Janus and the Magic of My New Year’s Day Ritual

I was named after a god. Okay, that’s probably not true. My name is just a continuation of one-syllable J names in my family: Jeanne, Jon, and Jan. But my name is certainly derived from Janus, the Roman god of change and transitions, and there has never been a drought of these in my life. Apparently, I am aptly named.

Neither my father nor mother ever told me why they chose this name for me. I can’t help thinking this is the power of archetypes. The gods and goddesses of the ancient world are still with us, deep in our psyche, regardless of our awareness.

Janus was present at every gateway, every portal, every door. So naturally, he is the god of beginnings and endings. With two faces, he saw what was to come as well as what had passed.

And this, my friends, brings me to my favorite tradition as one year ends and another begins: making a collage. You may be tempted to call it a vision board. Except that it’s not. The choice of images isn’t calculated. There is no deliberate searching for illustrations to represent certain ideals or wants. No calling on the law of attraction. No conscious setting of intentions.

Making a collage is about potentially capturing that which is hidden from your consciousness. It’s about mystery and revelation. And for me, it’s a great way to start the new year.

I enjoy skimming through a pile of magazines for images that call out to me. Some years I don’t have a lot to work with, other years the pile is huge. When I’ve pulled all the images that I like, I set them to the side. I get out the glue and tape and decide on the background paper. Some years, it’s a single sheet of white 8.5 x 11. In other years, I tape several together or even include colored paper. Poster boards have more heft and more space to play with. I even did one in 2014 that was five feet long.

Then the real magic begins. I sift through what I culled and listen to how and where the images want to be placed. A lot end up in the trash. Others are trimmed. Some are even placed and then covered. I work with it like a painter on a canvas or a sculptor with clay. Some images know exactly where they want to be and others need to be moved around until they find their home. There are always some I am sure I will use that end up discarded. As much as I like them, they don’t fit the whole.

When it is done, I sit back, enjoy and ponder. I hang it somewhere always visible. Next to the toilet was formerly a favorite spot as it gave me plenty of time to observe it up close. Now I typically hang it where I can see it from my bed. It never ceases to make me smile throughout the year. Intermittently, there will be moments of insight: Ah-hah! moments and isn’t that interesting? revelations.

The collage I made on New Year’s Day, 2022, is no different.

collage & photo by Jan Peppler

Only sometime after my Autumn trip to Sicily did I look at this and see the connection to our new home. (I had no expectation—and could not even imagine—that I would own a home in Italy this year.) The yellow color of the door matches the color of the house. This door appears under a photo of a path lined with Italian Stone Pine trees and next to a magical yard, with a key floating overhead. On the handle of the key are the four wings of a dragonfly and the rest I covered with what seemed to me a golden phoenix in flight. Looking at it now, maybe it’s a goose – but when I placed it, it felt like a phoenix.

So here we have keys to our new yellow Italian house, with a wonderful yard, next to an old stone (or concrete?) cottage with a small window and close to the beach. All of this seems to point to what indeed came to pass in 2022, but I never could have known this in advance. I couldn’t even know to look for these things. They were simply images that spoke to me and something deep in my psyche – or something beyond my understanding – had me arrange them as I did. We might even go so far as to note the water in a large bowl, which one might associate with there being no running water in the house, water that needed to be lifted from the well. And the woman in orange represents the serenity this new home brings me. Her placement balances the yellow door and frames the images relating to the house. Is this translation too much, too far-reaching? Maybe, maybe not.

Looking forward, looking back.

A friend told me the other day that she stopped making collages when she realized that she had images that represented things from her past. She thought that was a bad thing. I think differently. Remember Janus, the god of transitions, present at every threshold, looks both forward and back. Any effort we do to move forward always comes with a bit of the past. We can’t forget that transitions take time. There are some things from our past that we need, things that are helpful, or at the very least, comforting. Having a few things from our past can actually aid in our movement forward. These things must be acknowledged, but they don’t have to be the focus. They will fall away when the time is right. As we move forward on our path, the past will fade from our sight.

In this corner of my 2022 collage, I included a Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit – the smallest rabbit in the world (and endangered). Rabbit was formerly a totem of mine, which never made me happy because Rabbit is all about fear. When I saw this in a magazine last year, I admit that including it in the collage was deliberate. I thought, “Okay, it’s good that you’re small because I’m no longer as afraid as I once was, but I also need to acknowledge that I do still have some fears and remember to not let them keep me from the things I want.”  Only now, every time I look at this, I see a mouse. Like the mice in our house and the two that died below a dresser drawer. And that makes me laugh. This tiny rabbit may have been useful to remind me not to make a problem where there isn’t one: a lesson I struggled with over the years. Now, however, it’s time for it to go.

Note the image under the large YES. That is a photo of a sculpture in Venice, Italy. The hands are coming out of the water to grab the building. What a fantastic piece of art! I would love to see this in person someday. Now when I look at it in this collage, I have to laugh at what seems obvious: Say yes to the house! Grab it! Out of my deep unconscious (symbolized by the water), I reached for this. This sits on top of a nest with an egg in it, and a strawberry, which seems to say that new beginnings are sweet.

Can you see why love doing collages? So here is a full photo of the one I made last New Year’s Day:

If you’re at all inclined or even curious, I encourage you to make your own. Don’t think about it too much. Just flip through magazines, grab the images you like, and paste them onto paper. Hang it somewhere, look at it regularly, and be surprised at the revelations that come.

Have you ever done this? If so, how’d it go? If not, do you think you might?

And with this, my friends, I wish you a Happy New Year! Whatever you do to mark this transition from one year to the next, I hope it is meaningful for you. My prayer for 2023 is that it will be filled with joyous surprises, good health, an abundance of love, gratitude, and blessings - for each and every one of us.

Om Shanti, Jianna

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Some examples from previous years:

a bit excessive

to the very sparse

The year that I knew I would be selling my home and on the road, I used an elegant hand-papered notebook to make several collages and took this with me on my travels.