How to Set Magical Intentions for the New Year
Gather round the ancient fire and let us whisper the way to actually make life changes that transform: Intention.
Gather round the ancient fire and let us whisper the way to actually make life changes that transform: Intention.
But how do we craft intentions that actually create what we wish for in our lives?
Intention is the centerpiece of magic, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, infusing traditional words or objects with power and meaning. Intention is also the potency of spiritual work. When I teach ritual practice to folks I say, “anything done with intention is ritual,” meaning we can bring power and purpose to even the most ordinary acts of our lives simply by transforming the intention behind those actions. Intention is a creative act, one with the potential to change our lives through focus and the application of will in action.
Most folks have some sense that the New Year is a liminal time, a place for adjustment. There are many traditional folk practices in my lineages for the new year: The seven day period between “Christmas and the New Year in the Scots Gaelic tradition is Nollaig, and no work was done in these seven days. Instead everyone devoted themselves to festivities and goodwill. There is some thought that the word comes from bannag, meaning feast of women.
On New Year’s night, as in many other cross quarter days, the fire in the house is not allowed to go out. Candles are lit everywhere as a preventative and women use the night fire to bake their bread. This keeps away evil from the subsequent year. The wind is used to divine the year ahead:
“South wind, heat and produce
North wind, cold and tempest
West wind, fish and milk
East wind, fruit on the trees.”
On New Year’s Day the first offering is a dram of whiskey and spoonful of half-boiled sowens for luck (sowens is a porridge made from the inner husks of oats, soaked and fermented). Nothing could be given away or taken out of the house, not even the ashes of the fire.
New Year’s Day is a day for saining, clearing the home, barn and animals with smoke (juniper is mentioned), silvered water, saliva menstrum or wine and decorating the house with holly and mountain ash to keep away evil.
The first Monday after New Year’s Day is called Handsel Monday, a day of divination, whose name comes from sainnseal, a present given in the hand to every visitor of the house this day.”1
All of these symbolic acts reflect intention. The root of the word intention means “to stretch,” so when we craft intentions, we might gather from folk practice that we are seeking a combination of symbolic actions that stretch our worldly relationships and create supports for our visions to become tangible, real.
How is this different from a New Year’s Resolution? Resolutions are also ancient. Some sources believe resolutions began (or at least were historically recorded) 4000 years ago.2 Like many ancient practices we are left with a hollow shape of what they might have been. The word resolve comes from roots meaning, “loosen, untie, come apart,”3 which feels less like what we wish resolutions to accomplish.
Changing what we call our intentions for the new year is powerful in itself. But how do we craft intentions that are productive?
First, it is helpful to remember that intentions are not goals. They are practices, formulae, meaning they need to be repeatable and achievable. The end game of an intention might be a goal, but the goal does not come first. Creating an intention with a bite-sized practice that can begin immediately and be repeated consistently is the key to a successful intention. For example, if my goal is to become physically stronger in the new year, my New Year Intention would be to start weight bearing exercises for ten minutes a day — that’s something I can begin while waiting for the ball to drop, and the action on the intention is the magic. Combine focused intention with action and achievement is inevitable.
The second key to crafting powerful New Year Intentions is to know that intentions are adaptable. If the intention is not working for you, you can change it. Goals might succeed or fail, but intentions simply change. This has been helpful for many of my students in allowing a flexible and responsive relationship to intentions, and a dynamic vision of what successful intentions can be.
A symbolic exercise for magical intentions:
In this New Year Eve (or really any eve — flexible and adaptable as we are) find three seeds (dry beans work well)
a cup or small pot of soil (or a plot outside if your climate allows)
a glass of water
a pen and some paper
Develop three New Year Intentions using the considerations above — something immediately actionable that stretches you, perhaps in the service of a larger goal, something that may be adapted as your year progresses.
Using your own ritual practice, create a sacred space. Bless the soil, the water and the seeds. Make three holes in the soil. Write your intentions on small pieces of paper and scroll them up so they can be planted in the soil beneath the seeds. As you plant your intentions, envision yourself taking action for each one. Place a seed atop each intention and cover them both with soil. Pour a little water over the top and if you are indoors, find a window that gets good sun to place your intentions by. Give thanks and open your sacred space.
Be patient and persistent in visiting your intention seeds, providing them with all they might need to grow. Use this same method for actioning your intentions, let the seeds be a metaphor for your work.
Sometimes the seeds we plant grow, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we need to plant many seeds before even one will take root. This is a natural process, not one of discouragement but one of discernment and direction. As the poet Muriel Rukeyser says, “Not all things are blessed/but the seeds of all things are blessed/the blessing is in the seed.”
Here’s to a reclaiming of the sacred in our lives at each moment, with action and intention.
With love to your New Year Intentions.
Paraphrased from The Gaelic Otherworld by John Gregorian Campbell, a compendium of two books written in 1900 edited with contemporary commentary by Ronald Black.
History.com: https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-new-years-resolutions
Resolve, online etymological dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/word/resolution
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