Traditions and Rituals: Permission to Make Them Your Own

So when Jean was asking me what I thought I could use for a topic today, one of the things that interests me is traditions.

Why do we do what we do? What do we do? And how do those continue on? And I think through generations, through cultures, through families, through different locations.

It's just very interesting to me, especially living in different countries like I have.

And I think we've all been, Joanne's traveled and Jean's traveled and you've been in different locations and been exposed to different traditions and things.

And what your take is on, I think, the value that we place on traditions.

Why do we hang on to them like we do from generation to generation? Yeah.

Who do you want to start with? I'm trying to decide because I know that Joanne has some insight on this.

And I usually go to Jean first.

So maybe we'll start with Joanne today.

Okay.

Would you very quickly repeat where you were going to?

We're going with traditions.

So what do traditions mean to you? And, you know, I don't know if you want to explain one or two traditions that you hold and why you hold them.

Okay.

Okay.

I think traditions are good for us, to a point.

Obviously, if they include forcing you to do things that don't make sense to you, I could see that you might want to change to something that you've chosen yourself.

And so I take a wide sort of view of adopting traditions.

I don't feel tied to any particular cultural tradition from my ancestors, for instance, but other people get great benefit out of maintaining those types of connections over the long term.

I still remember my grandparents and my parents and all that, but I don't have a village that I grew up in and there were all these little rituals around every time of year and whatnot like we used to have in, say, the Middle Ages.

I have created my own rituals around a strong interest of mine, which is tarot cards, actually.

And so I use them every morning to let the universe give me a little, hey, these are the energies that might be floating around in your world today.

How do you want to handle them? Three cards usually gives me a pretty good idea of what it is and what resources i can use to symbolic resources i can use to handle those those traditions and i find that to be a very positive way to start my day if i've been worried about stuff from the day before it helps me clear my head and move on and it doesn't It's not strictly tied to any particular, say, religious tradition, but there's nothing wrong with doing it that way too.

So that's what I use it for my own personal benefit on a daily basis.

How about you, Jean? I know you've got a completely different take on the subject.