Still Smouldering Are Our Candles’ Wicks, As We Prepare for 2026

Out with the old and in with the new –
There’s magic on New Year’s in all that you do!
Beth

Get ready, get set! We have arrived at the crossroads of another new year!

So how do we prepare for what we all know is going to be a tectonic shift in our world? Especially thanks to both the spiraling geopolitical intensity building and because this is going to be a Tarot Wheel of Fortune year, since 2+0+2+6=10, which is the Wheel of Fortune card. (Look for my article detailing this coming soon).

First, as you approach this important threshold, I suggest that you spend some time today in sacred space, setting your intention for your highest hopes for this new beginning.

New Year’s is a time of very old magic, and all forms of manifesting, spells, and rituals are amplified at this turning.

The timing this year is especially beneficial, since it arrives during a waxing gibbous Moon, which reaches her fullness on Saturday. This is always an especially potent Full Moon, since it’s the one the comes once a year in her own sign of Cancer. So this New Year’s Eve would be a great time to harness that increasing, not quite peak energy for manifesting your desires.

For more details, I urge you to check out Elisabeth Grace’s vitally important column for this week. And as a bonus, I recommend that you tear yourself away from the bowl games (or whatever!) and make time on New Year’s Day for her chat with sound shaman Norma Gentile.

Rituals and Preparations

As if that’s not enough, though, you can prepare for this moment by knowing that everything you do on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day is loaded with magical significance.

For example, make a ritual of writing down a list of all you do not want to carry forward into the new year. A toss into the fire or a smoldering, cleansing, herb-filled cauldron will release those energies and is a time-honored tradition. For a more pleasantly fragrant combination of herbs, I can recommend rosemary, sage, clove, and lavender. Some more exotic choices might include angelica, burdock, myrrh, St. John’s wort, and witch hazel bark.

This is also an ideal time to make a vision board for what you’d like to manifest in the coming year.

Or pick a word that will be your inspiration and guidepost for the days ahead. Write it down or make it into art. Just be sure to put it somewhere that you will be reminded of it every day. My friend, Lunaea Weatherstone, used to have a brilliant article about her process. Alas, her beautiful website was on Typepad, which, as you may know, closed down with very little notice earlier this year. So it appears to be gone.

However, I have run across a similar approach from another Tarot reader. You can read more here.

Worldwide Traditions

In many parts of the world, the New Year is greeted with a lot of noise, sometimes made by church bells. Originally, this was to frighten away evil spirits that might try to sneak into the New Year and try to spoil it. People in the Northern Hemisphere sometimes lit bonfires for the same reason.

Our neighbors out here in the woods of Durham County, North Carolina like to shoot off guns and bottle rockets. But the local animals and I prefer the ringing of bells and songs offered to the Guardians.

Before midnight tonight, sweep and clean your house and take out all the trash. You don’t want to sweep tomorrow or take anything out of the house, or else you will sweep away the new beginning that tomorrow brings.

And doing laundry is extremely bad luck on New Year’s Day. Just so you know. (More tomorrow!)

Also, be sure you finish any projects you still have to complete, for they say that a task carried over will never prosper. If there’s something BIG going on that can’t be finished, at least complete a component of it, done and dusted.

Manifesting Prosperity

Using that same sympathetic magic, you might follow the custom of leaving some money just outside your door, so that you can bring it in first thing tomorrow, setting a prosperity spell for the entire year! This has worked beautifully for us for many years.

The American custom of spending the night with the one you love and kissing them at midnight ensures that the relationship will thrive in the coming year.

In Vienna, the pig (sacred to the Goddess Freya, whose time this is) is the symbol of good luck. Pigs are let loose in restaurants, and everyone tries to touch them for luck, as they run by. In private homes, a marzipan pig, with a gold piece in its mouth, is suspended from a ribbon and touched instead.

Hogmanay

Since ancient times in Scotland, this night has been celebrated as Hogmanay. Outshining even Christmas celebrations (which the infamously stuffy old Scottish Presbyterians banned for over 400 years), this is a time for rich feasting, drinking, dancing, tale-telling, and music.

The first person to cross your threshold after midnight brings luck into the house. Since medieval times, then, the best possible first-footer would be a tall, dark-haired, handsome man who brought gifts of whisky, bread, a piece of coal or firewood, and a silver coin.

He enters in silence, and no one speaks to him until he puts the coal on the fire, pours a glass for the head of the house, and wishes everyone a Happy New Year.

Then, of course, the revelries explode and continue into the wee hours, even for several more days in some cases!

I highly recommend adopting this practice at your parties tonight. It is a magical moment you will never forget, and rich rewards may be yours in the coming year! Although you may have mixed feelings about serving haggis.

Divination and Magic

Naturally, this is a wonderful night for divination, and it’s perfect for those of you who read the cards.

Or you might wish to ground the good fortune of this date by making an appointment with your favorite reader. At the moment, I am booked up through January, but I’ll be adding dates for February soon. You can bookmark this page, or else click here to keep an eye on when more appointments become available.

An alternative way to determine your future in the new year is to prick a newly laid egg at the smaller end with a pin. Let three drops of the egg white fall into a bowl of water.

Then use your powers of scrying to interpret the designs it makes. This will give you a glimpse of what the new year holds in store for you.

Another tradition for the young people is one that comes to us by way of Russia. Put a thread through a golden ring. Pour some water into a glass and then lower the thread with the ring into it.

Wait quietly until it begins to swing and knock against the borders. Count the number of strikes – they denote the age when you’ll get married.

Ancestors and Modern Times Entwined

And you know those resolutions we make year in and year out (or else resolve not to make any more)? We are not alone!

There are records from 4,000 years ago in Babylon of New Year’s resolutions. Often they were announced publicly. The most common were to make good any outstanding debts and return anything borrowed.

Nowadays, the most common resolutions are to lose weight and give up smoking, closely followed by .. guess what! .. making good any outstanding debts and returning borrowed goods!

And speaking of our long-ago ancestors, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all had the tradition of showing off the first babies born in the year. In the 14th century the custom of showing a baby entwined with a banner of the New Year began, in Germany.

The Divine Ones

New Year’s Eve is sacred to Yemaya, the Mother of the Sea. In Brazil, people dress in white, go down to the ocean, light candles in the sand and throw white flowers into the waves for Her.

In the ancient Egyptian traditions, today is the sacred day of Sekhmet, the lion-headed Goddess whose worship center was Memphis, Egypt. Nursing mothers would pray to Her to let down their milk and to protect their wee babes.

And this day is also set aside for honoring Vesta – the Roman Goddess of the hearth. Known by the Greeks as Hestia, She was credited with the art of building houses (since every home was built around the sacred central fire). A good energetic cleansing and blessing of your hearth would be a most rewarding activity today.

Perhaps echoing that custom, this is the day that many put away their Solstice decorations, for some say it is bad luck for them to still be up in the New Year.

At least be sure to give thanks on this night for the benevolence of Hestia, for the roof above your head, and the plenty in your life. In September, it was reported that homelessness in the U.S. had jumped yet again this year. With widespread job losses, dramatic new economic pressures, and cruel slashes in resources, the news is grim.

Blessed be to your holy home, as it gives you the nurturing and support that enable you to go out into the world.

Gracious Blessings in the Name of Hecate

And as you know, the last day of every month is sacred to our dear Hecate. Hecate is the Goddess of Witches and the psychopomp, who shows the way to those crossing to the lands of the dead. As such, She is the Guardian of the Crossroads, including all mundane road crossings as well as the crossroads between life and death.

We especially welcome Her as She presides at this crossroads of the Year.

She is the Triple Goddess in Her most ancient form, the trinity of Artemis the Maiden, Selene the Mother, and by Her own name, Hecate the Crone.

On this night, leave food at a crossroads in Her name. If you are especially wise, you will pick a crossroads where She can see to it that the hungry may eat it, whether they know it is in Her name or not.

Hecate also rules over prophecy, healing, visions, and magic. This amplifies even more the magic of New Year’s Eve as an outstanding night for divination, meditation and spellwork.

So raise a glass with me, and bid farewell to 2025, a year of shocking revelations, ghastly corruption, and profound challenges to our democracy. And yet it has also been a time when hope has stirred, with record-shattering numbers of citizens awakening and refusing to drift along as the rule of law and civility are being dismantled.

For better or worse, what has been is now a closed chapter.
Get ready, get set, and hail the new, ye lads and lasses.

2026 is knocking on our door.

 

This is an updated collection of tidbits from my posts in years past, with heartfelt thanks to the late, beloved Waverly FitzGerald, from whom I learned so much. Blessings to you, Waverly, for your legacy as a Priestess of Time and Teacher of the Wisdom of the Ancient Ways. What is remembered lives.