My Daily Ritual
Routines and rituals are a part of being alive. If we didn’t have routines we’d be exhausted by mid-morning, trying to come up with a new way to do things every damn day. And by my own definition, rituals are just routines that feel extra special.
You can turn any routine into a ritual if you think about it a certain way (which is a cool thing about consciousness). Brushing your teeth, making a pot of coffee, scrolling your phone first thing in the morning, can all become rituals if you imbue them with intention.
Or, you can full-on build an altar in your office/studio and pull tarot cards by candlelight every morning and call that a ritual, because if that’s not a “ritual” by anyone’s standard I sure don’t know what is.
And that’s what I did and have been doing and loving for a few months now!
I found a cool wooden bowl with a hole in it for cheap (or it might have been in the free pile) at a thrift shop that I stash a little piece of partially burnt sage, a feather, a petrified rock, a little tealight candle, a wish paper, and my daily tarot cards in. I even made myself a tarot mat out of some dinosaur constellation fabric I had, a piece of an old fleece blanket for batting, and a purple stretchy knit fabric for the back with some matching purple binding. Every morning I choose from my favorite tarot and oracle decks and I pull one or a few cards after setting everything out and lighting my little tealight with some ambient music going and a hot mug of coffee and my journal open beside me.
I use tarot not for divination (pretty much any story about fortune-telling is a tale of warning and woe so I ain’t messing with that mind-fuckery), but to prompt reflection. My daily pulls have really helped give me clarity and direction for lots of aspects of my life. I don’t get soul-shattering insights into my life and my psyche every day but if I’m open to it, I can always dig deep. I’ve surprised myself on more than one occasion, assuming a card meant one thing and didn’t apply to me but then realizing after a second thought that actually, it did.
It’s such a delicious little ritual. It can take anywhere from 5 minutes to a whole hour if I get really into it (or as long as the boy stays asleep).
As humans, we assign meaning to everything. So whether my cards are speaking to me from the beyond or they’re just helping me look at the circumstances in my life in a different way, they’re compelling, beautiful, and have been incredibly helpful to me.
I even use it in my art! I have a couple of oracle decks themed around the animal kingdom that I’ve used to choose subjects for my paintings. In fact, one of my decks prompted my recent rash of horse-themed artwork.
I love having my little morning ritual and I look forward to it every day. It’s such a beautiful segue into making art and helps me feel grounded and ready for whatever the day holds for me.
Is there something mundane in your routine that you do every morning that you can turn into a ritual? All you have to do is give it a little spark of intentionality by bringing your full consciousness to the task. Relish the small things. It makes life SO much more enjoyable.
