✦ Beauty Rituals · The Apothecary ✦
New Moon Evening Ritual
A quiet evening of beginnings: warm water, a night serum, slow breath, and one intention written down before sleep.
The new moon is the dark of the month: no light in the sky, nothing to show yet, everything still possible. Where the full moon asks you to release, the new moon asks you to rest and to plant. This ritual is built around that. It is the gentlest evening of the cycle, it ends in bed, and it works with whatever you already have in the bathroom. The botanicals I use are listed at the end; nothing here depends on them.
What you need
- A bath or a shower, and fifteen unhurried minutes
- A candle for the bathroom shelf (I light a Feu&Co Amber Vanilla)
- A night serum or a body oil (or the alternatives below)
- Your journal
- Your tarot deck, or the free Daily Draw
- Fresh sheets if you can manage it: the new moon deserves them
The ritual
Five steps, ending in sleep
Do it on the night of the new moon or the night after, when the sky is still dark.
15 minutes · The intentional bath or shower
Wash the month off, on purpose
Light the candle before you turn on the water, so the room is already soft when you step in. If it is a bath, make it warmer than usual and add a handful of salt or a few drops of lavender. If it is a shower, stand under the water with your eyes closed for one full minute before you touch a bottle. Say, in your head, that you are washing off the cycle that just ended. Then wash slowly, as if you had nowhere to be.
“The month is dark and empty, and that is exactly where new things start.”
5 minutes · The night serum
A few drops, pressed in while the skin is still warm
Out of the water, pat rather than rub, and while your skin is still warm and a little damp, press your night serum or oil into your face with the flat of your fingers: cheeks, forehead, jaw, the sides of the neck. Then a drop on each wrist and one over the heart. The new moon serum is not a treatment; it is a scent and a texture that tells your body the day is over. Choose something soft: sandalwood, lavender, chamomile, vanilla.
If you have a chrism, the anointing oils of the old world, this is its moment: a single line down the breastbone, slowly.
5 minutes · Breathing
Four in, seven held, eight out
Sit on the edge of the bed. Breathe in through the nose for a count of four, hold for seven, breathe out through the mouth for eight, as if you were blowing gently on the candle without putting it out. Four rounds. It is the simplest thing on this page and the one that changes the evening the most. If you like to be guided, our breathing meditation runs the pattern for you.
10 minutes · New-moon intentions
Write three lines, not thirty
Open your journal and write the date and the sign the new moon is in (our Moon Phase page tells you). Then three lines, in the present tense, about the cycle ahead: not a list of goals, more a description of the person you are quietly becoming this month. “I say what I need.” “I finish the small things.” “I let myself be looked after.” Keep it to three. Intentions are seeds, and a seed needs room.
Read them once, close the book, and do not reread them until the full moon.
5 minutes · A card for the cycle
One card to carry for two weeks
Shuffle with the question “what will help me this cycle?” and draw one card. Whatever it is, it is not a prediction; it is a companion. Leave it face up on your nightstand until the full moon, and glance at it in the mornings. A Wands card is energy to spend, a Cups card something to feel, Swords a thought to keep clear, Pentacles a routine to build, and a Major Arcana card the theme of the whole fortnight.
Then the candle out, the lights out, and the fresh sheets. The ritual is finished when you fall asleep.
No deck at hand?
Draw your new-moon card here with our own SolsTarot deck, and keep it in your journal for the cycle.
✦ Draw a card now✦ The botanicals I use ✦
Two bottles for the night
From the Sweet Sleep range at Living Libations. Both are optional; the ritual stands on its own.
Free international shipping over $250 · UK: £135 minimum (or the Fast Shipping Collection) · a few countries excluded
Their evening chrism, the anointing-oil idea in a bottle: a few drops pressed on the wrists, the breastbone and the temples after the bath. Soft, warm and quiet, exactly the scent of a new-moon night.
🌍 Shop it ✦
A mist on the pillow once the card is on the nightstand. It is the last thing you smell before sleep, and after a few new moons your body learns what it means.
🌍 Shop it ✦On a smaller budget
Any soft body oil works for step II, and a lavender pillow and linen spray does the job of step V for a few dollars. A handful of lavender bath salts turns an ordinary bath into the intentional one.
This page contains affiliate links. I’m a Living Libations ambassador and an Amazon Associate: if you order through these links, SolsTarot earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. Everything here is offered as a sensory and ritual experience, not as advice or a promise of results. Why I chose Living Libations →
Questions
New moon, asked and answered
What is the difference between this and the full-moon ritual?
The full-moon ritual is about release: massage, mirror, letting go. The new moon is about rest and planting: bath, breath, intentions, sleep. Do both and you have a rhythm for the whole month.
Which sign is the new moon in, and does it matter?
Each new moon happens in a different sign, and the sign colours the intentions: a new moon in Cancer leans toward home and feelings, in Capricorn toward work and structure. Check tonight’s phase and sign on the Moon Phase page, and read the sign’s page for the flavour.
Which crystal for the new moon?
Black obsidian or labradorite for the dark of the moon, moonstone for the whole cycle. Our moonstone and labradorite guides explain both.
I cannot take a bath. Does the ritual still work?
Completely. The shower version is written into step I. Even a warm cloth on the face with the candle lit, followed by the breathing and the three lines, is a full new-moon ritual.
Keep going
The other rituals
Skincare here means comfort, scent and a little ceremony, not treatment. If a product ever feels wrong on your skin, stop using it. SolsTarot is not a medical or dermatological resource.