New Year's Ritual Bonfire

In addition to your personal New Year’s ritual with the significant people in your life, I recommend the Mayan Fire Ceremony as a powerful way to bring positive change of the New Year into your life.

The Mayan Fire Ceremony was considered to open a door or portal into the spirit world that held the promise of receiving the blessings of spirit—love, healing, prosperity, peace, and anything you need for personal transformation. This ritual is also an opportunity to pay respects and make homage to your ancestors and loved ones you have lost. For this reason alone, I suggest enacting the Mayan Fire Ceremony: our culture is losing the important connection to the older people in our lives. Involving them in the rituals, ceremonies, and passages of our lives could heal a cultural rift and bring deep wisdom to all. Mayan shamans could “read” the fire in a divinatory fashion, and I hear that some modern metaphysicians can do the same. If you are fortunate enough to know anyone with such skills, invite them to your fire ceremony to share what they divine from the flames.

January 1—Mayan Fire Ceremony

What you need:

Candles in the following colors: red, yellow, green, blue, white, and black

Herbs: tobacco, rosemary, lavender, cedar, sage, and rose petals

Incense: copal, myrrh, or any resin-based incense

2 cups sugar

1 chocolate bar per person

Bells, rattles, drums, and other noisemakers

A firepot, fireplace, or safe place for an outdoor fire, paper for your intention

The candle colors represent the six directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down (or sky and earth). They also represent the different people of the world.

Gather your friends together at dusk on New Year’s Day and ask them to bring a colored candle (assign them a color), a noisemaker, and an open mind. Ask them also to write out what they want to purge from their life and bring the paper into the circle. The Mayan Fire Ceremony serves to bring positive new influences into our lives and also to dispel what no longer serves for good. This “letting go” can be anything. For me, one year ago, it was cancer, and this year it was too much clutter. For you, it could be an unhealthy relationship, a job that makes you miserable, or a cramped apartment.

Here are the steps to the ritual:

1.     Build a fire at 5:00pm and have it burning brightly as your guests arrive. Place a big bowl of herbs, flower petals, and incense near the fire.

1.     Create a circle around the fire and ask the eldest in the group to slowly draw a circle of sugar around the fire.

2.     When the elder has moved back into place in the circle, each person should light his or her candles from the fire and place it in the sugar circle, creating a mandala.

3.     Ask the youngest person to lead the group in this chant:
My life is my own
I must but choose to be better,
Vital breath of life I breathe
No more pain and strife!
Wise ones, bring us health and life
Bring us love and luck
Bring us blessed peace
On this our New Year’s Day.
Into the fire, we toss the old
Into the fire, we see our future
On this, our New Year’s Day.
Harm to none and health to all!

Everyone should rattle and drum away, making merry and rousing the good spirits. The spirits of the wise elders will join you.

After the drumming, start around the circle, beginning with the eldest. Allow people to speak about what they want to release from their life, and have them toss their “letting go” paper into the fire. Then the eldest person should lead the group in a prayer for collective hopes for the coming your, and anyone who wants to add something should also speak out wishes for positive change, for themselves and for the world.

Thank the wise elders and ancestors for their wisdom and spiritual aid by throwing some chocolate into the fire. Be sure to keep some for members of the circle to share and enjoy. The Mayans held the belief that a plentitude of offerings to the ancestors would bring more blessings. They also believed that fire ceremonies helped support the planet and all the nations of the word. Gifts to the fire signal to the elders that they can return through the door and to the other world, until you call upon them for help in the future.