Lunar Return

After the sun finally gives up
the sky to the moon
and my children are dreaming

I sit in an empty, unlit room
soaking in the silky sounds
of silence. My body breathes again.

In this darkness, I am found.

~ Erin Kundrie ~

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While I cannot always tell you what day it is - either the name of the day or its date - I am often able to say how full or dark the Moon is.¹ This hasn't always been so. Connecting with a lunar-focused way of experiencing time while being raised within a solar-focused culture took time and effort, a reclamation of ancestral wisdom, and new understanding of time and space beyond strident, unending linear progress. My initial inspiration to reconnect to the Moon as an important and ancient way of knowing time and space came from the books I was reading as a young witch that spoke of the magick that could be done by moonlight and the lost Goddesses that could be found there. Sign me up, my little witch heart sang! Decades later I've come to know lunar time as an essential part of my ability to feel whole and holy - measuring my life by the Moon allows me to ebb and flow, to know that all things are changing and reforming, that growth requires the renewal of decay, that tides must come and go from the shore

Lunar time asks us to critically examine the impossible goal of eternal stasis and immortality set out by capitalism and kyriarchy, while instead connecting with the liberatory experience of ever-change, of inhale and exhalation, of deep relaxation after deep tension.

Celebrating my monthly lunar returns has been a more recent addition to my practice, but one that I've come to treasure. As I continue to write about lunar returns, I wanted to write about some of the very simple rituals you might choose to do to connect with the energetic ebb and flow of your lunar return (and if you haven't yet, read my introduction to lunar returns to understand what they're all about and why you might pay attention to them). I want to focus on rituals that aren't about too much self-analysis, focus on self-improvement or anything that moves us too far into our thinking mind and out of our feeling body.

image via @boothryan_

Our Moon sign represents a lot of interesting aspects of our life, but one of the most important ways our inner Moon helps us to understand ourselves is by illuminating the ways that we feel most comfortable and nourished in our lives. Of course, there is a usefulness to journal prompts and deep self-reflection to help you get to a place of knowing your needs around comfort and feeling emotionally supported, and these are tools I love, but sometimes we just need to tap into something more instinctual and intuitive rather than over-relying on the intellectual. Getting to a place of feeling intuitive and trusting your instincts is not an instantaneous process - not everyone, for example, was supported in their intuitive truths or had to develop instincts that may or may no longer serve us (i.e. an instinct driven by hypervigilance). So it can be really helpful to commit to a regular monthly practice where you engage in some simple ritual to help support your growth of healthy instincts and trust in your intuition, especially when timed to the empowering energy of your lunar return.

For me, a lunar return is not about manifesting the ability to be more productive. It's learning how to recognize your own needs versus the expectations of productivity culture. In a capitalist society like the United States, the expectations of productivity are limitless which conflicts with the finite resources of individuals, communities, and the planet we share. I think it's important to be cognizant and wary of the ways that we might slip productivity culture into our magickal, spiritual, and healing work. Endless striving for self-improvement can lead to self-care that feels increasingly laborious, joyless, performative, and isolating. This can ultimately muddy our intuition and make it difficult to develop instincts which support real resilience (i.e. resilience that sees rest as powerful and essential).²

Here's my encouragement for developing a lunar return ritual practice: strive for something which feels pleasurable, easy to do, and which feels like a benefit in your life. I know, those are broad descriptors of a practice and could mean many things to many people, but that's the point - what works for you is going to be unique to you. Make your practice enticing to you. Sometimes where the benefit of a practice shows up in your life isn't always the present moment, but the practice is benefitting future or past you. Present me doesn't always want to do my daily meditation practice but I never regret having shown up for my meditation practice once it's over. That's what I seek in any regular practice of mine - a practice that cultivates pleasure that surpasses time and space. Yes, showing up for my meditation or lunar return practice is beneficial to my present self, even if it might take effort in the moment, but it's also a gift to my future self that I'm grateful to receive.

Before any of these rituals you have all sorts of ways that you can prepare for them, but only if you feel like you have the time, energy, and inspiration to do so. Don't let the fear of not doing something "right" or "all the way" - whatever either of those things might mean - prevent you from showing up to the rituals that you want to practice. Can it be beautiful to set up an altar for your lunar return and take a shower or bath before a ritual? Yes! But if you don't have the extra energy or time to do those things, the path to your ritual is still one of beauty, and you don't need to do anything else before a ritual but show up. I rely a lot on breathwork before rituals to help me ground and center and begin to shift my consciousness from the busyness of everyday life to the time and space between where rituals take place. There will be time for elaborate rituals and preparations but do what you have the capacity to do now - it's all practice, all sacred. With that in mind here is a might-do list for before a ritual.

A Might-Do List to Prepare for a Ritual

Cleanse & bless your body

Cleanse & bless your space

Dress (or undress) in a way that inspires you

Build or re-energize your altar

Drink some tea

Practice some simple breathwork

image via @_k_arrin

The Lunar Return Rituals

In a previous post on the magick of your lunar return, I shared three tea recipes that I find useful for connecting with different aspects of your lunar return. They focused on the three themes of reflection, rebalancing, and reconnecting which I've used as a guide to create simple rituals to help you connect with whatever energy you're most curious about in your life at the time of your lunar return. If you feel called to, you can incorporate the corresponding teas with the rituals below and/or work with one or more of the plants throughout your lunar return cycle, but that's only if it feels like a pleasure to do.

Reflection: Sound Healing

Humans are noisy creatures, using sound and the felt vibration of that sound to communicate ideas, evoke different emotions, and create spaces of healing. I incorporate sound and sound therapy techniques into my own personal and community healing practice, and while I enjoy using the tools of sound therapy, one of our most powerful and uniquely attuned sound therapy tools is our own voice. Singing about and beneath the Moonlight is an ancient way of being human which is one of the reasons I think its a beautiful practice to incorporate into your lunar return rituals.

The healing qualities of sound are manifold, but when it comes to the lunar magick of reflection, sound acts like dropping a pebble into a still pound: the energy ripples out, new things come to the surface, and the shape of your current life is felt through the small waves coming to shore. I like to use a simple technique like humming or toning sacred words or syllables (i.e. such as galdr, ogham, bijas, and so on) but sometimes there is a simple song or chant from my spiritual tradition that I'm drawn to. It's not about being pitch perfect or sounding "good" but using sound as a way to explore your current energetic state and needs. I am guided by my own sense of what feels good to me and I encourage you to be guided by your own sense of feel good noise.

What is powerful about an audible or vibration based sound practice in reflection work is that often we feel a need to reflect because something doesn't feel seen, heard, and/or held in our lives. Through sound we begin to hear and/or feel our way home. 

I like to incorporate tea into this sound ritual, placing a bowl or teapot full of brewing herbs on my altar as I sing, drinking this sound infused tea as the ritual comes to an end. After any sort of ritual I try to pay special attention to dreams and sudden insights that come my way and this is especially true with sound work and the way it can stir up hidden depths.

Rebalancing: Breathwork

One of the simplest ways I find energetic balance in my life is through breathwork. Breathwork is a free and accessible form of healing, helping to address the underlying stress that can cause so much suffering in our lives. While I've created a short course on breathwork geared towards magickal folk, I've made sure that one of my favorite breathwork practices known as the tree of life is available for free.

While I practice some form of breathwork everyday, I like to set aside extra time and space to let myself sink into my breathwork practices on days like my lunar return. Sometimes I practice a slow tree of life meditation and other times I just begin to breathe deeply and let myself be guided by my breath to where I need to go.

I love incorporating tea into my breathwork practice, especially when I'm feeling distracted and discombobulated. I'll begin by holding my cup full of tea under my nose, letting the steam help to open my airways and carry precious volatile oils into my airways, and giving my mind something easy to focus on with the scent of the brew. 

A breathwork session can lead into other practices, such as divination, guided meditation, art, writing, and more, or it can just be a breathwork session. Being present to simple practices instead of always being in preparation for the next thing is a powerful way of grounding, centering, and rebalancing. 

image via @shisilya

Reconnecting: Movement

Using movement as a practice of reconnecting to what it is you have hidden away or lost sight of can help us find a sense of self as holy, as Land, and as beyond worthy.

How you move as an act of reconnection and calling yourself home is going to be dependent on you, your physical needs, and your own unique desires. The guideline I follow is that I can move in whatever way I want as long as it causes no harm to me or those around me - other than that I allow myself to move however I want. I try to be led by how my body wants to move instead of trying to move it and more often than not I don't incorporate any music - but that's just my preference, you figure out what works for you.

I think movement rituals are especially important when you've tried to think yourself back home and now you just need to feel it. We're not seeking wisdom through movement or specific guidance or answers (though sometimes one or more of those things become known through movement work), but we're seeking to move as an act of saying "I'm here, come home, I love you, let's take up space together."

Is ending a movement ritual with tea a very sweet and lovely thing to do? Yes, yes it is. I actually enjoy using movement as a practice of reconnecting to myself and my needs before situations where I know that I'll be outside of my comfort zone, and when I'm able to bring tea from the ritual along with me it feels like I'm carrying own confidence and comfort elixir.

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Reclaiming time during your lunar return for gentle intuitive magick remains a rebellious act. 

Through these simple ritual ideas I hope you're feeling inspired to explore how it is you might show up to your own lunar return if that is something you're called to do. And if you're feeling like you can't possibly add another thing to your life, don't worry, the Moon is already showing up for you.

If you're looking for more lunar-inspired wisdom, you've come to the right corner of the internet. Find my original post on finding your lunar return or you can explore my series on the healing rituals of the lunar phases. I can even help you discover your Moon sign and Lunar Mansion and understand your birth chart better. For those looking for a deeper dive, The Lunar Apothecary is my space for helping folks discover who they are as healers through Moon-centered herbalism and magick.

Blessings on your lunar journey and may you have many a magickal lunar return!

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤ Thanks, friends. ❤

Footnotes

(1) Though, before any of you think that this is some sort of holy moon priestess humblebrag, I can't always tell you what's happening with the Moon either, as sometimes the measuring of time and space in any terms is beyond my grasp and I'm just trying to make myself a cup of tea which does not require me to know much of anything beyond where the herbs are and successfully turning on the kettle.

(2) It's also not very fun, all this endless striving, and the Moon has long been a symbol of rebellion against conformity to any oppressive norms including social media driven "wellness" culture.

Creating a Lunar Healing Practice That Actually Works for You

If you've found yourself here, reading these words, it is likely that you're interested in some sort of Moon-based practice. Maybe you've always wanted to hold Full Moon rituals every month or want to explore the ebb and flow of time from a more lunar perspective. Perhaps you've heard about the benefits of working with the Moon when it comes to creating healing and wellness in your life or you've tried to have a lunar practice before and got bored or overwhelmed or some other stumbling block appeared on your path. Whatever has drawn you here, I hope to spend some time with you helping you explore your unique needs for a lunar practice and ways to create one that you'll actually show up to on a regular basis (whatever "regular" means to you). 

I'll start by suggesting some self-inquiry practices (i.e. asking you a question that you can write about or meditate on), help you figure out the structure that'll best support your practice, and then share some tools that I think are useful when it comes to supporting a lunar practice.

Ready? Let's start with the all important why.

The Desire for a Lunar Healing Practice

Before we're even able to start a new practice, an important first step is to know your "why" for wanting to make an effort to show up in the first place. Defining your desire for a practice helps you to recognize what needs are most present in your life as well as help you to connect with dreams and visions of your own becoming. Knowing our desire helps to motivate us to show up for our practice but it also helps us to shape what our practice might look like.

Now, some of you might be getting ready to scroll away or skip over this section because you feel like you know your why already and don't need to define it again or you want to get to the good stuff. But I'm going to encourage you to keep on reading and to spend some time answering the one question I propose about finding your why. 

​​I'll be honest with you - when I have taken courses and come across writing prompts or questions to consider during meditation I have found myself on more than one occasion hesitating to do them. I would tell myself that I wanted to get to the easy-to-measure practical stuff or I've asked myself a question like that before so I didn't need to do it again. 

However, I've never regretted actually making time to practice self-inquiry, especially through writing, and the one thing that helped me show up to the practice was making it into a special ritual. I make myself a cozy cup of tea, I grab something nourishing to eat, and light a candle. Sometimes I pull out a collection of colorful pens, but usually rely on a trusted favorite black ink pen as a favorite tool. Often I like to hold a stone in my hand for a few quiet moments, something that helps ground me and connect me to my edges, calling myself back home again to this moment and this place. Doing these things in a ritual manner starts to wake up the curious part of me that's interested in being asked questions and answering them in turn.

So I hope you'll stick with me and take time either now or later to participate in the lunar magick that is self inquiry.

Deck shown is Lilifer Tarot by Marion Constentin

Everybody's why is going to be different, though there are certainly similar needs that show up again and again when we're talking about Moon magick and healing work. I've gone ahead and listed out examples of desires underlying a need for lunar practice below to help inspire your own self inquiry.

• I want to connect more deeply with lunar time as a way to break out of habits of overwork.

• I want to awaken my intuitive gifts.

• I hope to feel connected again to ancestral practices through connecting with the lunar calendar.

• I want to dedicate time each month just for me and my spiritual practice.

• I want to explore my inner world through shadow work guided by the Moon.

• I feel called to develop my skills as a healer and I feel that a lunar practice would help me.

• I feel called to the Moon and I want to understand why.

• I want to gather together with my magickal friends for a Moon ritual each month.

• I am working on creating feelings of wholeness in my life and the Moon feels like an appropriate symbol to help guide me.

Ready to explore your own why? You might have some very clear reasons or they may be more vague feelings, but wherever you're at in defining your desire, I encourage you to go ahead and answer the following question, whether spoken aloud, considered in meditation, or written down:

Why do I want a lunar healing practice?

Remember, no one is going to read or hear your answer to the above question unless you choose to share it (and you really don't need to share it unless you're called to share it with someone you love and trust). It's time to be honest with yourself and try to move out of the place, as much as you can, of comparison and performing-for-others-first space that has been hypercharged in our culture through social media, including amongst magickal practitioners. Get inspired by the magickal world, but don't get lost in the smoke and mirrors of the online world. In fact, being intentional and (at least initially) private about our desires around a lunar healing practice is in itself lunar healing work.

Working with the Moon is, in part, a process of understanding of our consciousness and subconscious realms beyond expectations of culture and peers, of trends and institutions in order to be able to show up to ourselves and in community as our ever-whole, ever-changing lunar self.

Once you have your why, let's talk about creating a structure that'll honor the rhythm of your needs, the ebb and flow of your magick.

Deck shown is The Morgan-Greer Tarot by Bill F. Greer

The Circle That Supports Us

Within the magickal communities that I belong to, the most often used symbol of magickal space is the circle. Never-ending and all encompassing, at the beginning of rituals and gatherings, special care and attention is placed on creating (or really, recognizing) the holiness of the time and space we're in. Sometimes these circle preparations are longer than the actual ritual itself, which is a good indication for how a successful magickal practice, including a lunar healing one, might be structured. 

Being intentional and following our desires when it comes to creating a circle or structure for your practice to thrive in is important if you want to develop one that is long-term and sustainable. Below I've listed some questions to help you to define a structure for your practice that'll best support you. There are broad and general questions, but you can use many of them as starting points for deeper inquiries (i.e. you don't have a lot of time for a lunar practice as your life is right now, but you want to make big changes to your life to make more time, and want to ask yourself what sort of effort that'll take).

• When you imagine a lunar healing practice, what does it look like to you? How does it make you feel?

• What do you imagine achieving, realizing, releasing or other experience through a lunar healing practice?

• How much time can you, reasonably and without hardship, make for your practice right now?

• Where do you want to practice and what sort of physical space do you have for your practice?

• What lunar phase do you feel called to work with? Learn more about the healing energies of the Dark Moon, New Moon, Waxing Quarter Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.

• What tools do you feel called to incorporate into your lunar healing practice, such as plant allies, a divination practice or devotional work with deity?

Let's start to put this all together by imagining that our friend, Magnolia, is excited about starting their own lunar healing practice. They are feeling called to this practice because they really want to develop their intuition after years of feeling like they kinda understand it, but are now interested in being intentional in their explorations. They feel like their intuition was dismissed a lot as a child and young adult which has led them to not listen to their intuition as much as they would like to. Magnolia wants to incorporate tarot into their lunar healing practice because they've been reading the cards for about a year and want to be able to rely less on their tarot books and more on their intuition when it comes to interpretations. 

Magnolia is called to work with the Full Moon during a monthly ritual. They made space in their bedroom for a little altar that they have already started meditating at in the mornings. When they were doing research on Moon rituals, they came across an old book by Margot Adler called Drawing Down the Moon and the cover inspired them so they've added a picture of it to their altar. (1) Magnolia decides to start with a simple structure for their monthly Full Moon ritual:

• A simple ritual to create sacred space based traditions from their African and Irish heritage. 

• A short meditation to awaken their intuition.

• A simple tarot spread where they won't read from their tarot book at all, but only interpret the cards intuitively. They are thinking of doing a tarot spread based on the sign the Moon is in (i.e. a Aries spread for an Aries Full Moon and so on), but they're going to be flexible about it and not stress too much over finding the "right" spread.

• Practice one psychic development game with the tarot.

• A few minutes to journal about their experiences.

• Closing up the space.

Through stating their desire and considering what it is that they hope to experience (re-awakening their intuition), Magnolia has created a very sweet and simple lunar practice. There are no fancy tools, just the items that they already have. They dream of being able to perform their Full Moon ritual on a beach like the image from Drawing Down the Moon, but that is something that they hope to draw towards them as they work with the Moon each month. There is plenty of space for them to innovate, add to or subtract from their practice as time and energy allows and mostly they feel inspired. Having a Moon altar in their room means that they get to see and be reminded of their intention every day, creating a path of connection between one Full Moon to the next. 

Magnolia is not trying to observe all the Moon phases every month (which would be every night because the Moon is always changing into a new phase) or trying to practice a multi-hour long ritual every New and Full Moon complete with an herbal bath consisting of dozens of herbs, three tarot spreads, thirteen candles that they hand-dip themselves each fortnight, and an elaborate ritual that includes a interpretative dance and costume change halfway through. Now, I'm not saying that this is not going to be the way that some of you want to practice, but for most of us this sort of effort is not sustainable for the long run and part of being in practice is being able to maintain a practice. Remember, a personal lunar practice is about being able to show up, not show off or be beholden to the expectations of others. (2) Good questions to ask yourself when you're developing your outline are:

• Is this useful?

• Will I be able to show up for this practice with as little hindrance as possible?

• Do I actually want to do what I'm proposing?

What would the outline of your lunar healing practice look like? Go ahead and take some time to write it down now. If you like you can start with your most elaborate dreams of a lunar practice and then distill that into something that is much more achievable for you in this time and space. But like Magnolia, with their picture of Drawing Down the Moon on the altar, you can incorporate affirming and aspirational images to your practice space to help you feel inspired.

To help spark your inspiration and imagination, I've listed types of lunar healing practices that you might want to try or make your own below:

• Cast a tarot spread each month during the Moon phase of your choice. I've created tarot spreads for the Dark, New, Waxing Quarter, Full, and Waning Quarter Moon phases.

• Take a monthly bath during the Moon phase of your choice each month, perhaps incorporating sea salt and/or lunar herbs into the water.

• Perform simple rituals of healing.

• Observe your monthly lunar return in a special way.

• Commit to learning a particular magickal skill at a certain lunar phase each month (i.e. crystal divination, trancework, charm making, psychic development and so on).

• Dance, howl, and sing under the Moonlight.

• Learn about and engage with lunar deities.

• Moon bathe (i.e. get outside under the light of the Moon, preferably with some bare skin exposed) as often as you can and are called to do.

Hopefully at this point you're starting to form a clearer idea of what it is your lunar practice might look like and feel like. Next, I want to introduce you to a few useful tools to support your practice.

Deck shown is The Natural Ink Tarot by Martha Miller

Useful Tools for Your Lunar Practice

Writing down your lunar practice plans - whether in a planner, on a calendar, in your journal or book of shadows, or on a note stuck somewhere you'll see it all the time - is one obvious, simple, and useful way to show up for your practice. You can even choose to have a special notebook reserved for writing down reflections, tarot spreads, dreams, and rituals all relating to your lunar healing practice, but you can also just use what you have available (like a current journal - use a different color ink to help you easily find entries about your lunar healing practice - or a notes app on your phone).

Find a way to keep track of the phases of the Moon. The cheapest, (often) easiest, and most ancient way is to look outside up at the sky to see what phase the Moon is in. Now, light pollution and limited access to safe spaces to Moongaze might restrict your ability to do this, but actually being able to observe the Moon in the sky whenever you can (or being under Moon light and dark whether or not you're able to physically see the Moon), helps us to connect with the very old parts of ourselves and our species that have been watching the Moon for millenia. Of course, there are apps and websites that help us learn even more about the lunar phases, signs, and mansions that the Moon is in and these are a useful addition to physical observation. Astroseek provides a free and comprehensive Moon calendar and there are plenty of other apps that you can find for your devices. For my own practice, I like to use the We'Moon planner for helping me track lunar and celestial rhythms. 

For those of you trying to find your way back into practice after a fallow period or who are struggling to reconnect with your magick, might I suggest some pageantry? I know I warned against performing-for-the-other, but we can still perform for ourselves. Sometimes we don't feel able to show up to a practice because we're struggling to connect with someone we were before or we can't yet imagine what we're becoming. Perhaps we're struggling with feeling worthy of our magick or what the meaning of having a lunar or any sort of practice is. I feel you. Here is where we can practice a bit of ancient and effective magick: faking it til you make it. Get dressed up, create a soundtrack for your ritual, step into the role of a confident healer / witch / priest/ess, and perform. Stir your tea mug as if you're the Great Goddess Herself stirring the cauldron of life and death and rebirth. Swirl your skirt, draw sigils on your jeans, pretend to be an old hag of the wood who is deeply enamored with their own sense of curmudgeonly self. Speak your whole ritual in "ye olden english" and let a character of your own creation show up to the ritual first. It can be silly, but all ritual is silly and strange to some degree, and if it helps you to show up to a practice that you really want to show up to, it's not just silly but a very effective form of magick.

Here are a final few questions to help you discover the desire of your practice:

• Who do I hope to become and/or feel through my lunar practice?

• What do I hope to call home to myself through my lunar practice?

• Where do I want to go with my lunar practice?

I hope you're feeling inspired and like you have some tools and ways of thinking about your lunar healing practice that'll help you show up to your practice. Through working with the Moon I hope you are able to know yourself as always whole and always changing and that you're able to set up practices in your life that make space for all of you to show up however you want and need to.

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Discovering your monthly lunar return can be a very sweet way of starting a lunar healing practice. Or you might spend a year observing the lunar sabbats. If you're interested in learning more ways of including tarot in your healing practice, come this way.

There are so many ways to create a lunar healing practice that is all your own. For those of you called to learn more about your unique gifts as a healer through lunar-based rhythms and rituals, you're invited to join me in The Lunar Apothecary.

Wherever your journey with the Moon takes you I hope that helps you spiral home again and again to your own wild wisdom and the ways you are deeply interconnected with your community.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Footnotes

(1) For my beloved readers who have balked at the thought of Drawing Down the Moon considered an "old" book by the current generation of young magickal folk, it was first published in 1979 which is 43 years ago and is sort of the equivalent of reading Dion Fortune's books in the 1990s (which were considered "old" books at the time by school age witches like myself). Seeing the new books I read as a young witch being touted as "vintage" by the younger generation is the main way that I recognize that I am becoming increasingly (thankfully) old. 

(2) Public ritual performances, on the other hand, can be a great time to show off!