Lisa Marie Rankin:

Hello, beautiful women. So today, I want to talk about rituals and specifically for rituals that I believe can help you reconnect to your feminine power and really help you become an active cocreator of your life. So first, what is a ritual? I believe a ritual is a bridge between our everyday mundane. And by mundane, I don't mean boring. I just mean our everyday earthly realm and the spiritual. Ritual acts as a bridge. It gives more meaning, purpose, and intention into our lives. Now sometimes we can think of rituals as habits, but where habits are things that we often do on autopilot without thinking, habits actually contract our consciousness because we're not even thinking.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

We're just kind of going through the motions of doing something. Rituals are the opposite of that. They help to expand our consciousness. They're going to shift our state. They're going to help us expand what's possible and really expand our connection with the world. So rituals and habits, sometimes they're used interchangeably. They're actually more like opposites, I believe. Again, we can think of the things that we do on autopilot, whether it's brushing your tea or having that glass of wine after work.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Those are actually there to contract our consciousness. We do them on autopilot so our brain doesn't necessarily need to think about it. Rituals are very very intentional. We're doing them to expand our consciousness whether we're doing a ritual to connect with a particular goddess archetype or connect with a seasonal celebration, we're trying to get more wisdom, become more than our everyday reality. We're opening ourselves up to more magical possibilities. Now I believe rituals really work too, but here's the thing. You can't half ass a ritual. You have to go into it with meaning, with intention, and actually believing that the ritual will work.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So today, I'm very excited to share 4 powerful rituals with you that will help you reconnect with your feminine power. So what do I mean by your feminine power? Because I know that can sound a little esoteric, a little woo woo, but actually I think it's a lot more practical and tangible than you might think. I believe women are extremely magical. I mean, think about it. You can create life in your womb. You can nourish your young with milk from your breast. And even if you have never had children before, you are still a creative force to be reckoned with. We are nurturing, magnetizing, creative, and yet I believe many of us have lost that power.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Part of that is because we live in a very masculine centric culture. What that means is we often follow this very linear path to success. We might go to school, go to college, get married, get a corporate job, climb up the corporate ladder, all of these things that we're told to do. So we start to value these qualities, but what that disconnects us from is our sense of feeling, intuition, discovery. So we've lost sight of this other part of us. Now there is nothing wrong with a masculine way of living, but if that's all we're doing, then we get disconnected from the part of us that is more creative, that's more collaborative, that is more involved in discovery as opposed to checking off external benchmarks or milestones for success. And that is why I believe so many women now are suffering from anxiety, depression, ennui. I love that word, ennui.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Often women will ask me, like, what does ennui mean? It's that sense of, like, do I have to get up? Oh, like another day another dollar or just living the dream. By the way, those are phrases that I used to say when I was very uninspired in the corporate world living this very masculine driven life. I'm just kind of doing it because I have to do it. There's not a lot of passion and enthusiasm behind it. But listen. We are only on this earthly realm for a very short period of time, so we want to infuse our lives with more creativity, with more enthusiasm, and that is where rituals come in. Sometimes in life, when life gets hard, especially when we're in midlife, we might be caring for children and as well as elderly parents and dealing with bills. We can start to feel that life is happening to us, and we're just reacting, maybe reacting to one fire drill after the next.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

But what rituals do, rituals almost give you the power where we're not reacting, but we're responding. We are cocreating with this divine life force. We're prioritizing what matters. We're really considering how we want to show up in the world. What is the energy that we want to invoke? So rituals, I believe, are very terribly important to live a purposeful, enchanted, and meaningful life. And I love that word, enchanted. I've been using that a lot lately because also as women, we are the keepers of the erotic flame of the hearth and of enchantment. So today, let's talk about 4 rituals that can reenchant your life and reconnect you to the divine feminine so you can live with more enthusiasm and more excitement and creativity.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

The first ritual is to invoke a goddess archetype. Now, of course, this is one of my favorite rituals. If you didn't know, I wrote a full book on goddess archetypes across traditions, across cultures called The Goddess Solution. The link to the book is in the show notes if you are interested. But we can look at all of these ancient goddesses, again, across cultures, across traditions, and their myth, their story, their qualities are just as relevant today as they were 1000 of years ago. We can look at these goddess archetypes, and I'll talk about a few today, to help us navigate the complexities of life. So whether we're looking to call in love, whether we need to deal with a very confrontational or complicated situation or whether we want to infuse our lives with more creativity. We can look at these different goddesses.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

The way that we work with goddess archetypes is that we consider their myth, consider their characters and qualities, and we start to bring them into our life. So for example, if I was looking to attract more love in my life, I might want to connect with the goddess Aphrodite. So I may have a ritual where I put symbols of Aphrodite, such as seashells or a bowl of water, flowers, something beautiful on my altar. You could also have a makeshift altar. Maybe it's on top of a bookcase or by your desk, and I can really take a look and let this sink in. And I start to think of how does it feel to embody these qualities. How would it feel if I went about my day as Aphrodite? So we can start to invoke a goddess by acting like the goddess. And as I always like to say, the goddess isn't a deity outside of yourself.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

She is an aspect of your highest self. You are the goddess. So a beautiful ritual that I like to work with is thinking about what is it that I'm looking to call into my life, and what is a goddess that I need to embody? How can I invoke her qualities and characteristics within me? We can look at Aphrodite for love, but maybe there was a stance that you needed to take or you had to deal with a very complex situation where you needed some confidence and confrontation. So that is the goddess Durga. She is the Hindu goddess of strength and protection. She has 8 arms, and she's carrying all of these weapons. But these weapons represent your inner strength. So if I was to invoke Durga, I would be really considering what are my weapons? What are my resources? Is it my knowledge about the subject matter? Is it somebody that I can call and connect with? But really reflecting on your own inner strengths.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Now if I was wanting to call in more creativity, I might want to invoke or embody the Hindu goddess Saraswati. So she's the goddess of creativity and knowledge. The Saraswati is a river. She's the goddess of flow. So if I want more flow into my life, a ritual might be to clean up clutter so I can bring more of that creative flow into my life. So we can look at these different goddesses and these different archetypes as parts of us that we need to invoke. Now I often get the question, well, is it a goddess or is it an archetype? And the answer is both. So if we are looking from a Jungian perspective, archetypes are autonomous.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

They have a mind of their own. So if you had ever found yourself saying, like, I don't know what got into me, or he just wasn't acting like himself, there's a chance there could have been an archetypal possession. Now we don't wanna be possessed by archetypes, although that does happen on occasion, but we do want to call them forth just like we would call a goddess. Now this doesn't make the goddesses any less important. It actually makes them even more important because we're invoking them within us, and they do have their own energy, their own way of being in the world. One of the quotes that I love that Carl Jung has said is he said the world of gods and spirits is truly nothing but the collective unconscious within me, and they're within you too. Now there's definitely different goddess archetypes that we may feel more at ease with. So, for example, I mentioned Aphrodite and Saraswati, the goddesses of love and creativity.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And these ones actually come pretty easy to me. I love being in love and I love being creative. So these are my go to goddesses. But, of course, in this earthly realm, we also need to be strong. We need to have discernment. We need to be able to stand in our truth and engage in difficult conversations. And that's when I would call on Durga, again, the Hindu goddess of strength and protection, or Athena, the goddess of wisdom who's also very strategic because I need a little bit more of that warrior goddess within me. Sometimes it can seem inauthentic, like, oh, but I just don't feel like Durga.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I don't feel like Aphrodite. Isn't that going to be inauthentic? And I always like to compare it to if you had weak biceps and you went to the gym to work them out, that wouldn't mean that you're inauthentic. You are just building a muscle, and that's what we are doing with these goddess archetypes. So having a ritual to invoke a goddess archetype can be really expansive because it's not about fixing yourself or trying to correct a part of you. You're bringing more in. You are expanding your sense of self. This is something we do each month inside of Enlivend, which is my transformative container that offers coaching, curriculum, and community. So on the full moon of each month, we will connect with a goddess archetype.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

We'll learn her myth, her qualities, how we could use these qualities in our modern world. There's often meditation and journaling questions. So we actually have these rituals monthly to connect with these different archetypes. Remember, these are different aspects of yourself. And just because they might not feel natural initially, it doesn't mean that they are not within you. They are looking for a way to expand. The second ritual I would like to talk about is harnessing the power of the moon. So the moon has long been associated with the divine feminine.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I mean, think about it. When we are bleeding, when we are menstruating, we menstruate with the moon. So every 28 days, often people will recognize, often women will recognize that they start to bleed on either the full moon or the new moon. And even if if you are no longer menstruating and you are postmenopausal or maybe going through perimenopause and your cycles are irregular, it can still be a beautiful practice to sync your cycle to the moon because we are still, what, 70, 80 percent water, so we are still very much affected by the energetics of the moon. The moon is cooling. It's nourishing. It's very similar to our sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone. In fact, within Ayurveda, an ancient Indian health tradition that looks to optimize health holistically by caring for body, mind, and spirit, the moon was really used to help women who were dealing with hormonal issues.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Of course, they didn't call them hormonal issues back then, but whether it would be fertility or painful periods or regulating your menstruation cycle, the moon is this beautiful connection that we have to the divine feminine, and it is always changing just like you are. Depending on which phase the moon is in, it can influence our emotions, moods, and really our overall well-being. So by becoming more in sync with the moon, we're gonna feel more in tune with our body and what's going on. We get a deeper understanding of ourselves. So let's look a little bit at the moon phases and how we can work with them and the rituals that we might want to start. The new moon. This is a great time to set intentions. So what do you want to create, or how do you want to interact with the world in the next 28 days? So setting your intentions for the new moon can be a beautiful ritual, writing it down and really reflecting upon it.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I always like to think of his intentions as not something that you want to get or give up, but really who do you want to become? What would you like to achieve in the next moon cycle? Then as the moon starts to wax, so from the new moon as it starts to wax and it starts to fill up, this is a great time to take action. So you might even think of a ritual as what's that first thing that you are going to do to help manifest the intention that you had set on the new moon. That waxing period is kind of this exciting period of taking action, bringing something to life. And then we have the full moon. So this is the juicy full moon. So this is traditionally a great time to gather. This is when we do our full moon goddess circles to connect with an archetype in enlivened. So to gather with your sisters, to make love with your partner.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

You can put some water outside, create moon water during the full moon. This is also a great time where you could offer forgiveness or take some time to reflect what you are grateful for. Now I just gave you a whole bunch of rituals for the full moon. You don't have to do all of them, but maybe pick one that is resonating with you. Then we have the waning moon. This is when the moon is starting to go dark again. And this is often a time of introversion or introspection. We start to want to turn inward.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

We don't wanna gather as much. So this is We start to want to turn inward. We don't wanna gather as much. So this could be a great time for self reflection, contemplation. You can start to look at what your intention was at the beginning of the cycle, and maybe you readjust during this period. You reflect on how it's going or if there's things that you need to shift. What have you learned about yourself or about the world at large during this time? And then we have the dark moon towards the end. And this is again a time of deep introspection, reflection.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

You can consider what it is that has manifested with your intention or maybe you start to recognize that it wasn't actually what you wanted and you have a new intention that you can start to work with in the new moon. When we start to sync to the moon cycles, we know when it is that we want to turn inward, maybe reflect on what's going on in our lives, when we want to set intentions, when we can take action, and then when we can gather as well too. So it really gives us a road map for the 28 days to help us increase our intuition, creativity, and productivity. Because remember, the moon is very much representative of the divine feminine, and I think this is what makes women so magical is that we are always changing. We are always shifting. So rather than think that we're gonna be doing the same thing every day or we're gonna feel the same each day and each day we have the same structure, take a cue from the moon and start to organize your month, your protect productivity, what you're trying to accomplish based on the moon cycle. Now we have a new moon coming up on January 29th. So consider for this new moon, what do you wanna achieve in the next moon cycle? And what are three actions that can help you get there? The 3rd ritual to help you reconnect with your feminine power is to celebrate the seasons.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I was about to say this is one of my favorites, but I know I say that for all of them. But I think this is terribly important and something that we don't do enough. So we spend so much time in front of screens that we spend more time looking at Zoom than we are looking at sunrises or sunsets. So I often hear women say, I need to get out in nature more. I need to reconnect with nature. And in a way, I'm sure you do, I do as well. But it's important to remember that we don't need to reconnect with nature. We need to remember that we actually are nature.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Whatever is going on outside, whether it's the leaves are changing color, whether it's starting to snow, whether it's cold and dry or hot and humid, it's going on within you as well. We are natural beings. So when we can celebrate cycles of the seasons, when we can reconnect with the energy of each seasons, we feel stronger. We feel empowered. We're no longer going against the grain thinking that, okay, I'm gonna eat strawberries in the middle of the winter or have the heat on or the air condition, we start to recognize that there's something more at play, that we are just not these mere individuals out here on the earth all by ourselves, but we're part of a much larger whole. Now one of the ways that I really love to celebrate the seasons is through the wheel of the year. Now the wheel of the year is a calendar. It was traditionally used by pagans or Wicca, but it's really used by many that shows the 8 seasonal Sabbath celebrations.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And the Sabbath, you can think of as the beginning of a season and the midpoint of a season. So you might be very familiar with, like, the fall equinox, the spring equinox, or the summer or winter solstice. These are really the points where we can look and reflect on what's to come. We can be grateful for what has been come, and we can really start to harness that energy and think about it too from a more psycho spiritual perspective of what are the seeds of my intention? What are the harvest that I hope to sow? Or who are the ancestors that I need to pay tribute to? So celebrating the cycle of the seasons can be a beautiful way of reconnecting with nature and, again, remembering that we are part of a much larger whole. And then we don't feel that life is just happening to us, but that we are actively cocreating with our lives. Within Enlivend, we do celebrate each of the 8 seasonal Sabbats. It's a beautiful time to come together as women to reflect on the energy of the season, of the qualities, and how that's really manifesting within our own lives. The next seasonal Sabbath celebration is Imbolc, and that's going to be on February 1st.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And this marks the midway point between winter and spring. It's a festival of light, renewal. It's often associated with the goddess Brigid who represents the hearth, poetry, healing, fertility. So Imbolc is a really great time as the light is starting to return to think about what it is that you want to call in. Also, what are the creative endeavors that you want to begin? So I'm gonna give you a few rituals for how you could celebrate in bulk and again you can see which ones resonate with you. 1 is to light a special candle or have a ritual fire where you really take time to reflect and contemplate what you want to call in. That's what the light represents. The sun is returning.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

We have a candle. We have a fire to mark the sun's return and also what it is that we want to return, what we want to call into. You could start to spend time outdoors. See if you notice any of the early signs of spring. I know we can start to hear some of the birds return or maybe there's some greenery as well. It's also a beautiful opportunity to embark on something creative. So we often don't make time for our creative endeavors. And this is something that I work with women a lot because we live in this very driven culture where we think that everything we do, there needs to be an ROI, so return on investment.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And I'm definitely like that too. Like, if I sit down to do this, like, really, what do I get out of it? How am I moving the needle forward? We need to stop that. We can do things just because they're fun to do, just because they light us up. It doesn't need to get our business to the next level. It doesn't need to get our health to the next level. We can just do it because it is fun, because there's something in us that's calling us to do it. So I think a beautiful ritual to start to celebrate Imbol is to set aside time where you can do something just for fun, just for play, whether it is art, whether it's craft or writing poetry, even if you've never written poetry before, but start to recognize that you can take this time and space to be creative and to honor that spark within you. The 4th ritual is to celebrate and connect with your sisters.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

This is so important. So I know many of my listeners are on a spiritual journey or a personal growth journey. I personally think those are one and the same, both spiritual and personal growth. But if one resonates with you more than the ever other, that's fine. Sometimes, though, that can feel like a solo path or like we are on it on our own. But we are in it together. We all rise together. One of my favorite authors, there's actually a podcast episode.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I don't remember the number, but Michaela Bohm, she wrote The Wild Woman's Way. And in that book, and I'm paraphrasing here, she writes, we learn about being a woman from other women. So we cannot be looking to embody the divine feminine or looking to invoke our feminine power unless we are engaging with other women. And I think that probably makes a lot of sense, although maybe it's not something that we think about so regularly. So we need to connect with our sisters, and we need to start healing the sister wound. And I think the sister wound is pretty pretty significant. I mean, I remember my time in middle school and high school, and I was bullied by some of the older girls. And that affected me for a while where I was the type of woman that was, like, I'm I'm just gonna hang out with the guys.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

There's so much less drama. And I know, it's kind of ironic now that I spend all of my days with you beautiful women and couldn't be any happier, but it took a while for me to get there because I associated other women with meanness, pettiness, drama, and I really had to relearn that. And when I tell that story to women in my workshops or in my community, many of them are like, I had that same experience. But now that we're older, we get to flip the script. We get to rewrite the script. We can start to engage with women. And when we do that, they also open up like this permission failed. We might see a woman in a great relationship.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And instead of being jealous or envious, that shows that there's the possibility for more of great relationships or of a successful business, but we can get inspired by one another. And I think that's really important because one thing that I have seen from women, especially earlier on in my life, is that we often get together to commiserate. Like, either my job is boring, my husband sucks, the kids are unruly, and those are just examples, by the way. And while it's great to have an air, like, a supportive air to listen to, We don't wanna just come together for commiseration connection. Right? Because we don't wanna stay in that space. They say that you become like the 5 people that you're around most, and that makes perfect sense. So we wanna make sure that we're also around women who are inspiring us, who are uplifting us, who are doing great things, who want to support us and encourage us to be our best selves. One of the practices that I really love to help us with the gathering of women in creating this transformative space is to be sure to celebrate your successes.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So in enlivened, I'm often asking the women, what do you wanna celebrate this week? What's something that you can brag about? What's something that good that has happened? Because, again, we start to create this halo effect when we can share all of the wins in our lives. We raise our energy, but we raise the collective energy as well. So thinking about the rituals that you can do with your community or whether it's an online community, again, enliven to offer as an amazing community of truly the most inspiring, fantastic women around where you can uplift, support each other, gather with each other, maybe study together, spiritual text or reading groups. Again, stuff that we do in Enlivened, but really think about how you want to bring that into your world. Maybe you start a circle. Maybe you connect with a friend and ask her, what do you wanna celebrate? So that is the 4th ritual is to celebrate with your sisters. So I know we covered a lot and I gave you more rituals within the rituals, but I want you to start really thinking about these 4. Let me just go over them again.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

The first one is to invoke a goddess archetype. So this is when we think of, like, what's a quality or characteristic that I need to embody? What will help me expand and help me be able to interact with the world with a bit more, like, clarity and confidence? The second one is to harness the power of the moon. So a woman's womb has long been influenced by the moon and just like the moon is always changing, so aren't we. We can look at the different phases of the moon really to determine how we wanna interact with the month ahead, when we want to what intentions do we want to set, when do we wanna take action? When do we wanna gather? When do we wanna turn inward to reflect and to inquire about how we're failing? So the moon really provides us with this beautiful framework that can help to increase our creativity, our productivity, and our intuition. The third one is to celebrate the seasons. The seasons are our teachers. Whatever is going on outside is happening within you too. We can take a cue from the seasons to really know what it is when we want to maybe start something new, when we wanna focus on creativity, when we want to turn inward.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

We can do this through the wheel of the year, which has the 8 seasonal Sabbath celebrations where each has its own quality and energetics. And then ritual number 4 is to celebrate with your sisters. So really thinking about how you want to heal that sister wound, how you want to learn about being a woman from other woman, but making sure that you are around a supportive community who can uplift you and inspire you to be the best version of yourself. So I hope that was helpful, and I hope you have some ideas for some rituals that you would like to integrate into your life. Rituals are a beautiful way to expand our consciousness and to connect with the divine. Take them seriously. Put a lot of meaning and intention behind them and really believe that they will work. If you would like to practice these rituals with a fantastic community of women, I invite you to join us in Enlivened.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

This is my one of a kind container where we have a curated curriculum with workshops, guest teachers, coaching twice a month where you can look at possibilities for what's going on in your life, get a new perspective of how to deal with a problem, and really expand what's possible for you. And there is a fantastic community of women on the inside there to support and inspire you. Now the doors will only be open for a few more days. So if you are interested in, take a look, get on in. The link is in the show notes.