The REAL New Year: Reset With the Spring Equinox

What if the real new year didn't begin on January 1st… but when the Earth wakes up?

In this episode, we’re exploring the powerful energy of the Spring Equinox and why many ancient cultures — and astrology itself — recognise this moment as the true beginning of a new year

As the Sun moves into Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, we enter the bold season of initiation, courage and fresh starts. The days grow longer, the earth begins to bloom, and the natural world reminds us that growth happens in cycles, not in the middle of winter

If January didn’t feel like a true beginning for you, this is your reminder that nothing is wrong with you — you’ve simply been moving in rhythm with nature

The light is returning
The cycle is beginning again
And so are you

The REAL New Year is here, are you ready to begin again, but this time, with nature on your side!

If this episode resonated, make sure to follow the podcast to never miss an episode, and come connect with me over on Instagram @thecyclica for more on cyclical living, earth-based spirituality and feminine empowerment

Transcript

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Okay, let's set the scene. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that it's January 1st. It's dark outside, the trees are bare, the earth is cold and still. Yet somehow this is the day the world tells you to become somebody new. New goals, new habits, new energy. But if you step outside and actually look around you, nothing is beginning. Nothing is starting afresh. Nature is resting, the soil is quiet, the earth is asleep, the seeds are still buried deep underground, and winter isn't a time for starting. It's a time for slowing down, reflecting, and conserving your energy. And yet every year we're told that January is the moment that we suddenly should feel motivated, clear, and ready to go. It's no wonder that so many people feel like they've already failed by the time it gets to February. Because the truth is that the real new year doesn't start in the middle of winter. It starts now. It starts when the earth begins to wake up. Next week is March 20th, and this is when something powerful happens. The spring equinox arrives, the moment when day and night are perfectly balanced, the light begins to win over the darkness, the soil begins to warm, the buds begin to appear again on the trees, and the animals begin to stir. Astrologically, the sun moves into Aries, and this is the first sign of the zodiac. This is the spark of life, the moment the seed finally pushes through the soil. For thousands of years, ancient cultures knew this was the true beginning of the year, not January, but spring. So if you've been feeling like this year hasn't really started yet, it's because it hasn't. If you've been feeling slow, reflective, or unsure of your direction, there is nothing wrong with you. Winter is the time for rest, reflection, and integration. This is the time now where you are starting to emerge, we are starting to blossom. And if you do feel like now you are finally coming back to life, that's because you are moving with the rhythm of nature. And right now, as we approach the spring equinox and airy season, we're stepping into the energetic beginning of a brand new cycle, a cosmic new year, a time to clear what no longer belongs in your life, and a time to plant the seeds for everything you want to grow. Hello and welcome to the Good Girl Rebellion Podcast. I'm your host, Izzy, the founder of Cyclica, and thank you so much for joining me on another episode. The Good Girl Rebellion is all about reclaiming your rhythm in mind, body, and spirit. Each week we are unraveling years of conditioning to reclaim our wild, rebellious, and intuitive truths. It's my mission to help women break free from society's expectations, help them reconnect with their feminine power, and live in alignment with the ebb and flow of our cyclical nature. So if you're ready to reclaim your power, reconnect with your wilder self and rise as the woman you were never taught to be, you are in the right place. Welcome to the rebellion. If you have been feeling off, there is a reason why. December, January 1st, that is not the time to start the new year. The time to start the new year is now, along with the earth, in alignment with her natural flow and her natural balance. So spring equinox is next week on March 20th, and this is the start, the official start of the new year. It's the astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere. And on this day, the sun sits directly above the equator, creating almost equal day and night across the planet. After this point, the light begins to win again and the darkness begins to shrink away. Many ancient cultures treated this as the traditional beginning of the year. January may be when the calendar resets, but March is the biological and energetic reset. Welcome to the official New Year New You. Nature is beginning to emerge, and she is our biggest teacher, especially when we live cyclically and if you're in tune with cyclical living. Nature is our greatest teacher, and if we can learn to unlearn everything that we have been conditioned to think and feel and the way we show up in this modern society, if we allow ourselves to unlearn this and we allow ourselves to lean back into our true nature and connect to nature and her patterns, we will live so much more aligned and in-flow lives. So nature is beginning to awaken. Spring, this is the perfect time to start afresh. Like we do in cyclical living, you have your inner winter, it's your hibernation, it's your cocoon, it's your time for rest and reflection to maybe have new downloads as you're connected deeper to your intuition because you're not as kind of yang outburst and overflowing of energy. This is a very yin internal, restful time. So it is the time that you would have more intuitive downloads. It's the time where you can reflect on things, you can think about new business ideas, you can think about new choices, new hobbies, new things you want to do. And then as you emerge, like encyclical living, in your inner spring, this is the time you put those things into practice. This is the time you start, you set the ball rolling, the seeds start to grow. It's exactly the same with the year. I do not understand why we are told that we should new year, new you start afresh January 1st, hit the gym, start your diet, do this, do that. It's not natural and it's not sustainable because, as I'm sure many of you have felt, by February 1st you are dead. I don't know about you, but February for me was like it chewed me up and it spat me out because I was trying to do so much, way too much. It was a real reflection that I had to slow down because I'm still in winter, I am hibernating. This is not the time to push, this is the time to allow everything to grow within me, and now this time of year, March, spring, is the time to allow things to bloom. Seeds are beginning to germinate, animals start to emerge from hibernation, trees start budding, early flowers start blooming. I bet you've walked around and you've seen, like you can see. I don't know, we have a big tree out the front of our house, and the crows they are collecting sticks, they are building nests. You can see animals are coming back out, everything is blossoming, everything is blooming, the world is reawakening, and so are you because nature is not separate from you, you are nature, so when nature reawakens, you are also reawakening, and this is something that we have forgotten. We are nature, so as nature re-emerges and nature blossoms, this is your time of the year to re-emerge and blossom too. Also, if you are familiar with astrology and the astrological calendar, we are coming into Aries season, so Pisces season is just about to end, and Aries season begins on March 20th. Aries is the first sign of the zodiac. So this is an astrological new year. This is the time to begin again. Aries, as I said, is the first sign of the zodiac, it's associated with initiation, courage, action, leadership. Aries is a cardinal sign, a fire sign, the zodiac sign that starts each season and represents new beginnings. Aries is ruled by Mars, the planet of drive, motivation, and forward movement. So this aligns perfectly with starting the new year, the spring, the reawakening, the initiation. Aries energy brings the spark of life. It's the moment the seed pushes through the soil. You get momentum, bold action, courage. Aries is bold, it's brave, it's courageous. It is go out there and get what you want. Energy. So this is the perfect time to start afresh. This is the perfect time to allow yourself to step into your new year, new you kind of like resolutions and energy. What is ready to be initiated into your life right now? I am an Aries, so this is my time of the year. This is my season, and I can feel the big bold energy. And that's the thing, even if you aren't a fire sign, an Aries, you will be able to feel the collective energy of the earth. You'll be able to feel as the sun moves into the sign of Aries, you will be able to call upon that big, bold, courageous energy because that is what we are here to do this time of year. We are here to start afresh, we're here to be big and bold and brave and beautiful. So harness this energy and allow yourself to sweep under the carpet anything that may not have gone your way so far this year because it's irrelevant. Beginning again in January is ridiculous. So let it go. It's in the past, what's done is done, and now you know this is the official new year. Now you know this is the time to start again. So allow yourself the peace and the acceptance and the grace to release anything that didn't go your way and know that on March 20th you have a fresh slate. This is the time that you can start your year anew. And if we want to look at it from a pagan witchcraft traditional point of view, this is Astara. Astara is a pagan festival which celebrates the spring equinox. Usually celebrated around March 20th, March 21st in the Northern Hemisphere. It's the moment, as I said, where day and night are equal, and from this point forward the light continues to grow. Energetically, it's the festival of rebirth, fertility, balance, and new beginnings, which is why it aligns perfectly with the astrological new year and airy season. Think of Astara as the Earth's awakening after winter. Ostara is thought to be named after the Germanic goddess Easter, and she was associated with dawn, spring, fertility, and new life. Her festivals celebrated the return of the light and the fertility of the land after winter. Many historians believe that this is where Easter comes from because Easter is symbolized, Easter symbols are eggs, rabbits, and spring flowers, and those are ancient fertility symbols that predate Christianity. Again, like we spoke about in the winter solstice episode, Easter has been plastered over Ostara, which again was a traditional pagan festival. Christianity just kind of sat itself on top of everything that we already celebrated. So the core themes of Astara were balance. As I mentioned, this is where we have the equal balance of light and dark. And spirituality, this is a moment to reflect. It's a moment to ask yourself where you need more balance in your life. It's a moment to integrate the light and the darkness within you and know that you cannot have the lightness, the happiness, the joy without your shadows, your sadness, your struggles. You cannot have one without the other. It's also the balance within us of masculine and feminine. Without the masculine, the go, go, go, you can't have the softness of the feminine. It's the symbol of rebirth and renewal. As I mentioned, it's also the pivot point in the Wheel of the Year where we have reached that middle point, and now the pendulum is swinging back towards the lightness, the summer. There is no more darkness yet to come. It is all going to be kind of big and bright and light from now on. Astara represents the return of life. After the stillness of winter, the seeds, as I mentioned, begin to germinate, the animals become alive, the trees bud, the earth starts producing food again. And this represents new beginnings, fresh starts, hope, growth. This was the time when you had made it through the hardest part of the year. It was a time to celebrate. It was a time to understand that it's only going to get easier from now. Like think back to the times before electricity, before our modern way of living. You made it through the hardest part of the year, and now the crops are going to come back, the earth is reawakening, it's going to be warmer, it's just going to get better. So can you see the perfect connection with Ostara this time of the year and your traditional new year? It is the time to start again, it's the time to start afresh. Ostara also represents fertility and creativity. Now, fertility doesn't have to just mean babies. I know this is the time of the year that you see kind of like all the little fox cubs and baby bunnies and lambs in the field. Like it is a time for birth, like in a physical, literal sense, but it's also a time for creative fertility. It's a time to start something, it's a time to rebuild and allow your new creations and your new ideas to blossom and take form. So you could ask yourself what ideas are ready to grow this time of year? What dreams have you been quietly incubating through winter? And what do you want to give life to this year? Ostara energy is very much the spark before full bloom. For example, for me, I am making a course and I launched the course as a live, in-person, kind of four-week program, and it was not my intentional decision, it was kind of like a decision I made off a whim, and I changed my plan and I was like, no, I'm just gonna do it this way. And I launched it, and instantly it felt sticky. It felt wrong because I was launching it in February, it was a time of hibernation. I purposely made myself come home this time of year to the UK to hibernate, to allow my creativity to be planted and to take form under the soil in the darkness, in my own space where I could create and write and meditate and journal and sit with a cacao and sit with myself and understand what it is that I wanted to birth so that when this time comes, when spring comes, I'm ready and I was not ready. So I took it down and I am launching a course in spring, in March, end of March, my course will be launching, and it will be perfectly timed because I have given myself the time to create it and the space in my hibernation to fully think about it and make sure I'm putting out something that I can be incredibly proud of rather than rushing. So more information on that course to come later in March. But if you are interested and you would like to know, then just send me a DM on Instagram at the Cyclica. I'm also offering a free womb wisdom workshop, which will be hosted on the 28th of March at 11am London UK time. So this is completely free. This is an introduction to cyclical living, to your inner seasons, to understanding how your body works and to harness this divine superpower within you. So if you are interested in joining us for that free one-hour class, then send me a DM on Instagram to save your space and I will see you there. So as I have mentioned, you have the connection between Easter and Ostara. What were the symbols of Ostara? Because it's quite coincidental that they are also the symbols of Easter. So eggs was one of them. They represented the potential and new life, the seed of something not yet born. People historically decorated eggs and used them in rituals. You could say the egg holds infinite possibility, just like the intentions we plant this time of year. A cute and quirky thing you can do this time of year to it is an Easter celebration, but it's also really rooted in Ostara. So it's the egg rolling competition at Devil's Dyke in Sussex. So you hard boil an egg, you paint it so that you can easily identify it, and then you go to Devil's Dyke with a load of other people and you roll your eggs down the hill, and the one that gets the furthest wins. I can't remember if you get any prize or anything, but it's a really fun kind of thing to do and day out. I think they hold it on Easter Saturday every year. So have a look. You can Google Devil's Dyke Egg Rolling and you'll be able to find it. But it's something we used to do when I was a kid, and it is so much fun. Another symbol of Ostara is hares and rabbits, they are the symbols of fertility and abundance. Rabbits reproduce so quickly, so they have become a symbol of life multiplying. In folklore, the hair was sacred to the spring goddess, and hares now are so rare, so seeing one, especially this time of year, is a really beautiful sign. Another Ostara symbol is seeds. Planting seeds physically is a classic Ostara ritual. This symbolizes planting intentions, nurturing them, and watching them grow over the year. It's a literal manifestation metaphor. Another symbol is spring flowers, and the spring flowers specifically associated with this time of year are daffodils, crocuses, tulips, primroses, and violets. They represent life returning to the earth. I don't know about you, but I have had so much joy driving around and seeing all the really beautiful yellow bursts of daffodils. It is just a sign from the world that she is waking up, the earth is coming back to life, and the daffodils are like the first sign of that. They are our gentle reminder that it's okay, it's almost over, spring is here, the new year is coming, and it is a time for you again as well to start afresh. Like with cyclical living, the wheel of the year mirrors your menstrual cycle. This is where we get our internal seasons from. This is where we find our connection. We are nature. So the earth seasons, the menstrual phases, the energy, it's all reflective. So Ostara is essentially your follicular phase. The earth is rising, the energy is rising, ideas are forming, life is returning. It's the moment when inner winter transitions into possibility. Some powerful Ostara reflection questions you can ask yourself are what part of you is ready to awaken? What seeds are you planting this year? And what is ready to grow into your life? Ostara reminds us that even after the longest winter, life always returns. So, as I mentioned, if you have felt out of balance, if you feel like you have been really trying and pushing and striving, and everything just hasn't gone your way so far this year, it's okay. This is why. This is why. This is we have been in the darkness, we've been in hibernation, we have been in our cocoon, and it's okay, but now that cocoon is slowly awakening. Slowly you can come out of your winter hibernation, out of your little dark cave and re-emerge back into the world. So this is the perfect time to set intentions energetically. This is the first forward moving moment of the year. The light is increasing, nature is beginning, Aries energy encourages your bold star, and the equinox symbolizes a clean slate. It's the perfect time to clear old energy, release what winter revealed, and plant intentions for your year ahead. This is the time to start afresh. This is the time to start anew. Everything else that happened up until March 20th is irrelevant. It's you can let it go. It wasn't your time. This was the recalibrating, the collecting, the remembering, the rest and reflection time. So this is your time now to start anew. Some amazing ways and rituals to practice for this time of year are, of course, a spring clean energetically and physically. You can declutter your actual physical space, you can throw away old clothes, you can throw away anything which no longer aligns with this new version of you you're calling in. You can really kind of get into all the dusty corners, all the kind of dark bits that may have collected dust or cobwebs or stagnation over the winter months. It's time to release it. Dust it out, hoover it up, clear it out, make sure you feel like your space. Is fresh and vibrant and has open windows, bring in like fresh air, bring that kind of like new flow. You can't allow the energy in your house to be stagnant. You need windows open, you need the kind of transition of the air and the wind through the windows. Allow it to blow out anything that's been kind of sat stagnation over this winter period. Allow it to clear out all the energies and anything that doesn't serve you. If you like to use sage or Palo Santo or incense, this is a great time to burn some sage or incense or anything and cleanse your house. Walk around it, ask anything that's been stagnant, anything that doesn't serve you and your greatest purpose and your highest self, ask it to leave. Ask the energies to clear themselves and then welcome back in these refreshing, welcoming, bold, bright, courageous energies that will help you move forward into your best self. It's a great time also to release old habits like a spring clean of your energetical and your physical space, clean up your habits, clean up the things you do that will not serve you and will not get you to your highest good. Winter is the time that we kind of slow down. There is some things that we pick up, there is some bad habits, maybe laziness, maybe we don't move as much, and there's nothing wrong with that. But is there something that doesn't serve your greatest good? Something that doesn't align with the person you want to be? This is the perfect time to do a full life audit. Look at your mental life, your financial life, your physical life, your spiritual life, and your social life. Reflect on all of those five main pillars and ask yourself: where do you want to be? Who do you want to become? What do you want your life to look like? How do you want your life to look like in each of those pillars? Get really, really clear on this vision. Understand what it is you want from your life, understand where it is you want your life to go. Because without vision, we can't bring anything into creation. First, we have to imagine it in our mind, and then we can see it take manifest physical form in our life. So get really clear on what it is you want, get really clear on what it is that doesn't serve you. Get really clear on every aspect of your life, because if you are not in control of your destiny, destiny is in control of you. I will say that again. If you are not conscious and in control of your destiny, if you do not bring enough conscious awareness into your everyday life, into all of those five main pillars, if you do not understand that in every single moment you have a choice, you have a choice to be aware and present and conscious and make a conscious decision, or you have a choice to just live out your conditioned unconscious programming. So bring enough conscious awareness into your life, understand that when you live consciously and you live with intention, when you take control of your destiny, your destiny cannot control you. So get really clear on that. Figure out what it is you want, and then figure out what it is you want, especially in this next year, because you can plan your kind of five main pillars for the rest of your life. You can kind of do like a full life roundup. This is what I want everything to look like, and then pick some things. Pick things you want to achieve this year, get really clear, really, really clear on it, and make a vision board. This is my favourite thing to do this time of year. My sister is actually coming over this weekend, and I think I'm going to make her sit down with me and make a vision board because I am obsessed with vision boards. If anybody, if you know me personally, you know that my screensaver is always a vision board, it's just always. I always have something on my phone, on my wallpaper that I am working towards. And when I came back from Bali in December last year, I took off my vision board and I made myself purposely sit in a space of openness because I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't 100% sure on what I wanted to look like, how I wanted it to go, and how I wanted this kind of dream to unfold. And I made myself sit with no vision board, no plan, no kind of like driving force. I had an idea, but there was no kind of like okay, I want to do this, this, this, and this. And now I allowed myself that space and that hibernation time to go within and reflect. I have been through every single one of my five pillars. I have a very clear picture of what I want my life to look like, but I still leave a little bit of a gap for the universe to bring me what I want in the best way possible. Because sometimes we can have a dream and a vision, and sometimes we get what we want, but not in the way we want we want to. So we have to have a little bit of space, a little bit of grace for the universe to bring to us what it is they think is gonna serve our highest good, because sometimes what we think is gonna serve our highest good isn't always what's gonna serve our highest good. So I have now got a really clear picture, I've now been given opportunities and experiences and things that I can now put into okay, this is where I'm gonna go, this is what my life is gonna look like. Come the new year, come April. I have a plan, I have a clear direction. Yes, there is room for different avenues and there is different options that could everything could kind of unravel differently, but I have a plan because I didn't set myself a strict this is what I'm gonna do and this is how it's gonna go in winter. I allowed myself that space which I've never done before. I've never allowed myself the space to sit in the uncomfortable unknown and see what it brings me, and it was really uncomfortable. It was as an Aries, I need to have purpose, I need to have direction, I need to know what I'm doing, where I'm going at all times. So sitting in a space of the void, the darkness, the void before creation, the space between was so uncomfortable. But I did it, and now I have a plan, and now I have a clear direction, and now I have a vision. So reflect on your life, reflect on it, allow some kind of space, but reflect on it and create a vision. Put in there absolutely everything that's gonna bring you joy and journal out everything that you want to let go of, any habits you want to let go of, anything you don't want to bring into this new year, this is the time to release it, this is the time to let go. So now you've done all your spring cleaning and visualizing. Another great way, another great ritual to connect to this time of the year, to Ostara, is a sunrise walk, especially on March 20th. If you can watch the sunrise on March 20th, that is the perfect way to welcome in the equinox. If you can walk barefoot on the earth, that is also an amazing way to ground into the earth's energy. My favorite thing is to go and walk amongst the forest. I just think the forest, especially like oak trees, mossy ancient oak trees, kind of damp. Oh my goddess, that for me is home, and that is where you can release all of these kind of stagnant energies. You can sit amongst the trees, you can sit maybe on a tree root, on the base of a tree, you can just stand and place your hands on a tree, and you can ask Mother Earth, you can ask the energies of the trees for the old wise souls to take away your negative energy. I know it might sound woo-woo, but trust me, it works. Go and sit amongst the trees and ask them to take all that doesn't serve you because it will leave you feeling rejuvenated and ready for this next new year. Another amazing thing you can do for a stara and this time of the year is plant seeds. So, and a great thing you can do is maybe you can buy seeds for your garden, or you can buy seeds for maybe a planted pot, and you can plant them with intention. So, something that I think would be really special and that I'm gonna do this year, even though I may not be in the country to see them grow. I am going to write down my intentions on a piece of paper, and then I will burn that piece of paper with that intention, and with the ashes, I will collect the ashes and I will also plant them in the soil along with the seeds. So when that seed grows, it is also growing from your intention. You can literally watch your intentions take form, take physical shape because everything is energy. So bringing your intentions down onto paper, bringing them into that plant, into that seed, it's a beautiful way to watch your manifestations and your intentions come into physical form. Another amazing thing you can do is if you have an altar already, you can add some of these elements, and if you don't have an altar, you can create one. So an altar is a special place where you have some elements that represent the aspects of the earth, so earth, water, fire, and air. They're also where you can maybe have crystals, incense, cards, anything that kind of has any meaning to you. An altar is the place that you put it, it's like a place of worship, it's your own sacred area that you can reflect on, you can look on, and it can bring you inspiration. So, some great things to add to your altar during this time of year are eggs, fresh flowers, seeds, maybe a green candle, and some pastel colours. Can you collect flowers and pastel colours? Can you see anything else, like maybe crystals or anything around these pastel colours to bring onto your altar? Another great ritual is to bury eggshells. This is an offering to the earth to symbolize rebirth and fertility. It's another way to ask for protection in this new year and allow yourself to kind of give an offering back to the earth, to allow yourself to give back to the earth and thank her for what she will then eventually give back to you. So, as we step into the spring equinox next year and the beginning of airy season, this is your invitation to begin again. Just like the earth is slowly waking up, you do not need to rush or force anything. You simply just need to plant the seeds, let this be the moment to release what winter revealed, clear the space for what you truly want, and set your intentions for the year ahead. Nature reminds us that growth doesn't happen overnight, it begins quietly beneath the surface. So trust that whatever you're planting now with care and intention will grow in its own time. The light is returning, the cycle is beginning again, and so are you. So this is your time, your new year's resolution, your new year, new you. Allow yourself to be reborn, allow yourself to release everything that has happened so far in this year and be born again. A fresh slate, a new start. This is the time to go out and create the life you have always dreamt of. Thank you so much for listening to the Good Go Rebellion podcast. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to remember that this is the start of the new year. What's happened so far this year is irrelevant. This is the time to allow yourself to be reborn, to allow yourself to grow and evolve and step into this new version of you. This is the time the new year starts. If you want to join me in diving deeper into all things earth-based spirituality, magic, mindset, menstrual cycle education, reconnect with your inner seasons, then you can find me on Instagram at the Cyclica, and you can find me back here every week with a new episode. So until next time, may you trust the season that you're in and have the courage to begin again in alignment with the earth. May you release everything that has happened so far and may you allow yourself to start again. All my love, and I will see you again next week.