Creating Your Sanctuary Shrine (New Moon Phase is Optimal)

On a low table or chest of your choosing, place a forest green cloth and a brown candle to represent family and home. Add lovely objects you have gathered, including from the garden and outdoors: ocean-carved driftwood, a gorgeous flower, a dried seed pod, a favorite crystal, whatever pleases your eye. It is of the utmost importance to add a bouquet of wildflowers native to your area you gathered close to where you live or bought locally. These posies will help integrate you and your home into your neighborhood and geographic region. Add a sweetly scented sachet of herbs from your kitchen garden or those you intend to plant: rosemary, lavender, thyme, mint, all of which imbue your space with positive energy. Burn associated essential oils, those which will create an aura of comfort around your kitchen, including vanilla, cinnamon, or sweet orange neroli in an oil lamp. Finally, anoint the brown candle while concentrating on the power of peace and bliss surrounding your home and all around your home altar.

Chant:

Peace and abundance are in abundance 
And here true bliss surrounds 
From now on, all disharmony is gone 
This is a place of powerful blessings 
For here lives sheer joy. 
And so it is — blessed be!

This consecrated space will ease your spirits at any time. Your altar connects you to the earth of which you are a part.

Setting Up Your Lunar Altar: Your Personal Power Center

Before there were temples and churches, the primary place for expressing reverence was the altar. The word “altar” comes from a Latin word which means “high place.” With a personal altar, you can reach the heights of your spirituality and ascend in wisdom. You construct an altar when you assemble symbolic items in a meaningful manner, focusing both your attention and intention. When you work with the combined energies of these items, you are performing ritual. Your rituals can arise from your needs, imagination, or the seasonal and traditional ceremonies that you find in this book and others. A book I draw much inspiration from has been Nancy Brady Cunningham’s A Book of Women’s Altars. I love her advice to bow or place your hands on the ground in front of your altar at the beginning of ritual work and at the closing, explaining, “Grounding symbolizes the end of the ritual and signals to the mind to return to an ordinary state of awareness as you re-enter daily life.” An altar is a physical point of focus for the ritual, containing items considered sacred and essential to ritual work and spiritual growth. An altar can be anything from a rock in the forest to an exquisitely carved antique table. Even portable or temporary altars can suffice such as a board suspended between two chairs for “rituals on the go.”

Dispelling Blocks: Full Moon Incantation

Is something getting in your way? Do you feel stalled out and overcome with procrastination? To overcome any blocks obstructing your creativity and productivity, you can dispel the negative energy by going for a walk in the nearest park. Find a round, flat rock, six to ten inches wide. This will become an altar supplied directly to you by Mother Nature, and it will have the purest energy. Begin by charging this stone on the full moon at your home altar. Light a white candle for purification, and then place your hand on the stone and chant three times:

Bad energy, take flight! 
Goddess of Night, shine bright. 
Moon of tonight, you give us delight. 
Fill this stone with your light, 
Imbue it with all your magic and might, 
Surround it with your protective sight. 
So mote it be.

Ideally, you’ll want to perform this spell three times on three consecutive full moons before you begin drawing upon its energy. Like your altar, your stone will be a reservoir you can turn to any time you feel stuck or uninspired. This rock will emanate with a quiet power you can draw from whenever you need.

Conjuring Conviviality – a Moon Day Ritual

How you start your week sets the tone for each day to come. It makes a lot of sense to do whatever you can to up the joy quotient for yourself and your loved ones. Jasmine tea is a delightful concoction and can create an aura of bliss and conviviality. It is available at any grocer or purveyor of organic goods but homegrown is even better. Brew a cup of jasmine tea and let it cool. Add two parts lemonade and drink the mixture with a good friend. Jasmine is a vine and represents the intertwining of people. You will be more bonded to anyone with whom you share this sweet ritual. If you grow a night-blooming jasmine vine outside your bedroom window, a heavenly scent will also waft in that creates and enhances an atmosphere of love in your home.

This is also a tonic that you can indulge in alone. I recommend brewing up a batch every Monday, or “Moon Day,” to ensure that each week is filled with joyfulness. As the jasmine tea steeps, pray:

On this Moon Day in this new week, 
I call upon the spirits to guide joy to my door. 
By this moon on this day, I call upon Ishtar and Celene, ladies fair 
To show me the best way to live. 
For this, I am grateful. 
Blessed be the brew; blessed be me.

Lunar Lore – 12 Months of Full Moons

Many of our full moon names come from medieval books of hours and also from the Native American tradition. Here is a list of rare names from the two traditions you may want to use in your lunar rituals.

January: Old Moon, Chaste Moon; this fierce Wolf Moon is the time to recognize your strength of spirit

February: Hunger Moon; the cool Snow Moon is for personal vision and intention-setting

March: Crust Moon, Sugar Moon; the gentle Sap Moon heralds the end of winter and nature’s rebirth

April: Sprouting Grass Moon, Egg Moon, Fish Moon; spring’s sweet Pink Moon celebrates health and full life force

May: Milk Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Dyad Moon; the Flower Moon provides inspiration with the bloom of beauty

June: Hor Moon, Rose Moon; the Strawberry Moon heralds Summer Solstice and sustaining power of the sun

July: Buck Moon, Hay Moon; this Thunder Moon showers us with rain and cleansing storms

August: Barley Moon, Wyrt Moon, Sturgeon Moon; summer gifts us with the Red Moon, the time for passion and lust for life

September: Green Corn Moon, Wine Moon; fall’s Harvest Moon is the time to be grateful and reap what we have sown

October: Dying Grass Moon, Travel Moon, Blood Moon, Moon of Changing Seasons; the Hunter’s moon is when we plan and store for winter ahead

November: Frost Moon, Snow Moon; Beaver Moon is the time to call upon our true wild nature

December: Cold Moon, Oak Moon; this is the lightest night of the shortest day and is the time to gather the tribe around the fire and share stories of the good life together

Spring Full Moon - Invocation of the Flower Moon

This dazzling spring Flower Moon is an optimal opportunity to strive for the new, to initiate a phase of transformation that will last long after the Full Moon has waxed into darkness. This invocation honors the season, planting seeds of positive change in your life to bloom for years to come. Start by gathering red and green apples, candles of the same colors, and seed corn from a gardening store, along with three stalks of lavender and three long strands of night-blooming jasmine. Leave these offerings on your altar all day.

When the Full Moon of May reaches the highest point in the night sky, light one red and one green candle on your kitchen altar. Wind the jasmine and lavender into a crown for the top of your head, breathing in the lovely scent the flowers produce. Holding an apple in each hand, speak this spell while circling the altar clockwise three times.

Moon of Flowers; light the way to change tonight, 
Through the power of Earth and Air, Water and Fire. 
As I bite this fruit of knowledge, I am thus inspired. 
All possibilities are before me. And so it is.

Eat from both apples until you are fully satisfied, and then bury twelve corn seeds and the cores in the rightmost corner of your garden. With the spring rains and summer sun, your intentions will flower into being. By the fall full moon, you will harvest the bounty of change from this spell, with great gratitude.

Blowing in the Wind – A Charm (Waning Moon is Optimal)

When the moon is waning, this is your opportunity to release anything that no longer serves in your life. We all need to embrace the winds of change in life, clearing away the old and making room for the new. This charm helps overcome upset and can help release anger and grudges. And isn’t this an important first step to happiness? What you’ll need: a blustery day, access to the outdoors, basil and sage.

Well, it’s not mandatory that you have a hill for this, but you do need an open area outside for happiness spells like this. It does need to be windy.

Take your herbs to your spot of choice with your back to the wind. Take the basil and sage and throw them up in the air as you visualize your problems blowing far, far away. Repeat this charm aloud:

No more fear and doubt and pain 
Nothing to lose and only joy to gain. 

Now, turn around and face into the wind.

Speak aloud:

May the winds of change be kind to me 
And bring about happiness and glee. 
Stress-free and happy I will be 

Close your eyes and feel the breeze on your skin and blowing through your hair. Stand still for a few more moments, focused on the release of your problems and the acceptance of peace and the calm that lies ahead in your future.