Saturday, December 31, 2022

For the Love of Cusps: New Year’s Eve 2022

 

 



Post © 2022 by Joyce Mason

I love cusps. I know I have mentioned before that my parents and I were born on three cusps in a row: Leo/Virgo (Dad, August 23); Virgo/Libra (Me, September 22; and Libra/Scorpio (Mom, October 23). I joke that we are a tricuspid family. We were each born on the last degree of our Sun signs.

Perhaps this fact of life and birth makes me even more sensitive to endbeginnings, a wonderful term I learned in a Yoga Journal article many years ago. There are so many in our lives. As a celebrant of the solstices and equinoxes since 1988, I have discovered just how sacred life is on the edge of change. As winter wanes and waxes into spring, spring into summer and so on, there is a kind of comfort and amazement at these markers. Life keeps going on and we just keep learning more about love and living. Cusps help us look back and review our progress.

Burning Bowl Plus

In my Solsisters ritual group, which I co-facilitate, we do the ever popular Burning Bowl ritual at Winter Solstice where you write down what you want to get rid of on your life, whether it’s weight, a certain fear, a communication pattern that does not serve—whatever causes your life not run optimally. Our papers can be burned in a fireplace, buried, trashed or whatever form of letting go suits you.

After doing this for a number of years, I realized we were missing a complementary ritual. I call it the Ceremony of Recognition. Yes, there are things we all want to release. But what accomplishments do we want to recognizes ourselves for? We need to pat ourselves on the back but most of all, to see how far we have come since we last did this a year ago.

Those accomplishments and evidence of growth are our keepers. These are the things we want to carry forward and weave into the next phase of life. We do this ritual first, before the burning bowl.

Why not try it? As I am posting this past midday on New Year’s Eve, I should mention that it doesn’t matter if you do it today, tomorrow or next week. It’s within the zone of an endbeginning and the sacred time of reevaluations.

Twenty twenty-two was a difficult year for many of us. May you carry forward all you learned and your best keepers. May 2023 bring your more personal recognitions and fewer things to burn. Happy New Year!

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 Photo Credit: © Tatiana Sviridova | Dreamstime.com


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