Originally included in my January 2024 newsletter. To get the most recent edition of the newsletter, sign up here!
The Gregorian New Year is such an odd holiday to me. The dead of winter (or summer, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) hardly feels like the time to think about resets or starting anew. Some witches celebrate Samhain on Oct. 31 as the new year, some when the sun moves into Aries around March 20. The fun thing about time is that, as a construct, we get to play with it. One of the things I appreciate most about the pagan Wheel of the Year is that there are celebrations for each season. In some ways, the new year represented by January 1st is more of a new moon energy– a time to start thinking about what seeds you’d like to plant. I like to think of it more in this way than as a rush toward new beginnings.
For me, this time of year does actually correlate more with my personal resets, as I have a late January birthday. While January 1 is a bit more arbitrary, our personal birthdays have a lot of astrological significance. I’ve gotten very into profections in astrology in the past few years, and it’s been helpful to lean into planting seeds that align with my profected house and planet each birthday. This is a technique I highly recommend, and one that features prominently in my astrology and year ahead readings (Kelly Surtees has an excellent article on this if you’d like to find your profected house). I’m looking forward to my upcoming 12th house year and consciously leaning into its themes of rest, isolation, and coming to terms with my own capacity through health limitations. Using Kelly’s article to find your age, what profection house are you currently in? What themes are currently present in your life?
If you need a permission slip to take the start to 2024 slowly, consider this your loving invitation. 💜 I certainly needed that invitation and reminder today. Remember that time is a construct (especially the ways that humans have developed to mark time’s passage), urgency is often manufactured by people whose nervous systems are activated, and this time of year is specifically designed for rest (whether in the northern or southern hemisphere; that summer heat isn’t great for energy either!).
the radiant unknown 