Pagan New Year Traditions: What Does A Witch Do On New Year’s?

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Pagan New Year traditions might look a lot like everyone else’s. Witches will do many of the same things that a secular person or Christian will do on New Year’s. But for us magical folks, these traditions take on a more sacred and witchy tone.

Pagan New Year traditions include manifesting good things with the Law of Attraction, drinking and partying with friends and family, setting goals for the new year, plus witchy rituals like cleansing, banishing and divination.

If you want to celebrate the new year like a Wiccan, pagan, or witch, read on to learn how we twist secular traditions into something magical and holy. Maybe these will become part of your pagan new year traditions!

Pagan New Year Traditions

New year celebrations go back at least to the Babylonians. The Romans took these celebrations to the next level with plenty of drinking.

While it seems secular now, New Year’s is actually very much tied to ancient pagan celebrations. Many of our modern traditions are passed down to us from the ancients.

While the new year isn’t always (or even usually) celebrated on January 1 in the middle of winter, there are some common traditions among different cultures.

Ancient Babylonians celebrated the new year with feasts and returning farm equipment that bad been borrowed from others.

In Norse traditions, Yule celebrations ended around the new year. The last feasts of the Winter Solstice were huge.

While Ancient Egyptian and Greek societies gave us our association of the new year with an infant: they paraded a baby around to symbolize the beginning of the new year.

And that kiss at midnight is handed down to us from the Romans. How Romantic!

What Does A Witch Do On New Year’s?

While many witches will simply celebrate New Year’s as a secular holiday, some prefer to add a religious or witchy spin to it.

Consider your own plans. How can you add magic to what you’re already planning to do? If you’re going to party, you could do some ecstatic magic where you use your frenzied energy to manifest. If you’re going to be at home, perhaps some romantic magic with a kiss at midnight will do?

Drink And Be Merry

To celebrate the Egyptian Sun god saving humanity from Sekhmet by giving her blood colored beer, they celebrated the new year by getting massively drunk.

Does that sound similar to what you’ll be doing?

Many pagan traditions honor the gods by drinking, some even entering a state of ecstasy (though this was often aided by other substances).

Maybe you can turn your night of drinking into something more spiritual by contacting the gods, or even just pouring some of your drink out onto the ground for them?

Manifestation Rituals

One of the most important pagan new year traditions is manifesting what you desire. Now is the time to set the tone for the rest of the year.

For the Aztecs, this was a time to sacrifice children by drowning in order to buy the favor of the rain gods.

Luckily, you can rely on the law of attraction and magic instead of human sacrifice to manifest your desires for the new year!

You can do a spell to manifest your own dream business, a spell for money, or simply a spell for good luck for the whole year.

Remember, though, that you need to have positive energy when trying to manifest good things.

Set Goals For The New Year

Before you can manifest an awesome new year, you need to know what you want.

Break out a notebook or bullet journal and start writing things down. What did you love about the past year? What did you hate? What new things do you want to see in the coming year.

Writing it all down can help you to decide if your goals are actually good for you. Before the new year, spend some time considering the pros and cons of your goals. Restate them if you need to.

Come into New Year’s Eve with perfect goals that will make the next year twice as good as the last one.

Divination For The New Year

In my opinion, all holidays are liminal days where the veil between our world and the spirit world thins. That makes any holiday perfect for divination.

You may not have a crystal ball, but you can try mirror scrying or pendulum divination.

Telling fortunes with dice, astrology dice, and palmistry are popular at this time of year as well.

To improve your psychic abilities, you can turn to herbs that enhance your intuition.

Cleansing And Banishing The Past Year

Some cultures saw the new year as a time to banish negative spirits. You can do the same, or you can cleanse your home of negative energy and your life of bad habits.

Bring out black crystals, clear quartz, and fluorite to cleanse the energy of your home.

Do some deep cleaning and sweep the debris out of your home through your doors (even if it’s cold out!).

Or you can try one of these home cleansing rituals.

Whatever you choose to do for the new year, consider the spiritual ramifications of your actions. Do what you can to make your celebrations ethical, and maybe leave an offering out for the gods and spirits.

Good luck to you in the new year!