There is something peculiar about change.
We can decide something intellectually long before the rest of us catches up.
You can know that a relationship needs to change. You can decide that the way you have been running your business is no longer sustainable. You can understand that the kind of leader you have been until now isn’t quite the leader you need to become next.
The decision can be perfectly rational.
And yet somehow, it doesn’t quite feel real.
We often think that change begins when we make a decision. Sometimes it does. But there is often a considerable distance between understanding something intellectually and beginning to live as though it is true.
Perhaps that is one reason human beings create rituals.
We use ritual more often than we realise
The word ritual can sound spiritual or religious. It might bring to mind candles, incense, altars, prayers or spells.
Those are rituals, but they are far from being the only ones.
We create rituals around beginnings and endings. Weddings and funerals. Birthdays and retirements. The first day in a new job and the leaving drinks on our last one.
We shake hands. We cut ribbons. We make speeches. We raise glasses.
And we create much smaller rituals too.
The cup of tea before sitting down to write. The notebook we open before a coaching session. The walk we take when we need to think. The few minutes of silence before an important conversation.
Organisations have rituals of their own: Monday meetings, awaydays, inductions, one-to-ones, annual conferences, project kick-offs and retrospectives.
Some are deliberate. Others have simply become the way we do things here but what they have in common is that they create a boundary around an experience. Such as something is about to begin. Something is ending. Something deserves our attention. Something matters.
Sometimes the mind needs something tangible
Change is often frustratingly intangible.
You cannot hold a boundary in your hand. You cannot see confidence. There isn’t a physical moment when you stop being the person who used to respond in one way and become the person who responds differently.
Often, change happens gradually and rather untidily.
That can leave us in an uncomfortable in-between space.
The old way no longer quite fits, but the new way doesn’t yet feel natural.
A symbolic act can give form to something that otherwise exists only as a thought. Writing down something you are ready to leave behind and destroying the paper doesn’t literally destroy the experience.
Lighting a candle doesn’t make a difficult decision for you.
Drawing a tarot card doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for what happens next.
And holding a leadership awayday doesn’t transform an organisation by itself.
But each can create a moment in which we deliberately stop, pay attention and acknowledge…
Something needs to change here.
That can be surprisingly powerful.
A ritual is not the change
There is an important distinction here. Ritual can mark change without actually making the change.
Perhaps you have experienced this personally.
You buy the journal. Create the vision board. Perform the spell. Make the resolution. For a little while, something feels different. Then ordinary life returns.
The same thing happens in businesses.
We create a new website. Buy the planner. Develop the strategy. Attend the course. Announce the new offer.
And it happens in organisations too.
A transformation programme is launched. New values appear on the wall. Everyone attends the workshop. A new structure is announced. Leaders stand on a stage and talk about a different future. Sure, there has been visible activity. But visible activity is not necessarily evidence that change has happened.
The interesting question comes afterwards:
What will I do differently because of the thing I have just marked?
That is where ritual becomes something more than performance.
For the person experiencing personal change
Sometimes ritual gives us a language for experiences that are difficult to articulate.
There may be things we are ready to release, identities we have outgrown, relationships with ourselves that are changing or possibilities we are not quite ready to say aloud.
For someone with a spiritual or magickal practice, this might involve meditation, tarot, candles, an altar, journalling or spellcraft.
The value isn’t necessarily in believing that the universe will now rearrange itself according to our instructions. It can be in creating enough space to ask:
What am I actually asking for? Why does this matter to me? What would need to change in me if this became possible? What am I ready to stop carrying? What action am I willing to take next?
Sometimes the spell is the moment we give ourselves permission to acknowledge what we already know.
For the solopreneur building something of their own
Ritual can look quite different when you are running a business or creating something that matters to you.
There is often very little external structure when you work for yourself. Nobody formally announces that you have become a business owner rather than someone with an interesting idea.
There may be no ceremony marking the moment you begin charging properly for your expertise, change direction, retire an offer that no longer fits or decide that your work deserves to take up more space.
Yet those transitions can involve significant changes in identity. Small rituals can help make those transitions visible.
That might mean deliberately closing one chapter of the business before starting another. Creating a particular environment before working with clients. Using journalling or tarot to surface thoughts before making a decision. Taking time at the end of a month to notice what has changed rather than immediately moving on to the next target.
The ritual doesn’t replace the spreadsheet, the marketing plan or the difficult commercial decision.
It creates a space in which we can notice the person making them.
And organisations have rituals too
This becomes particularly interesting when we move into leadership and organisational change.
Organisations may not describe their practices as ritual, but many of them serve similar functions.
A leader opening a meeting in the same way each week creates a signal about what happens in that space. A regular check-in can communicate that people’s experience matters. A retrospective can create permission to talk about what didn’t work. An awayday can temporarily interrupt the ordinary rhythm of delivery and give people space to think differently. Even the presence of a senior leader at a particular moment can be symbolic.
These things communicate something beyond their practical purpose. But organisational ritual carries the same risk as personal ritual. We can confuse the symbolic act with the change itself.
We held the workshop. We communicated the vision. We launched the programme. We reorganised the team. We trained the managers. Therefore, we changed.
Except the people experiencing the change may still be behaving exactly as they did before.
Real change appears later: in conversations, decisions, behaviours, relationships and what happens when nobody is consciously thinking about the change programme anymore.
A ritual can open the door. People still have to walk through it.
The space between intention and action
This is the space that Magenta School of Magick, and specifically “Humanistic Magick” is interested in.
Not simply magick, and not simply psychology, but what happens when intention, symbolism, reflection and action begin working together.
A spell can be understood as a deliberately constructed symbolic ritual organised around an intention. It might involve candles, tarot, herbs, sigils, visualisation or words; but the ritual itself is only part of the process. Eventually, intention has to meet behaviour.
The same principle exists outside explicitly magickal practice. A business owner might mark a new direction and then make the uncomfortable decision that brings it to life. A leadership team might spend a day exploring trust, but the change begins to become real when a leader can say, “I don’t know,” and give other people space to think.
Ritual can help us slow down enough to notice what matters. Symbolism can give form to something difficult to articulate. Psychological understanding can help us recognise the patterns that pull us towards the familiar. Deliberate action gives us somewhere to practise becoming different.
You don’t have to call what you are doing magick.
For one person, lighting a candle may be a spell.
For another, opening a journal may simply be a useful reflective practice.
For someone else, the important ritual might be closing the laptop, walking into a meeting and deciding that this time they are going to listen before offering an answer.
The language matters less than what happens next.
Because perhaps the most useful question after any ritual isn’t:
Did it work?
Perhaps it is:
What am I going to do differently now that I have acknowledged that something needs to change?