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the rituals world

Rituals

daily devotions

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  • A rudraksha mala with a cotton cord resting on a table beside incense and a candle in soft morning lightRituals

    Is Your Mala Actually Cruelty-Free?

    A rudraksha bead is a seed, not a bone. It grows on a tree, the Elaeocarpus ganitrus, native to the Himalayan foothills and parts of South...

    5 min read
  • A small calm corner styled for autumn with dried flowers, rust-coloured candles and dark stones beside a windowRituals

    How to Restyle a Calm Corner for Autumn Without Starting Over

    Restyling a calm corner for autumn does not mean building a new one. If you already keep a windowsill, shelf or small table where you sit,...

    5 min read
  • A cleared shelf with a small brass Lakshmi statue and unlit oil lamps, set by a window at dusk before Diwali.Rituals

    The Room You Clear Before Diwali's Lamps Are Lit

    Diwali carries its own instructions inside its name. The word comes from the Sanskrit dipavali: dipa, a lamp, and avali, a row or a series. A...

    6 min read
  • A mala, a cup of tea and rising incense smoke on a table lit by a full moon through a windowRituals

    How to Hold a Full Moon Ritual With Incense, a Mala and Tea

    Once a month, the moon completes its round, and in three unrelated corners of the world people have long marked it by lighting something, counting something,...

    5 min read
  • A sterling silver pendant held in an open palm in soft window light, its hallmark stamp catching the daylightRituals

    How to Choose a Silver Pendant for Dhanteras

    Turn a silver pendant over and look at the back. There is, sometimes, a tiny stamped number pressed into the metal: 925. Sometimes there is nothing...

    5 min read
  • A charcoal disc glowing under ash in a brass burner, with resin tears releasing smoke on a wooden table by a windowRituals

    How Do You Burn Resin Incense on Charcoal Without Scorching It?

    There is a particular smell that tells you the technique has failed: not the round, resinous scent a piece of frankincense gives off when it is...

    6 min read
  • An oracle card and deck on a wooden table with a notebook, pencil and small piece of amethyst in morning lightRituals

    How Do You Start Reading Oracle Cards?

    A deck of oracle cards sits on the table, face down, waiting to be shuffled. It looks old, or wants to look old: gilt edges, a...

    6 min read
  • A bowl of turmeric paste and a folded linen cloth on a sunlit European bathroom windowsillRituals

    Do You Need Five Steps for a Gentle Face Routine?

    A short guide to a much-argued question, answered not with a bigger bottle collection but with a single word, a single place name, and a much...

    5 min read
  • A single teapot and one cup of tea on a wooden table in soft morning lightRituals

    Why Make Only One Cup of Tea, and Stop There?

    In a monastery hall in Kamakura-period Japan, tea was drunk to keep monks awake. Not for its pleasant bitterness, which later became fashionable in poetry and...

    5 min read
  • A cooling cup of tea and a thin curl of incense smoke beside a window at dusk in a quiet European sitting roomRituals

    Is Five Minutes Really Enough to Wind Down Before Bed?

    Five real questions land in this column more often than most. Here they are, answered as plainly as I can manage, without the countdown clock. Is...

    4 min read
  • A loaf of bread, a dish of salt and a lit candle on the bare counter of a newly moved-into kitchenRituals

    The Housewarming Gift That Earns Its Place

    A crémaillère is a notched iron hook fixed inside a hearth, built to raise and lower a cooking pot over an open fire: closer to the...

    6 min read
  • An amethyst pendulum held still over an open palm beside a window, in soft daylightRituals

    What Is a Pendulum For, and How Do You Begin?

    In 1833 a French chemist wrote to a colleague about something strange happening in his own hand. Michel Eugène Chevreul held a pendulum quite still, and...

    5 min read
  • Hands choosing between small wrapped gifts on a European kitchen table in daylightRituals

    What Makes a Small Gift Worth Giving?

    A small gift can travel two directions, and Japanese gives each direction its own word. English does not. That gap in the dictionary is a useful...

    5 min read
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