The first week of 2024 has some well-timed alignments for kicking your year off right. Mercury goes direct New Year’s Day and Mars enters Capricorn on Thursday and it gives a nice boost to the start of the year.
I particularly want to focus on 12th night on Friday Jan 5 and Epiphany the following Saturday. These are great days for all kinds of traditional magic (protection, beating the bounds, sovereignty, prosperity, and so forth). The 12th night Wikipedia page has some basics and you can find all kinds of Paganish embellishments to try as well.
Truly, this window from the Winter Solstice through about the second week of January is a time of deep magic reaching far back in Northern Europe. So many layers of enchantment and meaning and practice, going all the way back to myths of the Sun’s rebirth after the darkest days. Note that the Sun is also at Perihelion — the closest point to the Earth in the year. This year it’s January 2nd in the afternoon (PST).
One interesting tidbit is that 12th night was considered the official end of the Christmas season and it was unlucky to have your holiday decorations up after this time. This suggests that you deliberately put the old year behind you, emotionally, psychologically, and magically. We typically try to get our tree cleared out by New Year’s Eve, but this year we are hosting a New Year’s Day magician’s hangover brunch and will clear the tree after.
Other days this week are for unblocking, releasing, and resolving, as well as prosperity and positivity. All the details are in the Inner Circle Planner as usual.
In terms of the year as a whole, March and May have some very positive alignments for enchantment (which doesn’t mean that the general space weather isn’t crazy). This autumn on the other hand is the roughest time for practical enchantment. I recommend kicking the year off strong — begin as you would continue — and lean in to get your major goals and projects going enchant the hell out of them in the coming months. Needless to say, I have some stuff to help you do that.
Happy New Year Everyone!