Add Salt to Your New Moon Ritual

You are surrounded by cycles of nature throughout the year. Spring flowers push their way through the snow, the leaves on trees light up the hills with their colors of fall, and the moon in steady fashion cycles through her phases, waxing and waning in concert with the pull of the tides on earth. Establishing a New Moon ritual practice can be a powerful reminder of how you are connected to these cycles.

The New Moon and Full Moon both amplify the ocean’s tides. There is a pull and a push with the waxing and waning of the moon that reflects as a more dramatic high and low tide. Imagine this push and pull as it imparts its forces on the fluids of your body, which share a remarkable similarity to seawater. Though the forces at play in the shifting tides vary, tuning into how you respond to both the full and the New Moon can be illuminating.

The Power of Adding Salt to Your New Moon Ritual

Sea salt is traditionally harvested by allowing the moisture to evaporate from seawater, leaving the salt behind. Many traditions around the world consider salt as an important part of purification rituals and a way to connect with the spiritual realm. Incorporating salt into your New Moon ritual can provide an activation of your connection to spirit.

[From a health perspective there are reasons to limit salt intake, but there is also a “Dark Side to Eating too Little Salt.”]

Symbolically, the moon corresponds to your emotional body. While the Full Moon is often considered a time to sit in the fullness of your life, welcoming the abundance you experience and feeling grateful for the blessings of your life, some Full Moons, including the most recent one, are considered important times for releasing. (Try this “Full Moon Ritual for Release.”)

Whether or not you intentionally invited in the energy of release with the Full Moon, you can practice this New Moon ritual to create what you want for your life by activating the energy of your intentions.

A Salty New Moon Ritual

What you need.

• Sea salt, preferably harvested with traditional methods

• A tall glass of freshwater

• A journal and something to write or draw with

• Access to an outdoor space, or your imagination

Begin by laying down outside, letting your gaze soften as you take in the infinite abundance of the stars in the sky. With the moon hidden, you will be able to see more stars than is possible at any other time. If you can’t see the night sky from where you are, awaken your imagination, remembering a time when you saw the night sky full of stars. Soak in the feeling of limitlessness as you let that sensation fill your entire body.

Take a small pinch of the sea salt and place it under your tongue, affirming both a purification of what is no longer serving you and a welcoming of your connection with the spiritual realm and the world that is unseen. With this connection, welcome the input from your higher self, the part of you that knows what is ready to come into being in your life. Let the salt dissolve under your tongue.

[Also try: “Hand Reflexology Practice for the New Moon.”]

Bring your journal somewhere you have light, and begin to write or draw your answers to the following questions.

• What am I ready to create and what is most important to welcome into my life?

• What will be the end result of these intentions coming into being?

• How do I need to show up every day to bring these intentions alive?

• What is the most important place to begin?

• What are the first steps I will take as I activate these intentions in my life?

Complete the ritual by drinking the freshwater, welcoming the salt into your body, and activating your intentions on a cellular level.

The less-showy side of the moon invites you into the realm of creation, the shadow side where seeds are sewn into the fertile soil of the New Moon. Practice this New Moon ritual and revisit your journal as the moon waxes. With the following Full Moon, you might find you have more to be grateful for, and you may open yourself up to a new layer of what is ready to be released.

More practices for the New Moon: “A New Moon Ceremony for Abundance.”