The 12 Magical Nights
The 12 Magical Nights is a pagan ritual that is usually practiced around the Winter Solstice. The 12 Magical Nights helped me manifest everything that I wanted this year. It is truly one of the most magical pagan rituals I know of and I’m gonna tell you exactly what it is. I’m also going to share with you the extra little thing I did that I feel really amplified this magic for me.
Where did the 12 Magical Nights come from?
As with many pagan traditions, the origin of the 12 Magical Nights is still a bit illusive to me. Personally, I have been doing this ritual for a few years now and based on my research I’m still not quite certain where it originates. Many people do this practice a little different and some, including myself, add our own spin to it.
Some people believe the 12 Magical Nights is tied to the Winter Solstice and moreover Yule. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year, occurring around December 21 or 22 (depending on where you live) in the Northern Hemisphere. The Winter Solstice marks the beginning of winter (and Capricorn season) and the hopeful return of sunlight.
After the shortest day the sun starts to return and slowly but surely with it, the return of warmth and light. Throughout history pagans have used this time to reflect on the cycles of light and dark, growth and rebirth, renewal and resilience, especially in the face of darkness.
Yule is celebrated around the Winter Solstice. In fact, Yule is often used interchangeably with the term “Winter Solstice” in pagan traditions. Yule is a festival that celebrates the rebirth of the sun, the return of light, and the turning point of the year. It symbolizes the transition from darkness to light, from the old to the new. Yule is typically celebrated for several days, encompassing the day of the winter solstice and the days surrounding it.
The 12 Magical Nights is also believed to be linked to Rauhnächte. In Germany this time is called “between the years” but it is also commonly known as the “Twelve Days of Christmas”. As the later suggests, this is a 12 day celebration that takes place from December 25th to the 5th. These Twelve days symbolise the twelve months of the coming year and are supposed to predict the coming year. The word Rauhnächte literally translates to “smokey nights” or “wild/hairy nights,” depending on different sources.
Much like Yule, Rauhnächte is a seasonal celebration that honors the endurance of life and the promise of brighter days ahead. Both celebrations incorporate many traditions and everyone has many different traditions that they choose to do during this time. One begins on the 21st the other on the 25th of December but the beliefs and practices revolving them are very similar. The 12 Magical Nights is a perfect way to celebrate either one of these because it’s all about wishes that you want to manifest within the next year, and both Yule and Rauhnächte are ways to prepare for and celebrate the coming year.
What is The 12 Magical Nights?
The 12 Magical nights is a ritual where you create 13 wishes, 12 of which you send out into the universe in hope of them to manifest in the coming year. The 13th wish will be the only one that you are responsible for. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me explain in more detail.
What you’ll need:
13 pieces of paper, it may be helpful to cut them out after you have written your wishes to make sure you have enough space.
Pen
Journal, aside from the paper for the wishes you’ll probably need to journal first to figure out what you want to wish for.
A jar or bag
A candle and something to light it with, one of your preferred size that you can relight for 12 nights. The color doesn’t matter but you can choose a color for manifestation such as white or gold.
A fire safe dish
Optional:
Tarot or Oracle cards
Vision board materials, this is my personal addition and I’ll explain fully after explaining the ritual.
Step 1: Write Your Wishes
This is something that may take you sometime, which is why I wanted to make this post early in December. Some people state that you should write your wishes on the Winter Solstice as that is the perfect time to reflect and go inward, but I’ve found that I definitely need more than one day. There are some things you want to consider that may help you figure this part out.
Your wishes should be about you and not anybody else. This one tends to be tricky for some people. For example, you can wish for more love to come into your life but try to avoid wishing for specifically someone else to love you. The same goes for family members, friends, coworkers… your wishes are about YOUR coming year and therefore they should be about you specifically.
Stick to a concise statement and make it concrete. I’ve struggled with this in the past. I ended up writing a paragraph per wish and they were always kind of vague because I thought that would give the universe more “wiggle room” to make something happen for me. Ultimately, it ended up sounding confusing and because of that nothing came from those wishes.
Use present tense language and as if this wish is already reality. So instead of saying “I want to have a new job”, write “I’m working the perfect new job where I make X amount of money effortlessly.” It’s important to also avoid writing what you don’t want, only what you do, which is why I added “effortlessly” instead of “…without feeling like I’m working hard.”
Make sure your wishes are tangible. You can definitely wish big but you also want to make sure you’re not wishing for things that might be physically impossible. Remember, you will be responsible for making one of the wishes happen. You don’t get to pick that wish either, it will be random. Therefore, you want to make sure you can make that happen for yourself with all of your wishes.
Take some time to reflect on your past year. Find a comfortable space, light a candle, put on some nice music, have a cup of tea, or do whatever else you need to reflect. Journal, revisit past memories, think about what went well and what didn’t over the past 12 months. What are you aiming for next year and what have you achieved? Try to focus on what’s the highest priority on your list for the future. Come up with as many ideas as you want and narrow them down to the 13 that stand out to you the most.
Once you’ve written down 13 wishes on 13 separate pieces of paper fold them up, place them in your jar or bag, and set them aside for your ritual. There’s no specific way to fold them and no specific place to set them, do what feels write to you. *You may also want to write your wishes down a second time in your journal to look back at them at the end of the next year (and also for the extra part I’m gonna be adding later on).
Step 2: Burn One Wish Each Night
Beginning on the Winter Solstice or Rauhnächte you’re going to begin your ritual. It’s called the 12 Magical Nights but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be at night. The name refers to this being a time when the nights are longer but slowly shortening as we move past the Winter Solstice and into the new year.
Find a quiet spot, such as your altar space if you have one. Gather your candle, fire safe dish, and bag of wishes. Light your candle and take a moment to ground and center your energy. Grab one wish at random and without unfolding it, burn it. Visualize or feel yourself release that energy into the universe as it burns. And that’s it. You will repeat this every single day for 12 days.
Step 3: The 13th Wish
On the 12th night you will be left with one wish, go ahead and see what it is. That is the wish that you are responsible for making happen. You have the entire next year to make that wish happen. In turn, the universe will make happen the other 12 wishes throughout the coming year.
Optional:
After burning your wish each day, you can also pull a tarot or oracle card. This will be a one card reading that will represent each month of the coming year. This goes back to the belief that this time of year is great for predictions. So day 1 you will pull a card for January, day 2 for February, day 3 for March, and so on each day.
After pulling your card, grab your journal and write down the month, the card, and the reading you get from that card. Sit with your card for a moment and trust whatever message comes through. You can look up the traditional meaning of the card (if it’s an oracle card it will come with a booklet with it’s own meaning), or let your intuition guide you. Look at it’s symbolism/colors/imagery, pay attention to any thoughts/feelings/sensations that arise, and interpret what you think it means. Write everything down so that you can come back to this reading during the month it’s intended for.
You can revisit this reading at the beginning of the month to see if you can observe your every day and see how the reading will resonate. It can be a prediction, advice, something to reflect on, or bring your focus to. It may not make sense now. It may not even make sense at the beginning of the month that it is meant for. But try and keep an open mind and trust the universe.
If you don’t have tarot or oracle cards, don’t worry because I’m going to do collective readings for every day of the ritual so make sure you follow along on either instagram, tiktok, or youtube (all linked at the bottom of the page).
My Personal Addition to This Ritual
Now let me tell you the fun little extra part that I added. Last time, when I was done with the ritual, I ended up doing a vision board. I love vision boards, I do one every year and this year I happened to have planned to do it with a friend the day that I finished the 12 Magical Nights and that’s what gave me this idea.
Remember how I said you want to write your wishes down a second time in your journal? What I did was, I created affirmations that I felt aligned with each wish. So if your wish is for a specific higher income, you can write an affirmation such as, “I attract financial abundance and success.” Then I placed these written affirmations onto my vision board and focused the imagery of my vision board around the affirmations.
Essentially this vision board became a part of my daily glamour ritual. I placed the vision board where I get ready everyday and as I got ready I read the affirmations out loud and truly visualized them as if they were true. The imagery on the vision board helped me truly envision my affirmations to be true. I did this every single day, and every single day I was aligning my energy with the wishes. I was affirming to the universe that this is what I deserve and the universe provided.
Common Questions I Get About This Ritual
As someone who has been doing the 12 Magical Nights ritual for several years now, I have come across a few common questions and so I decided this would be a great place to try and help if you also have these questions.
What if I can’t come up with 13 tangible wishes?
I get it, this seems overwhelming, especially knowing that you will be responsible for one random wish. So here is what I suggest. You may already have at least one or two wishes in mind. Are they concrete? How tangible are they? I want you to grab your journal and write those few things you have in mind and ask yourself if those things can be broken down into smaller wishes?
Can your one big goal be broken down into 4 or even 10? Are there certain simple things you can manifest that will help you come closer to your ultimate goal for the next year? This is what I encourage you to spend sometime journaling about. You may be surprised and realize that there are actually more than 13 things will come to mind that you wish to manifest in the entire next year.
By the way, if you are reading this the day I’m posting it, you have about 18-19 days (until the Winter Solstice) to journal and reflect on what it is you wish for.
What if I can’t burn anything where I live?
That’s okay. I do want to preface this by saying that the reason we are using fire here is because it is symbolic of celebrating light coming back after the darkest time of the year. That being said, you can keep that in mind and if possible play a video of a burning fireplace during your ritual or turn up your heater to help honor that part of the tradition. However, there are circumstances where you won’t be able to use fire and that is totally okay.
The goal is to release your wish out into the universe and like any other spell/ritual there are alternative ways to do that. You could rip up your wish (without opening it) and either bury it in soil or disperse it into a natural body of running water. If going to a river every single day for 12 days isn’t feasible for you (especially in the winter) you can collect your ripped pieces of paper in a dish and take them to a body of water on the last day. If you choose soil, you can do this in your favorite house plant, or in your garden, or go to a park; just don’t go to a cemetery as that would only put your wish “to rest.”
What if I miss a day or two?
If you are forgetful, one thing I recommend doing is setting up an automatic repeating alarm to remind you. However, life can be unpredictable and so is the universe in general. I promise you the universe won’t reprimand you for forgetting a couple days.
There are two ways I suggest to go about this, but also keep in mind this is based on my opinion, there isn’t necessarily a rule to this (or at least none that I know of). You could jump back into it the day that you can and burn the wishes for the amount of days you missed. So if it was two days, you can burn two wishes plus the one for that day. Alternatively, you could simply restart the ritual on the day that you are able to. So if you started on the 21st and missed two days, then instead of the 1st being your last day, it will end up being the 3rd to make up for those two days missed.
What if I missed the 21st, can I still do this?
Yes! Especially if it’s before the 25th, that is when Rauhnächte begins and is still aligned with this energy. If it’s passed the 25th and you still want to do this (and again this is based off my personal gnosis) as long as you start before the new year you can still do this ritual because we are still in the time period before the warmer days that we are celebrating for.
Do you have to do this at night?
No. It’s called the 12 Magical Nights but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be at night. The name refers to this being a time when the nights are longer but slowly shortening as we move past the Winter Solstice and into the new year. Do the ritual at whatever time of the day works for you. I always do this first thing in the morning, especially because I will also be doing collective tarot readings on my social media pages to share with you.
What if I fear my wishes?
I’m gonna be honest this is something I am a little surprised to see but I have had some people ask this. I want you to take a moment to reflect. Ask yourself what is it that you truly fear? Are you afraid of change? Are you worried your wish won’t be as fulfilling as you originally hoped? Are you hesitant to include one particular wish because you don’t want it to be the one you are responsible for?
There may be some shadow work in your future if you fear your wishes and I encourage you to do that during the time you are coming up with your wishes. Fear usually means that there is something that you need to let go of and winter time, the solstice, and the last month of the year, are the perfect energies to focus on releasing. This ritual is meant to invite transformation and new beginnings. In order to make that happen it requires reflection and release.
The 12 Magical Nights ritual has always been extremely transformative and magical for me. I am excited to be doing this again this year and I hope you’ll be joining too. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and be sure to follow along on social media for the collective tarot readings!
