Creative Bloom | Volume 4: Stories from Artists

Introducing Creative Bloom - our new Hopegrown series where art, nature, and soulful storytelling come together. This week’s story highlights the intersection between superstitions, manifestation, and the act of intentions. Enjoy!

"Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit..."

Come the beginning of a new month comes the blossoming sense of new and profound change. A time of release, opportunities and unburdening what no longer serves or provides for our greater selves. A metaphorical cleansing, out with the old and in with the new, especially in the months that mark the coming of a new season. Like many who have adorned themselves to be ritualized by habits, the first of the month also brings forth, and in such retrospect’s, peculiar or superstitious ‘techniques’ of manifesting love, luck, abundance and prosperity into their lives. 

Some of these habits can include cleaning, meditation, hot salt baths or journaling, whichever the choice of practice the user has faith that such habits or rituals will bring desire change, and for the better.  What is fascinating to explore in this counterculture of spirituality is the peculiarity of some of these odd and quirky habits. Historically, these rituals of new love, luck, abundance and prosperity stem from a historical superstition and have little to zero scientific conclusively or evidence of success other than the practitioner’s belief that such specifical ritualized tendencies work.

For instance, have you ever heard of the superstition to toss spilled salt over your left shoulder?

Curious enough to know why?

Salt is used in many spiritual practices to ward off evil forces or ‘bad luck’. Commonly used in many rituals as a conductor or element of protection. Therefore, spilling salt, you are essentially ‘spilling your luck’, or breaking the wards. Consequently, to avoid denting the barrier, we toss salt over our shoulders. Most importantly our left shoulder.

Why the left shoulder?

In many beliefs it is believed that ominous entities lurk over our left shoulder and tossing salt we are essentially ‘blinding’ the omen and returning ‘good luck’. Does throwing salt over your luck shoulder really return good luck? Its relevance is probably just as effective as spilling salt brings forth bad luck. However, it’s not such much evidence or physical proof, but rather the mindset of what you set out to be true. If you believe tossing spilled salt over your left shoulder will prevent bad luck, then your point of view will form the reality to be presented as such.

As such, in common first of the month practices to invite love, luck, abundance and prosperity into the home is the use of salt and cinnamon.  At the beginning of the month, take a handful of salt and blow it out your open front door.  This is used to banish any unwanted energy from your home, and for cleansing. Then when you are done with the salt, take a handful of cinnamon and stand on the outside of your front door and blow the cinnamon inside the home. Cinnamon is commonly used for protection and welcoming abundance and is used in many ritual practices for welcoming prosperity.

Another first of the month spell or ritual if you are not fond of the salty cinnamon mess, is taping coins to the top threshold of the house front door. It is said passing underneath the threshold with coins strapped above will bring forth financial success and abundance. Another tip if you don’t have enough coins to break the bank is tying keys to strings and hanging them in your front window, for a more boho witchy chic.

Again, if this is not your style yet you wish to still practice in these rituals of manifestation, I’ll introduce the simmer pot.

A simmer pot is used to cleanse the home and once again bring forth abundance and prosperity. What is truly nice about the simmer is that the ingredients can be whatever you choose because it’s not the ingredients that make the magic but the intention.

I am a favorite of always using cinnamon and whatever is in season at the time. For the fall seasonal months, I like to mix cinnamon with apple slices, rosemary, bay leaves, ginger, and cloves, giving that warm and inviting pumpkin kind of spice vibe. Then during the winter months, especially around Yuletide, I like to add orange slices and sprigs of pine and cedar for a more festive scent. In many cultures, oranges represent the sun and during the winter long darker months, dried oranges among the mantel, garland or in the simmer pot invite light and joy into the home. Orange are a metaphor that act as a reminder that while days are short and the nights longer, that the darker days are not forever and the sun will prolong in the summer days again.

What is great about a simmer pot is that it doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t need to know that oranges are for the sun, or cinnamon for protection. In fact, you probably make simmer pots without even knowing it when we make a pot of stew on a cold chilly day. The instant that warm broth hits our lips we can feel our body light up from the inside as the soups healing warmth cascades down our body, relaxing our spirit and providing soothing comfort on those long cold days.  

Ever wonder why nothing could compare to grandma’s soup?

Intention.

Intention of love.

Again, it’s not the ingredients that make the magic, but the intentions. Stir clockwise to bring forth manifestation of your will and then turn counterclockwise what you let go. Effectively it is banishment spell, and why none of us can say no to good soup.

Ever hear of, “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.” or “White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit.”?

Another first of the month ritual stemming from folklore dated back in the UK, a verbal affirmation to be said the first of the month to will good luck. Again, no physical evidence can be added proving that this technique works other than those who believe and practice it insisting that it does.

Does it truly work? Who knows. However, are you curious enough to try? Were you superstitious enough to toss salt over your left shoulder?

Other superstitions similar to ‘Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit’ that are not part of the first of the month rituals are never to walk backwards, whistling at night, avoid using door mats or frames that say welcome at your front door, never bring an old broom into a new home, planting lavender for luck, or knocking three times before you enter the woods.  All have their ties to some folklore or legend with connections to ritual practices, yet all in which the intention of bring forth luck, abundance and prosperity.

So, what makes the first of the month so special?

Because it is new again.

Starting fresh, clean slate, revitalization, we don’t realize it but come the first of the month we inhabit routine cycles that start the first of the month, whether it’s in the home, work, school or social events. We have become habituated by ritualistic tendencies that give structure to our lives. It has become so second nature that we are not even aware that we are doing it, but we are.

So, from the spiritualist side, whenever there is a habit, or cycle, it is important to cleanse and rejuvenate your space and refresh your mind space.

Never got that home project completed, saved enough money, studied enough, made enough time for yourself and family, the first of the month, first of the cycle marks a time when we have the opportunity of reflection and consciously make choices to make changes. What we wish to manifest is sparked by what we deem to be mark shifted into our reality.

It does not matter if you like mediation, journaling, blow salt and cinnamon through your front door, hang keys in your window, stew a simmer pot or simply repeat, ‘Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.’ The trick is not to be so caught up in the ingredients that make the magic but the intention.

If you set forth the intention to strive for something and truly believe, thenceforth you have the power, or the magic, to manifest it into your reality. Sometimes we just need the casual reminder through the changing of cycles, like the first of the month, to set ourselves right again, and focus on the things that will bring us the love, luck, abundance and prosperity we are deserving.