Simple Rituals to Re-Enchant Your Life

Also available as a pdf.

The following is an excerpt from Being Pagan, by Rhyd Wildermuth.

Look at the moon

This is where everything begins, and it is the simplest ritual possible. Look for and at the moon every day, even the slightest glimpse. Don’t use external guides to find it, but rather just look for it yourself. You won’t find it everyday, nor will you find it at the same time each day, but look anyway.

After months (many moons) of doing so, you will begin to already know where and when it will be, and what face it will have. Keep looking, and let the time of the moon become its own rhythm in your life.

Mark the seasons

The rhythm of the earth’s seasons is a yearly cycle that affects all of living nature, including humans. Rivers swell and diminish according to the seasons, plants grow and die back, animals mate, give birth, and hide away, and we humans unconsciously (bodily) respond to these shifts as well.

A very simple ritual to align your conscious attention to the unconscious reality of the seasons is to mark each shift with a small celebration. Depending on where you live, the official calendar dates of these shifts (mid-June, mid-September, mid-December, and mid-March) or older Celtic and Germanic dates (the first of February, the first of May, the first of August, and the first of November) might fit best as days to celebrate.

Regardless of which you choose, create a way to celebrate, such as hosting a small dinner, visiting important places to you, or participating in local celebrations.

Go For A Walk

Besides looking at the moon, the most basic and also most important act you can do that will bring you into closer relation to the world around you is going for a meandering, purposeless walk in the place you live.

The key here is to stroll, to wander, to move about the world with a kind of openness that moderns usually avoid. Often we close ourselves off to the world around us, stare at our phones and listen to music rather than letting the world around us in.

So, do the opposite. Leave your phone at home and just walk. Let yourself hear the sounds, smell the scents the world gives off, feel the wind, sun, and rain on your skin, taste the air around you, and regard the land with eyes open.

Be Body Again

This is deeply related to the previous ritual, since walking is a way to align your consciousness back into the body you are. There are other ways to do this as well, each with its own knowledge.

When you observe a child, you will notice that he or she seems to experience a relentless joy just being. Playing, jumping, running, crawling, and all the other physical acts of a child’s existence seem to be acts of pure delight. The taste of foods they enjoy, the feel of grass under their bare feet, the tickle of the wind, the warmth of sunlight on skin, and many other “simple” pleasures seem to be causes for grand celebration and laughter.

Do this, too. Go walk barefoot in the grass. Nap in a warm sun, catch snowflakes on your tongue. Play-wrestle with a friend, eat a meal with fragrant herbs, go swimming or take a very long bath. These are all things moderns call “self-care,” but they are ultimately the core acts of being body.

If you are able and it interests you, join a gym, learn yoga, or sign up for a martial arts class or sports club. Or go running if you can, even just very short distances. Do strenuous things that help you feel the body you are, activities that gently push the limits of what you thought you were capable of.

Caretaking our kin

It is not available to all, of course, but two powerful rituals you can add to your life are gardening and caring for animals. When you garden, you learn more about the way the earth and plants work than any book can teach you, and caring for animals is the same.

For those who cannot have animals in their home or have no space for even the smallest garden, there is no reason to despair. The land around you is full of plants and animals, wild flowers and edible “weeds” growing in the cracks of pavement and birds flitting constantly from branch to branch. Consider feeding crows or ravens (whole, unroasted and unsalted peanuts are ideal), or setting up a bird feeder. Gather wildflower seeds and spread them in abandoned lots in early spring. Learn the names of everything that grows and breathes where you live, and tell them your name, too.

Create an Ancestral Shrine

Every animist, Pagan, and indigenous culture has some form of ancestral veneration, and these continue even into Christianity and civic rituals (such as national holidays for veterans or leaders). Shrines, in particular, are a very widespread practice.

We often create these unconsciously in our own homes, hanging photos of deceased family members in certain places or placing items that remind us of them together in one location. If you find you already have such a place, use that location. If not, create a small space for it and add photos or memorabilia, or just place a very small bowl of water or a tealight (or both) there.

Regularly (daily, weekly, once a moon, once a season, or on specific birthdays) light a candle in that place, or fill the bowl of water, or do some other ritual act and speak a brief prayer of thanks to those who gave you life. If you do not know their names, just call them “ancestors” or “grandparents.” I myself do this twice daily, just a few words that takes no more than a few seconds to speak.

Create a Household Shrine

Another widespread Pagan practice is the creation of a shrine to household spirits. Such spirits generally do not like “too much” attention, meaning that they do not demand or even like acts of reverence or worship. I find the best way to understand this relationship is that they are a bit like highly-independent cats, who often seem to merely share a home with their humans and want food put out for them, but they don’t want your attention unless they are seeking it out first.

Shrines to household spirits are often created either at entrances or in the center of a house, which traditionally was the hearth (or kitchen). To find an appropriate place in your own home, try to think about one spot where you for some reason never look, a place where dust tends to gather and you rarely place things there, an “invisible” place. My suspicion is that these places are where such spirits already live.

Find such a place, or alternatively choose a corner of a kitchen, an entranceway, or a part of a room that no one will disturb. Light a tealight there sometimes, or leave flower petals, or anything subtle that reminds you and the house spirit know that you appreciate their presence.

Create Shrines to Other Spirits and to Gods

By now you probably understand the basic way a shrine is created. It is a sacred (set-apart) place created to honor something or someone, and they all share this general trait. What differs is the kinds of spaces used, as well as the materials, and how “honoring” manifests in each case.

Something that can be incredibly helpful to do if you are interested in creating shrines is to look to the shrines which already exist where you are. Civic monuments are a kind of shrine, for instance, including memorial plaques. Catholic churches are full of shrines to saints (who are often barely-concealed Pagan gods dressed up in Christian garb), and other religions such as Hinduism and Shinto create all kinds of shrines to gods, spirits, and ancestors. Looking to these other shrines can help you understand how they are created.

The concept of hospitality is also a key feature of these shrines. They are places created for a spirit or a god to feel at home in, a bit like preparing a table for a guest. Other aspects of hospitality are helpful to remember, such as what kinds of things a guest prefers. Thus, a shrine to a land spirit is best created from aspects of the land itself, rather than industrially-produced materials or statues. A shrine to a god would contain items associated with that god (a shrine to Thor would might have oak leaves or bark, for example, or be carved of oak).

Candles and incense are both very common things to include and use in such shrines, though be mindful of not burning candles in places where melted paraffin wax (which is an industrial product) would pollute nature. Also, avoid leaving “offerings” that would in other circumstances be seen as trash (especially plastic and metal).

Alternatively, you can create one shrine in your home where you honor spirits and gods, speaking prayers to them while you light a candle. Such prayers need not be formal—mine definitely are not.

Transform Your Relationships to Objects and to Place

One of the most powerful rituals I think a person can do that will help them sense the way that our consciousness and unconsciousness work together is one recommended by the writer Marie Kondo (also known as Konmari). In her “Konmari method,” she teaches people to organize their lives by holding possessions in their hands, asking themselves if the item “sparks joy,” and then if not, thanking the item for its existence and finding a respectful way to part with the object.

This method is ultimately animist, derived from Shinto understandings of the kami and our relationship to them. Often, we develop relations to certain objects or places that we are not conscious of because we did so bodily; because we rarely prioritise our bodily relationship to the world, we do not always understand the implications of these relationships.

Taking the basic principle of the “Konmari method,” which is at its core an animist principle, you can develop rituals to transform your relationships to places and objects. Perhaps there are spots in your home where you do not feel comfortable, or places in your neighborhood that always provoke certain feelings of despair, depression, anxiety, or fear. On the other hand, you probably have articles of clothing you wear when you want to feel good, or places you visit that always give you a sense of happiness or hope.

With a spirit of curiousity, go to such places or hold such objects and ask questions aloud. Speak to the place or the thing, voice how you feel, and listen for a bodily sense of what is occurring or has occurred between you and the place or object.

Again, it is vital to keep in a state of curiosity, rather than one of certainty. Being body is a way of being that many of us need years and years to re-learn, and often times our initial conclusion about a matter is shaped more by society or mass media than by our true bodily experience.

Rhyd Wildermuth

Rhyd is a druid, a writer, and a theorist. He was born in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains but now lives in a forested valley of the Ardennes.

Being Pagan is his sixth book. He is also the author of The Provisioner, All That is Sacred Is Profaned, Witches in a Crumbling Empire, A Kindness of Ravens, and Your Face Is a Forest, all from Gods&Radicals Press and RITONA Press.

He also writes frequently at From The Forests of Arduinna (rhyd.substack.com), and whiles much of his time with words, with plants, with his bike, with weightli􏰀ing, and with his partner.