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Jupiter and Saturn joining forces in The Great Conjunction on the Winter Solstice this week (December 21, 2020 to be exact…) is the biggest celestial event of the season, if not the year. Those of us in psychedelic healing and spiritual circles know that the best time to bust out your crystals, release the old, and call in the new is when the planets and sun are lining themselves up to support your witchy rituals of manifestation. This is a big planetary deal, and as the sun goes down this evening, we are gearing up for a night of elemental wisdom and magic under the Christmas star.
Rainbow Butterfly People by Inktally
Why Celestial Events Like the Winter Solstice and Great Conjunction are Spiritually Significant
The reason we take the time and energy to gather, conduct rituals, and to set intentions in alignment with the planets, sun, and moon, is because for most of human existence, these heavenly bodies were our only guides. They marked the passage of time, the changing of the seasons, and connected life on our planet to the heavens above us. They made us feel less alone in the vast universe, and we have always had a strong connection as a species to the world we saw in the stars.
Over millennia, our ancestors learned that when they came together to release, renew, and rejoice under the aligned planets, magic happened. Whatever they prayed for on these special days was amplified in power, because the sun and planets were shining down on them saying “WE OUT HERE!”
Our ancestors knew intuitively that just like in nature, there is always a season for everything. A season for clearing and releasing, a season for planting, a season for harvesting, and a season for rest. The stars and planets told us when it was the right time for everything.
These big celestial events are important because they help us humans shift energy in a big, serious way. When we take the time to get our shit together and say exactly what we want and don’t want, we are speaking our reality into being. The influence of these planets can usher in a new age, a dawning of a shift in universal consciousness. The planets move us forward with them, taking our world weariness from us, and allowing us to begin anew, no matter where we are right now, because now is the time.
The Awakening Butterfly by Jon Roueche
Getting Paralyzed by Spiritual FOMO
But what if you’re not in the know, and this stuff makes you feel left out? Because as a modern society, we’ve lost a lot of our connection to the earth and what’s going on in the sky, it can actually create overwhelm and anxiety for spiritually curious people who want to participate in the big thing, but don’t know where to start.
It can feel stressful to try to cobble together some kind of intention setting ritual or ceremony from scratch when you’ve never done it before. You may have big plans to do something epic to mark this Great Conjunction (which has not happened in more than 400 years) and then feel stuck as to how to do it. You may long to hold a Winter Solstice ritual, celebrating our passage into winter and Capricorn season, but then feel nervous about doing it wrong, so you do nothing.
In the not participating, we feel left out and sad, and then we get spiritual FOMO and feel like everyone is doing some amazing thing with the whole solar system, while we are sitting at home watching Netflix again instead of calling in what we want for our life. Generally, this is not the only place in our lives where perfectionism and anxiety derail our plans for doing things because we’re afraid they won’t be good enough. That we won’t be good enough.
Equanimity by Jake Kobrin
Allow Yourself to Be Imperfect and Do It Anyway
Sometimes we let the worry about being perfect, or a fixation with doing something exactly the “right” way completely derail us from taking action toward the things we actually want. We get caught up in a story or an idea about how something should go, or how we think others want us to do it, and we end up paralyzed, afraid to fail, and even more afraid of what others will think of us.
This often leads to seeking outside ourselves for permission from others. The thing is, the most important part of intention setting, releasing, rituals, calling in, and manifestation is ACTUALLY DOING IT. Even when it feels messy and embarrassing, or foolish and vulnerable.
When we are imperfectly praying to the mystery for relief, and a new fertile field to plant our dreams in, that is when our voices are the loudest. When they are true and real. When we light a fire and throw our pain and suffering into it, we are released, regardless of whether we said the right words facing the right direction.
Legend of Lemuria by Samuel Farrand
Find Your Inner Knowing, and Trust It
As with everything in this work, the right way is the way that works for you. We are always choosing what is aligned and what isn’t, what works for us, and what doesn’t. And healing with psychedelics allows that inner knowing, that intuition, that connection to our Highest Self to get louder and louder and louder, so that alignment is always audible, visible, and knowable.
Through psychedelic integration, we begin to understand that we do not need permission or instructions. That we are wild earth children who know how to play, and break the rules, and color outside the lines. We are, in fact, able to hear the sounds of the universe speaking to us. Always.
We just have to learn how to listen, and to trust our inner knowing. The more we work with plant medicine and integrate our experiences, the more we can hear ourselves.
So if you missed out doing it exactly how and when you envisioned, so what?
Do you have things to release, to let go of, to call into your life, to pray for? If so, don’t let the details stop you from doing your thing. Check in with yourself, find out what needs to go, what can stay, and what is welcome to arrive on your doorstep in 2021. Go outside, sit with yourself in nature, and create a ritual that works for you. The best time is now. The planets are still in alignment, holding space for you to step into your power. It is never too late to speak your intentions into being. The only way to fail is not to try.
There is no one who writes more beautifully and truly about the planets and our places within their pull than master astrologer Chani Nicholas, who says,
“To become the leaders that the world needs, the Great Conjunction calls us to venture towards the edges, to new ways of working, living, learning, and building with one another. There is no way to sugar coat the extreme travesty this year piled upon the entire globe, but if there is anything that we can take away from it, it’s that we know for sure what is essential.
With that wisdom, let us begin again.“
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