Winter Solstice & Yule Spell Jar for Rebirth

The winter solstice, also called Yule in Germanic traditions, is the longest night and shortest day of the year. It is the time we have the most darkness, and after the winter solstice, the sun returns — growing each day.

Because of this darkness and the return of the light, the solstice is deeply associated with rebirth. A kind of new year for witches, if you will. In this blog post, I’ll share how to make a DIY spell jar for rebirth in honor of the winter solstice. This would be a great practice to do on the winter solstice or in the days after it! 

So what are spell bottles or jars? Spell jars are a form of folk magic that can be used for many different purposes. I share more about spellwork below - keep scrolling to read it!

A LITTLE ABOUT SPELLWORK

To me, spells are about directing energy in a specific direction. They’re about using magick, which Dion Fortune defines as “the art of changing consciousness at will,” for healing, manifestation, and connection. 

I believe that they can be simple, and all you really need is yourself and your energy. Other items, like the ones we’ll use in this spell, are supportive in infusing some extra magick and energy into the work — but you don’t need them to do spells.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

For this spell, you’ll need:

As with all spells, use what you have. Feel free to substitute items, and don't worry if you're missing something from this list. Your intention is the most important part of any spell!

• A glass bottle/jar of any size 

• Salt of any kind for protection

• A piece of paper and pen to write your intention

• 3-5 drops of oil that supports rebirth like eucalyptus or peppermint 

• Stones that represent rebirth to you like moonstone, green aventurine, and howlite for peace as you transform. Other stone options could include malachite, citrine, moss agate, or quartz.

• Dried or fresh herbs that support rebirth like spruce, pine, or nettle.

• Dried or fresh rosemary for clarity and protection.

• Cinnamon stick for luck

• Dagaz rune, which represents dawn. This can be placed inside your jar or drawn/painted on the outside of your jar.

• White candle

• Any other representations of rebirth for you 

Let yourself be intuitive with your spell ingredients, and feel free to use what you have around you! 

SPELL STEPS

1. Like any spell, you’ll want to center and ground yourself before working the spell. You might spend a few minutes meditating, letting your eyes drift around your space, or doing breathwork or anything else that feels grounding to you. Find ideas for grounding here. 

2. When you feel ready, cleanse each of your items. You can use smoke, sound, salt, or another cleansing technique you align with.

3. Write your intention for the spell on the paper to add into your bottle.

4. If you’d like, you can paint your bottle with symbols that represent rebirth to you.

5. After your bottle is ready, take your time to place each item inside your bottle intentionally. Raise energy as you do this, either with deep breaths or chanting. I recommend coming up with your own chant that focuses energy on connecting to your intuition and developing your intuitive abilities.

6. When you’re done filling your bottle, seal it, hold the vessel in your hands, and keep chanting or breathing as long as you’d like.

7. Light your white candle and place it on top of or next to your spell bottle. Be mindful of your candle surroundings and never leave your candle burning unattended. Tip: Melt the bottom of your candle with a flame to make it stick to the top of your jar.

8. Spend time meditating on your intention as your candle burns. Connect with the feeling of rebirth. Visualize rebirth moving through your cells, making you whole. What would it feel like, look like, even sound like, to be reborn?

9. Ground the energy after your meditation by placing your palms on the ground and returning any excess energy to the Earth.

I recommend placing the bottle on your altar, keeping it at the forefront of your consciousness while it works its rebirth magic. Keep your Yule spell bottle out for one lunar cycle, until Imbolc, or when you feel ready to take it down.Want more ways to connect with the season of Yule? Check out these articles from our blog: 

• Oracle or Tarot Card Spread for Yule

• 4 Ways to Honor the Winter Solstice

• 3 Ways to Bring Meaning to the Winter Solstice

5 Samhain Rituals + Samhain Correspondences & Card Spread

The ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), celebrated on October 31st and November 1st, marks the end of our seasonal cycle on the Wheel of the Year. This is why it's often referred to as the witch's New Year. Seasonally speaking, Samhain is the third and final harvest of the season or the last rally to store and prepare for the coming Winter season.

This sacred celebration reaches much farther than harvests and is also a time when the veil between the physical and spirit world is at its thinnest. The Celtic people believed that spirits walked among them during this time, so Samhain is accepted as an ideal time to communicate and connect with the spirit realm. Here's a fun drawing I created with ritual suggestions for Samhain. Keep scrolling to learn more about each one. 

Time to pull out all of your favorite intuitive and protective tools! Let's dig into four different ways to connect with this season through ritual. I'll also share correspondences for Samhain and a card spread to use with your favorite tarot or oracle card deck. 

1. Create a Samhain Altar + Samhain Correspondences 

Switching up your altar or sacred space for the seasons is an easy way to bring in each celebration's energy on the Wheel of The Year. Get a quick look at how I do this in this video I shared on Instagram for Mabon. 

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When it comes to changing out your altar, understanding the correspondences (items that carry the similar energy) of Samhain will be helpful. Here's a list of tools and symbols that correspond with Samhain. 

Samhain Correspondences:

• Themes: Releasing, cleansing, divination, protection, the underworld, offerings for ancestors

• Moon Phase: Waning crescent moon

• Crystals: Labradorite, obsidian, onyx, garnet, hematite, amethyst

• Candle Colors: Purple, black, orange, silver

• Tools: Besom (broom), cauldron, any kind of divination tool

• Plants and Scents: Mugwort, cinnamon, clove, patchouli

• Foods: Apples, pomegranate, pumpkins, nuts, meat

• Runes: Algiz, Daggaz, Ansuz, Perthro, Othalo

• Gods and Goddesses: Persephone, all crone Goddesses, Callieach, Cerridwen, and Hecate

To create your altar, select items and symbols from the list above and anything else that personally connects you to this season. Clear and cleanse (both physically and energetically) your altar space, then place your altar items with care and intention. I like to end my altar creation by lighting a candle and saying a prayer for the altar's intention. It could be something like this, but feel free to tailor it to your liking. 

With this altar, I welcome the final harvest season and the thinning of the veil. I remember my loved ones crossed over and all ancestors before them and share this offering as a sign of my gratitude. Myself and my space are protected from any beings that do not have my highest good in mind. So it is. 

2. Sweep away negative energy with a besom

With the thinning of the veil between spirit and physical, it's essential to clear out and protect your space from unwanted energies. I shared a thorough post a few years ago with steps to perform a Samhain house cleansing and blessing; check it out here. Because I already wrote all about performing a house cleansing, I'd like to dive a little deeper into using a besom for Samhain. 

A besom, or broom, is a tool used by witches to cleanse a space energetically. Though your besom can clean physically, it doesn't touch the ground when used as an energy cleansing tool. Simply open a door in your house, sweep right above the floor, and visualize negative energy leaving your space. 

You can make your besom or find them for purchase at certain stores. I usually get mine from Trader Joe's and like to add my own decorations to it. 

3. Connect with your ancestors and give offerings to loved ones in spirit. 

There are cultures worldwide who believe that our loved ones come back at certain times to walk among us. We see this in the Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, Hungry Ghosts day in China, and in Samhain (to name a few.) 

Samhain offers us a special time to connect with, honor, and remember all those who have come before us. You can do this in various ways, including by connecting with your ancestors for guidance through your intuition, remembering loved ones and ancestors passed on, or giving loved ones in spirit an offering. 

Your altar is a great place to give an offering to any loved ones who've crossed over. An offering to your ancestors could be pictures of them or favorite foods and drinks. You can also connect with ancestors in spirit through meditation and breathwork. Check out this past blog post for steps to work with your ancestors through meditation and breathwork.

Find a guided journey to your ancestors here.

4. Protect yourself!

The thinning veil is a double-edged sword for Samhain. Yes, it is lovely to connect with spirit so easily, but it also leaves you more susceptible to all energies, which may not have your highest good in mind. Because the veil is so thin during this time, take care to protect yourself and your space from any unwelcome energy. 

The featured oracle card deck is The Ritual Deck.

A protection tool that works exceptionally well during Samhain is burning dried mugwort. I shared all about this plant here. Some other favorites are salt for banishing, black candles, and the Rune Algiz. Find even more protection tools and rituals in a previous post here. 

5. Pull out your intuitive tools + Samhain Card Spread

If you want to connect with spirit, set the wheels in motion for a new desire, or want to learn more about yourself from a higher perspective, now's the time to pull out all the stops and dive deep into your intuitive practice. With the thinning veil between spirit and physical, the doors are wide open for profound intuitive growth, shadow work, and spiritual connections. 

Here's a suggested card spread to try out with your favorite tarot or oracle card deck. Samhain tarot or oracle card spread.

1. In what areas of my life do I need more protection?

2. What bonds do I need to break free of in my life?

3. What areas of my life are seeking renewal?

4. In what areas of my life do I need to allow grieving?

5. What messages do my ancestors have for me?

There are endless options for performing intuitive work, but some of my favorites for Samhain are candle spells, scrying, oracle and tarot card readings, and journey work.

Samhain is a truly magical time, and I hope you can feel how special it is with everything I've shared here. Remember, there's nothing to fear. At our core, we are spiritual beings too. This unique time offers us the opportunity to connect with a realm we already know so well, even if we've temporarily forgotten. Samhain blessings, dear one!

Spellwork and Witchcraft Ethics

When we understand how powerful witchcraft and spellwork can be, we know that there is as much potentiality for causing harm as there is for healing.

I don’t believe that ethics in this area (or any, really) are black and white or something that can be written in a post and passed right along to you. I think ethics are both nuanced and personal. 

So in this blog, I’ll be sharing a bit of my own thoughts about spellwork and witchcraft ethics, and offering some different areas of reflection for your own spellwork and witchcraft ethics.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION + CONSUMPTION

Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, wrote for Medium, “Cultural appropriation is the misuse of a group’s art and culture by someone with the power to redefine that art and, in the process, divorce it from the people who originally created it.”

Cultural appropriation is rampant in the spirituality, new age, and witchcraft communities. Sacred indigenous plants are bought and sold by white folks, indigenous knowledge is whitewashed, repackaged and sold, and practices are stolen from cultures of color. 

The impacts of cultural appropriation are not just personal, they widely function to continue to funnel power towards white folks and away from Black folks, Indigenous folks, and other people of color. 

I also personally feel that working with tools and practices from our own ancestry are always going to be more powerful than working with tools and practices that are not from our own ancestry! 

Some reflection questions for your own practice around cultural appropriation:

• What tools are you using in your magical practice, and where do they come from? If they are from cultures other than your own, how are you giving back, uplifting and supporting those cultures and peoples? 

• Are they sourced in ways that feel good to you and aligned with your values (for example: are your crystals mined by children? Are trees being chopped down for your Palo Santo?)?

• What are the lineages of the practices you use? If you don’t know, do some research. 

• How were your ancestors practicing witchcraft and magic? What are their traditions? What tools were they using? What were there beliefs? (These are big questions and incredibly important ones, especially for white folks to be asking. It can be hard to find information when much of European folk magic traditions were stolen by Christianity when the religion swept over the continent, but it’s out there. To start ancestral research, I recommend checking out Sanyu Estelle’s Ancestral Altars: Europa Edition recorded class as well as Megan McGuire’s work. Cassie also loves Elen Sentier’s work on British Shamanism.)

CAUSING HARM WITH MAGICK

Just as we can do spellwork to attract love and abundance, we can also practice curses, hexes, and other kinds of spellwork to manipulate and cause harm to others.

It would be easy for me to tell you here: never use curses or hexes, never practice magic that causes harm. There are Wiccan creeds around this that you may be familiar with, the Threefold Law and the Wiccan Rede. 

The Threefold Law states that whatever energy you put out will come back to you times three. The Wiccan Rede states “An it harm none, do what ye will.” There are different ways to interpret the Wiccan Rede, but most agree that it means as long as your workings harm no one, do what you feel called to. 

I tend to agree with these ideas personally, but it’s not so black and white. Some Black magical traditions like Hoodoo have no such rules and use cursing and crossing in alignment with their own ethics. I think it’s important to stay in my own lane when it comes to passing blanket statements about what it is and isn’t okay to do with magic, when there are deeply rooted traditions that incorporate some of these practices. 

We can expand this out and ask, too — is it truly unethical to curse or hex a person who does evil in the world at a large scale?

I don’t have answers for you, but I invite you to reflect on these questions. What settles in your body and heart when it comes to causing harm with magick?

JUSTICE

This brings me to justice. Witchcraft is intrinsically linked to justice and is inherently political, no question about it. 

I invite you to ask yourself: how are my spells and magical workings contributing to justice in the world? Or are they functioning to amplify privilege and get only myself ahead?

One of my favorite practices around this was shared by Amanda Yates Garcia, the Oracle of LA. She invites us to send out any spell we do for ourselves for the collective, too. For example, a spell to attract money would also include something like, “as it is for me, as it is for all,” to ask the spell to attract money for all of us. A spell for a new home for yourself might include housing justice for all. A spell for a lover for yourself might include safe and healthy relationships for all. And so on!

CONSENT

One of the key principles in energy work is always getting consent. Energy work has real impacts, and people deserve the opportunity to be able to opt-in to receive it. 

For me, this is true regardless of our best intentions - even if we want to send healing to someone we don’t know (who can’t consent) because we think it would really help them. 

What is true for you? Ask yourself: what are my consent boundaries with others when it comes to energy?

As you can see, ethics is a murky field but an important one to consider for any witch! My advice is: Work from your own value system. If you’re not clear on what your values are, start there. Let your witchcraft practice reflect your ethos, and know that we all have different values & ideas of what is right or wrong.  

At the end of the day, we all have to be able to sleep at night from a place of knowing the truth, not from ignorance of the impacts of our actions. What do you need to change or lean into in your practice to make that so? 

3 Rituals for Mabon

Mabon, also known as the fall equinox, is the holiday on the Wheel of the Year that descends us into autumn. On this day, as with both equinoxes, light and dark find balance — we hover, suspended, at an even keel before tipping into more darkness.

When we fear darkness, this descent may feel scary. But intentionally working with the seasons and the Wheel of the Year can teach us the inherent goodness in every season, and the necessity of each point in the year. Without the fall and winter dying season, there can be no space for growth in spring and summer.

Without the pruning and reevaluating of the dying season, the growth season brings overwhelm and lack of focus. Without the shadow work fall and winter invite in, spring and summer feel shallow — love and light with no substance. Working with ritual is a beautiful way to honor this sabbat. Scroll down to explore some rituals to inspire your practice for this sacred day and season. 

Gratitude Ritual

Often referred to as the Witches’ Thanksgiving, Mabon is thought of by some as a second harvest time. A time to reap what you have sowed, and enjoy the fruits of your energy with those you love. 

This gratitude ritual is inspired by this aspect of Mabon. All you’ll need is a candle in a color that connects you to gratitude, a piece of paper and a pen. You can make this fancier if you’d like by rolling your candle in oil and herbs (here are a few gratitude herbs shared by Yoga International to check out), but it’s definitely not a requirement.

Ground yourself and spend some time reflecting on the question: what are you grateful for? Think back throughout this whole year, perhaps since the last fall equinox, and free-write everything you can think of on your paper. 

Maybe there’s even enough time and space from some of the harder things of the past year to find some gratitude in them (or maybe not, and maybe there never will be, and all of that is okay, too!). 

When you feel complete with your list, light your candle and start reading aloud everything you’re grateful for. Take a breath and pause with each item to really feel the gratitude move through your body, to consciously connect with this energy. Depending on how long your list is and how you’re feeling, you might read your list a few times.

Then, raise energy in a way that feels joyful to you - it could be dancing, shaking your whole body, laughing, or anything else that feels good to you! Let gratitude soak into your cells. Let it infuse your body with love. When you’ve felt the energy shift, burn your gratitude list on your candle and offer up a little gratitude prayer that feels good to you — I like something simple like, “thank you, more please!” to share my gratitude and offer to the Universe that I’m open to receiving more things to be grateful for. 

Let your candle burn out, or burn it for the next few days and sit in a short gratitude meditation each day while you do. 

Make an Altar

Making a seasonal altar is a lovely and tactile way to honor any season. To make your altar, ask yourself: what textures, scents, images, archetypes, symbols, and items evoke a feeling of autumn for you?

Check out this video from our Instagram page for tips on resetting your altar for the seasons.

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Here are some suggestions to inspire your practice, but I highly recommend letting your altar creation be intuitive:

• Sticks and/or leaves from the land near you 

• The High Priestess tarot card, symbolizing Persephone’s descent into the underworld 

• Local seasonal fruits and vegetables like apples, grains, and squash as offerings for ancestors 

• Autumnal colored candles — brown, red, orange, and/or yellow 

• Pomegranates, which also symbolize descent into the underworld 

Try to be as present as possible while creating your altar to really sink into the space you’re creating. After you’ve set up your altar, try spending a few moments meditating on the themes of Mabon and intention of this holiday.

Ritual to Descend into Darkness

This ritual is to be done outside at sunset (if that’s possible for you, if not, you could change it to be inside and view the sunset through a window) on the fall equinox.

Set yourself up for a pleasurable and safe sunset viewing experience, whatever that means to you! If it’s chilly, maybe you need a sweater and thick socks. Maybe you like to have yummy snacks and a drink, or a journal to write a poem about the sunset beside you. It’s up to you!

Watch the sunset and try to be as present as possible. Notice how the sun’s energy makes you feel, and how that might shift as the sun continues to sink lower and the colors change across the sky. As the sun sets, offer gratitude to the sun for its life-giving energy.

Sink into the darkness, and try to be as present as possible with it, too. Notice how your energy and the sensations and feelings in your body shift with the darkness. Ask yourself: what are the gifts of this darkness? What’s the medicine, the magic? Notice what you hear, smell, see - maybe it’s bugs singing, the stars in the sky, a smoky scent of someone’s backyard fire pit.

Speak words of love and praise aloud to the darkness. Share what you love about it. What you’re ready for. What calls to you about the darkness. If you feel called, leave an intuitive offering out for the darkness — food, a poem, a painting, a flower, anything that feels good to you.

Close your ritual with a few deep breaths, and spend some time journaling after to process your experience.

Happy Mabon! Sending you lots of love and wishes for a nourishing fall season from team Cassie Uhl. Find more rituals for Marbon here. 

5 Rituals for Lammas & Lughnasadh

Lammas, or Lughnasadh, is one of the four cross-quarter days on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. This holiday, celebrated by ancient European pagans, marks the beginning of the harvest season. 

The name Lughnasadh comes from “Lunasa,” which means August in Gaelic. Lammas is the English word for this harvest festival, which is Anglo-Saxon for “loaf mass.” I tend to use both names, as I have both Irish and English ancestry. 

At the beginning of the harvest season, the themes of this holiday are abundance, gratitude, harvest, and honoring the fruits of our labors and intentions throughout the year thus far. 

Honoring the sabbats with ritual is a beautiful way to tune yourself into nature and connect with Mother Earth. Scroll down for 5 Lammas rituals to help you celebrate this day! 

1. Meditate to connect with Lugh. This holiday is associated with the sun god Lugh (which you can see in the name Lughnasadh). Lugh is a warrior deity in Celtic mythology known for being skilled in many things, including fighting, building, and the arts. 

For this ritual, sit in meditation (ideally, outside under the sun if that’s possible for you) and ask to connect with the energy of Lugh. In my practice, I like to work with deities energetically as archetypes that are already within myself, but please, do whatever works for you! You can ask Lugh to share a message with you, ask him to share his skills in a specific area you need help with, simply offer him gratitude, or bring forward another question specific to you.

Bask in Lugh’s energy until you feel complete, offer gratitude, and close your meditation with a few deep belly breaths.

You can find a meditation for Lughnasadh here to help you harvest the fruits of your labor over the previous year and tune into the energy of pride.

2. Explore what you are harvesting in your life at this time. Try this tarot or oracle card spread for deeper clarity around the abundance in your life right now. 

• What I am harvesting at this time 

• The roots of this harvest (aka, what happened to make this harvest possible internally and externally?)

• How to step into the energy of gratitude 

• How to continue to create abundance in my life 

Spend some time meditating with your cards or journaling about their meanings to go deeper. 

3. Support local farmers. I love when ritual becomes tangible and infused with life, and this is one of those rituals! Ask yourself how you can support local farmers in your life. Perhaps you’d like to commit to doing a CSA next year or buying some portion of your food locally. Perhaps you can go to the farmer’s market, purchase some things and get to know your local farmers. Get creative and support those who make our physical harvest possible every day. 

4. Bake a loaf of bread. Associated with grains, this is the perfect day to bake a fresh loaf of bread. Do this with loved ones if you’d like for a more collaborative process, and infuse intentions of gratitude and abundance into the baking process. Share the bread with your loved ones afterward, and talk about what the themes of this holiday mean to you.  

5. Make an altar. Making an altar is a beautiful way to honor any sabbat. Get creative and make it your own! To inspire your own creativity, here are some ideas of things you might like to put on your altar:

• Bread or grains 

• Yellow, orange, red, or brown candles

• Local, seasonal fresh vegetables 

• Your tarot cards from the spread above

• The 8 of Pentacles, 10 of Pentacles, or any other cards that represent harvest, abundance, and gratitude to you 

• An ear of corn 

• Sunflowers

• Citrine, pyrite, or tiger eye

To learn more about the different sabbats on the wheel of the year (plus, get a free printable), click here. Learn more about the intersection of the first harvest season, Leo season, and Lughnasadh and the history of the Celtic God Lugh here. 

Walking the Path of Infertility & 5 Spiritual Tools to Help

Walking the path of infertility was one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced during this lifetime. If you’re walking this path, I see you, and I send you my love and encouragement because I know how hard it is. For four years, I was unable to conceive naturally, and I tried all the things. Eventually, after four years of walking the infertility path, I became pregnant and birthed my sweet twins, Ellis Andrew and Lillian Hart. Here I’m sharing some of the tools that helped me through this journey.

Let me preface this post with a gentle reminder that your experience is unique, and so was mine. Please, take what you like and leave the rest. My suggestions are based on my individual experience and may or may not work for you. 

I’d want to be extremely transparent about all of the tools that I relied upon throughout my infertility journey. I am a huge advocate for therapy and found a therapist that specialized in working with women who were struggling with infertility (she actually went through IVF herself!). If you live in Arizona and want her contact info, please send me a note here. I also used a variety of holistic and modern Western medical interventions, including acupuncture, massage, herbs, IUI, and ultimately, IVF. IUI and IVF are not for everyone, and certainly has its many downfalls, but it was the path I chose. 

The suggestions I offer you here have less to do with becoming pregnant and more to do with loving yourself where you’re at. I believe, for me, that the acceptance and peace I found around this issue is what ultimately lead me to conception. This isn’t the case for everyone, and as I said, this is a deeply personal path that is unique to each individual. Be open, but, if something doesn’t feel like a good fit, that’s okay! 

Berkano card featured from The Ritual Deck.

CREATE AN ALTAR

Having an altar gives you an area to hold space for all of the big emotions that go along with infertility. Early in my infertility journey, I made an altar for my unborn child. If you’re feeling this, go for it, but I’ll be honest and tell you that I took it apart in a fit of rage and rebuilt an altar for myself. I was so glad I did, and here’s why. 

For me, so much of the infertility journey was me constantly doing and trying new things, often with little regard for my body and energy. I can’t tell you how many times Dr’s would say, “This procedure is perfectly harmless and painless!” only to discover that it was indeed painful and very emotionally taxing. I felt like a human pin cushion on an emotional rollercoaster. I needed a space for myself more than anything, not for my unborn child! My unborn children were totally fine; I was the one who was struggling. 

So, my recommendation is to focus on you and honor your feelings as much as you can throughout the process. One powerful way to do this is to dedicate a space to yourself and your feelings with an altar. Think of your altar as a container for all of the big things you’re not ready to face or need a break from. I would even visualize placing my big emotions in a safe little container stored on my altar until I was prepared to confront them. 

Check out the video below to learn more about creating an altar, embodying the mother archetype, and leaning into shadow for infertility.

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Altars work well for grief and hardships of all kinds! Click here to check out a post I shared a while ago about how to create an altar. 

EMBODYING THE MOTHER ARCHETYPE WITH BERKANO AND THE TRIPLE GODDESS 

You do not need to bear children to be a mother. This was huge for me in my journey. In fact, I even tattooed the Rune Berkano on my finger as a reminder. I decided to have Berkano tattooed on my finger after I came to a place of acceptance about possibly not being able to have my own children. I wanted it as a reminder that I could be a mother in a variety of different ways. Berkano is a Rune that represents creation, birth, and fulfillment. It is often associated with fertility and motherhood. 

The Triple Goddess symbol is another symbol I used to tap into the energy of motherhood. The Triple Goddess symbol consists of the waxing moon, full moon, and waning moon representing the maiden, the mother, and the crone. This lunar reminder suggests that we can embody all aspects of the Triple Goddess at different times in our life. You don’t need to be young to act like the maiden, and you do not need to have children to embody the mother. Beyond the archetypes associated with the Triple Goddess, the moon phases also point to a reminder that everything is a phase and nothing is forever, just like the infertility journey. Read more about the Triple Goddess in a post I wrote here. 

You don’t have to have these special symbols tattooed on your body to work with them! But if you want to, by all means ;) You can add these symbols to your altar, meditate on them, create art with them, and wear them. 

MEDITATION

There are SO MANY choices to be made along the infertility journey, believe me, I know. Here are just a few, “Should I try IUI or IVF?” “Should I adopt?” “Should I stop trying altogether?” “Why do I think I don’t deserve to have children?” “Should I switch to a new Dr.?”, “Should I go the holistic route first?”, “What are my limits with this process?”. These are just a few examples of some of the big questions that went through my mind during my infertility journey. 

When life hands you any difficult situation, meditation is a powerful tool for a variety of reasons. Meditation will help soothe your possibly stressed nervous system to give you the space to feel and process some of the big emotions and questions connected to infertility. Once you’ve gotten to a place where you’ve experienced some of your emotions, meditation can help again by giving you clarity around any questions or confusion you may have about your path. 

If you’re new to meditation, I suggest trying a 5-minute meditation every day and then bump it up to 10 minutes a day when you feel ready. Click here to read a great blog post about meditation and how to start and stick with a meditation practice. 

My final IVF attempt that resulted in the viable pregnancy of my twin babes happened when my meditation practice was the strongest. I was actually hosting a two-week meditation challenge on Instagram at the time. I was the most at peace I’d been throughout my entire infertility journey and can say, honestly, that I knew I’d be okay whether or not my final IVF resulted in pregnancy. Now, I don’t think it was only my solid meditation practice that made this IVF attempt stick, it was a culmination of several things, but I know that it certainly helped!

CRYSTALS ALLIES

I saved this tool for the end because, though I do believe crystals are mega-powerful, I also think they can be a crutch. I like to use crystals in tandem with other tools, like the ones I mentioned above, not as a solo tool. Personally, I think crystals work best when their energy can be layered with other actionable steps. 

Here’s my list of crystals to help with infertility, bonus they’re all also great for pregnancy and connecting with Goddess energy!

Card featured from The Ritual Deck.

Moonstone- Moonstone, in all of its varieties, corresponds to femininity, the Triple Goddess, the element of water, and cycles. Working with moonstone can serve as a potent reminder that everything you experience is a phase. On a physical level, moonstone is said to help regulate cycles within the body. Moonstone is a gentle enough stone to keep in the bedroom on your nightstand or under your bed. 

Carnelian- There’s nothing like scheduled sex that will take the passion out of your sex life! Carnelian connects with both the root and the sacral chakra, making it ideal for connecting with your passion. It is also another stone that can help heal the reproductive organs. 

Rhodonite- If you’re in the trenches of infertility, you’re going to need a lot of self-love and self-acceptance. Rhodonite is here to help. Rhodonite is also said to help with fertility directly, but I relied on it more for its emotional balancing. When I was TTC and struggling, I had a rhodonite mala necklace created for me and used it often during meditation. 

Smokey Quartz- If you’ve been at this long, then you probably already know that that 2ww (two-week wait) is one of the most anxiety-provoking times of the month! Not to mention your hormones are at their peak! Smokey quartz can be your grounding and anxiety soothing bestie during this time. 

LOOK FOR THE SOUL LESSON AND DIVE DEEP INTO SHADOW

My last suggestion, and it’s a pretty esoteric one, is to look for the soul lessons in your infertility journey. I believe, before we are born, our souls decide what lessons we need to learn while in human form to help us progress. For me, this is where therapy and meditation really helped. It became evident to me throughout my process that I had a deep belief that I did not deserve to have children and that to be happy, I had to struggle. 

Much of my infertility journey involved getting nice and cozy with my shadow side (learn more about shadow work here) and negative the storylines I was choosing to live in. In therapy, I explored my beliefs about being undeserving and where they stemmed from through EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy gave me the tools I needed to explore these darker aspects of my life and ultimately heal them. 

My meditation practice helped me become more aware of when these stories would come to mind, so I could look at them with clarity and not attach to them. For me, this step was not the sort of thing I did in a day or even a week; it was a long process. 

I could obviously write about this for an entire book worth of writing! If you’re walking the infertility path and have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here. Remember, there’s a lesson in everything, even when it’s hard. Nothing lasts forever, and you are always supported!

I hope these tools offer you some peace and healing. I’m sending you so much love, hope, and strength for your journey, wherever it leads you.