Renewal The Tiny Spellbook

by Sarah Justice

I remember plucking the dead leaves off of a therapist’s office plant. It was a far cry from the two years before that, when I offhandedly told her that pruning is hard for me since the dead leaves provided something to the plant that the living parts didn’t. They provided a sense of elderly maturity, the way we sit on a dead stump of oak and acknowledge its worth. Maybe they provided the warning of mortality to the others. Maybe I’d just sat in that chair too long. Who knows.

This is true for us too. There are parts that are decaying, withering, falling away to make room for the new inside. And it seems in spring we perform rituals to welcome the newness and focus on the process of growth. This is great, but we seem to neglect what we’ve deemed unusable, worthless, negative or “bad” that’s still hanging around. Or maybe we snag the besome and sweep this stuff under the rug.

But like the dying leaves of my therapist’s plant, they’re not gone. they’ll hang around and bog down the new parts. They’ll take resources away from those strong parts too, all in vain of course, since they’ll die anyway. It’s not their fault. These negative traits are in survival mode, because at one point they had value and they served you, perhaps even protected you.

When my hands finally stopped cradling her plant’s dead leaves and started plucking them, she invited me to notice the change in my choices, a shift in perspective: even though those rusty copper leaves are beautiful in their own right, and their age and wisdom were mourn-worthy, they were gone. They had to go so that new life could grow.

I recommend for those of us who mindfully invite rebirth during Ostara to also honor the parts that we wish to leave. We don’t do this with a hefty “See ya later; don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Rather, we do it in a way that honors the “bad,” how it came to be and why it had value, and why we now must remove it.

This, too, requires the same mindfulness and energy transfer that setting an intention does.

Set aside time to collect dead leaves, particularly from plants you own if possible. Set them on the southern side of your home or altar. Assign each leaf with one trait you are trying to remove. Hold each leaf one by one and, as you do, think less of how this one trait is bothersome and more of how it served you. When done, state the following toward the negative trait and the leaf that symbolizes it:

An obedient servant, I honor your worth Released from your job since the duty is served A mindful sloughing; I commend your work And release with mercy, a death well deserved.