A Blessing for the New Year

Hello, beautiful creatures, and Happy New Year! Welcome to 2018. Now that we’re all past the silly season, and those of you who spent a leeetle bit too much time dancing with Dionysus over the calendar-flip have emerged from the pain cocoons of your hangovers, we can turn to face the coming year with a degree of equanimity. And yes, I know it’s just an arbitrary number to measure and delineate time, but it’s an arbitrary number that has real-life implications. In other words, it’s a symbol… and, as both a witch and a lazy magician, I’m all in favor of working with the symbols to hand. After all, isn’t working with symbols something us pagan/polytheist/practitioner types are supposed to be good at?

It’s customary in certain circles to start the new year off with introspection and contemplation, followed by a statement of resolution or a declaration of intent. I’ve never been much of a one for resolutions, but I’m quite fond of introspection and contemplation, and intent—like symbols—is a thing us woo-woo types should be comfortable working with. In that spirit, I offer you all the following blessing, borne of my own introspection and contemplation (and a little bit of divination). I write this blessing knowing full well that some of you may not want it, may disagree with parts or all of it. No matter. It’s an offer, not an order.

So, if it be your will:

Let this be a year in which we all use the time we could be dishing and critiquing people in “the community” to actually do the kinds of things that define our spiritual lives: acts of devotion, working magic, serving our communities, creating change, making art, making meals, making love… whatever. As the radio stations of my misspent youth used to say, “less talk, more rock.”

Let this be a year in which we all refuse to spend time or energy concerning ourselves with how “respectable” or “serious” our customs and practices might seem to people who aren’t on our paths, and instead focus our time and energy on pursuing what fulfills us as people and as practitioners.

Let this be a year in which we all allow the courage of our convictions to embolden us to honestly examine, critique, and live out our paths and faiths and traditions in the best, most honorable manner possible.

Let this be a year in which we all decide we will no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering and injustice around us, but instead choose to take whatever stands we can to alleviate that suffering and injustice, however we may. That could mean marching in the streets or writing letters, serving food in a soup kitchen or donating to causes, arguing with family members or punching Nazis.

Let this be a year in which, whether or not we have to fight what we hate, we all choose to save what we love.

And, most of all, let this be the year that goddamned dumpster fire GIF from 2016 stops feeling so painfully relevant.

May it be so, may it be so, may it be so.

Happy New Year, dear ones. Stay safe, and stay whole. ♥