How to Track Your New Moon Intentions: The Monthly Lunar Journal Practice
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Setting intentions at the new moon is only half of the practice.
The other half is what you do between new moons — the tending, the tracking, the honest mid-cycle assessment, and the willingness to look back at the end of each cycle and ask: what actually happened? What grew? What didn't? What do I understand now that I didn't at the moment of planting?
Without this second half, new moon intention-setting becomes a pleasant monthly ritual with no real through-line — a series of disconnected plantings that never become a garden.
The monthly lunar journal practice closes that loop.
Why Tracking Matters
Most people significantly underestimate how much they have changed, grown, and accomplished over the course of a year. Without a record, the gains are invisible — and the patterns that need changing are also harder to see.
Tracking your new moon intentions over twelve months creates something genuinely valuable: a visible record of your actual inner life across a full year. You can see which intentions keep reappearing cycle after cycle (a signal that something deeper needs to shift before this intention can take root). You can see where you have genuinely grown. You can see the patterns in what you want, what you achieve, and what you avoid.
This is the difference between spiritual practice and spiritual performance. Performance happens and is forgotten. Practice accumulates.
The Lunar Journal Template
A simple lunar journal template has five sections, one for each phase of the cycle:
New Moon (Day 1-2)
What are my intentions for this cycle? (1-3 specific intentions, written clearly)
What am I releasing from the last cycle to make space for what is new?
What is the quality of this particular new moon, and how does it relate to my intentions?
Waxing Moon (Day 3-14)
What actions am I taking to tend my intentions?
What momentum is building? What resistance is arising?
What is this phase teaching me about what I set?
Full Moon (Day 14-15)
What has come to fullness or become visible this cycle?
What am I celebrating or acknowledging?
What is the honest status of each intention I set at the new moon?
Waning Moon (Day 16-27)
What is ready to be released from this cycle?
What did not grow as I hoped, and what does that tell me?
What am I completing and clearing before the next new beginning?
Dark Moon (Day 27-29)
What wisdom did this cycle bring?
What do I want to carry forward into the next cycle?
What am I genuinely releasing — not just intellectually, but in my body and my actions?
How to Use the Template Without Overwhelm
The template is a guide, not a requirement. You do not need to write five full journal entries every month to have an effective tracking practice.
The minimum viable lunar journal practice is three entries per cycle:
- New moon: set intentions and release from previous cycle (10-15 minutes)
- Full moon: assess what has come to fullness (5-10 minutes)
- Dark moon: complete the cycle honestly before the new beginning (10-15 minutes)
Even this minimal practice, maintained consistently over twelve cycles, will give you a level of self-knowledge and clarity about your own patterns that most people never develop.
The Annual Review: The Most Valuable Practice of the Year
At the end of twelve cycles — ideally at the Samhain or Winter Solstice new moon — read back through your entire year of lunar journal entries. What you will find there is genuinely illuminating:
- Intentions that appeared repeatedly without taking root (these deserve deeper attention)
- Growth you had forgotten to appreciate
- Patterns in the times of year when you are most energized vs. most contracted
- Evidence of how much you have actually changed
- The thread of what matters most to you, running through all twelve cycles
This annual review is one of the most valuable practices in the entire lunar year. It transforms twelve separate new moon rituals into a single coherent story of a year of conscious living.
Getting Started
Start at the next new moon. You do not need a special journal. You do not need to catch up from the beginning of the year. Begin at the next threshold, with the template above, and stay with it for one full cycle. See what you learn. Then continue.
The practice builds. The knowledge accumulates. By the end of a year, you will have something that most people never have: a genuine record of your own interior life, season by season, cycle by cycle, told in your own words.
The monthly New Moon Journal template — ready to use from your very first new moon — is included in 13 New Moon Rituals: Lunar Beginnings, along with thirteen complete ritual ceremonies for every new moon of the year. 37 pages of complete lunar practice.
