Tips for Making Everyday Moments Magickal, by Phoenix LeFae
(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)
Every moment of life is magickal, but our awareness and ability to hold that awareness is the challenge. The mundane aspects of life might trick us into believing that regular tasks lack magick. This feeling increases when we have to do things we don't want to do. There are ways to make everyday moments magickal—it just takes a little shift in perspective. That shift comes through the form of ritual. Ritual is the deeply reverent practice of casting a circle, calling the corners, and performing magickal arte, but ritual is also done in the small places of everyday life.
Daily practice and rituals don't have to look like sitting in silence; long, quiet meditations; or a special drawn-out process. So, how do you add simple practical rituals into your everyday moments without the pomp and drama of a fully fledged ritual? Good news, it's totally easy.
Daily Ritual
There are parts of daily life that can be ritualized with just a simple shift in focus and attention. By shifting your energy when you engage in these tasks, you bring more of your spirit and power into them. We all have daily tasks that must be done; why not add magick into these moments?
Bathing
We all bathe. Bathing happens on the regular. Long ritual baths are delightful. Filling a bathtub with roses and salts, lighting candles, and playing soft music makes a lovely ritual. But it takes a lot of time, set up, and clean up. It's not really ideal for daily life or daily ritual.
Rather than worrying about setting the time aside to take a ritual bath, turn your regular bathing routine into a ritual with your intention.
- Keep salt scrubs in your showers and do a cleansing salt scrub every time you wash.
- Take a moment, literally just a moment, to connect with the water. Let yourself feel the water pouring over you. Feel grateful for the presence of water in your life.
- After washing, step fully into the stream of water and let it cleanse your spirit. Notice if there is anything stuck in your energy field that needs to be released and let the water shift it, letting it flow down the drain.
Food
Making and eating food is a daily practice we all need to survive and it is the perfect time to implement rituals. Cook with intention, even if that is just putting a frozen dinner into the microwave. Singing words of gratitude over your plate before eating it will charge it with your gratitude and bring more blessings your way. Gratitude begets things to be grateful for. Make cooking and eating a ritual. This doesn't mean you have to be serious and eat in silence. There is a lot of joy and silliness that can be part of ritual, too.
- Add ingredients with intention, understand what the magickal correspondences of herbs and spices are. Include things that are in alignment with the goals you want to achieve.
- Say prayers over your food as you prepare it and before you eat it.
- Take a moment to honor the food. Whatever you eat had to give of itself for you to eat it, honor that sacrifice with your gratitude. Be grateful for the hands that picked that food, the truck drivers that drove it to your store, the people that work at the shop that help you, and the hands that cooked it.
- Add herbs or essences into the water that you drink throughout the day. Make each cup of water you drink a ritual and a prayer. Chant words of empowering or blessings over your cup before you take your first sip.
Cleaning
We all have to clean up. We wash dishes, do laundry, clean the cat box, and even scrub toilets. Engaging your magickal self when doing these mundane activities helps you to bring ritual into the everyday. This is even more important when doing chores you don't like. For example: I really dislike washing the dishes. When I do the dishes, I use this as a time of meditation. I focus on my breath, I go within, and let myself be with myself. Washing the dishes has become a meditative practice in my daily life. It is a way to bring ritual into the mundane.
Magickal Moments
Try setting aside small moments in your life to work as triggers for magickal moments as you move through the day. Ritual doesn't have to take hours; it can literally be thirty seconds of awareness and focus. If you have a busy or highly scheduled life, you may need to insert these moments into your daily calendar. There are lots of apps both for spiritual work and for scheduling that can help you with this process. Technology can totally aid in your daily spiritual work.
Touchstones A touchstone is like a secret hint you put out into the world to help you remember important things. For example, whenever I put a key into a lock, I take a deep breath. The key and lock is a touchstone for me to intentionally breathe.
Touchstones can look like anything and they serve as reminders for whatever you need. You might pause and say a prayer every time you see the color pink. Perhaps you speak the name of a beloved ancestor any time you find a penny on the ground. Maybe you stop and feel deep gratitude whenever you hear a phone ring. Let your imagination run wild.
These touchstone moments are small rituals that pepper your day with magick. You never know when you will come across one of your touchstones. It creates an opportunity for you to pay attention to the magick that is happening in your world all the time.
Adventuring
A big part of connecting into daily magick and ritual comes from connecting into your part of the world. Get out into your neighborhood. Go into wild spaces near you. Take walks around your block and let yourself feel the buzz and thrum of your hometown. Learn where the spirits of the land dwell and connect with them. What are the cycles and seasons of your living place like?
- Track the Cycles: Keep a ledger or journal of the cycles and seasons where you live. Watch what plants grow and when. Notice the changes in weather. See how the moon phases change how things feel or look where you live.
- Sit Spot: Pick a time to connect with the land around you every day. Maybe it's the early morning or late night. It could be after work or mid-day. The time doesn't matter, it's the commitment that does. Go outside, or look outside your window, every day at the same time. Just notice what is going on out there is in the world.
Ritual and magick are a part of our everyday lives, we just have to be willing to see how they are intwined with everything we do. Yes, we have mundane things to do, clean toilets, pay bills, put gas in our cars. These things may not feel like rituals or magick, but they truly are, if we allow them to be.
We can easily bring more magick into our daily lives through the ritual of living. The big rituals are profound and moving, but it is truly the art of finding ritual and magick in our day to day that brings us into connection with all of the mystery that life holds.
Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2021. All rights reserved.