A Ritual for Self Lovin's

Today I am going to share with you  a wonderful ritual to help you enhance your love for yourself.

The first step of any ritual that I do is a cleansing of myself. This usually involves a relaxing, candlelit, bath full of lavender smellies accompanied by a cup of my favorite tea. This allows me to not only cleanse myself physically, but mentally as well. It allows me to wash away all of the gunk that I am holding on to so that I can start my magical practices all bright and shiny. This also goes into allowing myself to ground and center, which connects me to the earth, as well as empties me of all of the things that are not serving me.

I am a fan of simplicity when it comes to ritual. I'm not really into the elaborate stuff. I believe that as long as you have the will to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish, that is the most important and essential part of any magical working. For this working, all you need is a pen/marker, a piece of paper, and a tealight candle. I also have the Aphrodite Card from the Ancient Feminine Wisdom Oracle Deck, as well as a circle of rose quartz and aventurine, stones that are both great for creating an atmosphere of self love all around yourself.

Once you have yourself a nice atmosphere of candles lit, incense burning, and that hum of potential flowing through you, take the pen and write down all of the things that you love about yourself and all of the things that you want to love about yourself but don't. For the things that you are struggling with, write it in a way that reinforces that you already love that part of yourself. Stay away from the negatives. Even if you don't like your thighs, but you want to, then write down "I love my thighs." You want to manifest it into being the truth. If you write it down as truth, then it will become truth.

When you are done writing down those things, keep the piece of paper somewhere safe and allow the small candle to burn out. I put my piece of paper in the circle of stones and then set a chunk of quartz crystal on top of it to amplify my intentions. Then I let my candle burn out. Keeping the paper allows you to chart the path you're on. Read that paper out loud when you feel called to and allow the words to sink into your skin!

The misconception about ritual is that it does the work for you. What it really does is signal your intention to the Universe. It's like standing up and saying "Hey there Universe, I am ready to do this work, want to smoothe the way a bit?"

When we help ourselves, the Universe helps to clear the way.