5 Gentle Pagan Morning Rituals
A good morning routine can set the tone for the entire day. I try to do something related to my craft every day to let the sacred blend into the mundane, and help me stay grounded.
In today’s article, I want to share five simple activities to inspire your personal spiritual morning routine.
There are countless resources on how to create the perfect morning routine to max out your productivity. There is more to life than being productive and time efficient though. Instead, each of us can cultivate an individual routine that fits our personal purpose and helps us to gain energy and contentment.
Building a morning routine
The key to cultivating a sustainable morning routine, and any habit in general, is to start as small as possible. You may be able to change your whole life overnight, but too many changes to existing routines rarely stick.
Gently start to substitute the things you want to lessen in your life with new habits you want to build. For example, you can flip through a deck of tarot cards in the morning instead of scrolling through your social media feed.
Make sure that you know why you decided to pick up a new habit in the first place. It needs to make sense, spark joy, or hold meaning for you to stick.
I have gathered five simple activities to inspire you to create your personal spiritual morning ritual(s). They are ranked from lowest to highest amount of effort, and can be adjusted in any way you see fit.
Five activities to inspire your personal spiritual morning routine
• A simple glass of water
Starting the day with a big glass of water is my one non-negotiable habit.
Right after you get up, fill a glass and find a place to drink it in silence. Try to avoid any external distractions, and concentrate on your internal world. Ask yourself: What thoughts do I have? Is my mind loud or quiet this morning? Be gentle with yourself. Try not to judge, just observe.
Drinking a glass of water is beneficial for your health, but not necessarily a spiritual practice, right? It can easily become one though, if you link it with a visualization exercise.
Personally, I like to base this exercise in Norse mythology. I conjure up an image of the Well of Urd and the Norns taking water from it to tend to the roots of Yggdrasil, the great world tree. The water holds wisdom and life. I envision it as a light flowing into my body and nurturing its cells.
You can keep this visualization very basic, or make it as elaborate as you like.
• Time in your sacred space
Spend time in your sacred space. If you are a morning coffee (or tea) kind of person, you can drink your beverage of choice in this designated area.
A sacred space can be a specific altar you set up, or any other area where you feel connected to your practice in your home or outdoors.
Be present there for a few moments in silence. If you want to get fancy, you can light a candle or burn incense. This would also be a good time to give offerings to any spirits you work with.
If you like to pray, now is a great opportunity for this. I use homemade prayer beads that I keep on my altar for this purpose.
• Meditation
Meditation is one of those activities that is simple in theory, but can prove to be quite difficult in practice.
Basically, it is just finding a place where you can be undisturbed, set a timer, close your eyes, and be still for your chosen amount of time. The being still part is what has proven to be the most difficult for me.
I had a lot of false expectations when picked up the practice of meditation. I used to put myself under a lot pressure to achieve a state of perfect peace and calm in my mind that is usually anything but quiet. Sounds familiar?
What helps is to remind myself that meditation is a practice. The process is important, the end result is secondary at best.
For me personally, meditation is not about not thinking, but about not judging your thoughts when they will inevitably come up.
Deciding on an anchor point to focus and concentrate on helps a lot. This anchor point can be your breath, a spirit you want to connect with, or a simple rhythm (like drumming) that you can listen to with headphones.
Meditation can benefit your overall mental health, and also help to prepare your mind and body for further practices like trance or journey work.
I recommend starting with one minute of meditation every day.
This may seem like a ridiculously short period of time, and that is exactly the point. You may convince yourself that you don’t have enough time for a full five minutes of meditation, but you can surely manage one short minute.
Once you have established this tiny meditation habit, you can gentle start to extend the time period.
• Tarot card pull and journaling
Pulling a card of the day from a tarot or oracle deck of your choice takes less than a minute, and is a simple activity that you can build upon in a lot of ways.
The most basic form is to pull just one card. Look at the imagery, and see what comes up. You can place the card on your altar.
You can snap a photo of the card to keep on your phone as a reminder throughout the day. If you have more time, you can look up the card’s meaning in the guidebook of the deck.
You can extend this activity even further by writing in your journal about the card you picked. Here are some simple prompts to inspire you:
• What do you see in the card’s imagery? What do you like/ don’t like about the artwork? Describe the card.
• Which feelings does the image on the card evoke for you? What is the message it holds - either by your own interpretation and/ or that in the guidebook?
• Think about ways the card’s message could relate to your life today.
Another idea is to pick two cards, and try to form an affirmation for the day from their messages combined. If you have the time and energy, you can also do a longer reading.
• Silent walk
This last activity takes the most amount of physical effort, because it involves actually leaving your house. If you work outside your home, you can possibly incorporate it into your daily commute.
The silent walk is pretty self-explanatory. Go on a walk, and leave your phone at home, or at least in your pocket.
Be mindful of your environment. What animals can you spot? What plants are growing? How does the air feel today? What smells can do you notice?
You don’t need to live in a picture perfect rural setting to enjoy this activity. The majority of us probably don’t live in a whimsical cottage in the woods, but in a tiny apartment in a busy city. For a lot of us the closest thing to greenery in our neighborhood is just a small green strip, or, if we’re really lucky, a park.
Fortunately nature is everywhere. You just have to look close enough. Even in a city that seems to be all concrete and grey, there are shoots of green springing in between the buildings. There are still birds to listen to, and other animals to spot.
Going on a silent walk can be as short as ten minutes in the morning. Try to be really present, and avoid distracting yourself with listening to music or podcasts.
A silent walk is a great opportunity to connect to your environment and its local spirits, and to get a feel for nature and her seasons.
What do you think about spiritual morning routines?
Do you have any rituals that you do every morning?
That’s it for this week’s article! I hope you can find something of value in my writing.
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