Reading Eliade’s the *Sacred and the Profane* over the holidays I offer these seven old ideas for the new year:

1) Welcome the new year as a new world. (Seriously reject history.)
2) Celebrate the new year by creating utter chaos—what came before creation.
3) Lay on the ground as a ritual of rebirth (after it snows).
4) Travel to the underworld to retrieve a lost soul.
5) Accept woman as your god. (My first commandment.)
6) Understand that change requires transformation, loss, and inevitably grief.
7) Leave your body (on occasion . . . see point 2).